Page 51 of Tidal Creatures

“Too small,” says Judy. “And I’m pretty well known in our department for avoiding your company. Someone would talk.”

“Right,” he says, and tilts his head back to look at the sky, smacking his lips thoughtfully for a moment before he looks back to her, and offers, almost offhandedly, “We could go to my house? My sister’s probably there, so it’s not like you’d be alone with me, and it’s far enough off campus that no one’s going to see.”

Somehow, going with this man to an undisclosed second location seems like a safer plan than walking with him across campus. Judy doesn’t know whether that’s her own concern for her reputation speaking, or the strange harmonics that accompany his every word, but her mouth opens before she has a chance to think about it, and her answer is given:

“That works.”

Anna scowls at her, less aware of the danger, more aware of the strangeness of refusing a public office for a private home. Judy can’t understand how Anna can listen to him speak and not hear the strange harmonics wrapping around every single word, how she can look at him and not see the way space tries to distort around him, unable to make up its mind whether he should be more real than the rest of them or rejected entirely. He’s more solid than they are, like something dropped in from another reality, one that makes this one look like tissue paper.

Anna is the huntress here.

She should recognize the greater predator.

Judy scrapes up an uneasy smile, flashing it first at Anna and then at David. “Professor Middleton is the chair of my department,” she says.

“He’s your advisor?” asks David.

“No,” she says. “I’ve gone out of my way to stay out of his classes.” She can stop herself from sharing information that shouldn’t be thrown about in public, but she can’t lie in his presence. She can tell, in an abstract sort of way, that he wouldn’t like that, and part of her is more concerned about upsetting him than anything else.

“Why?”

“Because I terrify her,” says Professor Middleton easily. “Come along, students. It looks like we’re going to have an unscheduled class session at my place today.” He gestures for them to accompany him as he begins walking, heading for the edge of campus. Judy wants to run. Judy wants to turn and bolt as fast as she can. She follows anyway. Running won’t save her now, not when he knows her name, not when he’s been wondering about her already. Not when she’s caught his attention.

Maybe if she’d been more careful, if she’d watched where she was going, she might have been able to finish out her time at Berkeley without this happening, but she wasn’t and she didn’t, and now she’ll have to pay the price for her mistakes on top of everything else.

Anna and David follow her, both perplexed by her seemingly meek obedience, neither of them saying anything or stepping up. They stay almost entirely themselves, as close to human as they ever get, and maybe that’s part of why they can’t tell how much danger they’re in. David is still new to his divinity. Anna is less so, and she said before that when she’s on a hunt, she’s always partially stepped up, Artemis riding actively along with her human host. Her inability to sense the presence of a larger predator is confusing.

Maybe they’ll find out why it’s like this before they die. And if they don’t … well. Hopefully someone else will start asking questions about Aske. She deserves some answers, and some peace, even if Eliza’s family will never know what happened.

“You don’t have to look like you’re marching off to your own execution,” says Professor Middleton, looking at Judy as he walks. “We’re just going to my place to talk, because you didn’t want to do it on campus.”

“How far away do you live?”

“Not far,” he says, turning down Bancroft and heading for Telegraph. That’s the main street for the university’s social scene: if you want cheap pizza or used books, you go to Telegraph. Judy’s heard rumors of a happening nightlife that thrives there in upstairs and underground clubs after the sun goes down, but her evenings have been taken up by homework and Lunar duties for so long that the rumors have remained just that—rumors, things to eventually be proven by someone else, someone with more time to kill than she has.

Professor Middleton looks out of place here, weaving between the teenagers playing hooky and playing at being whatever version of alternative is currently speaking to their souls, brightly colored hair and denim jackets, patches of chainmail hung decoratively off recycled fashions from the Buffalo Exchange. Several of the street vendors smile as he passes, some pausing in their work or negotiations to raise their hands in greeting, and he smiles back, entirely at ease.

The feeling that he’s out of his natural environment fades with the second. He’s still too drab and too ordinary-looking for the color and chaos around him, but his posture seems to shift, adapting to his environment like an octopus changing color to blend into the bottom of a fishing boat. By the time they’ve gone a full block, he’s entirely unremarkable once more, and their mismatched little student group is more likely to attract attention than he is.

It’s a neat trick. Judy frowns, trying to figure out how he’s been able to accomplish it. Professor Middleton smiles in answer.

“They call it body language for a reason,” he says. “If you speak it fluently enough, you’ll never stick out. I’ve heard good things about your work. You have a real gift for languages. I’m surprised you haven’t spent more time studying this one.”

“Kinesthetic linguistics is such a large field that I’ve never really had time to focus on it,” says Judy, distracted into answering without a veil of terror between her thoughts and her voice. “Culture and environment play such a huge role, and it’s always struck me as being almost on the border between linguistics and behavioral science. Maybe if I was planning to go into mental health care or social work. Being able to read the way people change their posture depending on threat assessment of their surroundings could be a huge help.”

“Or if you just wanted to go anywhere in the world without attracting attention. One of my housemates is almost as good at it as I am, which is saying something, given that she doesn’t really have a gift for languages. She’s real good at physical stuff, though, so I guess she just came at it from the other side.”

The thought of a professor having housemates—plural, apparently, and a sister who either lives with him or comes and goes at will—is a little jarring, a reminder that there’s no benchmark in adulthood where capitalism ceases to apply. Judy frowns as she walks, glancing back at Anna and David. They don’t appear to have noticed Professor Middleton’s odd postural mimicry. Then again, they both move like college students, meaning they’re still in their natural habitat this close to campus.

They reach the corner of Haste Street, and Professor Middleton turns. For a moment, just a moment, he can’t see them, and once again, Judy sees the chance to run. Once again, she doesn’t. If she runs, she’ll have to keep running, maybe for the rest of her life, and as a goddess of immortality, that life could be very, very long. She doesn’t know if the professor is the sort of man—or manifestation—who holds a grudge. She’s gone out of her way not to know.

Haste is quieter than Telegraph, lined with private homes, gated apartment complexes, and the smaller, calmer sorts of business that a city center needs but the hectic social pyramid of Telegraph can’t sustain—dentists and daycares and accountancy firms. They keep walking, and Judy watches carefully as Professor Middleton’s posture shifts again, abandoning the veil of collegiate ease, becoming what she assumes is his natural stance. He walks like he’s not afraid of anything, like he’s seen the worst the world has to offer, shrugged, and decided to keep on going, unperturbed.

It’s a terrifying walk, all the more because it offers no threats. As she watches him, she realizes she doesn’t really know much about the man; she’s read his published papers, which are meticulously researched, and precisely as petty as any other academic work, but she’s worked so hard to avoid him that she’s never risked attracting his attention by digging too much into who he is. She didn’t even know he had a sister.

She knows he’s an artificial person, built in a secret lab by alchemists who wanted to control the world, so the question of how he has a sister seems like a reasonable one. Either he was cloned from a naturally occurring person and they decided to adopt each other after he became the living force of universal control or—probably more likely, and way more frighteningly—his sister is an artificial person too. Judy can’t fathom what she’d be the force of. Professor Middleton is the Doctrine of Ethos. There’s only one of those. Right?

Her questions are all-consuming enough to keep her quiet as Haste turns into Shattuck—a main artery, yes, but more domesticated than Telegraph, farther from campus and commensurately more commercialized—and Shattuck turns into the warren of small residential streets. The houses here are old Victorians, imposing, meticulously maintained, and beautifully painted, some with that sort of decorative trim that people call “gingerbread” picked out in tastefully contrasting colors.