Part XI TRAVEL

Weeds Transformed

Riding back to the beach in Oar's glass coffin was more pleasant than my previous trip. This time there was a hint of brownish green light, dimmed by fathoms of water but enough to show where the boat was going. I lay on my stomach and looked through the forward wall, watching for fish crossing the bow. There were several collisions on the trip — smallmouth bass who glanced off and scuttled away in terror — but the thumps of impact weren't so loud when I knew they were coming.

The boat opened up as soon as it landed, and I hurried to unload the equipment I'd been lying on: my pack, the Bumbler, and Jelca's food synthesizer. The last was a heavy brute — it took all my strength to wrestle it out of the boat, even using the carrying straps that I'd attached to it. If I carried the machine myself, I'd only manage a few klicks a day before dropping from exhaustion. Oar, however, claimed to have no trouble hauling such a weight. When her ancestors engineered themselves transparent and immortal, they'd obviously thrown in the strength of gorillas as a bonus.

And Oar felt inferior to me?

After two minutes, the boat closed itself and slipped back into the lake, returning underwater to pick up Oar. In the meantime, I busied myself testing the food synthesizer. If it didn't work, we'd still press on with our trip — I could shoot game with my stunner, or forage for nuts and berries — but spending time as hunter-gatherers would reduce the distance we could travel in a day, and increase our chance of being caught by winter. Added to that, I preferred not to eat local flora and fauna. Everything might look like Earth species, but they still could turn out poisonous. Even if they were fully terrestrial, that was no guarantee of safety. What if I cooked a rabbit for supper and later found it had rabies?

Since the synthesizer was solar-powered, I set it in the sun and loaded the hopper with weeds from the face of the bluffs. Grinders whirred immediately, turning the plants to puree: a good sign. There was no way to guess how long the machine needed to do its job, breaking the weeds into basic aminos, then reassembling the components into edible blobs: maybe five minutes, maybe several hours. In the meantime, the day was fresh, and placidly warm outside the shadow of the bluffs. I took off my top to air after wearing it four days straight… or perhaps just to feel the autumn sun on my skin.

For a few minutes, I had the planet to myself.

Alone

I had never been alone before… not in this specific way. Often I had been one of only two sentient creatures on a planet — the other being Yarrun, of course. But a planet-down mission was different, with goals to accomplish, checklists to work through, and a shipload of Vac personnel listening to your transmissions. Even as a little girl, I never felt truly alone. I was constantly accompanied by responsibility: the schoolwork heaped upon potential Explorers from the age of three, plus the chores I had to do on the farm. Now and then, our family took vacations; now and then, I played hooky or ran off to sulk in "secret hiding places" my parents likely knew from their own childhoods. But wherever I went, I was shadowed by what was expected of me. You don't free yourself from duty by running away. That only increases the weight on your shoulders.

Now, I was free — forcibly cut loose. If I stayed on this beach forever, what difference would it make? How would anything change? Jelca wasn't expecting me. He might not even be glad to see me: just some kid who made a spectacle of herself, mooning after him at the Academy.

Ullis would be happy if I showed up — we got along well as roommates. Even so, I remembered one night in the dorm, when she complained after hours of study, "Who cares about zoology, Festina? Cataloguing animals is as pointless as stamp collecting. There's only one classification system that interests me: things that can kill and things that can't." Even as Ullis hugged and welcomed me, she might be thinking, A zoology specialist… why couldn't it be someone with useful skills?

Why force myself on them? It might be better just to lie in the sun. I could keep Oar company, and give her English lessons till she felt brave enough to use a contraction.

And then what, Festina? Help clear fields to prove you're both civilized? Play "bed games" with her out of sheer boredom? Endure it as long as you can, then go lie down with her ancestors? That would be a vicious way to die: withering up with radiation sickness, while the glass folk around you fed on the rays.

"I'm an Explorer," I said aloud. The words had no portentous echo — they were just words, spoken as waves lapped the shore and bushes rustled in the breeze.

I touched my cheek. "I'm an Explorer," I repeated.

As a duty, it was stupid; but as an open opportunity…

Some maudlin urge made me want to address a speech to Yarrun — an apology and a promise. But the only phrases in my mind were too banal to voice.

The sun continued to beam warmly on my skin. A gull launched itself from the top of the bluffs and I watched it soar into the cloudless sky.

Oar's Axe

Ten minutes later, Oar's boat slid onto the sand. She stepped out, and with rehearsed casualness, swung a gloss-silver axe onto her shoulder. It looked deadly heavy, but not metallic — perhaps plastic, perhaps ceramic. Whatever it was, I'd bet my favorite egg the blade was sharp enough to shave a balloon; a culture that could make a see-through woman could certainly produce a monofoil cutting edge.

"On our trip," Oar announced, "we should clear trees now and then. Then we can tell the Explorers we traveled in a civilized way."

"Let me guess," I said. "When Jelca taught you our language, he never explained the word 'ecology.' "

Oar Food

Before I could lecture Oar on environmentalism, the food synthesizer gave a subdued chirp. I looked at my watch: eighteen minutes since I pressed the machine's ON button. Jelca might be lax on conservation, but he made admirably efficient gadgets.

When I opened the drawer at the bottom of the synthesizer, it contained two dozen blobs of jelly, each the size of my thumb. They came in several shades: light pink, frost green, and dull brown, with a few clear colorless ones too. I lifted a pink blob and smelled it; the fragrance was generically fruity, like cheap candy that simply tastes red.

"What are those, Festina?" Oar asked.

"Food."

Her nose wrinkled skeptically. "Explorer food?"

"And Oar food."

During my three days of breakdown, Oar had fetched us both food from the big village synthesizer, so I knew what she usually ate. Most dishes had the shape of common terrestrial foods — noodles, wafers, soups — but of course, each morsel looked like glass. The jellylike output from Jelca's synthesizer was at least translucent; but I had to admit it didn't resemble Oar's normal cuisine.

"Try that clear one there," I pointed. "I'll bet it tastes good."

"I cannot put that in my mouth," she objected. "It has touched the green one. It is dirty!"

"This is special food," I said. "It doesn't get dirty." I took the clear blob myself, making sure it hadn't picked up any color from adjacent blobs. "See? It's pretty."

"Now you're touching it."

"My hands are clean… and my skin color doesn't rub off, you know that. Otherwise, you'd be smeared and smudged yourself."

She didn't look convinced.

"Oar," I said, "if you don't like food from the synthesizer, what are you going to eat? Do you want me to kill animals for you? Or rip up plants I think might be edible? Do you want to eat raw fish? Or bright red raspberries?"

Her eyes widened in horror. "I will try machine food," she said quickly, and plucked the clear jelly from my hand. With the get-it-over-quick air of a woman taking medicine, she plopped the blob in her mouth, and swallowed without chewing… as if she was hurrying to get it down before the taste made her gag.

Seconds ticked by silently. "How was it?" I asked.

"I do not know," she answered. "I shall wait to see if I become sick."

Good enough, I told myself. If I could eat her food, she could probably eat mine; but let her work up to it gradually. In the meantime, the sun was bright — she could photosynthesize, like her ancestors back in the village.

"We're ready," I said. "Let's head south."

We Begin

Our climb up the bluffs proved Oar had ample strength to carry the synthesizer — with it strapped to her back, she walked as if its weight were barely there. I worried the straps might chafe her bare shoulders; but as time passed without a peep of complaint, I concluded her skin really was as tough as glass… and hardened safety glass at that.

From the top of the bluffs, our way south ran into the wooded ravine. I veered off the most direct route to avoid passing the log that held Yarrun's corpse; instead, I led Oar along the ravine's spindly stream, traveling southeast according to my compass. Walking wasn't easy — undergrowth tangled thickly along the stream bank — but I stuck with it for ten minutes, till we were far past my partner's shabby burial site. Then we turned due south again, climbing out of the ravine and into more level woodland.

For a long time after that, I still made wide detours around any logs that lay in our path.

Walking (Part 1)

Here is what I remember from that first day.

The peaceful stillness of the forest… and sudden compulsions to break that silence, babbling trivialities to cover the noise of guilt in my brain.

The quality of Oar's voice as she replied to me — the way the surrounding trees absorbed the sound and muted it.

The slash, slash, slash of our feet through fallen leaves.

A covey of quail which suddenly flushed from cover as we approached.

A flock of geese flying south in a lopsided V, their honking distant and piercingly autumnal.

Topping a rise and seeing a great open marsh in front of us, sparkling in the clear sunlight.

The small nose of a muskrat weaving along the edge of the creek in the marsh's center.

Oar fastidiously cleaning her feet after picking her way across mud. ("It is brown and ugly, Festina; people will think I am stupid if my feet are brown and ugly.")

Watching a great blue heron balance on one leg as it scanned the water for prey.

Borrowing Oar's axe so I could cut down a cattail, then pulling the plant's fuzzy head apart as we continued through the swamp.

The maddening suspicion that there were eggs all around me: heron eggs hidden by bulrushes, turtle eggs buried in the mud, frog eggs globbed just beneath the creek's surface. I knew better — on Earth, few species laid eggs so soon before winter — but still I was seized by impulses to look behind patches of reeds or kick the dirt with my toe… as if I had acquired some mystic intuition of eggs calling to me.

I hadn't. I found nothing. And in time, twilight closed around us as we reached the far edge of the marsh.

My Sleeping Bag

Beyond the marsh was forest; we built camp just inside the trees. More precisely, Oar went to gather firewood, while I pulled handfuls of marsh greenery as input for the food synthesizer. Once the machine had begun digesting the plants, I went to my backpack and debated opening my sleeping bag.

Like most Explorer equipment, standard-issue sleeping bags were compact. They had no bulky padding; an open bag looked like a sheath of tin foil, shiny side in. The foil didn't have the weight of a nice down comforter, but it was a good insulator for all its thinness — the glossy interior reflected back most escaping body heat. Surprisingly, the entire bag could be folded into a package no bigger than the flat of your hand.

It could be folded that way exactly once: at the factory where the bag was manufactured. Once you broke the shrink-wrap containing the bag, you would never fold the damned thing neatly again. It turned into a crinkly cranky mess of foil, billowing unmanageably in the slightest breeze and smooth enough to slip from your hands unless you held it in a death grip. The best refolding job I ever managed produced a lumpy wad as big as a pillow. Try jamming that into your rucksack when the original package was the size of an envelope.

So: to open or not to open the bag, that was the question — whether it was worse to spend the night unprotected, huddled against Oar for warmth, or to open the bag now and spend the rest of my life on this planet, fighting with a misshapen clump of surly tin.

To hell with it. I'd sooner shiver.

Around the Campfire

We ate around the campfire, Oar picking out the clear jelly blobs and me eating the rest. It took several courses to fill our stomachs. We would stuff the synthesizer with biomass, wait eighteen minutes, then eat the results while the machine whirred away on another batch.

While we ate, we talked… which is to say, Oar talked and I asked enough questions to keep her going. I wanted to learn all I could about her background, especially what she knew about the history of her planet.

She knew almost nothing. The far past was a blank; even the recent past was vague. Oar couldn't remember her father — her mother had pointed him out in the Tower of Ancestors, but he had been dormant Oar's whole life. Sometime during the pregnancy, he had simply decided enough was enough.

That was forty-five years ago.

It unsettled me that Oar was forty-five: she was almost twice as old as me. On the other hand, I had seen that her people didn't show their age… and why should I think of her as childlike, just because her English was simplistic? How's your grasp of her language? I asked myself.

It brought up an interesting question.

"Oar," I said, "how did you learn to talk like Explorers? Did Jelca and Ullis teach you?"

"Yes."

"They taught you to speak this well… and how long were they here?"

"A spring and a summer, three years ago."

"You learned this much English in six months? That's fast, Oar."

"I am very smart, Festina," she answered. "Not stupid, like Explorers."

It struck me she might be right. Bioengineering made her stronger and tougher than me; why not smarter too? Admittedly, Earth's attempts at building smarter people had seldom met with success: tinkering with the brain was so complex, most intelligence enhancement experiments ended in tragic failure. Even "successful" research projects had a ratio of ten thousand dead or near-vegetable infants for every child who turned out a cut above normal. Still, Melaquin had succeeded in so many other DNA modifications, why not heightened learning ability? It could work with the right approach — nothing crude like a mere increase in skull capacity, but exploring how humans truly differed from other animals…

Neotony. Maybe that was it.

"Neotony" was a biological term related to a prolonged period of childhood. Humans were the winners in that category, at least on Earth; some species took longer to reach sexual maturity, but nothing required parental care as long as Homo sapiens. From time to time, zoologists hypothesized that neotony was a prime factor in human intelligence. After all, children learn enormous quantities of knowledge in a short span of time — much more than the greatest genius manages later in life. Some experts thought that the length of human childhood kept our brains in a state of accelerated learning for years longer than anything else in the animal kingdom… precisely what put us ahead of other species in terms of thinking capacity. If you keep acquiring knowledge at high speed for ten to fifteen years, you're just naturally going to beat animals who hit their plateau at two months.

Suppose the Melaquin engineers extended the childlike learning phase even longer — decades past us normal-flesh humans. Suppose a forty-year-old could learn languages with the wide-open ease of a toddler. And keeping these glass people childlike wasn't a safety hazard: they were practically invulnerable and had all their needs supplied by machines like the food synthesizer.

On the other hand, childlike brains might have their drawbacks in the end; after decades of operating at top speed, burnout might easily set in. Was there a neural chemical responsible for feelings of interest, curiosity, wonder? To construct childlike minds, the engineers may have pumped that chemical up to intense levels — levels that just couldn't be sustained forever. After years of high-capacity effort, the gland that produced the chemical might simply succumb to overwork. Result? Motivational shutdown. A deep metabolic lethargy.

It was all guesswork, but the logic held together. I gazed at Oar, seated across from me with the campfire's reflection flickering on her face. A sting of tears burned in my eyes. Pity is stupid, I told myself. Every organism breaks down eventually. My father's heart broke down… my mother's liver. Why feel unbearably poignant that Oar's weak spot is her brain?

But the tears did not stop stinging.

Walking (Part 2)

We slept the night in spoon position, with the Bumbler keeping watch for prowling bears. Only my legs got cold — the rest of my body was protected by the insulated remains of my tightsuit. An hour before dawn, I heaped fallen leaves over me from thigh to ankle, so I wasn't directly exposed to the breeze. The improvement was immediate; I kicked myself mentally for not doing it when I first lay down. Something had frazzled my survival instincts, and I couldn't allow that to continue.

The day dawned cloudy, and by noon it was raining. The good news was that we were walking through forest; the bad news was that the trees had shed enough leaves for rain to get through anyway. Little dribbles trickling down Oar's body looked like drops on a windowpane.

The drizzle continued intermittently for a day and a half. It started warm but turned colder on the second morning: a drop of five degrees according to the Bumbler. I hoped this wasn't the tip of the icestorm… but the temperature stabilized during the afternoon of our third day of travel, and the clouds thinned enough to let the sun glimmer through whitely. By then, we had reached the end of full forest and were picking our way through patchier groves down into the great prairie basin.

The next day we had to detour around an enormous herd of buffalo grazing directly in our path. Oar was surprised we didn't walk straight through them; but large bull ruminants are notorious for nasty tempers, and I had no intention of getting trampled. It took four hours to circle to a point where we could turn south again, which tells you how big the herd was… several thousand animals in total, all of them shaggy with winter fur.

In midafternoon, with the herd still visible behind us, we came upon a dozen wolves. No doubt, the pack was shadowing the buffalo; I couldn't remember whether wolves were day or night predators, but they would attack when they were ready, running in to pull down a calf or an elderly animal too weak to defend itself. In the meantime, they eyed us from a judicious distance of a hundred meters, sizing up our food potential.

"Clap your hands," I murmured to Oar.

"Are we expressing admiration for those dogs?"

"Just do it!"

Oar slapped her hands together several times: glass on glass, each impact as loud as a hammer blow. The noise hurt my ears; and the wolf pack vanished like mist at dawn, slipping silently away through the tall grass.

We had no more trouble with animals that day. Most wildlife stayed away from us through the entire journey. As the terrain flattened out, it became easy to spot ground mammals a long way off — prairie dogs, rabbits, coyotes — but they always disappeared before we came near. Birds let us get closer; they stared at us suspiciously from trees or bushes, or flew overhead in vast migratory flocks. It was late the same day we passed the buffalo that I looked up at one flock and said, "Holy shit!"

"Do Explorers revere shit?" Oar asked with interest.

"It's an expression," I said, still staring at the sky. "Do you know what those birds are?"

"No, Festina."

"I can't be sure… but I think they're passenger pigeons."

The Pigeons

"Do those pigeons carry passengers?" Oar asked. "I should enjoy flying on a bird."

"I don't know why they're called passenger pigeons," I told her. "They've been extinct for five hundred years."

"Extinct means dead?"

"Yes."

Oar burst into giggles. "Dead things do not move, Festina. You are very, very stu— confused."

I didn't answer. Over the past few days, I had grudgingly accepted Melaquin as Earth's near-twin; but the sight of an extinct species jolted me. There weren't even passenger pigeons on New Earth — when the League of Peoples built humanity its new home, they could only duplicate what was still alive on…

"Damn, I'm stupid!" I said, hitting my head with my palm.

"No, just confused," Oar insisted generously.

Duplication

In all my time on Melaquin, my mind had been too lost in dismay and distraction to put the pieces together. The League of Peoples had already proved it could duplicate Earth — after the schism that divided humanity, the League had built New Earth as a refuge for those who agreed to respect the galactic peace. Humans who refused to give up armed violence were quarantined on their old planet, stuck with the legacy of pollution and war accumulated over the centuries; but those who abandoned their weapons were given a clean new planet: Earth without the garbage. New Earth was a "Welcome to the Universe" gift from the League of Peoples… along with star drives, YouthBoost, and other goodies no sentient race should do without.

Why had it taken me so long to remember New Earth was artificially constructed? Stupid, Festina: very stupid. But now that my eyes were open, everything made sense.

Some time far in the past — long enough ago that history didn't record it — members of the League must have visited Old Earth. They made the same proposal then that they made to humanity in the twenty-first century: prove your sentience by renouncing violence, and we will give you the stars. As in the more recent contact, some prehistoric people must have said yes while others said no… and those who agreed not to kill were given a new home elsewhere in the galaxy.

Here on Melaquin.

This planet must have been built by the League to duplicate Earth at that long-ago time… including the presence of passenger pigeons. Somewhere Melaquin must also have dodos, moas, and other species that hadn't survived recent times on our Earth; unless the humans who came to Melaquin had killed those animals all over again.

No, I thought to myself. They didn't kill the animals, they killed themselves. Either they developed bioengineering on their own, or they received it as a gift from the League; and they had turned themselves into glass creatures like Oar — tougher, stronger, smarter, and a complete evolutionary dead-end.

"Festina," Oar said, "are you becoming crazed again?"

I must have been standing frozen, thinking it all through. "No," I answered, "I'm not crazed… although you may think I am when I tell what I want to do."

"What?"

"We're going to find rocks and look for creatures that probably aren't there."

Paleontology

There is one simple difference between Old and New Earth: the original planet has fossils; the duplicate does not. When the League gave New Earth artificial deposits of sandstone, limestone or shale, they didn't enliven the rock with simulated remnants of ancient life. For the sake of raw materials, they did create fields of petroleum, coal, and other fossil resources… but not the fossils themselves.

I bet Melaquin didn't have fossils either.

The most promising excavation site within view was the shore of a creek half an hour ahead of us. Water cuts down into soil, exposing stones that would otherwise require digging to bring to the surface. The creek bank should have a good sample of easy-to-pry-out rocks; if I checked a few dozen without finding fossils, I could be fairly confident my hunch was right.

"We're going to that creek," I told Oar.

"Yes, Festina," she answered patiently. "Going around it would take a long time."

Creeks were plentiful in that part of the prairies. Most were a few paces wide and barely thigh-deep, so crossing them was no challenge — just cold and wet. The one we approached now was larger than average, but still too small to deserve the name "river": thirty meters across, sluggish and barely over our heads in depth. In spring, it might be deeper; but now the water level was low enough to leave a healthy sweep of gravel uncovered on the near shore.

"Perfect," I said. "As good as we're going to find on short notice."

"Do you want me to clap in admiration of the creek?" Oar asked.

"No need." I climbed down the dirt bank to the gravel and stared around appraisingly. The top layer of stones were worn smooth by water action — whatever fossils they once contained could have eroded to invisibility. Still, I might find better samples underneath; and there were other places to look for exposed deposits.

"Oar," I said, "can you please walk along the bank and see if there are any rocks sticking out of the dirt? I'm looking for rocks with edges… not smooth like these pebbles."

"What shall I do if I find one?"

"Bring it to me."

She looked at me dubiously. "You want me to touch dirty rocks, Festina? That is not very nice."

"You can wash your hands after — the creek's right there."

"Is the creek water clean?"

"Clean enough," I said, stretching a point. It was actually a bit muddy, thanks to silt washed down by the previous day's rain. No doubt, it also contained the usual disease — causing microbes one finds in untreated water: typhoid perhaps, and a cornucopia of viruses for intestinal flu. However, Oar had little to worry about — along with the other improvements in her body, she probably had a nigh-impregnable immune system. Why not? Her designers had built in everything else.

I envied her for that. Since the start of our trip, I'd carefully purified the water we drank, boiling it on the campfire and filling enough canteens to last us through the next day. I also had water purification tablets if the canteens ran dry, but I preferred to use those sparingly, since I could never replenish my supply. Still, I worried about infection. If this planet really was a duplicate of Earth from millennia ago, it might have smallpox, diphtheria, pneumonic plague: famous diseases, extinct in the rest of the galaxy, but possibly still thriving here on Melaquin.

Maybe Oar was right to worry about getting dirty.

With the air of a woman who hopes she doesn't find anything, Oar started walking slowly along the water's edge. I turned my attention to the gravel flat and began to dig down. Sure enough, the stones were not so eroded a few centimeters below the top surface. I was just beginning to examine them for fossil evidence when the Bumbler's alarm went off.

EM Anomaly

I did my programmed roll-and-tuck, having the good fortune to dive in the direction of the Bumbler rather than throwing myself into the nearby creek. With fists ready for trouble, I kicked the Bumbler's SHUT-UP switch and scanned the area.

I saw no threat, but standing on the creek-bed, I was three meters lower than the main level of the prairie. Anything could be up there, lurking just out of sight.

Not far away, Oar opened her mouth to say something. I held up a hand and held my finger to my lips. She closed her mouth and looked around warily.

Think, I told myself. What could the Bumbler detect from here? It might be a false alarm — Bumblers did make mistakes — but Explorers who dismissed such warnings soon had their names entered on the Academy's Memory Wall.

Maybe the Bumbler had suddenly decided to complain about Oar again: unknown organism, help, help. Still, I had programmed the machine's tiny brain to accept her as a friend; her presence hadn't bothered it for days. Best to assume the problem was something else… something I couldn't see.

What could the Bumbler detect that I couldn't? It had a small capacity for peering through the creek banks, but not well — its passive X-ray scans could only penetrate ten to fifteen centimeters of dirt. Naturally, it could see farther if something was emitting large quantities of X-rays… or radio waves…

Radio. Someone nearby might have transmitted a radio message. Quickly, I backtracked the Bumbler's short term memory and looked at the radio bands. Yes: it had picked up a coherent short-wave signal lasting only fifteen seconds. Did that mean an Explorer in the neighborhood? Or someone else? Silently, I turned to Oar and pointed to the creek. Without waiting to see if she understood, I hefted up the Bumbler and headed for the water. We could hide there, just to be on the safe side — the middle of the creek was deep enough to be over our heads. My pack had a tiny scuba rebreather, only two minutes of air, but enough to stay submerged in an emergency. I'd give that to Oar; for myself, I'd have to make do with…

Shit. I'd have to snorkel with the same esophageal airway I'd used on Yarrun.

The Peeper

After whispered instructions to Oar, I lowered myself into the water. It was cold; it was also murky, but that was good. The slight cloudiness would make it hard for someone to see me poised just under the surface. Oar, of course, was invisible as soon as she submerged.

I found a depth where I could stand on the bottom and keep the tip of the airway just above the surface. The taste of it was sour in my mouth. I had washed it since the Landing, washed it over and over again; but I still imagined I could taste the rusty flavor of blood on the plastic.

Trying to refocus my thoughts, I aimed the Bumbler's scanner straight up at the outside world. In the muddy water, I had to amplify the Bumbler's brightness before I could make out the screen; but my eyes adjusted soon enough to give me an adequate view above the surface.

The sky. The creek banks.

Thirty seconds after we had hidden ourselves, a head peeked over the south bank.

At first, it looked like a fully human head: smooth brown skin; darker lips. But as I stared more closely, bile rose in my mouth. The head had no hair — or rather it had an abstracted glass simulation of hair, like Oar's but a slightly different style… and the eyes were also like Oar's, silvery globes with mirror surfaces.

The lips drew back in smile… or maybe a grimace. Inside the mouth, the teeth were clear as glass.

Sickened, I realized what I was seeing. This was a glass person just like Oar; but he or she had glued strips of skin onto cheeks, forehead, and throat.

Strips of human skin.