Sea Changes 
by Amy Bechtel
Doctors treat deviations from normal-which is a perennial challenge when you don't know what's normal! 

On my birthday, Howard Winston brought me a present. 
It wasn't exactly my first present of the day. When I'd pulled into the parking lot of my veterinary clinic bright and early that morning, I'd found a large box on the doorstep. Now that isn't at all unusual. Most vets wind up with boxes of kittens and puppies abandoned on their doorsteps from time to time; it's really quite common. But my box held an eight-foot-long boa constrictor with beady reptilian eyes. It was just my luck. All I'd ever wanted was a quiet little practice, catering to ordinary animals like cattle and horses and dogs and cats. But my client Howard Winston also collected creatures like tortoises and snakes (not to mention his utterly unique sea monsters) and he had lots of friends with weird animals, and now they all came to see me. So I'd ended up with a reputation as a reptile vet, in spite of the fact that snakes give me the willies. Especially big snakes. 
My assistant, Tegan, was impressed. “Wow, Michael,” she said. “That's one big snake. What are you going to do with it?” 
I looked at her hopefully. I knew she liked reptiles; she kept snakes in her home. “Would you like to have it?” I offered. 
Tegan looked regretful. “No,” she said. “It's too big for my apartment.” 
Apparently it had gotten too big for somebody else's apartment, too. I sighed and lugged the box into the building. Where was I going to put it? I had horrible visions of the snake crawling between the bars of my cages and devouring my patients; it certainly couldn't go in the kennel room. Finally I put the box in the storeroom, shut the door, and pinned a FREE SNAKE notice on the waiting room bulletin board. 
By the end of the day, no one had volunteered to adopt my snake. Tegan had found an old aquarium out in the shed and had fixed it up into a decent little snake habitat. The boa now sat coiled in the aquarium, glowering at me. 
“I wonder when it ate last,” Tegan said. 
“I guess we ought to, uh, offer it something,” I said. “Soon.” A big snake was bad enough on its own merits; a hungry big snake was unthinkable. 
“Dr. Clayton?” My receptionist, Kami, cautiously cracked the storeroom door and peered inside. “That snake won't get loose, will it?” I looked doubtfully at the aquarium. It really wasn't big enough; what if the snake got bored and decided to start dismantling it? I would definitely have to remember to keep the storeroom door shut. “I hope not,” I said. 
Kami didn't look reassured. “Howard Winston is here,” she said, backing out of the room in a hurry and closing the door behind her. 
* * *
Howard Winston and his wife Lynda were waiting for me in the exam room. Howard sat placidly in his chair with an aquarium in his lap; beside him, Lynda held a small cardboard box. Howard smiled at me and pushed his glasses up his nose. Howard is middle-aged and balding and very soft-spoken; to look at him you'd never guess that he was the cause of so many of my veterinary nightmares. Not the least of which was that Lynda, who'd once been my receptionist, had quit her job in order to be with Howard and his sea monsters. 
“Hi, Michael,” Lynda said. “Happy birthday. We brought you a present.” 
I looked at her sadly. “I don't suppose the present is that you're coming back to work for me?” She had been such a good receptionist. “Sorry,” Lynda said. “But you're not so bad off, are you? It looks like Kami's doing better.” 
This was true, although it was mostly because there was no way Kami's work skills could have gotten any worse. 
“And you have Tegan,” Lynda went on, smiling. 
“Um, yes. She's an excellent worker.” 
“I'm sure she is, Michael.” Lynda rolled her eyes. “Come on, I saw you kissing her at our wedding reception. So what's up? Are you two going out?” 
“Well, maybe. Sort of.” 
“Sort of?” 
I sighed. I was smitten with Tegan, no doubt about it, although a year ago I'd never have believed I could fall for a girl with spiked hair, tattoos, and snakes. But it was all damnably awkward, since she was an employee and I was her boss. I tried to explain this to Lynda, without notable success. 
“Well, anyway,” she said. “Happy birthday.” She handed me the cardboard box. 
It was a plain cardboard box, with a bow on top but with no wrapping paper. It had air holes. This was not a good sign. 
“Come on, open it,” Howard said. I lifted the top and looked in. Inside were two little tortoises, each of them about the size of the palm of my hand. 
“Er,” I said. “Tortoises. For me?” 
“For you,” Howard said proudly. “Do you like them?” 
I picked up one of the tortoises, looked at it, and tried to smile. Howard was looking anxious and hopeful, obviously eager for me to like my present. The little tortoise peered back at me and waved its legs in the air. A reptile. How nice. But at least it wasn't a snake. 
“Well, sure,” I said heartily. “They're great. Are they Max's kids?” 
“Oh, yes.” The huge old tortoise Max was one of Howard's favorite pets. “And here's the aquarium we got ready for you. It has the proper lights all set up in it, and a water bowl, and a place to climb, and a couple of little shelters for them to hide in. Lynda made the shelters, see?” 
I looked into the aquarium. There were two little tortoise-houses, both made out of needlepoint. Ye gods. 
“I kept thinking you ought to have a pet,” Howard went on. He was starting to look worried. “And it seemed like tortoises would be just the thing, since you can leave them alone all day while you're working. That's why there's two of them, so they can keep each other company.” 
Howard really had meant well; I knew that. And I'd always pretended to like his reptiles, so how could he have known better? “Thank you, Howard,” I said. “It's just the thing.” 
He brightened. “Really?” 
“Really.” 
“Oh good, good. So, what are you going to name them?” 
“Well, I don't know.” I picked up the second tortoise, which looked exactly like the first one. How could I name them when I couldn't even tell them apart? “I'll have to think about it.” 
Howard nodded, looking pleased. 
“By the way,” I said, “I don't suppose you know anyone who would like a nice big snake?” 
“A snake?” Howard looked interested. 
“How big of a snake?” Lynda asked. 
“Oh, I don't know. Six feet, seven. Well, maybe eight feet. Or nine. I haven't actually measured it.” 
“Honey, what do you think?” Howard asked. 
“No,” Lynda said firmly. “We're talking about a reptile reptile brain here. It'll think anything smaller than it is food. And I might add, I'm smaller than it.” 
“Well, that's true,” Howard conceded. “That is the problem, isn't it? It's so sad the way snakes get abandoned when they grow too large to handle. No one wants to be around them any more.” He looked thoughtful. “Of course they do sometimes try to eat their owners, but it isn't like it's the snakes’ fault. They aren't smart enough to know any better.” 
I had a sudden urge to go check and see if my snake was still in its too-small aquarium. 
“I'll ask around,” Howard said. “I know some people who do snake rescue. I'll see if they can take your little guy.” 
“Thanks,” I said, bemused. I hadn't known there was such a thing as a snake rescue group. “I'd appreciate that. So, how are you two getting along? How are the monsters?” 
“Oh, they're fine,” Howard said. “Still growing like mad. You won't recognize them the next time you come out. Would you, um, like to see some pictures? And would Tegan?” 
I smiled and called Tegan into the room. Howard can be worse than a new father with baby pictures sometimes. He can't show the pictures to just anyone, though; he's firm about keeping his monsters a secret. He develops the pictures in his own home photo lab, and Lynda, Tegan, and I are the only ones who get to see them. 
Howard unlocked his briefcase, shuffled through a pile of poetry books and notes (he teaches poetry three days a week at the local college), and pulled out a plain brown envelope. Proudly he handed it to me, and I shook the photographs out onto the exam table while Tegan peered over my shoulder. 
The monsters had grown. A lot. They were starting to look more and more like their mother, who had died of a mysterious disease while they were still in the pouch. They were singularly peculiar creatures, with huge spherical bodies with four-pronged tails, wrinkly whiskered faces, and a respiratory system complete with blowholes and gills. I picked up a picture of Curious, the monster I knew the best, and examined it. The surgical scar on his bulbous side was fading nicely (that surgery had certainly been a nightmare) and it looked like it might disappear altogether one day. I handed the photo to Tegan and flipped through pictures of the other monsters-Caddy, Megamouth, and the rest-and then stopped at a photograph of a patch of muddy ground. You had to look closely to see the tiny silver fragments of eggshell in the mud. 
“Oh look,” Tegan said. “The hatched eggs. Have you ever seen what hatched out of the eggs?” 
Howard shook his head regretfully. “No,” he said. “We're keeping our eyes open, though.” 
Of course they didn't really know what to look for; sea monster reproduction was turning out to be more mysterious than their respiratory systems. I'd thought at first that the monsters were simple marsupials, that they gave birth to undeveloped live young which crawled into their mother's pouches like little kangaroos. After all, we'd found the ten baby monsters in their mother Nessie's pouch. They'd still been nursing, and Howard had had to bottle-feed them all. 
But this winter, Caddy had laid a clutch of tiny silver eggs in the snow at the bank of their pool, and Megamouth had followed her out of the water to fertilize them. Two weeks later, Howard had found the shards of eggshell, and whatever had been inside the eggs had disappeared. There wasn't anything in any of the monsters’ pouches; Howard had checked. Apparently this stage of the life cycle was free-living, and presumably at some future time, the hatchlings would find their way to their mother's pouch. 
That was my guess, anyway. Reproduction can be a complicated thing. I looked at Tegan wistfully, and sighed. 
There was a knock on the door; Howard hastily swept his sea monster pictures into his briefcase. Kami poked her head in and said, “Dr. Clayton? There's a chicken here to see you.” 
“Oh.” I sighed again. “Thank you, Kami.” 
“We'd better be going,” Howard said. “Let us know what you name the tortoises, OK?” 
“Sure,” I said. “See you.” 
Lynda waved, and together they headed out through the waiting room, passing by a woman who was sitting on a bench with a chicken on her knee. 
“What a weird-looking chicken,” Tegan whispered to me. “What kind is it?” 
It was a black chicken, with a huge topknot of feathers that fell forward and obscured its eyes and face. I had never seen anything quite like it before. “Um, some exotic breed,” I said lamely, and changed the subject. “Tegan, would you get these tortoises set up in their aquarium for me?” “Sure. Are they Professor Winston's?” 
“No. They're, ah, mine. For my birthday.” 
“Your birthday? I didn't know it was your birthday.” Tegan looked at me accusingly. 
“I usually try to forget about my birthdays,” I said. “I don't know how Howard found out.” 
“Hm,” she said. “You're not on call tonight, are you? Want to come to my place for dinner?” 
I suddenly felt happier. Maybe this birthday wasn't a lost cause after all. Dinner with Tegan! This was a present far more to my liking than a pair of tortoises. “Sure,” I said. “I'd love to.” 
Midnight the exotic chicken had a laceration across the back of its head; it had been bitten by a toy poodle. It was a Polish chicken, its owner Mrs. Jones informed me, obviously taken aback by my ignorance of the breed. Apparently it had been bred for its plumage, which was, I had to admit, spectacular. But it was impractical at best, since apparently the chicken couldn't see well enough to avoid predators. Even very small predators. 
“You'll need to set up a safe place for your chicken,” I told Mrs. Jones as I sutured the wound. “Someplace where your dog can't get at it.” Mrs. Jones gave me a sideways look; she seemed unsure about taking advice from a vet who didn't know what sort of chicken she had, but eventually she conceded that a chicken sanctuary would be a good idea. 
“It will be awkward, though,” she said with a sigh. “Midnight and Buffy will have to take turns in the house.” 
A chicken in the house? “Oh,” I said faintly. “I see. But if you don't keep them separated, this sort of thing is bound to happen again.” 
“I suppose you're right,” Mrs. Jones said unhappily. “Well, there's no help for it. I'll see to it that they're separated.” She looked thoughtful. “I suppose I could fence off half the house as well as half the yard. Then they could both be inside, yet still be in a safe environment.” 
“Um,” I said. I hadn't had in mind anything quite so extensive. 
But she was on a roll. “Yes, that's just the thing! It will solve everything. I'll see about hiring a contractor tomorrow.” 
I finished suturing the wound, then watched as Mrs. Jones carried her chicken out to her car and placed it in the passenger seat. Unreal. I went back to the exam room and found that Tegan had already finished scrubbing my instruments and was busy sweeping up chicken feathers. 
“The treatments are all done,” she said, “the back door is closed and locked, and I checked on the snake. I'll bring it something to eat tomorrow. Just in case. Are you about ready?” 
“Sure.” 
“Why don't you take your tortoises home, then, and get them all comfy. Then come on over for dinner. Here, I made you a map.” 
She handed me a sheet of paper and I took it, belatedly remembering my tortoises. I had managed to forget all about them. What in the world was I going to do with them? Perhaps I could leave them at the clinic. But no, Howard would find out, and he'd be horrified that they weren't living at home with me. He'd be even more upset if I gave them away. Resigned, I went to fetch my new pets. 
* * *
I drove home with the aquarium on the floorboard of the truck. The little tortoises crawled about busily; out of the corner of my eye I could see one of them scaling the little rock mountain that Howard had helpfully helpfully provided. I hadn't known that tortoises liked to climb. Distracted, I almost missed my turn. I wrenched at the wheel and took the turn on two squealing tires. When I was on the straightaway again, I saw that my little mountain climber was down on his back, legs waving in the air. Oh well. I was almost home. A few minutes later I pulled into the drive of my rented duplex, parked, and carried my tortoises inside. 
Now, where to put them? The kitchen counter had a handy plug, but I didn't really want them in the kitchen. Hell, I really didn't want them in the house. Finally I settled on a corner of the living room floor. I set down the aquarium, plugged it in, and righted the overturned tortoise. It looked relieved, and immediately started up its mountain again. 
The water dish had apparently suffered a tidal wave; I scooped up the soaked bedding and refilled the bowl. The food dish still had plenty of fruit and vegetables in it, which was a good thing, since my refrigerator contained only beer and hamburger. I was going to have to go shopping. 
But not tonight. Tonight, dinner at Tegan's! I quickly glanced through my mail (lots of bills, as usual) and checked my messages. There was only one message, from my landlord. “Sorry to spring this on you, Michael,” the message said cheerily, “but your lease is up next month, and we've decided to sell the duplex, so you'll have to be out by the end of next month. Sorry.” 
He certainly didn't sound sorry. Unhappily, I looked around the duplex. I wouldn't really miss the place, but moving was going to be a pain in the neck. Especially this time of year, which was the busy season at the clinic. When was I going to find the time to look for a new place, let alone move? 
But this was no time to be worrying about next month's problems. I picked up Tegan's map and hurried out to my truck. 
* * *
Tegan's apartment looked fairly normal from the outside. It was perched atop the detached garage of a big rambling house just outside of town. It was very picturesque, really, as the garage was nestled in a thick stand of piñon and juniper. I pulled my truck into the drive beside Tegan's battered little car, got out, and climbed the steps to her door. I knocked, and after a moment the door swung open. “Hi!” Tegan said. “Come on in. How are your tortoises?” 
“Oh, they're fine, thanks.” I took a step inside, then stopped, startled by the riot of foliage just inside the doorway; it was a jungle of green leaves and vibrant blossoms. I took another step, and bumped my head on a hanging pot with a huge fern dangling over its sides. 
“Oh, sorry,” Tegan said. “You'll have to duck under that.” 
“Right. Thanks.” I made my way further into the room. There were plants everywhere, hanging in pots from the ceiling, clustered in the windowsills, on top of the bookcases. The far side of the room contained a large homemade terrarium, complete with plants, little pools of water, tree branches and-I looked closer-lizards and snakes. A couple of crickets hopped about forlornly, seeming to realize that they would soon be reptile food. 
“Dinner's almost ready,” Tegan said. “Have a seat.” 
I made my way through the foliage to the kitchen table, which was set with two plates, silverware, and a potted violet. Tegan was busy at the stove. She'd changed from her work clothes into a leotard and skirt, and she looked stunning. I suddenly wished that I'd changed out of my work clothes too. Although, come to think of it, I didn't really have anything nicer to wear. All my clothes were pretty much the same. 
Dinner was startlingly normal: salad and spaghetti, and for dessert a cupcake with a birthday candle stuck in the middle. Tegan lit the candle, smiled, and said, “Make a wish.” I looked at her face, aglow with candlelight, gazed into her beautiful brown eyes, and wished. 
Immediately the phone rang. It was Howard, calling because something seemed to be wrong with his sea monsters. He wanted me to come out to his place right away. 
Believe me, that wasn't what I wished for. 
* * *
Howard's place is sixty miles outside of town, in the mountains at the end of Caliente Canyon. The roads are bad, especially when you get onto Howard's property, and sometimes the drive seems endless. I didn't mind it tonight, though, because Tegan was with me; she was fascinated by the monsters and took every opportunity to visit them. 
“What did Howard say was wrong?” Tegan asked. 
“He said the monsters were acting strange. He said he went up to see them this evening, and they just ignored him. Apparently they haven't ever done that before.” 
Tegan looked thoughtful. “That's a pretty vague symptom,” she said. 
“Tell me about it.” In my experience, the sea monsters’ symptoms were always vague. 
“Do you think there's really anything wrong?” 
“I've got no idea,” I said. “Howard is really good about picking up on anything that's out of the ordinary with his pets. The problem is, we don't know enough about the monsters to know what normal is.” 
“Like when Caddy laid her eggs. She was acting so weird, we all thought she was sick.” 
“Exactly.” 
Tegan tucked her legs up on the seat and gazed out the window for a time. I turned expertly onto Howard's faint ranch road (I'd been there many, many times) and Tegan jumped out to open the gate. When she got back in, she brought with her a gust of cold air and the scent of juniper. For a moment I envied Howard, living in his idyllic hideaway up in the mountains. Then my truck hit the first of the road's many formidable potholes, and my duplex suddenly seemed a much nicer place. It was really too bad that I was going to have to move. 
“Is it just me,” Tegan said, “or is this road worse than it was last time we were here?” 
“It's worse,” I said. “Howard says it discourages trespassers.” 
“What does he do if he needs a plumber?” 
“I don't know,” I said. I'd never thought about that before. How did Howard handle home-repair problems? 
Tegan looked pensive. “Do you think he'll always be able to keep the monsters a secret?” 
The truck jounced into another pothole and lurched very close to the edge of the road, where a cliff face dropped away into the darkness. It didn't seem likely that anyone would stumble across the monsters by way of this road, but the dryness of the desert mountains was deceptive. There was a vast network of underground water beneath us, connected to the surface via a myriad of hidden pools, stock ponds, and springs. Howard had taught his monsters to stay within certain artificial boundaries, ensuring that they would not come to the surface anywhere off his property. But the monsters were growing up. Who knew if they might, like teenagers everywhere, decide to rebel against their boundaries? 
“I don't know,” I answered. “Howard won't ever reveal them; he's frightened of what might happen to them if they're discovered. But the monsters may have other ideas.” 
I thought about what might happen, should the scientific community (not to mention the media) ever find out about the monsters. There would be certain distinct advantages-turning over the monsters’ veterinary care to an aquatic specialist came immediately to mind-but the idea still made me uneasy. I remembered all too well the time when all the little monsters had popped up in the middle of the Huntingdons’ stock tank. I had only met the Huntingdons twice, but they had made a vivid impression. They would not have hesitated to kill the monsters. And even a fairly scrupulous scientist might see no great harm in sacrificing one of the monsters in order to study its internal anatomy; after all, there were nine more. And then there was Stranger, the even weirder creature that lived deep below the monsters’ pool. As far as I knew, she was the only one of her kind. 
When we got to the monsters’ pool, Howard and Lynda were waiting for us. They'd rigged a light, much to my relief, and the near side of the pool was lit up almost as bright as day. Tegan and I got out of the truck and joined them by the pool. 
“So what's going on?” I asked. 
“I don't know,” Howard said fretfully. “They're just acting so odd. Look at them.” 
I gazed out at the pool. It was an ordinary-looking stock pond, save for the unusual clearness of the water. The casual observer would never guess that there were hidden depths of waterways beneath it, or that there were monsters within it. The water remained quiet and still as I peered at it, my eyes slowly adjusting to the dimness outside the cone of Howard's light. Then there was a soft spray of water from a blowhole, and one of the monsters surfaced. 
It was Curious, the most playful and fun-loving of the monsters; I'd know his wrinkled whiskery face anywhere. He always swam up to the bank to greet me, squeaking and whistling and extending a tentacled fin for me to hold. But today he simply glanced at me, scarcely acknowledging my presence, and then he sank slowly back beneath the surface. 
“Is that what they're all doing?” I asked, bewildered. Howard nodded mournfully. 
“For how long?” I asked. 
Lynda glanced at Howard, looking stricken. “We don't know,” she said. “They seemed normal this morning, but we've been gone all day. We'd just gotten home when we called you.” 
As she spoke, Caddy and Megamouth appeared, swimming slowly towards the bank a few feet away from us. They hovered there, fins slowly churning the water, and a moment later Curious joined them. One by one the other seven appeared, all converging on a spot in the sandy shallows nearby. 
I looked carefully at each monster in turn, trying to decide if there was anything abnormal about them besides their behavior. They were much bigger than the last time I'd seen them; they seemed to be nearly full-grown, and as far as I could tell, they all looked healthy. As I watched, Caddy and Megamouth crept slowly up the bank, coming to rest on the bottom with their blowholes in the air but with most of their bodies submerged. The other monsters hovered close by. With all ten of them visible, the stock pond looked oddly small. I knew how big it really was-I'd gone diving in it, and hadn't seen any sign of the bottom but I still felt a twinge of concern. Was the pond really big enough for ten fully grown monsters? 
Caddy suddenly let out a shrill whistle, and I jumped. All at once the monsters started to move, diving for the bottom and then resurfacing with rocks and sticks in their fins, squeaking and whistling nonstop as they deposited their finds in the shallows. 
“What are they doing?” Howard asked. “Doc?” 
I didn't answer; I had no idea what they were doing. All ten monsters swam back and forth in a frenzy, piling sticks and rocks and mud in a pile that slowly spread from the shallows to the bank. Except it wasn't a pile, not really. It was a semicircular partition which separated a portion of shallow water from the rest of the pond. As I watched, the partition walls rose above the waterline, and the monsters busied themselves plastering the walls with mud and piling on more flotsam. When the walls were tall and sturdy, the monsters seemed to relax. The frenzied swimming stopped, and the disturbed dirt and silt began to settle towards the bottom. Curious squeaked and swam over to us, pushing himself up half out of the water to greet us. Then he slid back into the pond and started playing half-heartedly with the smallest monster, Caterpillar. It seemed a token effort; they both looked exhausted. 
I moved closer to the monsters’ wall, marveling at it. I'd never known them to build anything before. Tegan leaned over to touch it, poking gingerly at the construction to test its strength. “It's like a beaver dam,” she said. “What do you think it's for?” 
“I've got no idea,” I said. “Can you see anything in the little pool?” 
“Not yet,” she said. “Howard, can you move the light a bit? There, that's good. Wait a minute-I think I saw something move.” 
Howard and Lynda crouched down near Tegan, peering into the little partitioned pool. I was still watching the monsters. Curious and Caterpillar were dark shapes outside the circle of light, still playing their half-hearted game, and after a moment the others joined in. All but Caddy and Megamouth, who hovered near the partition, looking extremely pleased with themselves. 
“Oh, I saw it,” Lynda said, excited. “And there's another one; look!” 
“What are they?” Howard asked. “Oh look, another one. And another. How many are there?” 
I turned away from Caddy and Megamouth and joined the others. Howard's light was now positioned so that it shone directly into the little pool, and the water was regaining its usual clarity as the disturbed dirt settled. In the water I saw a group of little swimming creatures. Each was about two inches in diameter, shaped like a flattened sphere with eye-stalks. They were brown, speckled with gray and black splotches. And how many were there? I counted four, five, six.... 
“Ten,” Tegan said. “There're ten of them.” 
Ten? I looked back at the big monsters in the stock pond; there were ten of them as well. Were there always ten in a litter of sea monsters or was this a coincidence? Were these indeed the creatures that had hatched from Caddy's eggs? Judging by the way Caddy and Megamouth hovered nearby, they were. They didn't look like sea monsters, except for a certain wrinkly quality around their eye-stalks, but I was pretty sure that that was what they were. 
“Are they the babies?” Howard asked eagerly. “They are, aren't they! Oh, look how adorable they are.” 
“They're beautiful,” Lynda said proudly, and Tegan nodded in agreement. 
I looked at the little creatures again. They still looked like wrinkled, flattened spheres with eyestalks. They cruised slowly about their pool, moving with awkward undulations of their bodies in the style of clumsy amoebas. They definitely weren't beautiful. 
But they were sort of cute. 
One of them was subtly changing color, the brown of its skin slowly changing to olive green. As I watched, the others started changing color too, some to olive green and some to a darker brown. Tegan lightly touched one on its back, and it instantly turned a brilliant red. All of the other creatures changed to a dull pink, with red spots. Startled, Tegan pulled her hand back out of the water. 
“That's amazing,” Lynda said. “I wonder if they communicate with each other that way. With colors and patterns, like octopi.” Lynda looked excited; she had been trying to decipher the sea monsters’ whistles and squeaks ever since they were tiny, and had gotten almost nowhere. If these creatures communicated with color, that would be a whole new avenue for her to explore. 
“They feel different from the monsters,” Tegan said thoughtfully. “I didn't get any sort of sense from touching them.” In fact, that was the only way we'd been able to communicate with the monsters at all; when one of us clasped a monster's fin, there was a transmission of emotions-fear, contentment, happiness; a sort of chemical communication. I reached out to touch one of the pink and red-spotted creatures. It immediately broke out in more red spots, but didn't turn fully red as Tegan's had done. And Tegan was right; I didn't feel anything from it at all. 
We sat by the pool for far too long that night. Howard made a trip back to the house to fetch snacks and a cooler of drinks, and after an hour or two, Howard and Tegan began to wax poetic. I found that it was almost as interesting to listen to them as it was to watch the baby monsters, even though I had never had the slightest interest in poetry in the past, and had always been grateful that Howard was not inclined to recite poetry around me. They traded poems titled “Evolution” for a time-I actually quite liked the one that began “When you were a tadpole and I was a fish,"-and then delved into Shakespeare. 
“Oh, there's a perfect one,” Tegan said. “'But doth suffer a sea-change, into something rich and strange.'” Even I had heard that one before, in my hated college English class. I had disliked Shakespeare with a passion passion. But tonight, in the moonlight, with the sea monsters and their astonishing babies swimming in the pool beside us, the bard's words seemed remarkable and true. 
Or maybe it was just because Tegan was reciting them. 
We watched for hours as the baby monsters swam beside us, changing through a rainbow of colors. 
* * *
Four weeks later, I still hadn't named my tortoises. Hell, I still couldn't tell them apart. I was going to have to do something about that. Soon. Howard had been calling me every day to update me on the baby monsters and to ask me what I had named my tortoises. I reached into the aquarium, picked up both tortoises, and squinted at them. They looked like identical twins to me. How was I supposed to name them when I couldn't even tell which one was which? 
Well, there was no help for it. I put one of the tortoises back in the aquarium, carried the other to my desk, and used a marker to paint a large black dot on the top of its shell. 
The phone rang while I was capping the pen. I groaned, remembering that I was on call tonight, and picked up the phone. It wasn't an emergency, though; it was Howard. 
“The babies are growing,” he said proudly. “Lynda measured them today. On average they're about half an inch bigger than the first time we measured.” 
“Well, that sounds good,” I said cautiously. Yes, growth seemed like a good thing, but who knew? “Have you figured out what they're eating?” 
“Not really. They spend some of their time burrowed into the sand on the bottom, so I suppose they might be eating worms or bugs or something. And their colors are getting just amazing. Lynda's been by the pool every waking minute, logging the color changes and trying to figure out what they're responding to each time. We've got videos, too. Michael, you simply must come and see them in the daylight.” 
“I'll try to come out this weekend,” I promised. 
“Oh, good. Say, have you found a home for your snake yet?” 
“No,” I said shortly. The snake was still living in the storeroom, sated (I hoped) on the rat it had eaten last week. It was restless, though, and its aquarium was definitely too flimsy for it. Today I'd gone to the storeroom for a box of adhesive tape, and had found the aquarium empty and the snake tightly coiled around the mop bucket. I had not been pleased. 
“Well, snake rescue hasn't got room for it, but I'll keep trying to find it a home. How are your tortoises?” 
“Oh, they're fine. Just fine.” I waited for the next question. 
“Have you named them?” 
“Well-” I realized that I still had one of the tortoises in my hand, the one that was marked with the large black spot. I held it up in front of me. I could tell it apart from the other one now, but I still didn't know what to name it. Speedy? Greenie? Inertia? It was a tortoise, after all. 
“Spot,” I said, suddenly struck with inspiration. “And-and Rover.” 
Howard laughed in delight. “Oh, that's good! See, I told you the names would come to you. See you this weekend.” 
After Howard hung up, I sat at the desk for a time, watching Spot navigate through my piled books and papers. Spot was quite an active little fellow; it was surprising how quickly a tortoise could travel. When he wandered too close to the edge of the desk, I scooped him up and put him back in the aquarium. He trundled to the food dish, which was full of healthy chopped vegetables and fruits. The grocery-store clerk had been wildly impressed that I was purchasing fruits and vegetables for a change. I'd decided not to mention that it was all going to be tortoise food. 
Spot crawled into the dish (tortoises are not tidy eaters) and started munching something green and leafy. I watched him eat, wondering what the baby monsters were consuming. Since they were growing, they had to be eating something. If they really were growing, that is; I couldn't imagine that the little spheroids were easy to measure. Lynda might be mistaken. But I didn't really think so. 
I finally stopped watching the tortoises and picked up the newspaper, ready for my nightly ritual of scanning the classifieds for rentals. I was going to have to leave my duplex in less than a week, and I still hadn't found anyplace to go. There simply wasn't much available. This week, for example, I had only found a six-bedroom estate (complete with sauna, stables, and a corresponding monthly rate), a summer cabin in Colorado, and a fixer-upper whose ad cheerily stated that they were planning to install plumbing “soon.” None of these were exactly what I was looking for. I started scanning today's ads-the cabin in Colorado had vanished from the classifieds, but the estate and the fixer-upper were still available-and saw a new listing. It was for a one-bedroom apartment, furnished, in a nice neighborhood only a few minutes from the clinic. The rent was reasonable, and it was available immediately. Saved! I thought gleefully. Eagerly I picked up the phone and dialed the number. A woman with a pretty voice answered it on the second ring. 
“Hello,” I said crisply, trying to sound like a well-financed, responsible tenant. “I'm inquiring about the apartment for rent. Is it still available?” 
“Why yes, it is,” the woman answered pleasantly. “It's a very nice little one-bedroom, furnished, with lots of windows. I could show it to you tomorrow if you'd like.” 
“That would be great,” I said happily. “Let me see, my schedule's a little erratic, but would sometime around noon be OK?” 
“Certainly,” the woman said. “I'll just go ahead and go over our policies, shall I? They're all quite standard. The lease is for one year, we'll require first and last month's rent plus a security deposit up front, and we don't allow pets.” 
“Oh, that's no problem,” I said, although coming up with that much money at one time was likely to be a large problem indeed. I'd figure something out, though. “I'll have all the deposits ready, and I don't have any pets. Well, of course there are the tortoises, but they live in a-” 
“I'm sorry,” she interrupted, her voice becoming frosty, “but we don't allow pets of any kind.” 
“But they live in an aquarium,” I said. “They stay in it all the time. Wouldn't that be all right?” 
“I'm afraid not,” she said firmly. “Our policy is very strict. No pets of any kind. If you want to rent from us, you'll have to part with your tortoises.” 
“Oh,” I said blankly. Why would a landlord care about a pet that lived in an aquarium? It wasn't like an aquarium inhabitant was going to be rampaging around the apartment destroying things. Well, unless it was my snake. But what harm could tortoises do? 
“So do you still want to view the apartment tomorrow?” The woman's voice didn't sound pleasant any more. 
I looked at Spot and Rover, who had finished eating and were presently resting in one of their little needlepoint shelters. I wasn't likely to come up with a better excuse for getting rid of them. Howard would probably even understand something like this. I opened my mouth to say yes, but then I looked at the tortoises again. 
They were awfully cute. 
“No, thank you,” I heard myself say. “I'll keep on looking.” 
I hung up and stared at the phone. What was I thinking? There wasn't anyplace else to look. There were no other options in my price range, unless I wanted something without plumbing. I was going to have to leave the duplex in a matter of days. If I didn't take this apartment, I'd end up living at the clinic. I shuddered at the thought, and decided I had been too hasty. I was reaching for the phone again, phone number in hand, when it rang. This time it was an emergency. 
I spent the rest of the evening, and most of the night, at the clinic. A German shepherd named Brutus had slipped out through a poorly latched gate and had wandered into the street, where he'd promptly been hit by a car. Judy, a cocker spaniel, had eaten a box of rat poison that had been stored in the garage. Fritz the dachshund had been attacked by the neighbor's Rottweiler. All in all, it was a long, long night. 
* * *
When I finally drove home (at 5 AM) I was tired enough to be a bit philosophical. The world was a dangerous place, even if you were standing in your own front yard. (Little Fritz had been in his front yard when he was attacked.) I wondered how the monsters would fare over the long haul. There were plenty of dangers even when they stayed on Howard's property; there were poisonous creatures in the water (Curious had eaten one once, and had nearly died), there were diseases, there were parasites, and God only knew what other dangers lurked in the depths. It was no wonder the monsters had fenced off a relatively-safe area for their babies. I hoped it would work. Baby animals, just like children, tended to have most of their accidents in the home. Kittens got cycled through clothes-dryers and were crushed in reclining chairs; puppies chewed through electrical cords and swallowed toys whole. It was a wonder any of them survived to adulthood. Morbidly I wondered if the monsters’ clever partition would be enough. When I got home, I anxiously checked on Spot and Rover, and replaced their water dish with a shallower, broader bowl. Just in case they fell in. 
I never did call back the woman with the one-bedroom apartment. 
* * *
“So you still haven't found a place?” Tegan asked. It was Saturday, and we were driving out to Howard's place to visit the monsters. For once it was a pre-planned visit instead of an emergency. 
“No,” I replied. 
“When do you have to be out of the duplex?” she asked. 
“Monday,” I said mournfully. 
“Where are you going to go?” 
“The clinic, I guess. I can get one of those air mattresses and put it on the floor. Someplace.” 
“But what about all your stuff?” 
“I don't have a lot of stuff. I guess it's just as well.” In fact, I could still pack all of my possessions in my truck. At my age, I wasn't sure if that was such a good thing. Surely a mature, semi-successful veterinarian ought to at least need a U-haul to move his belongings. 
“You can stay with me if you want,” Tegan offered. “Really?” 
“Sure.” 
Oh, I was tempted, let me tell you. Pure spinal reflex almost made me say yes immediately. But as soon as my brain got into gear, I realized that I didn't want to do anything to spoil our slowly-developing relationship. We'd had only two real dates, so far, so it was probably a little too soon to be moving in. Besides, would there really be room for me among all those plants? 
“It's nice of you to offer,” I said. “But I'll be fine at the clinic.” 
“If you're sure,” Tegan said doubtfully. 
“I'm sure,” I said, trying very hard to sound sure. After all, living at the clinic wouldn't really be so bad. There wasn't a shower, but there was plumbing, and I could take sponge-baths. An air mattress on the floor would, no doubt, be perfectly comfortable. It was even possible that there might be a quiet time in the middle of the night, when all the patients were resting and there was no howling or barking going on. Or maybe not. Well, there would definitely be plumbing. 
We reached Howard's stock pond in the middle of the afternoon. It was a glorious spring day, full of bright sunshine and wildflowers and twittering small birds. Suddenly I felt like rejoicing: I was out of the office, I was with Tegan, and I wasn't on call. What did it matter that I had no place to live? Life didn't get much better than this. 
I got out of the truck, stretched luxuriously, and wondered if it would be proper to hold Tegan's hand. I'd been trying very hard to keep our relationship professional while we were at work. But this wasn't work, not really. We weren't going to provide veterinary care for the monsters, we were just here for a friendly visit. Pleased with my analysis, I reached out hopefully, and Tegan smiled and put her hand in mine. 
“Michael, Michael,” Howard gasped, hurrying to meet us. “I'm so glad you're here. Something strange is happening.” 
Tegan let go of my hand, concern flaring over her face. Everything suddenly seemed dark and dismal again. Here I was getting kicked out of my duplex, with nowhere to go but a clinic with a huge hideous snake in it, and as if that weren't enough, I was going to have to deal with something strange. I had so wanted a peaceful, nonworking afternoon with Tegan. 
“What is it?” I asked dolefully. “It's the babies,” Howard said. “They're, well-well, you'd better come and look.” 
Tegan and I headed for the pond, Howard jittering anxiously alongside us. The pond looked calm and peaceful: a gentle breeze was raising little ripples that glinted in the sunlight, and the banks were overhung with waving grasses and brilliant wildflowers. Lynda was sitting by the babies’ pool, peering into it intently. In the stock pond Caddy surfaced with a little splash and whistled at us, and Curious squeaked happily and swam for the bank. Tegan paused to greet him, and I thought about doing the same, but Howard was already more nervous than a chihuahua on the exam table. I decided I'd better say hello to Curious after I'd had a look at the babies. 
“Hi, Michael,” Lynda said without looking up. She was sitting between a pile of notebooks and a box of brightly colored water toys, and she had a huge sheaf of paint samples in her lap. I settled on the bank beside her, and Howard picked up a video camera and hovered over us. In the partitioned pool, the little squashed spheroids undulated cheerfully through the clear water. In the daylight their colors truly were remarkable. I saw two purple ones with white stripes, a deep blue one with yellow eye-stalks, two sky-blue ones, and three speckled brown ones. The two purple ones peered at us, shifted briefly to a red-spotted pink (still with white stripes) and then slowly turned purple again. The blue ones bobbled past without seeming to notice us, and the brown ones crept slowly along the bottom. But wait, I'd only counted nine. Where was the tenth one? 
“Look right there,” Lynda said softly, pointing. “Against the partition.” 
I looked at the partition. It appeared to be even sturdier than the last time I'd seen it; I supposed that the monsters must have been periodically reinforcing it over the last few weeks. Carefully I examined the hard-packed network of twigs, grass, rocks, and mud. After a moment I saw an odd brown-speckled mass, which was clinging to the partition like a tumor. Its color was similar to that of the creatures that were crawling along the bottom of the pool, but it was definitely not an eye-stalked spheroid. It was more of an amorphous-looking blob. 
I heard Tegan's soft step behind me, heard her indrawn breath. “What is that thing?” she asked. 
“It's one of the babies,” Lynda said. “It crawled up there a few hours ago, and then it stopped moving. It's been sitting there on the partition ever since. Changing.” 
“Like a caterpillar?” Tegan asked. “Is that a cocoon?” 
“I think so,” Lynda said. “What do you think, Michael?” 
“Yes,” Howard said anxiously. “What do you think, Doc? Is it all right for them to change like that? Are they supposed to?” 
Well, I certainly had no idea. But the monsters were acting perfectly normal, playing tag in the stock pond, and they seemed to think that the cocoon-thing was OK. They'd always been very sensitive-if one of them was sick, then they all acted sick-and I figured that if anything were wrong with the babies, they wouldn't be playing. I said firmly, “Yes, I think this is what they're supposed to do. After all, they don't look much like monsters now, do they? They've got to change sometime.” 
“Oh,” Howard said, sounding vastly relieved. “Oh, good; I was so afraid that something was wrong. Especially since it looks like those other little brown ones are headed that way.” 
I looked back down at the bottom of the pool. The three speckled brown spheroids were trundling very slowly across the bottom, all in the direction of the partition. They seemed to move more and more slowly as I watched, especially in contrast to the other six. The six bright-colored ones continued to swim here and there around the pool, changing colors as they interacted with each other. The sky-blue one bobbed near the two purple ones, and quickly changed to lavender. The blue-and-yellow one drifted near the cocoon, broke out in brown speckles, and then swam off, slowly resuming its original colors. 
“Look at this,” Lynda said. She took a plastic yellow ball out of the box beside her and tossed it into the pool. The blue-and-yellow spheroid bobbed to the surface beside the toy, goggled at it, and turned green. Lynda then tossed a red ball in beside it, and the spheroid developed a set of wavy black stripes. “They even react differently to very slight changes in color shades,” Lynda said, pointing to her array of paint samples. “I keep wondering if they're actually communicating with color or just reacting to their environment, but I guess there won't be time to figure it out. Not if they're all going to start changing.” 
“I hope I've got enough pictures,” Howard said behind us, his video camera whirring busily. “I was so disappointed that I didn't get a proper picture of the eggs.” 
I got up after a time and went to greet Curious (as always, he was happy to see me), and after he swam off to rejoin the tag-game, Caddy lumbered partway up onto the bank. She was a lot bigger than Curious, I noticed. So was Megamouth. I said hello to Caddy and took a handful of her tentacles, and a wave of emotion washed over me. I felt her pride and satisfaction, no doubt for the babies, mixed in with the simple pleasures of seeing friends and playing with her siblings. It wasn't language, perhaps, but it certainly was communication. I suspected the babies’ color changes were something along the same lines, but simply harder for us to understand. It did look like they were all going to cocoon before we had time to find out, but I imagined that we could still learn a great deal from studying Howard's video logs. Knowing Howard, I was pretty sure that he had taken plenty of pictures. 
We all spent the afternoon by the pond, basking in the sunshine and watching the babies. By the time the Sun set, the three brown babies had started to cocoon, and two of the others had gained brown speckles and had started crawling along the bottom. I had to admit that I was having a wonderful day, even though I was having to deal with strange in a big way. Strange was all right, I decided, as long as it was, well, normal. 
As darkness fell, Howard turned the video camera over to Lynda, switched on the lights (he had four set up, now) and drove to the house to fetch sandwiches and drinks. By midnight, six of the babies had turned to cocoons, two were crawling the bottom, and two were still the same awkward undulating spheroids. Tegan and I had progressed to hand-holding. 
Lynda sighed and stretched. “We ought to go in now,” she said. “I usually don't keep the lights on them for so long, just in case they need the dark hours. Guess it's time to leave them alone for awhile.” 
Howard looked wistful, but he obediently turned off his camera and switched off the lights. “Gosh, it's late,” he said. “Do you want to stay at the house tonight? You're not on call, are you? If you stayed here you could have a look at them in the morning.” 
“Well, I don't know,” I said doubtfully. I didn't have any patients at the clinic this weekend, but what about Spot and Rover? 
“We could stay as long as we left in the morning, couldn't we?” Tegan suggested. “My lizards should have plenty of food and water for the night. What about your tortoises, Michael?” 
I'd given them a nice helping of fruit and vegetables this afternoon before I left, and had filled their water bowl. And it was midnight already; if we left at, say, eight in the morning, we'd be home by nine. The tortoises really ought to be fine until then. I fretted for a moment, worrying that one of them might tip onto its back while I was gone and be unable to get up. But then I remembered that as soon as I got home, I'd be going straight to bed, and wouldn't be able to turn them right side up till I woke up in the morning anyway. It wasn't like they would bark or cry when they got into trouble. 
And I really did want to see what was going on with the monsters tomorrow. 
“Spot and Rover should be OK too, as long as we head back in the morning,” I said. 
“Oh good,” Howard said happily. “Let's go find someplace for you to sleep.” 
* * *
I spent the night on an air mattress in one of Howard's reptile rooms. (Tegan got the guest room.) The air mattress was much more comfortable than you'd expect, though there was something daunting about lying there listening to the soft slither of snakes and the pattering of lizard feet. A mournful cricket chirped for half the night, then abruptly fell silent. It had just become reptile food, no doubt. I was tired enough by then that I was simply glad it had stopped its racket. 
I woke up at dawn, got dressed in yesterday's clothes, and set out for the kitchen. I got lost in the peculiar architecture of Howard's house (he'd built it himself) and found myself wandering past aquariums full of hermit crabs arranged next to mirrored display cases of pottery; terrariums of chameleons next to bookcases crammed with leather-bound books. The arrangement of displays was a reflection of Howard, I decided, although Lynda was starting to make a mark for herself-the pottery was hers. I wondered if I would ever have a place that reflected me. The duplex certainly didn't. I wasn't even sure what a place that reflected me would look like. Idly I wondered how I might decorate the six-bedroom mansion I'd seen for rent, if I should ever find myself in a position to afford it. How much would I have to raise the clinic prices in order to pay that exorbitant rent? Of course, if I raised the prices that much, I wouldn't have any clients left, which would mean there would be no income at all. Perhaps I could put a poster on the wall of the clinic storeroom instead. 
After a hasty breakfast in the kitchen, we all headed out for the monsters’ pool. There was only one baby left, a brown-speckled spheroid crawling across the bottom. We watched it (Howard, of course, filmed it) while it climbed onto the partition and made its cocoon next to the other nine. The little pool suddenly looked sad and empty. Howard put down his camera, looking stricken. Caddy splashed up onto the bank beside him, peering around the partition to examine the cocoons. Howard reached out to clasp her fin. Then she let out a cheerful-sounding squeak and slid back into the water of the main pond. 
“Well, I guess everything's OK,” Howard said. “It's just going to be so strange not having those babies swimming around. I already miss them.” 
It did seem strange, looking into the empty pool that had been full of bustling little spheroids just yesterday. What was happening inside those cocoons? What would emerge from them, and when? 
And when had it started to seem strange to look at a pool that didn't have sea monsters in it? 
* * *
Spot and Rover did fine during my overnight absence, and had no difficulty weathering either the move to the clinic or the subsequent move to the little apartment I finally found. In fact, they did a lot better than I did; living at the clinic for two weeks was not a pleasant experience, plumbing or no plumbing. It just wasn't restful, sleeping on the floor while a giant snake lurked in the next room. I had some interesting nightmares, all of which involved snakes. 
My new apartment, while not exactly palatial, was a much more pleasant place to live. It even had furniture. I put Spot and Rover's aquarium on a little table under the bedroom window, unpacked my paltry number of boxes, and surveyed our new domain. I spent a few minutes rearranging the furniture, moving the bed a bit to the right and the chest of drawers a bit to the left. Then I peered out the window at the street below. It wasn't a great view, but it would do. Then I contemplated the bare walls. They really needed some sort of decoration, but what? I had a few extra posters at the clinic, but I didn't really want the Life Cycle of the Liver Fluke or the Anatomy of the Canine Ear on my bedroom wall. Well, I needed to go shopping for the clinic anyway; I was out of enemas. I would look and see what the store had to offer in the way of décor. 
At the store I wandered about the aisles, looking at the selection of framed prints, posters, and knickknacks. In the poster rack there was an astonishing selection of winged cherubs, unicorns, and rock stars I had never heard of. None of the posters was quite what I was looking for, although the poster of the blonde in Spandex and leather was certainly interesting. I studied it for a time, and then went off to buy my enemas. What was I looking for? I really had no idea. 
I unloaded my enemas at the clinic, went back home, and spent the evening with Spot and Rover. 
* * *
Two weeks later, in the middle of a hectic morning at the clinic, Howard called. He was so excited I could hardly understand him. 
“They're out; they've come out and they've gone into Caddy's pouch, just like Nessie's; they look just like little sea monsters now! All ten of them, they're so wonderful, and they're in the pouch and they're nursing and all of them seem fine, and you must come and see them, Michael, you must!” 
“That's wonderful, Howard!” I was delighted too, especially by the news that all of the monsters seemed fine. I didn't often get frantic phone calls from Howard saying that everything was fine. 
“When are you coming, Michael; can you come right away? I can't wait for you to see them!” 
I glanced at my treatment board; I still had to spay a Rottweiler, fix a tortoise's broken shell (it had been run over by a lawn mower), de-scent a ferret, and suture up a horse that had run through a fence. This was going to take a while, and I still had afternoon appointments, too. Much as I wanted to go see the monsters (and escape from the clinic) I supposed that if there wasn't anything wrong with them, I couldn't legitimately cancel all my appointments. 
“I can't come till tonight,” I told Howard. “I'm swamped here, and as long as everything's OK...” 
“Oh, everything's fine! No problems at all, everything is wonderful; I wish you could come sooner but I'll see you tonight; have a great day, Michael!” 
I figured it was going to be hard to have a great day when there was a ferret de-scent in the middle of it (there are very few surgeries I like less) but once that one was over, the day got better. The tortoise's shell repair went very smoothly (once I got over cringing at the thought of such an accident happening to Spot or Rover), the Rottweiler was cooperative, and it was always good to get to work on a horse. The horse in question was foolish and skittish, as one might expect from a horse that had run through a fence, but I enjoyed the suture job just the same. I spent so much time working with exotic creatures these days, I hardly ever got to do a good old-fashioned laceration repair on a horse. 
I was almost finished with the afternoon appointments when a huge, long-haired, scruffy-bearded man walked into the waiting room and politely inquired about the free snake. He was one of Professor Winston's poetry students, he told me (though not in Tegan's class, it appeared), and he had always yearned to have a big snake. When I took him to the storeroom and showed him the snake, he looked deeply into its eyes and pronounced it beautiful. 
“Is it really free?” he asked hopefully. 
“Really,” I assured him. “Then may I take it? I'll give it a good home, I promise.” 
The man strode out with the snake draped across his broad shoulders, happily murmuring endearments to it. Tegan, Kami and I watched him go. 
“Cool,” Tegan said. “I knew there was a perfect home for that snake somewhere.” 
* * *
Tegan and I reached Howard's place at dusk. I rejoiced all the way there, utterly thrilled to be rid of the snake. I could put the aquarium away in the shed and stop buying rats, and the snake could not possibly have found a better home. I wondered what the man's next poem would be about, and if anyone had ever before written a sonnet to a snake. 
My truck bounced up to the stock pond and Tegan and I jumped out. Howard and Lynda were waiting for us there, and all of the sea monsters were clustered near the bank. Caddy and Megamouth appeared to have grown even larger than the last time I'd seen them-they were both now at least as big as Nessie had been, and the stock pond looked correspondingly smaller. The pond already didn't seem big enough for ten adult monsters. What was going to happen when Caddy's babies grew up? 
But this was no time to worry about the far future. Proudly, Howard reached into Caddy's pouch and drew out a squirming little monster. It was a perfect miniature of Caddy, with a bulbous body, a wrinkled face, and whiskers. Howard gently put it into my hands, and it squeaked softly and sucked at my fingers. 
“All ten of them made it,” Lynda said happily. “They're all in the pouch, and they seem to be fine.” 
Caddy came out onto the bank and nudged me gently, and I put the little monster back into her pouch with the other babies. Then Caddy nudged me again, and wrapped her tentacled fin around my hand. I blinked at her, suddenly recollecting my last day in the old duplex, when I'd been sealing up boxes and doing a bit of token cleaning before moving into the clinic. Then I remembered walking into my new apartment with Spot and Rover's aquarium under my arm, surveying our new domain and pronouncing it home. I was even going to make it look like home, one of these days. 
Beside me, I heard Tegan's soft gasp. I let go of Caddy's fin and turned to look at her. She was crouched at the pond's bank, her hand on Megamouth's fin, her eyes wide, staring at nothing. Then Megamouth swam away, and Tegan took a slow step backwards, looking dazed. 
“Tegan? What's wrong?” 
“Nothing's wrong, it's just-I remembered something I hadn't thought about in ages.” 
“What did you remember?” Lynda asked. I noticed that she and Howard were both watching us intently. 
“I remembered the day I left home. It was-it was a rough day.” Her eyes were downcast, her face drawn and closed, but only for a moment. She brightened and said, “But then I remembered the day I found my apartment, and how I started to decorate it, and how perfect it was for me.” 
What happened the day you left home? I wanted to ask, but Tegan had already moved past that, and was her usual cheerful self again. I was so intent on Tegan that it took me a minute to realize that she'd had the same sort of memory as mine. 
“Howard and I remembered moving in together,” Lynda said softly. “Making a home for ourselves.” 
There was a quiet splash from the center of the pond, and then another, as Caddy and Megamouth dove beneath the surface. The other eight monsters squeaked and whistled for a time, and then dove after them. Slowly the ripples died away, and the pond grew still and silent. 
“They're not all leaving, are they?” Howard said in alarm. Lynda took his arm and shook her head, but Howard didn't look reassured until Curious splashed to the surface with seven other monsters following behind him. 
But Caddy and Megamouth never did come back. 
* * *
Two weekends later, I stood in my bedroom beside the aquarium, frowning at my still-bare walls. Caddy and Megamouth had no doubt set up housekeeping by now, in a pond of their own, and I was still living in a generic apartment. Even Spot and Rover had new décor; I'd bought them another little mountain to climb on. But I still hadn't found anything for myself. 
The doorbell rang, and I hurried to get the door. Tegan had promised to come over and help me shop this afternoon. But the person at the door wasn't Tegan; it was a doleful-looking postman with a cardboard box in his hands. “Wouldn't fit in your mailbox,” he told me, sounding indignant. “Here.” 
I took the box inside, closed the door behind me, and read the address label. It was from Howard and Lynda. Nervously I turned the box over, then over again. There were no air holes, no mysterious thumps or squeaks emanating from within it. It was probably safe to open it. I pulled out my pocketknife, cut the tape, and opened the box. 
Nestled in several layers of bubble wrap, I found a framed picture. It wasn't a picture of the monsters, although their pond was in the background. It was a picture of Tegan and me, silhouetted against the sunset. Tegan was in profile, gazing at the pond, and her hand was clasped in mine. Carefully I lifted the picture out of the bubble wrap and placed it on the bedside table. 
The doorbell rang, and I hurried to the door. It was Tegan this time. 
“Hi!” she said when I opened the door. “Ready to go shopping? We've got to make this apartment of yours into a home.” 
“I'm ready,” I said, and followed her out into the sunlight. But I had Spot and Rover and a framed picture picture at my bedside, and Tegan to come visiting and perhaps, one day, move in. Whatever we found to buy today would not really make much difference. 
My apartment had already changed into a home. 

Copyright © 2002 by Amy Bechtel. 
(EDITOR'S NOTE:Michael, Howard, and the monsters have appeared previously in “Little Monsters” [Analog - November 1989], “Business as Usual” [Analog - July 1991], “Strange Things” [Analog - June 1992], “Yellow and Orange Blues” [Analog - May 1998], and “As Time Goes By’ [Analog - July/August 1999].)