David Nickle - Eutopia

Andrew shook his head. “Didn’t see who did it. But it happened—it happened after we killed the Juke. I was away. So I didn’t see it.”

“Away, were you?” Sam Green stepped a little faster as they headed down the slope. Andrew watched his back as they headed to the main entrance of the house. All was, then, as Andrew had begun to suspect; Sam Green had spent more time, considerably more time, with the hill people around Eliada than Dr. Bergstrom had. He had seen a great deal of this. And he knew enough about Mister Juke, and the way the creature reproduced, not to look too surprised when Andrew had told him what he’d found in Loo Tavish’s belly.

One of his men met them at the front door, which he was guarding like a castle gate. He stepped aside, and Sam opened the door himself. They stepped into the entry hall of Harper’s house silently, and then he shut the door.

“What killed them, Dr. Waggoner?” he said.

“It wasn’t an animal,” said Andrew. “It was men, but not men with guns. The Tavishes were butchered. That’s why I’m back here—I think the attackers might be on their way.”

Sam might have been about to say something else, but he stopped himself at the sound of two pairs of footfalls overhead. They both waited as the footsteps started down the stairs, and at no great length Garrison Harper appeared unaccompanied on the landing. Even at this early hour, Harper was dressed in a dark wool jacket and trousers; his hair combed impeccably.

“My God!” exclaimed Harper, hurrying down the remaining steps. “Dr. Waggoner! You have returned to us! Pray you’ve returned unharmed!”

“I am a little worse in some ways,” said Andrew. “Better, thank you, in others.” He pushed himself to his feet. Harper strode close and took his good hand in a typically resolute handshake.

“Yes, yes, I suppose that you are,” said Harper. “First, however, we must get you cleaned and fed.” He pulled back and looked Andrew up and down. “Food and water first, I think. Yes, sir? I apologize, but given your state I think the kitchen—”

“—will be fine, sir,” said Andrew. “I would appreciate some fresh water.”

Harper made a harrumphing sound and turned on his heel. “Harris!” he called, and the butler emerged. “Let’s repair to the kitchen. You can arrange for Dr. Waggoner to have an acceptable breakfast, I presume?”

Harper’s man led the three of them through an archway beneath the stairs barely acknowledging Andrew’s presence, hurrying through the dining room and nearly letting the door to the kitchen hit Andrew’s arm as they made their way into the vast, stove-hot space. Harper settled on one of several wooden stools next to a wooden table. Andrew took another.

“We’ll take our breakfast here,” said Harper.

“As you wish, sir.” The fellow gave Andrew a disapproving look and hurried off.

“I have to apologize again, Dr. Waggoner. Eliada, despite my best efforts, seems to resist your kind at every turn.”

“Eliada’s not unique that way.” Andrew shrugged and Harper nodded, and in the silence Andrew wondered how was he going to broach this discussion?

Do you remember that strange patient we discussed? The one with the remarkable neck? I believe, sir, that he is of an entirely different species… A monster, Mr. Harper, it is very true! His young burrow their way into the wombs of expectant mothers—they issue forth—and they seize the very souls of men ! Andrew Waggoner thought he would never be clean enough, or well-enough dressed, to broach the subject to a fellow like Garrison Harper with anything approaching credibility.

As it developed, he did not have to. Harper smiled sadly at Andrew.

“Eliada is not unique now,” he said. “But with the help of that patient we discussed before you left—the fellow they tried to hang before harming you—I hope that one day it will be.”

“The patient—Mister Juke,” said Andrew.

Harper nodded. “Mister Juke,” he said. “Ah, Dr. Waggoner, how over this past week I wished I had been more forthcoming with you, that evening we met. You asked me about him then, didn’t you? And I evaded.”

“I’ve seen more of them,” said Andrew.

“Have you?”

“I’ve developed a theory about their nature.”

They were interrupted as one of Harper’s kitchen servants, a stout young blonde-haired girl brought over a chrome platter of china and silverware, and another who might have been her older brother, bearing a steaming pot of coffee which he poured into two delicate china cups. Andrew took his with sugar and thick cream; Mr. Harper drank his black.

“They are,” said Andrew, after swallowing a long pull of the hot sweet mixture, “fundamentally parasitic.”

Harper raised an eyebrow. “Parasitic. Like a tapeworm, you mean? The tapeworm lives inside us. Yet this patient—he exists outside the body.”

“No, it does not,” said Andrew. “It’s born from eggs that are laid in the wombs of women. Once hatched, the young compete for food inside the womb—either from the nourishment travelling along the umbilical cord to the foetus, or, if there is no foetus there, from the mother herself.” Andrew felt a palpable release as he spoke—drawing together as he was the culmination of a day and a night’s thought and correlation, as he crawled down the mountain slope toward Eliada. “As they do so, they develop an affinity for the mother’s blood and that of her family. And using that affinity, the ones who survive and emerge are able to… manipulate the family.”

“Using the affinity,” said Harper. “I see. How does this manipulation manifest?”

“Like a narcotic. It causes hallucinations—visions that are indistinguishable from what spiritualists might call the transcendent experience. Those visions cause men and women to believe that the creature is something other. A spirit. A god.”

Harper looked away.

“You don’t believe me,” said Andrew.

“Oh, quite the contrary. You’ve said nothing that I haven’t heard in as many words already. Our friend Dr. Bergstrom has followed your line of reasoning quite as far along as you have—and beyond.”

Andrew set his coffee cup down. “Beyond,” he said. “So you know what threat the Juke poses to this community?”

Harper smiled. “The threat,” he said. “There is no threat to this community, young man, that its constituents do not manifest upon themselves. The Juke is nothing more than an opportunity for this community. For this one, and all others.”

“An opportunity? Sir,” he said, “the Juke is a… it’s a rapist. And a leech .”

The kitchen went quiet at that—just the low burbling of a boiling pot of water carried forward. The half-dozen others in the room—including Sam Green, who, Andrew noted, had made his way closer so as to better hear the talk—were all staring at him.

“All right!” said Harper over his shoulder. “Back to your duties, please!”

The staff turned away, although Sam Green just leaned against a wall. Harper shook his head.

“It may be that the creature in the quarantine could inspire religion. But although I’ve allowed churches here—and in spite of its name—Eliada is not a town raised to God.”

“If not God,” said Andrew, “then—”

“Man,” Harper finished for him. “The perfectibility of Man. That was our goal when we built this place. Do you know what was here before we came?”

“I do not.”

“Savagery,” said Harper. “There was nothing here—naught but hill folk barely possessed of language, never mind wit, surrounded by the Kootenai Indians—who although savage themselves at least had the wherewithal to make good use of this land’s bounty, in fish and land and stone.”