Page 52 of Tidal Creatures

They’re the kind of houses Judy dreams of owning one day, large enough to contain libraries and home offices and—

She stops dead. David and Anna do the same, all of them staring at a house so out of place that it might as well be a slap across the face of the neighborhood. Judy’s supposed to be the one who’s good with words, but she can’t even convince her mouth to move for the first several stunned seconds—long enough for Anna to demand, loudly, “Okay, what the actual fuck is wrong with the people who live there? Did they lose a bet, or do they hate their neighbors?”

“I was colorblind until my sister and I killed our father and merged sufficiently to overcome our engineered shortcomings—and I mean true colorblindness, not the kind that normally occurs in the human population. There’s nothing wrong with red-green colorblindness, or a lack of sensitivity to shades. I lived in a grayscale world, and it’s a miracle I didn’t pancake myself across a highway or something before I figured out what colors were. Now I have them all, and they’re still novel.” Professor Middleton shrugs broadly. “I like ’em. We have all these colors, and all these words for colors. We should use them more.”

Anna turns to stare at him. “There’s using them more, and then there’s painting your house to look like a prism fucked a rainbow.”

“I didn’t paint it,” he says serenely, and starts walking again. Judy catches David’s elbow before he can follow.

Leaning close and dropping her voice, she says, “Probably because he just asked the house to look like that and it couldn’t figure out a reason not to.”

He turns and blinks at her. “What are you talking about?”

“You need to be careful around him,” she says. “He’s dangerous.”

“What?” David actually snickers at that. “He’s built like a beanstalk. He’s wearing tweed. I don’t think he’s dangerous, Judy. I think you’re all freaked out by everything that’s been happening, and you’re jumping at nothing.”

“You just dismissed Aske being murdered as ‘everything that’s been happening.’ Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”

Maybe David can’t hear the words around every word Professor Middleton says, but he can react to them. The little subliminal eddies in the air telling them this is safe, this is fine, this is a good idea, they’ve been burrowing their way deeper and deeper into his thoughts, and now he can’t see any reason why he shouldn’t be happily following a strange professor into a house stolen from a children’s television show.

Judy lets go of his arm. She can’t fight this. Chang’e might be able to resist it better than she can, but for her to let the goddess take over is for her to admit that Judy’s human life is coming to an end. If she runs, if she tries to break the other Lunars loose and take them with her, she’ll make an enemy of the Doctrine. There’s no coming back from that. Even if she abandons her hopes of linguistic success, she’ll be on the run forever from the concept of language itself. As he so accurately pointed out, even movement is a language. She’ll never escape.

None of them will.

Professor Middleton has reached the house, and is holding the gate in the fence open as he watches her talk to David. Anna is beside him, already too far away to reach. Shoulders slumped, Judy follows, and David trails along behind.

The garden is as much a marvel as the house is a monstrosity, unseasonable fruits and flowers warring for dominion. Like the house, it’s a riot of chaotic color; unlike the house, it somehow manages to form something coherent and even beautiful. It’s like a contrasting argument, like the house is in conversation with itself and its surroundings, and thinking about it too hard makes Judy’s head hurt.

There’s a peach tree near the fence line, branches heavy with flawlessly ripe fruit, and the sight of it makes Chang’e want to step up, to taste their sweetness and judge how close it is to her own. Judy has to fight her back down, to silently remind her that they don’t want to make this situation any worse than it already is. If the professor takes her stepping up as a threat … No. The risk is too great.

He smiles as she approaches. “I was concerned you might have remembered another appointment,” he says, like they’re old friends and she’s not here under unspoken duress.

“I think we need to talk this through,” she says, and he nods, gray eyes grave.

“We do,” he agrees. He waves them into the garden with a sweep of his free hand.

The porch steps are painted as garishly as the rest of the house, each board a different color, and as if that weren’t enough, the windows are made of mismatched panes of leaded carnival glass, giving the whole edifice a funhouse air that simultaneously ties it all together and adds the final horrifying touch. Judy’s surprised the neighbors haven’t torched the place yet, their suburban sensibilities overwhelming the normal distaste for arson.

As for Professor Middleton, he heads up the stairs and opens the unlocked front door, revealing an ordinary hallway beyond, plain wood with doors to either side and a stairway about eight feet deeper in. He leans into the house, yelling an enthusiastic “Hey, Dodge, I brought home a bunch of stray moon gods, and if you don’t get down here, I’m going to keep them!”

The house makes no reply. He turns back to the group, smiling more broadly this time. “All right, now that you know I know and we’re not on campus anymore, come on in and you can explain who the hell you are and what you’re doing at my school.”

In he goes, and they follow, ducklings in a line with no other obvious options. Anna is the last one in, the huntress finally appearing to realize she’s walking into a trap. The door swings shut behind her. She stops, turns, and tries to open it again. The knob won’t budge, and there’s no visible way to unlock it. Swallowing hard, she follows Judy and David, who are walking together through the narrow space.

Professor Middleton leads them to the kitchen, which is as oddly normal as the rest of the house, marble countertops and white walls and windows which, seen from this side, appear to be made of perfectly clear glass. If not for the bookshelves lining the walls of the breakfast nook, there would be nothing to distinguish it from any other middle class suburban kitchen. A round cat bed rests against the base of the central island, and the oldest orange cat Judy has ever seen is curled there, tail over its nose, sleeping soundly.

The bookshelves aren’t a surprise. Their contents are. There isn’t a single book on linguistics, not even one of Middleton’s own, but there are several books on higher mathematics, some with titles so long and convoluted that Judy’s not sure she could understand the credits page, much less the books themselves. The round wooden table in front of them is covered in papers and Post-It flags, again, exactly like similar tables in academic households around the world.

Anna doesn’t seem to notice. Neither she nor David is really looking around, having just figured out how much trouble they might be in: they’re watching Professor Middleton, Anna with predatory tenseness, David with something much closer to territorial irritation. Judy hangs back. She might know more about the situation than they do, but she doesn’t know enough.

Professor Middleton heads for the coffee machine on one counter, picking up the half-full pot and decanting a cup. “Talk,” he says.

It’s a command. None of them are prepared to resist it, and they all begin talking at once, words tumbling over themselves as if they’re trying to recreate the complex harmonics of the professor’s own speech. Unlike his words, where the unspoken ones fade politely into the background and become harmonics, these words smother each other, becoming unintelligible.

He puts the pot down and pinches the bridge of his nose. “All right, stop talking,” he says. They do, all of them. Judy’s not sure she’s ever going to be able to speak again, no matter how much she wants to. Awkward, for a linguist.

“I need you to go one at a time,” he says, and indicates Judy with his coffee mug. “You, girl in my department who knows enough to avoid me. Who the hell are you, and who are your friends?”