brain thief
Jul. 27th, 2011 08:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
holli“I’m thorry, but thith is jutht fathinating,” Igor said. He was wearing a massive magnifying lens on a headband, and blinking owlishly through it at Sam. “It’s a deplorable wathte of parts, I know, but you have to admire the artithtry.”
“I really don’t,” Sam said. “Now, what was wrong with the brain on this one?”
“What do you mean?” Igor asked. It really was disconcerting, the way the lens made him look like he had one massive eye and one regular, slightly lopsided one. But it was still nicer to look at than the body on the table.
“Was it too old, like the others? I mean, obviously it wasn’t working at a hundred percent, the poor thing jumped off a bridge,” Sam said.
“No, the brain’th not bad at all,” Igor said. “He mutht have got it on ithe as thoon as the donor kicked the bucket and tranthplanted it not long after, becauthe I’m theeing very few signth of brain-death. She wath in her right mind when she jumped.”
“Just not her right body,” Sam muttered, and Igor surprised him by laughing.
“Thorry, Corporal, but that’th a very Igor thort of joke to make. Thith cathe hath got you thinking like uth, hasn’t it?”
“It hasn’t got me understanding the culprit, though,” Sam said. There was a question Sam had been wondering about for a while. “Igor, why doesn’t the Clan do things like this? Build patchwork people, do brain transplants, all of it? It’s not that many steps away from what you normally do.”
Igor stopped laughing. “It’th farther away than you think it ith, Corporal. We Igorth do our our best to pretherve life-- even to extend it-- but not indefinitely. We know that everyone hath to die eventually. If they didn’t, the world would be an awful meth. An Igor who trieth to cheat death ith an Igor who’th forgotten he’th a part of the Great Work. We take that very theriouthly.”
“And if you found out an Igor was the one responsible for this?” Sam asked, waving at the poor creature on the slab. “What would you do then?”
“Oh, the Clan would do our best to thee that he got hith head put on thtraight,” Igor said. “Literally, if nethethary. But you think it’th most likely thomeone at the hothpital, don’t you?”
“That’s the current theory,” Sam said. “Which, actually, is what I’m about to go and explain to the Commander.”
Commander Carrot was doing paperwork when Sam came into his office. Unlike Sam’s dad, who had tended to let the stuff pile up and regarded filing as a black art, Captain Carrot believed in keeping a tidy office. He did his paperwork promptly and without any apparent reluctance. Sam thought it was a bit weird, but that was Commander Carrot for you.
“Hallo, Sam,” Carrot said. “Bit of a commotion last night, wasn’t it? I’m sorry your date got spoiled.”
Sam shrugged. “It turned out all right,” he said. “And Meg gave me a bit of a breakthrough on the case, anyway.” He explained about the prison tattoo. “So I think it really must be someone at the hospital-- someone who works there, and has access to bodies.”
“Why’d he start out by grave-robbing, then?” Carrot asked. “If he could have used the hospital’s resources from the start.”
“That’s... a good question,” Sam said. “Maybe he was afraid of drawing notice. But now he hasn’t got another choice, since he knows the cemeteries are being watched. And, well, I think he wanted fresher parts.”
“Yes, Igor told me this one would have lived-- properly lived, more or less-- if she hadn’t jumped,” Carrot said. “Why do you think she did it?”
Sam had thought about this, and the thought had given him the cold shudders. “Well, put yourself in her shoes. Feet. Whatever. She dies, presumably of natural causes, and then she wakes up and she’s a patchwork monster and some madman’s cackling at her that he’s created life. One look in the mirror, and she runs for the bridge. That’s my best guess, anyway.”
“Seems like a reasonable deduction,” the Commander said. He paused, and a faint frown flickered across his face. “There was... something else I wanted to talk to you about, Sam.”
Sam found himself feeling unaccountably nervous. “Yes, Commander Carrot?”
“It’s about your... friend,” Carrot said. “Miss Garlick. I spoke with her briefly. For some reason, she seems to be under the impression that your name’s Sam Ramkin. Any idea why that might be?”
The floor, unfortunately, did not open up and swallow Sam. He gulped. “Er.”
Captain Carrot only looked at him, with the same mild look he always used when you’d done something you shouldn’t. It was worse than if he’d looked upset, really, because the mild look made you feel about six years old.
“I may have... fibbed a bit,” Sam said. “I just-- when I met her, That Article had just come out, and I was really sick of being Ankh’s Most Eligible Bachelor. So I pretended I wasn’t.”
Commander Carrot didn’t look disappointed, the way Mina had. He just looked a bit sad, and the corner of his mouth twitched, the way it did when he was trying not to say something he knew wouldn’t be taken well. “Sam, you can’t keep deceiving this girl,” he said. “You know it’s not right. You’ve got to tell her the truth.”
“I know, I know,” Sam said. “I’m just-- working up to it. I’m not sure how she’ll take it, that’s the trouble.”
“It doesn’t matter how she’s going to take it,” Carrot said. “It matters that it’s the right thing to do.”
Sam slumped miserably in his chair. “I know,” he said, “and I will do it. Just... let me work up to it a bit, you know?” He froze. “You haven’t mentioned this to Dad, have you?”
“I haven’t,” Carrot said, “but if this carries on too long I might. So tell her, already.”
“Right,” said Sam. He left the Commander’s office with a sinking feeling that his day was about to get a lot worse. Well, he was headed for his parents’ house from here, at any rate.
Assuming they still didn’t know about Meg, nothing too bad could happen there.
***
“Mum, I’m not going to do it,” Sam said, and meant it.
“Oh, honestly, dear, it’s nothing to cause a fuss over. The poor girl just needs an escort, that’s all. And think of who’d be inflicted on her if you didn’t do it!”
“I don’t care, Mum,” Sam said, although the thought of the alternatives did make him wince a bit. “I’m not escorting some useless figurehead. It’s bad enough that I’ve got to go to the Cotillion at all, and it’d be a sight worse if I had to take a Princess to it!”
“The lad has a point, Sybil,” Dad said, and Sam shot him a grateful look. “Even if she’s the princess of some damned tiny country no one’s ever heard of. A Vimes escorting royalty? Sam would never hear the end of it.”
“She’s a very sweet girl,” Sybil said, “princess or no. And you get on very well with the royal family of Lancre, Sam, you sat next to the King at dinner not two years ago and you told me you quite liked him!”
Sam felt a ball of ice form in his stomach. Dad was saying “That was the King? And he seemed like a sensible sort, too,” but Sam wasn’t really listening. The Crown Princess of Lancre? Oh damn, damn, damn...
But he couldn’t say why he didn’t want to do it, could he? He hadn’t told Mum and Dad about Meg yet, and he certainly wasn’t about to tell them he was dating a girl who didn’t know his real name. But in a country small as Lancre, odds were good that Meg knew the Crown Princess, at least well enough to say hello to, and she certainly wasn’t going to miss pictures of her new boyfriend in the society pages, dancing with the Princess of her own country.
Then again, Meg wasn’t really the sort to read the society pages, was she?
Sam realized he had backed himself into a corner. The best he could really do was hope the Cotillion didn’t fall on a slow news day, and therefore got shunted to a back page of the paper. Meg might not notice. Mum and Dad, on the other hand, would certainly figure out something was up if he kept putting up a fuss about the Cotillion. He tuned back into the conversation, which by now consisted of his parents bickering amiably, and cleared his throat.
“All right, Mum. I’ll do it. But only to spare her being escorted by a Venturi, or one of the Rusts.”
“That’s sweet of you, dear,” Mum said, but Dad was frowning.
“Are you sure about this, Sam?” he asked.
“Perfectly,” Sam lied. Lying to his parents was not something Sam was particularly skilled at, but the good news was that he usually got away with it, on the rare occasions he had to do it, because Mum and Dad were never expecting it. This, blessedly, was no exception. Dad looked a little suspicious at Sam’s turnaround, but the coppering instincts didn’t appear to have kicked in.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-28 01:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-28 02:15 am (UTC)"Oh hey, if you work out the timelines Young Sam and Magrat's daughter are only about a year apart. Huh. What if they dated? Wait, no, that's a terrible idea, she's a princess, Vimes would lose his shit... Wait, no, that's a GREAT IDEA."
no subject
Date: 2011-07-30 01:03 pm (UTC)