Georgia On My Mind and Other Places Read online

  “No.” Gilden resisted as she tried to draw him down beside her. “It’s not that. Please.”

  She released him at once and pulled the sheet up to cover her body. “You’ve been avoiding me. Hiding from me.”

  “Not true. I’ve been working, all the time—to get you this.” Gilden held out a copy of the new data record.

  “What is it?” She dropped the sheet and reached out for the little box, ignoring, as Gilden could not, the bare shoulders and breasts that were revealed.

  “The Sigil. Mating. The images show everything, with more body detail than anything I’ve given you earlier.”

  “Ooh! At last.” She cupped her hands around the data block and held it to her chest. “Arrin, I must see this. Right now.”

  She scrambled out of bed and into shirt and shorts. Gilden fancied that he could see a slight additional swell in her belly.

  He looked away. “I hope this gives you what you need. I went much too far to get it. I think the Sigil realize that we have been observing inside their ship.”

  Derli was hardly listening. Although she reached out to give him a token squeeze as she passed by, her attention was on the data block. She went to the waiting computer and inserted the new record. Gilden watched over her shoulder until the first frames of data appeared, showing the smaller Sigil clinging to the back of its partner. Then he went in search of Valmar Krieg.

  He found the red-bearded guardian where he was supposed to be, in his assigned living quarters and bedroom. Krieg was not alone. Asleep at his side lay a huge Lucidar woman, blond, big-bosomed, and thick-limbed. Gilden thought at once of the Sigil, with its far larger partner.

  “This had better be important.” Either Krieg had been awake or he slept so lightly that he awoke at Gilden’s first touch. “It’s the middle of the goddamn night.”

  “I have new information about the Sigil. I passed a copy on to Derli Margrave.”

  “So what?” Valmar Krieg was sitting up while the woman at his side snored on. “Derli doesn’t need me to help her analyze it. I can find out what it tells tomorrow.”

  “I suspect I went beyond prudence in obtaining the new information. The Sigil are aware that I have tapped their ship’s monitors.”

  “That’s another matter—and bad news for you if it’s true.” Krieg swung out of bed and moved toward the door, ignoring the sleeping woman. “You were supposed to operate invisibly, for God’s sake. Not blunder around and announce your presence.”

  He went to the upper floor and stared out of the window. The Sigil ship was visible, sitting at the center of a permanent circle of lights.

  Krieg grunted. “All quiet so far.” But even as he spoke the ship began to lift, drifting upward from the smooth spaceport surface. As it rose higher its six support legs retracted into the pearly white body. A few moments later the personal monitor at Krieg’s belt called for attention.

  “Emergency!” It was Bravtz’ig, by the sound of his gravel voice still three-quarters asleep. “You there, Krieg? We just received a Sigil departure flight alert. Their ship is moving out.”

  “This is Krieg. I’m watching it happen. What can we do about it?”

  “Not a damn thing—unless you want to tell me to try and stop it.”

  “How would you do that?”

  “Good question. Destroy the ship, that’s the only way I know. And I can tell you now, our space command would refuse to do that even if you ordered it.”

  “So I won’t waste time trying. Can you follow their path?”

  “Until they go to subspace. Then we’ve lost them. You know that as well as I do.” Bravtz’ig’s face appeared on the tiny screen, squinting and suspicious. “Did you cause this, Krieg, you and your cock-up Earth friends?”

  “How could we? Follow their ship as far as you can. If we lose it we’re all in trouble.”

  “You’re in trouble anyway. Get off the line, Krieg, so I can talk to someone useful.”

  Bravtz’ig vanished. A moment later the unit went dead. Krieg turned to Gilden.

  “I suggested we didn’t cause this. But you did cause this, didn’t you? You stupid asshole. It was the same on Earth. Your damned voyeur urges, you couldn’t let go watching until it was too late. Now I have to go back and tell the Mentor that instead of learning more about the Sigil it was our party that drove them away from Lucidar. Come on.” Krieg grabbed Gilden roughly by the arm and dragged him back down the stairs.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To collect Derli. With the Sigil gone our value on Lucidar is less than zero. We have to get out before this place blows up. Better be ready for pain, Gilden. The two of you will spend the next fifty years in purgatory.”

  “Derli had nothing to do with this.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. You were screwing her, or more likely she was screwing you. Don’t bother to deny it. She pushed you to get the data she wanted. Well, I hope she thinks it was worth it when she finds out what’s coming to her.”

  “You can’t hurt her.” They were at the entrance to Derli’s apartment. “She’s pregnant—with your baby.”

  “I’ve got a hundred kids.” Krieg did not even slow down. “All my women have ’em, I make sure of that. Wise up, Gilden, that’s what they’re for. One kid more or less means nothing.”

  The door was unlocked. Derli was still at the display. She turned when they entered but she hardly seemed to see them. The screen showed an enlarged view of the glistening yellow organ that coupled the small Sigil to its great partner.

  “Arrin! Did you realize what you were seeing when you made this recording? We had it wrong, everything wrong.”

  “That doesn’t matter now.” Krieg released his hold on Gilden and went over to Derli Margrave. He switched off the computer and left a static display. “You can stop screwing around with all that. You and Gilden fucked up big-time. The Sigil left, and now we’re leaving. We’re going to Earth.”

  Still it seemed as though Derli was not listening. The screen held her attention. Gilden came to stand between her and Krieg.

  “She doesn’t want to go back to Earth, can’t you see that? She loves it here on Lucidar.”

  “She’s going. So are you, dead or alive. Get out of my way.”

  “What happened on the Sigil ship was my fault.” Gilden moved to put his arms around Derli. “You don’t have to take her. Just take me.”

  “I’ll do whatever I like. I’m taking both of you.” Krieg was reaching for his belt. “Hands off her.”

  Derli at last noticed what Krieg was doing. She cried out in horror and tried to pull free of Gilden’s hold. “Do what he says, Arrin—whatever he says.”

  “Take her advice, Gilden.” Krieg’s fingers were poised above his belt. “Do what I tell you. Last warning. Move!”

  “I won’t.” Gilden tightened his embrace, holding Derli to him. “Try and make me. But I wouldn’t if I were you.”

  “You bloody fool.” Krieg’s face was red with fury. “I’ve warned you, three times. You can’t say you didn’t ask for it.”

  He pressed a sequence of buttons along his belt.

  There was a moment of total stillness, followed by an inhuman groan. It came from Valmar Krieg. He stood, unable to move. All the muscles of his body were contracting at once, tighter and tighter. Sinews and tendons snapped and popped, bones burst from their joints, arms and legs became shapeless bags of blood as veins and arteries ruptured. As he toppled forward the moan of expelled air from the tormented rictus of his mouth continued. But he was dead before his face smashed into the floor.

  Gilden moved to stand by the body. “That’s one question answered. I wondered what you had in store for me. Sorry, Krieg. I have to say you deserved it.”

  “You did that to him?” Derli Margrave had collapsed to her knees and was staring at Arrin Gilden’s impassive face and Valmar Krieg’s body with equal horror.

  “I guess I did. He ought to have known better. Dammit, Derli, I’m a voyeur, and I’m the
best there is. Krieg should have had more sense than to mess with me. Once you told me that coded sequences would activate implants in our skulls I had no choice. There’s easy access through the nose and mouth. I sent voyeurs in to discover and erase the sequence from my implant. Yours, too.”

  “But what happened to Krieg?”

  “I changed his coding to match the sequence that used to be in my implant.” Gilden gestured to the shapeless hulk at his feet. “That would have been me, Derli. That’s what he intended me to be. You, too, maybe.”

  He went across and lifted her to a standing position. “We’re free now. Both of us. We can go where we like, do what we like.”

  Her eyes were empty. He was not getting through to her.

  “Derli!” He shook her. “Snap out of it. If you want to stay on Lucidar without getting arrested we’ll have to explain what happened to Krieg.” And, when that warning produced no effect, “What’s wrong with you? You were like this when we came in, before Krieg ever started in on you. What did you mean, we have everything wrong?”

  The question broke her trance where shaking had failed. She began a shallow nod, almost fast enough to be a tremble.

  “We did. We misunderstood everything. Now I know why the Sigil cut off contact with people here. I think I know why they left Lucidar—and if we send the right message, I think maybe they’ll come back. I have to reach Bravtz’ig.”

  She started for the communication line, but Gilden stopped her.

  “Bravtz’ig won’t talk to us. Better if we go over there.”

  He led the way. Derli was talking nonstop behind him.

  “I got off on the wrong foot during the very first meeting with Bravtz’ig. Sexual dimorphism, I said, to explain the size difference between the sexes. I also said that analogy with Earth forms could be misleading and dangerous, but I didn’t listen to my own warning. When the records came in from their ship I found myself having trouble whenever I looked at the big Sigil and the small Sigil. To me, they both resembled females. But they weren’t.”

  “Of course they weren’t.” Gilden had to pause to take his bearings. He had never been to Bravtz’ig’s work area before in the dark. He turned slightly to the left and set off walking again. “We saw them mating.”

  “No, we didn’t.”

  “You may not have—but I did. Their coupling is on the data block I just gave you!”

  “I know. But you didn’t see them mating. For one excellent reason: the Sigil do not use sexual reproduction. They are asexual animals. I suspect that they had never encountered sex in any form before they landed on Lucidar. That’s what terrified them when they began to learn our biology. Sexual reproduction is such a terrific way of performing genetic variations, anything without it seems at a terrific evolutionary disadvantage. They’re scared of our biology.”

  Gilden had to stop, even though it was only another forty or fifty yards to Bravtz’ig’s office. “You don’t understand, Derli. I don’t know what was wrong with the data block that I gave you, but I saw them mating. In real time.”

  “No, you didn’t. You just thought you did. There is a valid Earth analogy, but it’s not the one that we’ve both been using. Did you ever hear of a Sphex wasp?”

  “What have wasps to do—”

  “Everything to do with this. A Sphex wasp is one species of the order of parasitic wasps. Its larvae eat grasshoppers. But the larvae don’t catch them. The parent wasp does. She stings the grasshopper, enough to paralyze but not to kill. Then she lays her eggs inside it. They hatch and consume the host grasshopper from within. Some of the other parasitic wasps, ones that lay their eggs in caterpillars, are even trickier. The caterpillar is stung, but it doesn’t stay paralyzed. It recovers and goes on feeding. The wasp larva inside feeds on it, eating the caterpillar’s organs in ascending order of importance so that the host stays alive as long as possible.

  “That’s the analogy for the Sigil. We are observing two different, asexual species. They look pretty much the same to us, but a grasshopper and a wasp probably look the same to aliens. The little one has evolved to prey on the larger—and carries it on long journeys, so that the smaller one’s young will have food. The yellow organ you saw isn’t for transfer of sperm. It’s a combined sting and ovipositor, to paralyze the big one and then lay eggs inside it.”

  Gilden recalled the wriggling Sigil, suddenly becoming still as the tapered member pierced its body. “But the big one is intelligent. It must realize very well what’s being done to it.”

  “It surely does. But we can’t begin to guess how it feels. Maybe it even believes itself privileged, to carry the offspring of a superior being. Like the old stories of mortals who bore the children of the gods.”

  Any horror that Derli might feel was overwhelmed by professional satisfaction. She seemed to experience none of Gilden’s revulsion as she moved ahead, leading the way to Bravtz’ig’s offices. “But we can go into details on this later,” she said over her shoulder. “What we have to do right now is send a message after the Sigil ship, pointing out how asexual animals survive on Earth and Lucidar and compete very well with sexual forms. Of course, that message won’t be necessary if the Sigil has simply gone off for solitude during the larval growth period. That’s what lots of Earth creatures do. Then the ship may be back anyway in a month or two.”

  Gilden trailed after her. He was not listening. To experience as the climax of life’s experience, not love but the exquisite pain of a wasp’s sting. To be protected and cherished not as a companion, but as a living larder. To be consumed slowly and agonizingly from within. And above all else, to know your fate and comprehend exactly what was being done to you.

  Somehow, the old torments threatened by the Teller seemed feeble and halfhearted.

  The Sigil ship had not returned three weeks later when Gilden appeared one evening in Derli’s living quarters. She was still hard at work. As Lucidar’s expert on both the psychology of the Mentor and the biology of the Sigil, her services were constantly in demand.

  She nodded to him. “Dinner? Sit down, Arrin. Ten minutes more and I’ll stop.”

  “You don’t need to stop.” Gilden did not sit down, but began to pace back and forward behind her. “I didn’t come to suggest dinner. I came to say I’m leaving.”

  “You have to go to Montmorin again?” She was focused on the screen in front of her.

  “No. I’m leaving Lucidar.”

  “Didn’t I tell you? We don’t have to. Bravtz’ig says the Mentor daren’t try a military move, and Lucidar would never agree to our extradition. We’re quite safe here.”

  “It’s not that. I came to say goodbye.”

  She froze, still staring at the screen. “You mean—you’re leaving me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you…cared for me.” She swung around. “No. I thought you loved me. That’s what you’ve been telling me for the past few weeks.”

  “It was true. It is true.”

  “I see.” Derli stared down, to her swelling belly. “I see. I’ve been a fool. I started a relationship with you when I had another man’s child growing inside me. That was crazy. You can’t put up with that, no man could.”

  He said nothing, and at last she went on, “It’s the baby, isn’t it? You can’t stand the idea that I’m carrying Valmar Krieg’s baby. But it’s my baby, too. And you want me to get rid of it. You think, I could just go and have an abortion—”

  “Stop it. Right there.” Gilden halted in front of her. “I could agree with you, tell you that it’s the baby. That’s an easy out. But it wouldn’t be true.”

  “Then what is it?” Derli could not hide her misery and confusion. “I know I’ve not had enough time for you, I’ve been so busy the past couple of weeks.”

  “It’s not that I’m feeling neglected, either. I’ve been busy, too. And it’s certainly not the baby. It’s me. You tell me I’m cured, that everything is fine now. That I’m sexually normal—”

  “M
ore than normal. You are a wonderful lover.”

  “So you say. But Derli, inside my head I’m a mess. I dare not tell you what I think about when the two of us make love. I have to go away and try to sort myself out.”

  “But you’ll come back?”

  “I hope so.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Might you come back when the baby is born? I mean, you say it’s not the baby…”

  “One more time: it’s not the baby.”

  “Because I haven’t said anything to you, but I’ve been really worried. I came through a subspace trip when I was pregnant, which you’re not supposed to do. Then when we got here there were the changes of air and food and gravity, and no one seems to know what effect that might have. Maybe it’s going to be abnormal, maybe it will be deformed…” She paused. “I don’t see anything funny in this!”

  Because Gilden was smiling. “Derli, you don’t give me credit for anything, do you? Not for caring about you, not for worrying about you, not for watching over you. Not even for competence in the one field where I’m supposed to be better than anyone in the Empyrium.”

  He leaned forward and touched his fingertips to her abdomen. “Don’t worry about the baby. Take my word for it: she’s doing just fine.”

  The bee’s kiss, now!

  Kiss me as if you entered gay

  My heart at some noonday,

  A bud that dares not disallow

  The claim, so all is rendered up,

  And passively its shattered cup

  Over your head to sleep I bow.

  —Robert Browning, from “In a Gondola”

  Afterword to “The Bee’s Kiss”

  I usually tell people that I don’t write horror stories, but if this isn’t one then I don’t know what is. The horror for me lies not in the fiction, which is a homey tale of human obsession, domination, cruelty, torture, and death. No. The horror is all in the factual statements about parasitic wasps that occur late in the story.

  I have seen the event for myself, and it’s much worse than I described. The biggest Sphex wasp (Sphecius speciosus, a monster up to two inches long) captures cicadas and takes them underground to feed its young. However, it is big and strong enough to grab its prey in flight. The cicadas make a loud squealing noise when they are caught, which they keep up until the wasp stings and paralyzes them. There is no way that they can know what is going to happen to them, but they certainly sound as though they do and the result is truly awful to hear.