Gunther Muck's Arc

Chapter 4 of 6

Galahja clamped the septic tank lid and turned away. Gunther rolled after her along the trench floor. His new bulk dragged. Half a night's scrap still churned inside him, unsorted, hot. Then the pain hit. A twist deep in his core, sharp as a snapped wire. Gunther stopped short. Something in his gut was fighting back. He seized on the grit. His body pulsed. A bad weld of copper and plastic had lodged crosswise inside him and would not break down. Gas built. His skin stretched thin and shiny. He could not roll. He could not hide. If a crud-eater came now, he was meat. Galahja glanced back. "Move, crud." Gunther could only shudder. A bead of black oil pushed out his side and dripped. Galahja crouched. Her dog sniffed him and whined. She pressed two fingers against Gunther's swollen flank and frowned. "You're jammed. You'll split." She looked up the trench, calculating. "There's a dumper past the bend. Big ceramic. Pilot uses it. She'll let us through if I ask." She scooped Gunther onto a flat scrap of tin and dragged him. Around the bend the trench opened. A huge white toilet sat tipped against the wall, its tank broad as a door, its lid propped up like a listening ear. Beside it stood a woman in a burned flight suit, one arm strapped tight to her chest. A small horned animal pressed against her boot, footpads working the dirt. The pilot watched them come without moving. "Brynn," Galahja said. "He's blocked. I need the bowl." Asha Brynn's eyes went from the girl to the shivering lump on the tin. Her jaw tightened. "Last time you used it you left a mess." "He'll die in the open. Two minutes." Brynn nudged the footcow back with her knee. She lifted the seat with her good hand. "Two minutes. Then you owe me a coil." Galahja slid Gunther onto the ceramic rim. The cold shocked him. She pushed his flank with the heel of her palm, steady, hard. "Push it out. All of it. You want to fit through wire, you get lean now." Gunther clenched. The bad weld tore loose inside him and came up his throat-seam in a rush. Copper, plastic, black oil, a curl of foil. It slapped into the bowl. More followed. A second cramp, a third. When it stopped, Gunther was a third smaller. His skin hung loose. He could roll again. Brynn dropped the lid and worked the handle. The bowl swallowed everything with a deep gulp. "Coil," she said to Galahja. "By tomorrow." Galahja nodded. She lifted Gunther in one hand now. He fit in her palm. The bright, undigested weight he had risked his life to gain was gone into the pipes. He was small again, and hungry, and further from a starship than he had been at dawn.