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I do. The skin itself has been covered with scribblings made with what looks like charcoal. There’s diagrams and what looks like a drawn dissection of a clam along with a few arrows pointing at specific parts. Devi’s writing covers the skin in lines slanting upward, and there are smears everywhere from where her hands have touched the skin itself or the charcoal dust slides away from its initial application. It’s still readable but that doesn’t mean it’ll stay readable for long.
Running my finger over the edge of the hide, I ponder it. “I’ve handled older books and they’re made with parchment, which, if memory serves me correctly, is just very, very thin hides that have been scraped and scraped to the point that they make an almost paper-like substance. I think you’re on the right track but you need a better medium.”
Devi brightens, excitement on her face. “That’s what I thought, too. That maybe if we worked the hides a certain way that the charcoal would stick better.”
“Or no charcoal at all,” I murmur, envisioning it. “You need a quill pen and some ink. Scrape it onto the skin. There has to be a type of ink we can make that will be runny enough so you can write with it but indelible enough that it won’t bleed on the skin itself.” Already I’m picturing it in my mind. Scraping a thin skin, stretching it, and then scraping it over and over again until it’s soft and flimsy, and then maybe stretching it again to write upon? I don’t know how parchment works but I bet we can experiment and find out. “I think ink will be the easy part. I took a bookbinding class once and I think I remember the gist of how to make things. I bet we can figure out paper, or at least a reasonable facsimile of it. And we can bind all the papers in a heavier, stiffer cover that will protect them. We could make a library of sorts, so people will have information to reference and nothing will be lost.”
Devi groans. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. See, this is why I’m glad you’re here! You’ve got the expertise I lack.”
Her effusive praise is making me a little uncomfortable. “I’m just a librarian.”
“Yes, but you eat, sleep, and breathe books. You have different ideas for them than I do. Like I said, I’m glad I came to you.” Devi beams at me. “You’ve got the solutions.”
Me? I just got here. And now I’m feeling like an absolute fraud. “Devi…I’m not really an expert at all. Heck, I’m not even a librarian. Whoever I was cloned from was a librarian, not me. The memories I have aren’t even mine. I…I don’t know what I am.”
If Devi senses my impending mental breakdown, she doesn’t show it. She examines one of the skins critically, then touches a fingertip to one written word and tsks when the writing smears.
It’s not the most sympathetic of responses, and I’m a little stung. “Didn’t you hear me?”
“Hm? Oh, yes. You’re a clone. I know. There’s lots of them on the beach. The a’ani are clones too. The guys with the crimson skin? That’s not in their genetic makeup. They’ve been more or less branded with the bright red skin so the entire universe is very aware at all times that they are made from cloned material.”
“O-oh.” That wasn’t the response I was expecting. “I haven’t really had a chance to talk to them…”
“And Angie’s baby? Glory? You’ll see her soon enough. Cute little muffin with bright red skin and the prettiest lilac-colored hair. She’s a clone, too. Gren is a clone, too, but he’s more like clone-soup. He’s made up of a lot of genetic splicing from a lot of different hosts. And the other people you landed with? Clones.”
I just blink at her.
Devi leans in and pats my hand. “Look, I’m not the most understanding of people to complain to. If you feel you need therapy, I will introduce you to Steph. She was in college for psychology when she was stolen from Earth, and she loves to help people talk through their emotions. But if you want a scientific perspective on things…yes, you’re a clone. And you’re not even a particularly interesting specimen.”
“Ouch.”
She chuckles. “That’s a good thing. Interesting means ‘aberrant’ in scientific terms, and usually comes with a host of issues. If you have to be a clone, be an uninteresting one, you know? But what I’m trying to say—and poorly—is that cloning seems to be fairly normalized on this end of the galaxy and while I understand it might throw you for a loop initially, it’s nothing to worry about.” She pauses, and then adds, “And if you want a really scientific opinion, cloning is a very natural thing in biology.”
