“Yes, you see my friend Jonathan.”

“You keep him locked up in here?”

“I do. It’s for his benefit.”

She could believe that. It was common knowledge the rehab centers were fancy crematoriums and she couldn’t see much difference between him roaming the streets and being locked in a cage in her colleague’s basement. At least he couldn’t take a chunk out of anyone this way. The elzi dozed, serene, fingers clenching and unclenching in typical stereotyped behavior. She approached the cage and saw that it was suspended from the ceiling by chains. The floor was actually a deck and the cage hung a few feet out from the railing. She looked down and was surprised to see that there was no ground below—it disappeared in darkness.

“How deep does that go?” she asked.

“It’s quite deep. Let me show you.”

Friar flicked a switch and harsh yellow lights popped on at regular intervals, going down what must have been eight stories. At the bottom they formed a circle around a hatch the size of an aboveground pool.

“Where does that lead?”

“To the under city, of course.”

“The under city?”

“Yes. The sewers, the abandoned Broad Street Line and all its stations. It is quite large, and grows larger. There are things down there, digging things, things that tunnel and carve and build.”

He was almost reverent as he spoke. She shivered.

“Why do you have this? How did you even build this?”

He smiled sadly.

“What did they offer you? A million? Five million? Ten million? Twenty?”

“Uh, it was ten.”

He nodded. “Yes, what they offered me. That was not the first job I have been offered, but it was the first I refused. As a younger man I thought them fools the way they tossed around their riches, that they did not understand human concepts of value and money. Now, wiser, perhaps, I see they understand it far better than we, that it is worthless compared to life—and sanity.”

“So that’s how you built this? Working for the Gaespora?”

“Indeed. A fascinating species, but too niggardly with their secrets. My curiosity is better rewarded by the UausuaU.”

“So you believe their spiel about being from another planet, or another universe, I guess? You don’t think they’re human?”

“Human? Yes, partly. And also other. They have touched the knowledge of a different existence and the idea of that existence has brought them closer to it.”

“Yeah…I think they mentioned something like that. They also drugged me and messed with my head or something.”

“Ah yes, I remember my first time. Nothing quite like it, is there? I guess the best word would be telepathy, but it’s purely physical, of course.”

“Okay.”

She did not like this. He was saying more and more and she was understanding less and less. The opposite was supposed to be happening. She’d come here to simplify things, not complicate them with dumb philosophical chatter. She went over to an operating table, which no longer seemed out of place. It was a hard metal slab, smeared with blood.

“And I’m guessing this is where you chop up the elzi?”

“Correct.”

He waddled over to a sink and donned two yellow gloves. He sprayed a rag with some solution and attacked the bloodstains.

“Sorry for the mess,” he said. “I was just conducting an experiment before you came.”

“What kind of experiment?”

“I’m trying to see if I can remove the elzi implants without killing the host.”

She laughed. He was insane, clearly. It wasn’t too surprising—he’d spent his life studying the Wekba and working around criminals and beasts. As far as madnesses went, Friar’s was pretty mild. But thinking he could cure the elzi, that was the kind of shit that would get him killed. Better to round them all up and burn them. Smash up every computer, car, and sentient vibrator and return to an agrarian utopia.

He smiled at her. “I know. It seems hopeless, but I must try. Actually, I have learned one neat trick. Let me show you.”

He went to a control panel, an old-fashioned analogue dealy with buttons and levers. It swung the cage around above the operating table and the bottom opened, dropping the elzi like a turd onto the table. He groaned a little and then curled up into a fetal position. Saru stepped back. She wasn’t afraid of the elzi—she’d zapped her share of the angry ones—but she didn’t trust this “trick” that Friar was about to perform. He fastened chains to the elzi’s wrists and ankles and then she noticed that Friar had pulled out the elzi’s teeth and chopped off his fingers. To declaw him? To make him less dangerous? Or was that part of the trick?