Composite Creatures Caroline Hardaker (smart books to read TXT) 📖

never used to do that. He pushed his knuckles deep into his eye sockets, kneading them slowly behind his glasses.

“Art?”

He stopped speaking and looked up at me, checking me from a safe distance. He lifted himself slowly, uncurling his back and stretching himself as tall as he could.

My Art.

He wouldn’t talk to them before he’d talk to me, surely? He stepped towards me, whispering so close to my nose that I wasn’t sure what he’d said, and followed the bald man to the kitchen with one last look over his shoulder. He might have said “I love you,” or it might’ve been “I have you.”

“Sit down, Norah.”

I stayed standing. “Why are you here so early?”

Fia sighed, smoothing the leather with iron-palms. “How’re you doing, dear?”

“I’m alright. It’s early, we had a party last night. I drank far too much.”

“Oh dear. We’ll get you in for a physical soon, how’s that? There’s a new research programme you’re eligible for which ups your recovery time after alcohol. Would you like to try it? Shall I put you down for it? It’s proving to be quite popular. We can sign you both up.”

I didn’t take the bait, but instead said, “How do I go back to the beginning?”

“Sorry?” She looked genuinely taken aback. “Back to when?”

“Back to the beginning of this whole thing. I want to know my rights. I’ve got this far and I don’t even know what happens if I changed my mind.”

“Changed your mind.” Fia tipped her head. “Why would you do that?”

Full thrust. No more tiptoes.

“It’s not your fault,” I blurted, “but there’s been a mistake. With our ovum organi. She’s not like the others, what you said they’d be like. Something went wrong when you made her.”

“Oh right… Have you reported it? We can take her in today and do an assessment.”

“No, you can’t. It’s not right. I signed up for an ovum organi – a lump of skin, bone, and muscle that wouldn’t engage, wouldn’t talk. Would exist – just… exist. An organ-egg, right? But this one, she’s like us.”

Fia narrowed her eyes. “OK. What’s physically wrong with her?”

“You don’t know?” I laughed, “I’ll bring her in.”

I must have looked mad. I felt mad. In the kitchen, Nut was tearing around the room, circling Art and Mr Martin who sat at the dining table with an open briefcase. I couldn’t see inside it. Art looked grim. He fiddled with the zip of the duffle bag as the bald man scribbled into a notepad. I ignored them and tried to distract Nut from her hypnosis, grabbing at her on each lap. Both of them just watched me, didn’t help, didn’t interrupt. I was as wild as Nut then, and the expressions they wore said to me one thing – that I was on my own muscle-run and needed to get it out of my system. Don’t disturb it, let nature run its course.

“Please, Nut,” I begged. “Please.”

Every time I placed my hands on her shoulders she twisted from my reach. Nothing could stop her running, fleeing from a predator, survival her only instinct. She galloped without sideways thoughts, driven by the need to grow, be strong.

I read later that it felt like electricity, building up around the sternum. The ovum organi’s first instinct is to stretch, and then to release the charge by tensing the muscle groups one by one. But when this didn’t work (and they were designed not to), this cup of electricity overflowed and caused the current to burn through the axons to the nerve-endings. The sensation would only end when the energy had been expended, the muscles exhausted. It sounded like torture.

The bald man stood up and handed me a mug. He’d made me tea. When? Art watched the cup warily, as if ready to launch himself out of the way if I threw it. The man had his head tilted down, peering up at me over his glasses. He wafted his hands up at me, like you do when you air a bedsheet, and I took a sip of the steaming brew.

I had to go back to face them. In the living room, Fia and Nathan were waiting in silence.

“She’s running now, but you just need to see her for yourself. She’s different.”

Fia had already slipped her tablet from the leather folder and was scrolling. “We carried out a routine examination two weeks ago, and she seemed to be recovering well from the seizure this summer. She was well enough to donate to Arthur. A molar, I think.”

The blood. I’d seen the blood. That night in the garden. The night Art had warned me. I imagined them all smuggling Nut out of the house or even worse – the dirty procedure happening within these very walls. Was Nut’s blood on the carpet somewhere, trodden into the pile beneath my feet? Was I just as grubby as the act was?

“You shouldn’t have done that,” I said. “It didn’t belong to him.”

“It did, though,” Fia responded. “He pays for it every month. Like you do.”

Nathan leaned forward like it was his turn to sing. All together now.

“You both deserve this. The world’s so hard, Norah. There’s hardly a minute left in the day to work ourselves out. We need longer years. Would you give that up, now that it’s genuinely owed?”

He didn’t see. Neither of them knew. I had to whisper it in case Nut heard. I edged close, grasping Fia’s arm in case she moved back. I had to make them understand before they took her away, before they drank her dry. “Nut knows things. She knows everything that’s going on. She’s alive.”

Fia mouthed a silent “Ohhhh,” and turned to Nathan. Maybe he knew more about this. Maybe this was what his research was all about? He smiled. “Of course she is. She’s as living as you or me. She is alive. But she wasn’t born, she was made. She was made of your matter, not of your mind. And we own