Steve weighed his options. Silence had returned, a beautiful dreamy silence like midnight after a rain or when a baby finally gave up. He gloried in it. He basked in the effervescence of its glow and let his mind wander free among the varied reactions he could try and have to what had just occurred inside his brain. None of them seemed positive. None of them seemed nice. HIs shoulder hurt a lot. But after being stabbed with a thunderous pike of white-hot noise his brain now didn’t and that, he reasoned, was enough to be getting on with for the time being.
Then he thought about Sheila.
Sheila didn’t do rapturous calm in the aftermath of pain. She attempted rapturous pain, no matter in the aftermath of what. He stumbled to his feet. Muleman had a head on the back of his head, a sentence that didn’t sound quite right to Steve in his own mind but nevertheless made enough sense to be getting on with for the time being. The schnauzer growled. The militia man growled. Sheila growled. It was time for Steve to take command, to live his glory and finally be the leader everyone had always told him he should consider trying to listen to. He cleared his throat.
“Sorry ‘bout that,” Muleman said, out the front mouth. The normal one. Steve’s brain split, briefly, and then melded together again. “I’ve got… a condition.”
“No shit,” said Sheila, violence in her vibrato. She only had that when something was getting ready to die and didn’t know it. Something about Muleman’s two faces made Steve think it wouldn’t be that simple. He thought of the egg beast. He thought of the cow. He thought of Muleman’s instant apology. He shuffled around, calmly and slowly, aware as he did so that he was being watched by the eyes in the back of Muleman’s head. Presumably Muleman’s head. The way the body was constructed indicated that this was probably Muleman’s head but who was Steve to make those kinds of judgements? Especially now? There were two cows behind him, probably the eight or twelfth that had stood there, and he’d only ever had one. So.
“It’s…” Steve said, trying very hard to move between Muleman and Sheila, which was difficult on account of Sheila trying to keep an angle of attack open. “It’s ok. Little warning, maybe.”
“Didn’t expect you to have this wonderful crea- these wonderful creatures!” Muleman said, the thrum of whatever had happened vibrating calmly at the bottom of his voice. “I’as so ready to be disappointed.”
“And that would have been bad,” said the militia captain, no question mark anywhere near his own voice, which sounded thick with dirt. Steve looked over and saw the man digging mud from between his lips.
“Well, yes,” Muleman said. “I would have been really, really disappointed.”
“And so you couldn’t warn us?”
“Would have been harder to show my disappointment appropriately, if I had warned you beforehand.”
“Ah.”
“What the hell’s the deal with the mule cart,” Sheila asked. It had clearly been bothering her. She spat the question and had stopped moving away from Steve, who had successfully- temporarily- intervened. The answer, it would seem, mattered.
“Beautiful conveyance,” Muleman said. “And it deflects from my height.” Steve, worried Sheila might become enraged at this, turned, but when he went to placate her he saw nothing less than resigned defiance in her eyes. It had been an odd day. “So,” said Muleman, matching his tone from before his earth ending squeal and the revelation of his second head, “What can I offer you for one of these animals? They really are incredible!”
We too, sensing your confusion, wonder what we would do. Men with two faces are literal pariahs. It’s built into the fabric of every culture. They represent duplicity. And yet here we have one who is only honest after revealing his second face and in fact appears to be interested in mutually beneficial trade. It would freak us out as well, we think. But then, the cow in front of him just underwent mitosis. We imagine that’s atypical behavior in most scenarios.
And then we have the question of the dual heads themselves. The cows had two heads. As did the wolf and the deer. In a reality where that’s happening, where that’s normal, the question starts to become why doesn’t any human have two heads. Why, in fact, aren’t there lots of them? The answer probably lies somewhere between concentration and longevity. There are no cows walking around with guns ready to shoot anybody weird or making toast someone else wants. It seems reasonable to us to see this Muleman, to see things as they are, and wonder ‘Why not?’ in place of the proverbial. You may do as you wish but consider the disadvantages in accepting established convention.
“Well,” Steve said. “We’re sort of… open for business, as it happens.” He grinned, trying to force himself back into affable trader mode while unable to stop himself wondering what kind of expression backface had on right now. The cow, which it was presumably looking at, lowed softly. He glanced at the militia captain. “But we’re in the market for defense.”
“Not really,” Sheila said. Steve thought about this for a second, remembered the trunk of guns, and sighed.
“Fine,” he said, trying not to make it sound as though he were contradicting himself (thus undermining his bargaining power) or Sheila (thus asking to be throttled in his sleep). “Maybe we’re in the market mostly for… what’s the word… good will?”
“Not really,” Sheila said, at the same time the militia captain said “Good luck” and Muleman said “Fantastic.” Whiplashed, Steve tried to focus on one of them so that he could align himself with one avenue to success, failed, and sighed again.
“I can’t,” Muleman said, turning to the captain and Sheila in turn. “Guarantee anything. But I can say that historically I’ve found trade between parties to be a wonderful balm to any perceived irritations.” Steve looked at Sheila. She didn’t have her perceived irritations face on. “Now. What, captain, might you have to trade?” He paused. “Other than the hat.”
“Wood,” Steve said.
“Really?” Sheila barked.
“Oh that’s what it was,” said the captain. “Wondered who’d cut a hole in the fence.”
“That was me.”
“Shoulda taken it then.”
“The truck was full.”
“Poor planning.”
“Yeah, I know-“
“Can we,” Sheila said, cutting in. “Get to the end of this? Because if I have to throw up in the barn again I’m gonna be pissed off.”
The first time had been when the cow that they had- for lack of a better term since- referred to as the Mother Cow had first sprouted the third eye indicative of an impending split. It had just been there one morning, dampening all the enthusiasm they’d felt in the aftermath of having found the cow in the first place and forcing some serious internal question-and answer, at least for Steve. It’s hard to plan on drinking the milk of a thing once you can see it clearly has some loose genetic wiring. And, apparently for Sheila, the more pressing concern was how hard it was to keep down the milk you’d already drunk.
“A fair concern,” said Muleman, tenting his fingers and nodding with an appropriate level of grave understanding. Steve had a feeling that in other circumstances he might have put a hand on her shoulder, though in this set he seemed to have accepted that he’d made himself a threat and that Sheila did not respond well to them. He continued. “In any event, for the cow- either of them, I suppose, would be a more accurate identificationary statement, although I might be more partial to the one on the right given it’s the offspring and I witnessed its birth-“ Steve had a moment of pause at this. How would you know? Which was the old and which was the new? It had split down the middle. “I could probably let you take the pick of my cart. The cart, mind. Not the box. You’ve only seen the pickings box so far and you, ma’am,” he looked at Sheila and bowed deeply. “Might be most interested by some of the cart’s… contents.” She brightened up at that, and Steve’s concern began to rise steadily again. He glanced uneasily at the militia captain, who glared back with the kind of malice that only the truly simpatico can ever muster. “I invite you to go and take a look,” he continued, “While these two gentlemen attend me to the chicken yard. I suspect my earlier intervention may have created some financial opportunities there as well.”
He stalked out of the barn towards the chickens. Steve gawped, doing his best to make it an internal gawping and failing bravely if Sheila’s face was anything to go by. Then she vanished, evaporating in the direction of Muleman’s cart. Left alone with the militia captain he did what, through time immemorial, people in great stress have done without fail when left alone with someone they don’t really know all that well.
He nodded his head backwards, asked a question with his eyebrows, and then followed his equally confused adversary towards their only common link.
