Mirror Image

Arsenal sat down. The tissue sample cartridge poked out of the pocket of his lab coat and clattered to the floor.

"What's that?" Jinx sat cross-legged on the thinly carpeted floor. She was about to tell a story, but the noise distracted her.

"Oh!" He felt irritated with himself for forgetting. "It's a tissue sample from the space trike. I wanted you to see if it was like the samples from the crew."

"You'd better get that into the refrigerator. I'll run it up later."

Arsenal got to his feet, retrieving the cartridge from the floor as he stood up. "Where--?"

"It's the huge thing in the corner of the room."

The refrigerator was a large model, intended for the kitchen of a well-to-do family, vastly over-sized for a collection of tissue samples. Arsenal opened the door and deposited the sample next to the other ones. "Yeah. Nice and roomy."

Jinx shifted on the ground, making herself comfortable. "Yeah. Like some sort of really, really obvious product placement. Now, come here -- I have a story to tell you."

They sat on the thin carpet. Jinx began talking.

"It wasn't all that long ago that our ancestors were nomadic hunters. Three, four millenia ago?"

"What, on the homeworld?"

"Yes. Before we had all this." Jinx gestured around the room. "Before technology, back when symbols were only used for magic, not for keeping records. But not before history."

She paused for a moment.

"Oral records -- poems and songs -- survive from the archaic era. Back then, social organization was hardly more developed than a hunting pack, often led by individuals with remarkable abilities."

"Super-powered warlords."

"Yes. One of the longer story cycles was about the struggle between the great hunter Darneth and Nyqll, the river king. Nyqll built a walled city, and kept his meat in pens. He would send his soldiers out to burn the forest, and grow grain to feed his livestock. Over time, the grasp of Nyqll's burning hand reached Darneth's hunting grounds, and the two warlords began to fight."

"It sounds like Nyqll was ahead of his time."

"He was. Agriculture, slavery, docile livestock, and books of account -- all of this seemed like a perversion of nature to the ancients. Forcing flesh to submit to one man's will. For them, Nyqll was a monster, an enemy of freedom and righteousness."

"And they wrote the poems."

"Precisely. Their vision of the river valley king."

Arsenal tried rubbing the back of his neck, but stopped -- his left thumb was pointing the wrong way. "So that monster is a projection of some long-dead culture's rejection of the modern world."

"Not just any culture. The distant ancestors of the Reyll. They preserved the nomadic values of Darneth in their own moral code. He's not just some archaic political cartoon, he's a fundamental part of our sense of reality." She looked at Arsenal's ruined hand. "Give me your hand."

Arsenal hesitated a moment, then gave Jinx his left hand. She spoke.

"I can't shape your flesh, but you can."

He looked at her for a moment. "All right. All right."

She smiled and lifted up his forearm. "No use starting an operation without a plan. You need a mirror image of your left hand. How do you want to do that?"

"Turn it inside out."

"Kind of. You'll need to keep the nerves and the blood vessels attached. How do things look in there?"

He concentrated, probing his hand and wrist. "Twisted around. One half-turn to the left."

"And the tendons?"

"Straight ahead."

"Brace your arm. I'll talk you through it."

He lay on the floor, and braced his elbow on the floor. She lay down facing him, and looked at him. "Do you know what you have to do?"

He hesitated. "Yeah."

"I'll hold your arm steady. This is gonna hurt."

He swallowed. "Let's do it."

The flesh of his land became pliable like clay. His fingers became shorter.

He gritted his teeth, trying no to scream.

"Keep going."

He shuddered as he came to the long bones of his palm. Jinx held his forearm still.

A mirror image of his ruined hand now hung limply from the end of his forearm. Jinx took a breath. "You're going to need to sever the tendons, twist your hand back into position, and reattach them."

Arsenal was pale and breathing shallowly. "All right."

"Don't tense up."

"Let's get it over with."

She grabbed his wrist to help keep the tendons in place. "Now."

The pain was indescribable. His hand twisted around, and slowly rose back into position. "Hold on."

"Do it. Do it now."

Tendons reattached. Peter took a deep breath, and wiggled his fingers.

He smiled.

"It worked!"