Made Men by Bradley Ernst Read Free Book Online Page B

that
creative. He had to use the truth sometimes.”
    The
open cabinet was full of jars. Each receptacle neatly organized and labeled.
Five huge jars sat heavily on the bottom shelf, which was obviously reinforced
to make direct contact with the concrete floor. Each vat was capable of
accommodating a large breed of dog, or perhaps a baboon. Smells oozed past each
rubber seal.
    Rickard,
too, flared his nostrils and stood open mouthed, bulging skin beneath his jaws
to create a bilge. His brother had found a technique to taste each scent.
Identifying and isolating the chemical smells of the preservative fluid, the
common odors were ignored. The first-born twin concentrated on the deeper
smells—those from the hairs on preserved arms and sweat glands. The musk
from a primate’s neck, folded at an odd but serene angle. Medium sized, sodden
specimens inhabited the second shelf, two jars deep. Urea wafted from that row;
each occupant was covered in fur. A few were sleek and held the tangy smell of
yeast. Some had patches of scales. One smelled like cold metal and salt. Ryker
mimicked his brother and found that the throat technique made it easier to
isolate the various odors.
    They looked … smelled … familiar.
    The
smallest vessels—sized to hold mammals as large as Norway rats or as
small as fledgling sparrows—were perched above eye level, even for The
One Who Was Different, on the third shelf. The fourth shelf contained books.
    With
a hand over his nose, the taller boy appeared to struggle with the smells.
Ryker wondered if the pale child could smell what they did. The reasons he and
his twin could smell so acutely floated inside the jars. Inside
the cells of the lifeless things. Their pickled
nuclei—chromosomes—DNA contained the reason. When their creator had
meddled, he’d done so with blind ineptitude: a day-old puppy attempting to
facet a diamond with his scrambling dewclaws. Both the incidental accidents
floating, unblinking—and those peering into the jars—were an
unlikely result.
    Life found a way.
    Fleetingly,
Ryker thought, Horses?
    No—not
horses. The question flickered by, one of many unlikely thoughts. Ryker panned
the preserved menagerie, categorizing, focusing on visible differences, then watched The One Who Was Different. He’d found their
bag. Opening the buckles without pause, he sorted through its contents. He told
them not to touch the trigger of the pistol … then he told them why. He added
the geneticist’s other journals to the first two, then removed the oily rag from the Luger, smoothing the cloth flat on the floor with
his palms. Deftly, as though preparing for a feast, he placed an obsidian
scalpel to one side of his surgical field. Then he slid a medium-sized jar from
the second shelf. Twisting the lid loose, he winced at the noxious
preservative. He didn’t, however, hesitate to pull out the animal inside.
Rickard, who’d been leafing through textbooks, stooped to watch as The One Who
Was Different placed the carcass on its back and patted the unknown fluid
preservative—the not-water—from the skin of the corpse, then
massaged its tissues until it looked less fetal and more flat.
    He
slit the creature open with the sharp, black knife. All three of them peered
inside. With nimble movements, the warm, white boy continued. Ryker watched the
face of their companion.
    His eyes moved so fast .
    He
learned with such speed that before he had seen the entire inside of the
animal, Ryker was sure the boy knew what he would discover next. The pallid
genius made eye contact with him, and Rickard also, frequently.
    He’d finished the dissection for them so
they could understand it.
    It
was a dissection that would take a team of top surgeons with specialized
equipment days to accomplish. The volcanic glass blade ran along a skull
suture, then another. In the hands of the child, the shard danced around a
foramen and the sinus turbinates were bared … the cribriform plate set aside.
The