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Sazahk’s shoulders shot up again. “You don’t believe me.”
Garin’s smooth combing didn’t falter. “I do believe you. I just want you to start at the beginning.”
Sazahk fell quiet. Garin heard him open his mouth a few times, but each time he closed it without a word. Speechless wasn’t a state Garin had ever expected to see Sazahk in for long, but he supposed it was a good thing. The man tended to bury others in words, to obscure and to challenge until the threat passed. Garin hoped as he drew the comb through Sazahk’s ends, then worked his way up higher, that Sazahk might actually consider that Garin wasn’t a threat at all.
Finally, Sazahk spoke in a small voice Garin had never heard from him. “I’m a biologist, but I’ve always been most interested in genetics. The genes we pass down, the genes that get mutated as we live our lives, and the genes that express themselves in one person and not in another, despite being present in both.”
Garin kept his pace steady and waited for Sazahk to continue.
“But genes are what make up an individual and individuals are what make up a society, so there are a lot of rules and regulations and lines that aren’t allowed to be crossed when you start to experiment with the fabric of an individual and thus, according to the Senate, the fabric of society.” Sazahk twisted his hands together in his lap. “It’s not that I don’t think those things matter, but I don’t think those things matter more than a person’s life.”
Garin drew the comb through the untangled lower half of Sazahk’s hair.
“I think an individual can decide what risks they’re willing to take for themselves.” Sazahk clenched his fists. “Other people don’t get to tell them it’s too dangerous, or that some amorphous greater good is more important than their lives.”
Now this computed. These words from Sazahk’s lips fit into a shape in Garin’s head that made sense.
“There’s a town that borders the southern end of the Dead Zone. The water to its newer neighborhoods comes from a river fed by a spring inside it.”
Garin bit his lip as he picked at an especially large tangle. He didn’t need to be a biologist to know that wasn’t good.
“The children born within that neighborhood have a mortality rate over one hundred times higher than the Qeshian average.”
“Shit,” Garin breathed, breaking his promise to himself to be as calm and neutral as possible as Sazahk told his story.
Sazahk’s shoulders lowered from his ears as his voice grew more confident and determined. “For the children who present the typical symptoms, the pain is excruciating, and their lives are short, hard, and hopeless.”
Garin shook his head. “But why doesn’t the government do anything? They’re not the Humans for god’s sake.” One expected that sort of negligence from the Human species state after all.
“The government does do something.” Sazahk’s disdain dripped from his tongue. “They provide hospice care and financial support for the family while they tend to their dying child, and they help the grieving parents with fertility treatments in order for them to have another child that might have better luck in the genetic lottery. What they don’t try to do is save them.”
“And you did.” Garin jumped ahead in the story as he conquered the biggest tangle. He’d known Sazahk wasn’t the villain.
Sazahk sighed. “I tried, yes.”
Garin frowned as he ran his fingers through Sazahk’s smooth, disentangled hair. “Why did you tell me you killed them?”
“Because I did.”
“No, they were already dying.”
“And I killed some of them faster.” Sazahk looked back and met Garin’s eyes. “Some of them died years before they would have. Some of them died in greater pain. Some of them held out hope until the last minute and died still thinking they might get better. I did that, Garin. I can’t deny that.”
Garin shook his head. “You were trying to help.”
“Was I?” Sazahk snorted and looked away, up at the stars stretching out above them. “When they arrested me, they said I was a monster. That I was a sick psychopath experimenting on children to satisfy my own deranged curiosity.”
Garin bared his teeth as rage lanced through him. “That’s not true.” None of that was fucking true, and he dared anyone to look at the way bright green like the first grass of spring in the Turner gardens lit up Sazahk’s face as he studied a funny-colored rock and say that the qesh was a monstrous psychopath.
“But I was curious.” Sazahk hung his head. “I did want to know more about what was hurting them. I wanted to know how it worked. I wanted to know how to fix it and I wanted to know why other things didn’t. I was fascinated.”
Garin shuffled to Sazahk’s side to look into his face. “Curiosity isn’t a fucking crime.”
Sazahk snapped his head up to glare at him. “Actually, in this case, it was. It was illegal to conduct the sorts of experiments I was conducting and to ask the sorts of questions I was asking about the Dead Zone and the qeshian genome.”
Garin lifted his chin. “Well, I don’t think you did anything wrong.”
They glared at each other for a few moments, Sazahk’s skin still tinged with purple and blue. Then the bruised colors faded into a muted brown, touched with yellow, and Sazahk’s eyes softened into uncertainty. “You don’t?”
