“New one,” said his female captor. She and the two-nosed man put him down.
The group lay scattered on the ground.
Mercer lay in a state of stupor among them.
An old man’s voice said, “I’m afraid they’re going to feed us pretty soon.”
“Oh, no!”
“It’s too early!”
“Not again!”
Protests echoed from the group.
The old man’s voice went on, “Look, near the big toe of the mountain!”
The desolate murmur in the group attested their confirmation of what he had seen.
Mercer tried to ask what it was all about, but produced only a caw.
A woman — was it a woman? — crawled over to him on her hands and knees. Beside her ordinary hands, she was covered with hands all over her trunk and halfway down her thighs. Some of the hands looked old and withered. Others were as fresh and pink as the baby-fingers on his captress’ face. The woman shouted at him, though it was not necessary to shout.
“The dromozoa are coming. This time it hurts. When you get used to the place, you can dig in—”
She waved at a group of mounds which surrounded the herd of people.
“They’re dug in,” she said.
Mercer cawed again.
“Don’t you worry,” said the hand-covered woman, and gasped as a flash of light touched her.
The lights reached Mercer too. The pain was like the first contact but more probing. Mercer felt his eyes widen as odd sensations within his body led to an inescapable conclusion: these lights, these things, these whatever they were, were feeding him and building him up.
Their intelligence, if they had it, was not human, but their motives were clear. In between the stabs of pain he felt them fill his stomach, put water in his blood, draw water from his kidneys and bladder, massage his heart, move his lungs for him.
Every single thing they did was well meant and beneficent in intent.
And every single action hurt.
Abruptly, like the lifting of a cloud of insects, they were gone. Mercer was aware of a noise somewhere outside — a brainless, bawling cascade of ugly noise. He started to look around. And the noise stopped.
It had been himself, screaming. Screaming the ugly screams of a psychotic, a terrified drunk, an animal driven out of understanding or reason.
When he stopped, he found he had his speaking voice again.
A man came to him, naked like the others. There was a spike sticking through his head. The skin had healed around it on both sides. “Hello, fellow,” said the man with the spike.
“Hello,” said Mercer. It was a foolishly commonplace thing to say in a place like this.
“You can’t kill yourself,” said the man with the spike through his head.
“Yes, you can,” said the woman covered with hands.
Mercer found that his first pain had disappeared. “What’s happening to me?”
“You got a part,” said the man with the spike. “They’re always putting parts on us. After a while B’dikkat comes and cuts most of them off, except for the ones that ought to grow a little more. Like her,” he added, nodding at the woman who lay with the boy-body growing from her neck.
“And that’s all?” said Mercer. “The stabs for the new parts and the stinging for the feeding?”
“No,” said the man. “Sometimes they think we’re too cold and they fill our insides with fire. Or they think we’re too hot and they freeze us, nerve by nerve.”
The woman with the boy-body called over, “And sometimes they think we’re unhappy, so they try to force us to be happy. I think that’s the worst of all.”
Mercer stammered, “Are you people — I mean — are you the only herd?”
The man with the spike coughed instead of laughing. “Herd! That’s funny. The land is full of people. Most of them dig in. We’re the ones who can still talk. We stay together for company. We get more turns with B’dikkat that way.”
Mercer started to ask another question, but he felt the strength run out of him. The day had been too much.
The ground rocked like a ship on water. The sky turned black. He felt someone catch him as he fell. He felt himself being stretched out on the ground. And then, mercifully and magically, he slept.
Within a week, he came to know the group well. They were an absent-minded bunch of people. Not one of them ever knew when a dromozoan might flash by and add another part. Mercer was not stung again, but the incision he had obtained just outside the cabin was hardening. Spike-head looked at it when Mercer modestly undid his belt and lowered the edge of his trouser-top so they could see the wound.
“You’ve got a head,” he said. “A whole baby head. They’ll be glad to get that one upstairs when B’dikkat cuts it off you.”
The group even tried to arrange his social life. They introduced him to the girl of the herd. She had grown one body after another, pelvis turning into shoulders and the pelvis below that turning into shoulders again until she was five people long. Her face was unmarred. She tried to be friendly to Mercer.
He was so shocked by her that he dug himself into the soft dry crumbly earth and stayed there for what seemed like a hundred years. He found later that it was less than a full day. When he came out, the long many-bodied girl was waiting for him.
“You didn’t have to come out just for me,” said she.
Mercer shook the dirt off himself.
He looked around. The violet sun was going down, and the sky was streaked with blues, deeper blues and trails of orange sunset.
He looked back at her. “I didn’t get up for you. It’s no use lying there, waiting for the next time.”
“I want to show you something,” she said. She pointed to a low hummock. “Dig that up.”
Mercer looked at her. She seemed friendly. He shrugged and attacked the soil with his powerful claws. With tough skin and heavy digging-nails on the ends of his fingers, he found it was easy to dig like a dog. The earth cascaded beneath his busy hands. Something pink appeared down in the hole he had dug. He proceeded more carefully.
He knew what it would be.
It was. It was a man, sleeping. Extra arms grew down one side of his body in an orderly series. The other side looked normal.
Mercer turned back to the many-bodied girl, who had writhed closer.
“That’s what I think it is, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said. “Doctor Vomact burned his brain out for him. And took his eyes out, too.”
Mercer sat back on the ground and looked at the girl. “You told me to do it. Now tell me what for.”
“To let you see. To let you know. To let you think.”
“That’s all?” said Mercer.
The girl twisted with startling suddenness. All the way down her series of bodies, her chests heaved. Mercer wondered how the air got into all of them. He did not feel sorry for her; he did not feel sorry for anyone except himself. When the spasm passed the girl smiled at him apologetically.
“They just gave me a new plant.”
Mercer nodded grimly.
“What now, a hand? It seems you have enough.”
“Oh, those,” she said, looking back at her many torsos. “I promised B’dikkat that I’d let them grow. He’s good. But that man, stranger. Look at that man you dug up. Who’s better off, he or we?”
Mercer stared at her. “Is that what you had me dig him up for?”