Saltus

A homonculus of inappropriate humor

Crew member aboard the starship Eurynasir, captained by DEMETRI ARELLO

Excerpt from Empire of Silence

“Aye, Saltus.” The Jaddian turned. “Best strap yourself in. We’re for the up-and-up.”

The little man pulled himself up and out of the hatch, wrinkling his already wrinkled face. At his full height, the man could not have been more than four feet tall, and he was built in a way that recalled the orangutans I’d seen in my grandmother’s menagerie. His arms nearly dragged on the ground, and there was thick gray hair on them and on the backs of his hands. His legs were short and bowed. Saltus smiled, running one of those huge, wrong hands over his hairless scalp until he grabbed the gray-black queue that sprouted from the base of his skull. He twisted the rope of hair in his hands as he spoke. “This the passenger?”

“Of course he is, haqiph,” Juno put in, voice scathing. She sounded as revolted by the creature as I was myself, though there was a worn quality to her disgust.

The homunculus, Saltus, squinted up at me, twisting his hair in an awful parody of a little girl. “You didn’t say he was like me.”

I started, nearly jumped out of my skin, hackles rising. “What do you mean?” I had to will my fists to unclench. We couldn’t have been less alike if the little monster had been Cielcin. Homunculi weren’t human, not truly. They represented a loophole in the Chantry’s technological regulations—their religious decrees—and like all loopholes, greed and human cruelty poured into that space like wine. Homunculi were bred for tasks that normal men, even the planetbound serfs, found distasteful. To have one compare itself to me . . .

“We are both homunculi!” he said brightly, and he offered me his hand as Juno had. I didn’t take it, not then understanding the gesture. “Both children of the tanks.”

-Chapter 20: Off the Map