Virginia Hamilton Read Online Free

combing their insides and I know how they work. I know that they get choked on the dust and they die. Oh, they don’t have throats that choke. But the dust oozes in through their skin and it chokes up their workings and they die.”
    “I haven’t seen any of them die!” Levi said.
    “Well, maybe you haven’t been looking hard enough,” Thomas told him. “Because they do die, and all the time, too. But they don’t stop to die.”
    Dorian and Levi stared at him. Miacis blinked.
    “Give him a chance to explain,” Justice said, before either of them could say anything.
    “Well, thanks, girl,” Thomas said. “Glad somebody around here cares to listen some.”
    Always as sarcastic as he can be, thought Justice.
    They were silent, watching the creatures. Worlmas in the water grew to ten times their original size. They floated like footballs made too large. And when they tried to leave the pool, their legs broke under the pressure of their overblown bodies.
    “Brother!” Justice cried. “How big would they get if they had an ocean to swim in?”
    “There’d have to be a point where growth reached its outer limit,” Dorian said.
    “That could be at the size of an elephant,” Levi said, “depending on the quantity and purity of the water.”
    “So, as I was saying,” Thomas began, “these beasties don’t know when they’ve kicked the bucket. You can’t tell dead ones from live ones walking around unless you have something like a sharp knife. Then you slit one down its back. If the brown stain flows, it’s alive and it dies. You slit another one and what happens? Whatever life was in there, the mucous stuff, the membranes and the brown-stain acids, whatever,” Thomas said, “it’s gone, or drying up. But the beastie keeps right on moving until it’s so dried up it breaks apart into small pieces, which break up into even smaller pieces. But it never will go pank-a-pank! unless that brown stuff flows.”
    “You sure of that?” Levi said, the sound of alarm in his voice.
    “Positive,” said Thomas, proud of his scientific study of worlmas. “I’m telling you. They ought to die right off, all at once, but they don’t. Because these buggers are programmed to move around so they can dry out. Once they’re all dry, they come apart in littler and littler pieces. No remains to clutter up the place. All very efficient. It’s in the genetic code for beasties, I’d say.”
    “So the dust is …” Levi began.
    “… is maybe everything that has to die here,” Thomas finished for him. “I thought of that, too. That’s if moving around after death, drying up and falling to dust, is the same code for everything. But we don’t know that, either. Moving around after death could be an involuntary action, kind of like a slow rigor mortis.” He glanced at Justice and quickly away.
    He had been looking at her fast and sideways like that all day, Justice realized.
    “I don’t like any of it, much. It’s creepy,” Dorian said.
    “To think things can be moving around and dead at the same time,” Levi said solemnly. “You see them and you don’t even know they’re dead.”
    “But how long do they keep on moving?” Dorian wanted to know.
    “It would depend on the genetic code for the kind you’re talking about,” Thomas explained.
    “So how long does a worlma move around after death?” Levi asked.
    “I can’t say for sure. It could be an hour or a day dead. Probably no more than two, three days dead to dry up and pull apart. But I’m guessing.”
    Silence, in which they watched creatures struggle and die. In which Justice closed off a tracing between her and Miacis so the others couldn’t scan.
    Talking about worlmas, Master, shoot, Miacis tracing. Her language was a mixture of words she found in any of their minds. Worlmas ain’t no nevermind to nothing, man, lady. He hiding something? This about Thomas.
    Justice had to laugh, but kept it within. Thomas gets interested in something, he