On Thursday Howard’s poetry student came to the clinic for an interview. Thinking of a poetess, I had imagined a fragile, ethereal young woman, with long dark hair and a flowing white dress. The woman who appeared in my office wore a leather jacket, jeans, and a tattoo. Her short spiked hair was dyed a startling shade of magenta and was decorated with a bright green lizard-shaped hairpin. She smiled and said, “Hi, I’m Tegan Smith. I’m here about the job.”
I stared at her for about thirty seconds before I remembered to invite her to sit down. “Er, hi,” I said. “I’m Michael Clayton. Did, uh, did Howard tell you what the job involved?”
“Sure,” she said easily. “Cleaning cages and mopping floors.”
“And did he tell you how much it pays?” How much was perhaps not the correct term; how little would have been more accurate.
“Yes.”
“And you’re interested?”
“Sure. Are you?”
“I, ah—”
Something suddenly moved in her hair, and I stared.
“What is it?” she said.
Her lizard hairpin was moving. With a switch of its tail it crawled to the top of her spiky bangs, and peered at me with unblinking eyes.
“Ah. Um. There’s something in your hair.”
She reached up, looking puzzled, and plucked the lizard off her bangs. “Oops,” she said. “I thought I put him back in the terrarium.” She patted the lizard and popped it back into her hair. Then she smiled a dazzling smile and said, “So do I get the job?”
Leather jacket, tattoo, wild hair, and reptiles: well, she would at least be a contrast to Kami. “You’ve got it,” I said. “Can you start tomorrow?”
On Friday Tegan showed up for work at 8 A.M. sharp. She still wore jeans and a leather jacket, but she changed the jacket for a smock without any objection. I studied her hair covertly; there did not appear to be any lizards in it today. That was a relief; some of my patients would have been frightened of a lizard, and others would have tried to eat it.
I had my soon-to-depart kennelman show Tegan around while I saw my morning clients. Within an hour I noticed that she was doing better work than the kennelman. And she was cheerful about it, too. She whistled as she piled dirty towels into the washing machine; she sang as she changed litter boxes and scrubbed dirty dishes. By the time morning appointments were over, the cages sparkled, the garbage cans were empty, the floors were clean and every dog and cat was snuggled on a freshly laundered blanket. I went outside to the barn and noted that the stalls were raked clean and spread with new bedding. The two horses in the barn were nibbling hay, and their water troughs had been scrubbed and filled to the brim with fresh water. I went back into the clinic and discovered Tegan in the front office, helping Kami answer the phones and file charts. Amazing. Under the magenta hair and the tattoos, Tegan was a gold mine. I owed Howard big-time for sending her here. And that meant that I was well and truly obligated to go out to his place for a “surprise” tonight.
I did not enjoy the trip to Howard’s place. The fifty-mile drive up Caliente Canyon is bad enough, even if you break the speed limit by a considerable amount, but Howard’s ranch roads are worse. Potholes lie in wait, big enough to swallow a truck, and hairpin turns teeter precariously on the edges of cliffs. I suppose the roads discourage trespassers, but I’ve always wondered how Howard puts up with the three-day-a-week commute to teach his college classes.
When I finally got to the house I got out of the truck cautiously, not sure what to expect in the way of a surprise. In spite of Howard’s assurances, I was still expecting a new pet. When the house door opened I jumped about three feet, but it was only Howard, with Lynda behind him. They greeted me politely, then looked at each other as if trying to decide who had to break the bad news.
“We really called you out here for a good surprise,” Lynda said ruefully. “Nothing to do with work at all. But while you’re here, do you suppose you could take a look at Curious? I think he has a stoma chache.”
I groaned and felt a sharp twinge of pain in my own belly; Curious and his nine siblings were enough to give any veterinarian a bleeding ulcer. I probably had six or seven ulcers by now. Resigned, I got back in my truck with Howard and Lynda, and we drove into the hills until we reached a secluded, deep pool. It looked like a big stock pond from the surface, but if you dove in you’d find yourself in a vast network of underwater caverns, extending for miles in every direction, and so deep that you’d never be able to find the bottom. I stopped the truck and we walked to the edge of the pool. Lynda knelt and slapped the surface of the water, in a distinctive pattern. The water rippled away from her hand, scattering the reflection of the moon. Lynda sat back and waited, and gradually the water stilled. It was silent for a long moment, except for the chirping of crickets and the whisper of wind in the grass. Then the water roiled and splashed, and a sea monster poked its face out of the water. An instant later it was joined by another, then another, until finally ten monsters were swimming happily at the surface.
Actually only nine of them were swimming happily. Curious had been the last to surface (he’s usually the first) and he looked preoccupied, as if with something internal. The expression on a sea monster’s wrinkled, whiskery face isn’t particularly easy to read, but I knew Curious well, and I could tell at a glance that something wasn’t right. Curious wasn’t even paying much attention to his visitors. Definitely not normal.
I groaned inwardly; I’d really been hoping that Howard and Lynda were imagining things. Howard’s sea monsters are unique creatures; they are bizarre spheroidal marsupials with gills, blowholes, four-pronged tails, and whiskery faces. They’re still babies, each about the size of a grown man. I don’t know how long it takes for them to mature; their parents were at least five times the size they are now. Howard bottle-raised all ten babies when the adults died of an insidious disease. There’s nothing else like them in the world, and Howard keeps their existence a closely guarded secret. Which means I’m the unlucky vet who gets to figure out how to take care of them when anything goes wrong.
Lynda persuaded Curious to come out of the water so I could do an examination. He lay placidly on the bank during the process; he was used to examinations. I’d examined all the monsters regularly ever since they were born, taking blood samples and making records of normal monster physiology.
I started at the whiskery nose and worked my way down. The eyes were clear, the gums pink, the blowhole clear, the gills normal-looking. The abdomen was tight and tender to the touch; Curious lifted his head in distress when I palpated it. That was really all I could tell; the monsters’ external fat layer was too thick for me to actually feel anything inside. I worked my way down to the tail without finding anything else significant, and drew a blood sample from a tail vein. Then I got out my portable x-ray unit and snapped a picture of the belly. Curious slipped back into the water, but he didn’t rejoin the others; he stayed near us, resting his head on the bank. Lynda knelt beside him and patted him soothingly. The other monsters clustered nearby, watching, uncharacteristically subdued.
“What do you think?” Howard asked anxiously.
“Well, Lynda’s right. It’s an acute abdomen. Stomach ache, that is. I can’t guess what’s causing it, though.” I opened the back of my truck and plugged in the little centrifuge; I could at least get a packed cell volume. While the blood was spinning, Curious retched and vomited on the bank. No food, nothing but a little frothy liquid. I frowned; I’d never seen any of the monsters vomit before. I hoped it was a relatively normal physiological reaction for a monster’s digestive tract. Curious looked dismayed.