by T. J. Bass
A hand touched his shoulder. He heard the old Watcher’s voice. Icy creams were painted on his skin.
‘Drink?’ asked Watcher.
‘No,’ said Val. ‘My eyes—?’
‘The Mediteck says the electroretinogram is still equivocal. There’s a chance.’
His arm splint was checked and loosened slightly. He felt the to-and-fro motion as the stretcher team moved him into a cubicle.
‘Of all the rotten luck,’ he cursed.
The old Watcher cackled: ‘Rotten? You were very, very lucky, me lad. Those coweyes are cannibals. You were lucky she wasn’t hungry!’
During the days that followed, his visual cortex played with strange colors and shapes as pigments and enzymes were replaced. When the bandages came off he had vision of a sort – rod cells had regenerated their granules first. He saw black and white images – low brightness, high contrast.
Icy creams still coated his skin, but he could see the burns were covering with tough scabs. The splinted arm was painless – just knitting itch.
He reviewed the optic records of his ill-fated Hunt. Stills of the coweye analyzed out at nearly sixty kilograms mass. His arrow had struck dense, five-toed bone – the scapula. It was a solid, painful hit. Why hadn’t she hibernated?
Val glanced at the sensor readings – her body temperature did not drop. It stayed at 99.8 degrees. 99.8! A full 1.2 degrees above normal – ovulation temperature! She couldn’t hibernate, she was late follicular phase. That explained it.
The rest of the record made sense now too. She hadn’t killed him for her supper – instead she copulated. Using the trophy knife she had removed his Cl-En suit from his unconscious form. Mounting, her demand-type pelvic thrusts initiated his sacral autonomic cycle successfully. She was frightened off by the arrival of the Meditecks.
‘Watcher,’ he called. ‘Can I see the gear that was brought in with me?’
The withered old man reached under his cot and pulled out the locker. It contained his sliced-up suit, helmet and the archery set. There was an unfamiliar device too – something he had seen the coweye use on him prior to mounting – a long, wire needle attached to a fist-sized, knobby handle – the RUDEE.
‘Where did you find this?’ he asked.
Watcher shrugged. ‘The crew that brought you in said the coweye had stabbed you with it – low in the belly. They pulled it out and brought it along. The Mediteck analyzed it, said it was a RUDEE.’
‘I recognized it. The depolarizing enteric electrode used to give tone to rectal and urinary bladder muscle when the sacral autonomies were destroyed by spinal cord injury. It is a crude, homemade device. But it worked. I wondered how the coweye had managed a successful mount so quickly – considering my comatose condition.’
Watcher smiled and nodded. ‘I’m afraid she must have had a course in neurophysiology or bioelectrics,’ he laughed.
Val turned the device over and over in his hands. The parts had been collected from a variety of sources – power pack from a Pelger-Huet helmet, capacitors from Agromecks, and a circuit board from a wrist BD. Who would know enough to put one together? Who would do it for a coweye?
‘Tinker!’ exclaimed Val.
The remainder of his convalescent month was spent probing the Class Two’s memory banks for traces of Tinker and his men after the flood in the freight station.
‘But less than three hours later the whole area was destroyed by meteor impact. New Lake is there now,’ reminded the computer.
Val scowled – hurting his granulating burns. A scab flaked off his eyebrow.
‘Give me the flow diagram for the sewers again.’
The screens flowed with color-coded boxes and lines.
‘The sewer service had a station near those gratings. Did your sensors pick up any buckeye sightings there prior to New Lake?’
‘No record.’
Val squinted at the screen. His color vision was returning slowly. He saw five sub berths. Three yellow – empty. Two purple – subs docked.
‘Where were the three subs?’
‘No record.’
Val sat back, calculating the Sewer Service sub’s speed at thirty knots – more than enough speed to escape into the Coweye Sump before the explosion that formed New Lake. Tinker could still be alive! Val clenched his fist, winced, and opened it slowly. Another scab flaked off.
Curious Nebishes crowded into the garage to hear Gitar’s song. Kaia had grown meatier – stronger with time. He sat with Gitar making a rhyme. Hypnotic music rolled at 150 hertz – entraining autonomies – locking onto cephalic rhythms. At 160 decibels they sang their five-toed songs – songs of violent passions, freedom and individual strength. The Nebishes joined in – hesitantly at first – and then with almost violent spiritual fervor.
Children of Olga, you’ll be free,
To run and swim and climb a tree.
You’ll eat the pear and taste the grape.
You’ll see a bird, a fish, an ape—
Cursing the hive, Kaia led them Outside. But they clustered, wilted and died like rootless flowers in the next day’s sun. None survived to run on the green, for they lacked the buckeye’s five-toed gene. Kaia sobbed at the sight of their bodies baking.
Val limped into Walter’s quarters half-expecting the old man to have died. He was still propped in his bed. Venus fussed over Val’s scabby skin and arm splint. He accepted the drink she offered and turned to Walter.
‘It’s good to be here. That ride back on the tubeways was almost worse than the burns – another segment flooded in the trench.’
‘Learn anything?’ asked Walter. His voice sharp, clear.
Val smiled. ‘Never hunt a coweye in the follicular phase.’
Walter snickered, then broke into a loud guffaw. He sat up, laughing, and holding his side. His arms and legs moved quickly. The edema was gone, and with it the peripheral neuritis and paralysis.
‘Never hunt a coweye in the follicular phase,’ laughed Walter through big tears.
Venus brought in a tray of nibblers and drinks. She was puzzled by their laughter, but Walter couldn’t collect himself long enough to let her in on the joke. Val rummaged around in his kit and handed the RUDEE to Walter. It was partly dismantled.
‘So this is how she did it – electro-ejaculatory apparatus. Where would an aborigine get a device like this?’ said Walter.
Val frowned.
‘I’m not sure. But I suspect that Tinker – or someone with his skills – is Outside helping them.’
‘Them?’ said Walter. ‘Oh, you are referring to our old white-haired buckeye. They are on two separate continents. They just might be the last of their kind – too. Museum specimens, if we can catch them – certainly no threat to the Big ES.’
‘No threat,’ mumbled Val. ‘It is the principle of the thing. As a hunter I was supposed to wipe them out – I hate to see one get away.’
Walter sipped his drink.
Kaia carried Gitar into another shaft cap. His old body had been rejuvenated by his high-protein diet. He sought a mate. Gitar spoke with authority. Doors opened. They stood on the platform and focused the woofer downshaft. Fifty thousand heard the noble notes of stately guitars. Only a score of the dull citizens lifted their heads. Only one climbed the spiral – a pale, slight female – Dee Pen.
Gitar leaned on the dispenser – party edibles fell. He toned her soft tissues with strings while she ate and drank.
Kaia took her for a walk in the garden – showing her the night sky – a bright lunar disc and first-magnitude stars. Celestial beauties to warm her soul. The moth pollenators approached night bloomers.
Gitar spoke with drums, and cymbals and strings.
He sang of nesting, of love and good things.
He exulted free life on top of the ground.
This set her to dancing and rocking around.
Then Kaia with a knife, her arm he cut deep.
He held and caressed her, and loved her to sleep.
&n
bsp; Before dawn Gitar warned Dee Pen inside. Kaia watched her leave, crying. She returned to Garage – took her love inside. The blood on her arm had clotted.
She ran all the way downspiral to her cubicle. When she came in, Walter could tell by the greenish stains that she had been in the gardens. Her slashed arm told him what she had done.
‘Nesting?’ he scolded.
She nodded through tears – stunned, disheveled and matted.
‘I don’t know what came over me. There was this buckeye in the shaft cap. He played music. We danced. I was so in love.’
Walter remembered the buckeye’s last visit. Old Busch had been killed and eaten. He patted her on the shoulder.
Val collected optic records from Door and several Agromecks. He and Walter studied the rape of Dee Pen.
‘It must be in the music – have it analyzed,’ said Val.
Walter requested audio records from shaft caps where the flower clustering had occurred. Same analysis – a rolling base near 200 hertz with a focused energy around 160 decibels. The rhythm varied – but the beat usually searched around for the victims’ vagal beat – the pulse rate.
‘This strolling minstrel has been credited with over a dozen rapes and one hundred and fifty flower clusters. Lots of deaths for a music lover,’ said Val.
In the following months the map showed Kaia’s range of activity. Dots appeared where he lured citizens to their deaths. Triangles appeared where he raped the hive women. Walter and Val kept track of the coordinates and made frequent attempts at interception on foot, but the killer minstrel eluded them with ease. Their bulky suits made pursuit on foot impossible. Rapes climbed into the hundreds – flowers climbed into the thousands.
Val caught the jumper as she was climbing the rail. He smeared her with mud and dragged her back to her cubicle. Dumping the DAB mud all over the floor, he swept her rugs, drapes and stuffed furniture into the disposal chute. Caked, sticky and granular, she screamed.
‘My furniture! I spent years weaving it.’
Val slapped some sense back into her.
‘A moment ago you were trying to kill yourself. This mud will protect you from house dust – IA. That furniture will kill you. You were depressed a moment ago, right? Doesn’t that total body mud pack give you a different perspective?’
She slipped on the muddy floor and sat down with a splat. Yes, life did look different. He tossed the rest of the mud against the wall and said: ‘Join the Dabbers. Go to their meetings. Try to stay alive.’
‘Another buckeye sighting,’ said Walter as Val entered. ‘Close one this time.’ He handed Val his hunting kit.
Val was tired. It was the end of shift, but he tubed right over to the reporting shaft city and climbed upspiral to the garage. A squad of Security guards milled around the viewscreen. The view was of the gardens.
‘Did I miss him again?’ asked Val, puffing.
‘No,’ said the captain of the guard. ‘He’s still out there. My men are afraid to go out – no Cl-En suits, you know.’
Val didn’t comment. He knew that Security had yellow and watery gray livers like most citizens. It took a brave hunter – with a brown liver – to go Outside. He looked at the screen. The view blurred. He struck it with his palm. The shaft cap’s optics were old.
The buckeye was standing at parade-rest about a quarter of a mile away. His guitar was held like a shield over his left arm. It made Val a bit uneasy, the stiff body and expressionless face. Never had he seen a buckeye just waiting for a hunter like this. And the music – not strings like a guitar, but the ching, ching, ching of a tambourine.
‘How long has he been out there?’ asked Val – suiting up.
‘Over four hours.’
He hooked the arrow case over his right shoulder and walked up to Door.
‘Give me a two-inch crack. Thanks.’
As he started to peer out, the tambourine cadence picked up in volume. The buckeye started marching toward him. The music grew – vibrating Door and Val’s helmet.
‘I see a guitar, yet I hear tambourines,’ said Val.
‘Not tambourines,’ said the garage meck. ‘Armor. The sound waves analyze out as a Roman legion circa 5,000 years ago. Computes as 3,000 foot-soldiers at a mean distance of 1.8 miles in slightly hilly terrain.’
‘Simulated sound,’ mumbled Val. ‘That musical instrument certainly is sophisticated!’
The sound grew to 200 decibels. Val’s helmet protected him, but the Security people were driven back out onto the spiral. Val could hear individual swords and shields clanging now.
‘I’m impressed,’ said Val sarcastically. He nocked his arrow, asked Door for three more inches, and aimed at the buckeye’s chest. The buckeye was less than thirty yards away when he shot. An easy kill.
Val approached the stiff body. It lay stretched out in a bed of beans. The guitar remained standing, propped in the greens. Val bent down. The body was cold, pulseless. The eyes and mouth were dry – corneas clouded. He had been dead for a long time. The arrow head was embedded bloodlessly in the outer table of the sternum.
‘Yes,’ said Gitar. ‘He has been dead for half a day.’
Val jumped and pulled another arrow. The guitar-shaped meck flickered pleasant light patterns. Val calmed.
‘You are the meck that has been responsible for all these rapes?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘But you don’t have a penis.’
‘On me it would be a rostellum or a switch-blade baculum. But you are right. I do not have a penis. I enlist one when the situation demands it.’
‘You are a bad machine. You have killed many citizens with your music – calling them outside. You must obey me and come back for reprogramming.’
‘I am not that kind of a machine, hunter. I am asking you to come Outside and travel with me.’
Val spoke into his wristcom. ‘Give me a tightbeam. Can you focus on this little renegade meck – I want a self-destruct transmitted – can you do that?’
Gitar scuttled off like a horseshoe crab.
Val glanced down at the cold body. Why had Gitar brought it to the shaft cap? Some sort of funeral rite for a dead warrior? Val wondered what role he had just played in the ceremony. When the Sampler arrived, Val asked for the entire body to be sent down to the Biolabs for dissection. Maybe the skin and bones could even be mounted – since it was the last buckeye. The Big ES surely had funds for that.
Walter’s family-5 invited Val to share their evening meldasm. The flavor-of-the-night was synthebacon produced by skip-frying adrenals. Venus took Val into the refresher to soak off some of his crusts. As they leaped into the meld she commented on the softness of his newly epithetialized skin.
‘You’re soft too – but kind of lumpy,’ he said. ‘What’s in those breasts?’
‘Syntheflesh,’ she said, wiggling away. ‘I’m augmented. My body may be bumpy, but my soul is beautiful.’
He nodded. She certainly did relate well.
‘How’s the mud therapy?’ asked Walter.
‘We’re getting some good results. Stamping out the old Dermatophagoides. I try to get all my suicide gestures to join your Dabbers. Put soil organisms between their toes. Stabilizes their psyche.’
The meld writhed on – pleasuring pudenda. Dee Pen’s enlarging uterus added another fraction of a soul to their collective soul – making it a warmer meldasm. Val knew the infant was the buckeye’s – a little five-toed heterozygote. He didn’t know if it would be born with a fifth toe or just the bud of one – but he knew it was unauthorized. Walter had applied for a birth permit, of course. Val made a mental note to check on it.
‘Watcher called Val to report another flower cluster.
‘Not another buckeye?’
‘No,’ said Watcher. ‘Just that renegade guitar. It doesn’t answer to tightbeam, and won’t self-destruct. It just travels from city to city luring citizens to their deaths.’
‘Music?’
‘Same as before – 200 hertz, 16
0 decibels, 70 beats per minute. The boys from Audiopsych have narrowed it down to one of the TAR reactions – thoracic autonomic resonators – the Pied Piper mechanism. Do you remember all those unauthorized tightbeams just prior to the Big Hunt at 50:00?’
Val nodded. Tinker had been involved in several.
‘Tightbeam probes of the Class One’s historical banks were made,’ continued the Watcher. ‘Music sections were searched for the TAR items such as paeans, war drums and fertility rites. All have strong rolling bases that would resonate any thoracic autonomic plexus.’
‘Pied Piper TAR?’ mumbled Val. ‘Why so few from each city? I’d think the entire population could be piped buckeye.’
Watcher shook his head. ‘No. Psych reports that less than one in a thousand respond. Fortunately most citizens are locked into the rhythm of the hive.’
Val nodded. He knew the TAR effect depended on an intact neurohumoral axis. The Nebish was many microvolts lower in autonomic tone. His steroid level was only a tenth of a buckeye’s. Only those with the bad five-toed gene could be piped.
‘Where is that damn guitar now?’ asked Val.
‘It commandeered a Huntercraft named Doberman,’ said Watcher. ‘My circuits are watching, but my outside eyes are weak. I’ll contact you if it shows up again.’
Val was puzzled. He saw Gitar move under its own power. What motivated it to steal a big craft like Doberman? Odd.
Gravid Dee Pen endured the callous impersonal routine of the clinics. Little effort was made to comfort the victims of buckeye rape. Big ES was suspicious of anyone who mated to music unless it was during the meld. Naturally her birth permit was denied – one of the committee signatures was Val’s.
Dee Pen confronted Val in his private cubicle.
‘Why you?’ she asked sadly. ‘You are a friend.’
‘I’m a Sagittarius,’ he said. ‘I’ve been on the committee since Hunter Control was closed. The committee feels, and I agree, that the five-toed gene is bad for the Big ES. Your child carries that gene.’
‘But the baby will have my genes too,’ she sobbed. ‘Walter will help with the raising and conditioning. We’re both loyal four-toed citizens. The baby will be a Good Citizen too.’