Slither - Edward Lee [32]
Nora sat back in the fold-down army chair. She rubbed fatigue out of her eyes, or was it confusion? It's impossible. It's fucking impossible.
Loren yawned, a fist to his mouth. "Maybe we really have stumbled on something. Maybe this is a previously unknown infantile mite or something."
"Come on, Loren," she objected. "This big? You and I both know that it's impossible for something like that to get this big. It's contrary to insectoid life."
Loren nodded dumbly.
It was the feeling in her gut that bothered her most. She felt tacky in the gritty humidity. Patches of sweat darkened her T-shirt like blotches. "It's able to move at will," she almost droned, "which means it's functionally-motile. But-"
"No parapods, no legs, nothing even close to a monotaxic foot," Loren finished for her. He looked back a moment at the mag frame, then shook his head at the evidence bright before his eyes.
"It looks like it moves on bristles or cilia."
Loren pointed errantly to the specimen. "Come on, Nora. They are cilia, and we both know that. We're looking right at it."
Nora let out a long sigh. "Which means we're looking at something that's impossible." I can't say it, she fretted. Loren would think I was ridiculous. When she looked back at him, he was staring right back at her.
But it was Loren who broke the ice that she was afraid to, afraid because her peers would think she was being absurd. "We were right earlier, weren't we?"
"The thing on Trent's shirt and the things in the shower are the same, and they're not some undiscovered species of mite or sebaceous parasite. We both know exactly what these things are, but neither of us is saying it. It's a motile worm ovum."
Loren nodded, confusion lengthening his expression. "A motile worm ovum the size of a coffee bean. Which doesn't exist."
Indeed, they'd both seen the same thing before, but under electron microscopes, not little 100x field scopes.
Now Nora rubbed her face in the most bewildered frustration. "There's no such thing as a motile ovum this size. They're all microscopic, they're just simple cell clusters with a cilia-based system of locomotion."
"Um-hmm." Loren held another plastic collection vial up to the light, and shook the bean-sized thing inside around. "Well, this ain't microscopic, Nora. So what do we do?"
Good question. "Collect more samples, look for the annelid that these things come from, and report to the college. That sounds like the best bet."
Loren stared grimly. "Sure, but that's ignoring the consequences of something, isn't it?"
"I know. The annelid that these things come from must be. . ."
"Really big," Loren said.
She gestured her microscope. "On one side of this one, there are some apertures behind the cilia roots. And I'm pretty sure I saw a stylet ring there."
"So did I, and now that we've decided what this really is, why should that be a surprise? Most other forms of motile ova have them, it's the delivery system to the host, and right now we're both wondering if one of these things could infect a human."
Nora nodded wearily.
't'he infection constituents would be incompatible in humans, wouldn't they? And of course the ova themselves would be too. A human immune system would destroy it immediately." Loren blinked. "Right?"
'I think so," she said very softly.
Loren seemed suddenly enlivened. "So let's not freak out. This is actually exciting, it's a polychaetologist's dream. It might be a new species."
'Yeah, that would be great, Loren." But she didn't sound convinced. "But we're still ignoring the size."
Loren looked back down onto the radiant magnifying frame. "It's big, all right." He seemed to be chewing the inside of his cheek. "And I mean really big."
CHAPTER SEVEN
(I)
They moored the beaten cabin cruiser at the usual stop just when high tide hit; Jonas, hip-deep in the lagoon, caught the rope Slydes tossed and tied it off to a sweetgum tree.
"It's creepy tonight," Ruth commented as she lowered herself off the back ledge.
"What are you talkin' about?" Slydes asked.
She looked up and around,