Джон Адамс - The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019

The next six weeks passed in a blur of tests and measurements. The active egg grew warmer by the day, and on Day 6 it began to swell, growing so quickly that I fancied I could almost see it happen. I cooed to it, increased the humidity, and began wiping it down with a dilute acid bath, helping the shell to weaken and thin. I had made a study of the creature’s biology, reading every report, examining every biological breakdown, and the acid had to do something other than belch forth to dissolve cities. It took too many resources to be that limited. But as a way to protect the young . . .

The eggshell was so thick. The acid would wear it away, telling the baby that it was safe to emerge. In the absence of a parent, erosion would do the same thing, but it would take so much longer. So very, very much longer.

I was wiping the mixture of acid and seawater across the shell when the egg gave an almighty shake, almost hopping in its cradle. I pulled back and watched in delighted awe as the shell split and tore under the force of a sharp-jawed saurian head pushing its way to freedom.

All vertebrates practice cuteness as a survival mechanism. Even baby snakes and lizards are adorable compared to the adults, with large eyes, outsized skulls, and a certain rounded softness. The infant creature was no different. It blinked its round golden eyes at me, all four of its pupils contracting, and made a small, querulous sound. I smiled.

“Hello, little one,” I said.

It made the sound again, louder this time, before beginning to chirp, pushing its arms through the remnants of the shell and holding them out to me.

The creature had been bipedal. Its child was no different, built like the hybrid offspring of a human and an alligator, with soft scales in a dozen shades of green, from mellow jade across its belly to deep malachite on its back. It had the beginning of what would eventually be jagged spikes running the length of its spine, and tiny, pearlescent claws on the ends of its fingers. Like most reptiles, it had been born with a full complement of teeth, each one sharp enough to tear through flesh. Strangest of all were its eyes, two large and placed where I would expect on a bipedal predator, two smaller and placed above them, giving it an incredible range of vision. Nothing would ever sneak up on this child of the deeps.

It chirped again. I took a breath. It could be trying to lure me in, to make a meal of me, in which case I would die and so would it, starved and unable to escape the house at its current size. It could also be an imprinted infant, turning to its presumed parental figure, seeking comfort.

“You and me, kid,” I said, and leaned forward, scooping it out of the eggshell, into my arms.

The infant creature made a softer sound, somewhere between a purr and a sigh, and pressed its face against the curve of my neck, huddling into the warmth of me. I held it tightly, looking at the wrecked remains of its eggshell, and thought of the people who would give anything, anything, to be where I was now, to have this tiny, innocent thing at their disposal. Think of the secrets they could learn by taking a juvenile apart!

I could have anything I wanted with a single phone call. Money, fame, all the attention in the world. I could be the new darling of the sciences, the one who changed the field forever. Or I could have this baby, who was already falling asleep in my arms, heavy and content and absolutely sure that I would keep it safe.

I kissed the top of its head. “You and me, kiddo,” I murmured. “We’ve got work to do.”

Geode toddled around the backyard on increasingly strong legs, tail waving wildly to help them stay stable and upright. Only a month out of the egg and they were already up to my chest, capable of knocking me over with the innocent enthusiasm of their play. With only two known exemplars of their species, I couldn’t have said whether they were male or female, but I had lost the ability to think of them with the dispassionate it by the time they were a week old, happily shredding salmon with their talons and trying to lure me into eating the bits they didn’t want. They were an individual. Not a human, but not a beast either.

And they knew me. Geode couldn’t speak, but they understood their own name and all the things I was inclined to ask them for. They even allowed me to continue taking blood samples, despite their dislike of the needle, because I said please and promised them their favorite delicacies when I was done.

They tripped over a rock in the yard and stumbled, making a distressed groaning noise that turned into a hacking sound, like a cat in the process of coughing up a hairball. They moaned once and spat a ball of faintly glowing, semisolid goo onto the ground, where it began to smolder and sink into the earth. Geode moaned again, now sounding ashamed.

“Oh, no, baby,” I said, rushing to their side and rubbing the scales on the top of their head soothingly. “That was a good thing you did just now. What a fine, strong baby you are! Why, I’m sure most unidentified sea-dwellers can’t make acid until they’re much larger than you are!”

Geode creeled hopefully. I laughed.

“Yes, you can have some chopped squid as a reward. Greedy little one.”

They bumped their head against my sternum. I laughed again, planting a kiss on their cheek before turning and starting for the house.

As soon as they couldn’t see me, I let my smile fade. Acid. They were spitting acid. I’d known that was a normal part of their development, but between that and the speed with which they were growing . . . their childhood was going to be much shorter than I wanted it to be, and there was no way I’d be able to hide them forever. Honestly, I was going to be hard-pressed to hide them much longer. They ate more every day. There were only three stores within reasonable driving distance, and even rotating which ones I went to, and when, they were starting to notice how much fish I bought. The money would run out soon, and that was assuming no one tipped off the authorities to the tourist with the strange shopping habits.

Was it paranoid of me to think that buying too much fresh salmon could bring the government down on my head? Maybe. But I was the only person known to be living in my area, and I was from out of state, and this was a different world from the one that I’d been born into. This was a world where monsters were real.

Geode chirped and nudged their head against my arm, asking for more scritches. Maybe this had always been a world where monsters were real. We were just finally being forced to admit that maybe we’d been wrong about what they were.

Another month passed in furtive shopping expeditions and the increasing hunger of my adopted child. The first time I stepped into the backyard to find them with their head buried in the ripped-open chest cavity of a stag I stopped, heart thundering in my ears, questions of radiation and exposure racing through my mind. It wasn’t safe to hunt here. It wasn’t safe to fish here. It wasn’t—

It wasn’t safe to starve here, and I couldn’t buy enough meat to keep Geode from crying in the night, or apparently to keep them from running off to hunt. They were taller than I was, still growing at an incredible rate, and their acid projectiles were no longer accidental but were instead aimed and fired with pinpoint precision, usually to object to something I had asked, like another blood sample or for Geode to lift their tail out of the way while I worked. We danced through the increasingly cramped house with exquisite care, me trying to keep records of their astonishing growth, them snarling and snapping and shedding strips of too-small skin everywhere. I gathered every single one, the marine biologist’s equivalent of a baby book, and I didn’t feel an ounce of guilt. Yes, Geode was the scientific discovery of a lifetime. A proper laboratory could have learned so much more from them. I didn’t care. They were my responsibility, my adopted child, and I knew how this would end.