Part 11 (1/2)

”That, too, if necessary. But I am more interested in bones.”

”You are also an archaeologist?”

”May we cease fencing?” he asked with irritation. ”My name is Cyrano, and I am a forensic entomologist. Geode found the first set, you saw them, Mid sent me to a.n.a.lyze them. You were supposed to have the last set for me. Did you?”

”Geode?” she asked sharply.

”Mid calls me that,” Geode said. ”Others don't know.”

”So this man is legitimate,” she concluded. ”Very well, show him the body, Geode.” She seemed unpleased.

”It's in the barn,” Geode said.

May returned to her car. ”I will call in later. I shall want a full report.”

”We all require the fullest information,” Cyrano said. ”I shall interview you before making my report to Mid.”

She got in her car and drove around the loop and away. Cyrano's lips quirked. ”She's miffed because Mid told me your code name and not her. He just forgot, I'm sure; he's a busy man. Let's see that body.”

Geode hadn't liked May Flowers much, but he liked this man. He was a.s.sertive without being pushy, and he had set May back. Geode led the way to the barn.

”Let me pull my lab in,” Cyrano said. ”I'll park it behind, where it won't show from the house. This may take some time.”

Geode opened the gate to the barn. Cyrano got in his van, started it, and pulled it carefully through. Geode closed the gate behind, while the van moved on to the barn and beyond. There wasn't much s.p.a.ce there, but enough for the van. It was entirely hidden from the loop, which was all the average visitor should be on.

He walked up and opened the side door of the barn, which was beside the van. He climbed the wooden ladder to the loft, which had not yet achieved its daytime heat. ”Here,” he said.

Cyrano ascended behind him. He went to the body, helping Geode uncover it. He hauled the bag out to the uncluttered part of the loft and peered in. He sniffed. ”Interesting,” he remarked.

Geode nodded, knowing what the smell did. He was getting an erection himself. If only he could have a whiff of that when he was with none!

”Very well,” Cyrano said. ”I will haul this to my lab in the van and work there. Why don't you check on me in an hour, when I'll have a better idea where we stand?”

Geode nodded. This would delay his tour of the property, but couldn't be helped. The man was doing Mid's business.

He climbed down the ladder and went out.

* 15 - CYRANO WATCHED THE man go, then made a silent whistle. He had antic.i.p.ated something odd, but this was beyond his expectation. That first sniff had told him: potent pheromones! This man had been treated to biological compulsion such as was normally unknown in the human species. The enclosure of the plastic bag had concentrated it, of course, but the body had been dead for over a day, and stored in this heat. There was almost nothing left of the flesh, so there should have been very little of the chemical remaining. Even that little bit had been enough to give him an instant and almost painful erection. He understood from Mid that it had a similar effect on women. That was remarkable indeed. He had not truly believed it until he sniffed it himself.

What other surprises did this desiccated body have to offer? He would soon find out. He folded the bag, clutched it under one arm, and made his way down the ladder. He carried it out of the little barn and put it in his van. Here in the shade of barn and forest the van would not overheat, and he could perform his initial tests efficiently. He left the sliding door open, and opened the other doors, so as to allow any breeze to refresh the air inside and keep the heat down. He had air conditioning, but didn't use it unless he ran the motor, and that wasted gasoline, so he avoided it when he could. He brought out a stool and sat on it, using the floor of the van as his operating table. He donned new gloves, set out his kit, and went to work.

He slid the bag off the body and gazed at it. The thing was no more than a skeleton, with a membrane covering it under the man's pajamas. An incongruous sight, a pajama-clad skeleton! He carefully unb.u.t.toned the top and got it off, then did the same for the bottoms. The whole of the skeleton was now open to view.

The membrane covered all of it. Even where the bone was solid, as on the skull and pelvic girdle, that membrane extended. It completely surrounded the body, bones and hollows and all.

Was it tight? If so, there could be gas trapped inside that would be invaluable for a.n.a.lyzing. He could try to capture a vial of that. He would also clip as much of that membrane as he could and save it. The main thing was the bone, which appeared to be intact. He could perform only the crudest of tests out here, and he was already pretty sure they would not be relevant to this case. This was the most unusual body he had heard of!

His hands went about the routine mechanisms, collecting his samples, but his mind ranged back to the circ.u.mstances of his life which had brought him to this unusual case. He had been a veterinarian, and satisfied with it, but his curiosity about obscurities had gotten him into mischief. For example, when sent to inoculate a herd of cattle against a routine infection, he had wanted to know the pattern of that infection; how had it spread here, what were its dynamics? Could it be controlled better by isolation than by inoculation? Or could the disease itself be modified to become benign? What about the worming? Worms were endemic, but rather than poisoning them in the animals every six months, why not prevent them from ever getting in? Many maladies were spread by insects; surely it made sense to deal with the insects, instead of allowing them free access to the animals. He had constantly to dose horses against the larva of the deer botfly. The female botfly would hover around the horses' legs and glue her yellow eggs on them; those eggs were harmless in that stage, but a few days later, when they hatched and the larvae began to crawl, the horses would rub their legs with their noses, and the larvae would transfer to the mouths and thence to the digestive system for the next stage. That was where the damage started. The cycle could be broken simply by brus.h.i.+ng the eggs off with a stiff brush or pumice stone, but it was hard to do because they were firmly glued on and the horses didn't like to stand still for it-and in any event, another botfly would soon be by to deposit more eggs. So it was easier simply to medicate the horses regularly-but still it seemed to him that it would be better if the botflies never got at the horses in the first place. Prevention was so much better than treatment.

Unfortunately, effective prevention would reduce the need for treatment, and fewer veterinarians would find employment. Cyrano's notions incited covert hostility. He persisted, but could not make headway against the entrenched att.i.tude. He discovered that the att.i.tude and practice of the average person were firmly anch.o.r.ed in that person's perception of his self-interest. He lost his position and found it hard to get another; word had spread. He was not charged with anything tangible, and probably others did not even properly fathom their underlying motives, but pretexts occurred and he was unemployable in this profession. He lacked the financial backing to go into practice for himself. But the truth was that his interest in veterinary medicine had diminished, and his interest in insects had increased. He changed specialties, though he was now beyond the flush of youth, and became an entomologist. He could not be blacklisted as a student. But his savings gave out, and he was faced with the prospect of giving up without completing his course of instruction.

That was when Mid entered the picture. Mid offered him money to complete his program, and a position thereafter at an excellent stipend. But there were two stipulations: he must specialize in what Mid chose, and he must become anonymous. He would publish no papers, he would make no headlines; he would work only for Mid.

It seemed not the best of bargains, but also not the worst. He seemed to have no enticing alternative. So he agreed, without complete enthusiasm. He a.s.sumed a new ident.i.ty for his work with Mid: that was when he became Cyrano, the literate dueler. He dueled not with swords but with concepts and microscopes.

Thus he took many more courses than he had antic.i.p.ated, in more subjects. But he emerged with a considerable background in organic matters. His actual degree was in entomology: the study of insects. But had learned a lot about anatomy, human and animal, and forensic procedures.

It seemed that some of Mid's operations were being sabotaged, but the proof was difficult. Cyrano investigated the death of a prize horse and discovered fly larvae that indicated the animal had not died when or where it was found; it had been poisoned, then transported to another state, where it had supposedly and mysteriously expired. That made the difference; Mid was able to ascertain when and where the deed had been done, and who was in charge of the horse at that point. That person had disappeared, and Cyrano had not inquired further. He was getting to like his employer better, though he had never met him.

Another case involved the death of a person. This appeared to be innocent, an unexpected heart attack, and there had been no investigation, but Mid wanted to know the cause. Cyrano was given four hours with the body, privately, before the cremation. He discovered a pattern of larval development that was unusually rapid. This was inconclusive, he had reported to Mid, but it answered the description of cocaine residues in the tissues.

Mid had made an abrupt and intense quest for cocaine, having several employees involuntarily tested. Cocaine was found. The person involved left Mid's employ in a hurry and was not heard from again. Cyrano had been given a vacation in Hawaii and a significant bonus: Mid had his ways of expressing favor.

It had been ten years now, and Cyrano's doubts about working for Mid had long since faded. He had been involved in more interesting challenges than any ordinary employment would have provided. The work appealed to him, grisly as it sometimes was. Where else would he get to run tests on a mysterious human skeleton? Cyrano was now moderately rich himself, thanks to Mid's generosity, and could afford to retire. He had no intention of doing so. He wanted to continue working for Mid, and he was fully committed. He was loyal to the death.

He heard someone coming. It was Geode. He glanced up. ”Yes?”

”You said to check back in an hour.”

Cyrano glanced at his watch, which was a fine expensive timepiece, one of Mid's little gifts. An hour had indeed pa.s.sed; it had seemed like five minutes! But his hands had been busy, and he had his preliminary samples, as well as a perpetual erection that was now no joy at all. He needed a break.

”Yes. I will take this specimen away for further study. But I had better interview the one closest to the living person. I believe she is here?”

The man looked uncomfortable. ”It's supposed to be secret.”

”Geode, I've worked a long time for Mid. He tells me everything I need to know. He told me you had the body of a man, and were hiding his wife at the Middle Kingdom. I understand the need for secrecy perfectly, and will tell no one of her presence, and you will tell no one that this body ever was here. Not because we care about each other, but because Mid wants it private. You work for him; you understand how he is.”

”Yes.” Geode was visibly rea.s.sured.

”Bring her out here. I'll need to talk to her only a few minutes. Then I'll be on my way, and with luck we'll never meet again.”

”But aren't you here to exterminate the monster?”

”Indeed I am. But first I have to understand it. Then I will hunt it, and kill it, and take its body away, and your life will return to normal. I prefer to work alone, as I think you do.”

”Yes.” The man turned and walked toward the house.

Cyrano shut down his operations and moved away from the van. Now at last his erection subsided. What effective pheromones those were! If a perfume company ever bottled them, it would make a fortune, making its lady clients truly irresistible. Fortunately, the effect lasted only while the pheromones were actually being inhaled. But how much worse would it be with the living monster? For it was a monster; Mid had called it that, and what it had done to that body was virtually incredible. There was no residue of flesh at all; all of it was gone, and the surface of the bones had been etched by some powerful reducing agent. Probably the monster could dissolve bone too, but lacked the patience to bother because of the diminis.h.i.+ng returns. So it withdrew and moved off, leaving the discards.

What was it? Nothing Cyrano had encountered before, certainly! He knew of no earthly creature that could do anything like this! Dissolving a body and consuming it, all except for the hard parts. No animal operated that way. Except- He stopped still. Except an insect. He remembered his first sight of fireflies, flas.h.i.+ng in the dusk, so beautiful. Perhaps it had been that sight that had turned him on to insects, even as a child. He had grown to other pursuits, but that image of the flas.h.i.+ng fireflies had always lured him back. Yet part of what had turned him off the subject, for a time, was the way the firefly fed. It used digestive acids to dissolve the body of its prey, then sucked in the fluid. Later he had come to accept the differing ways of other creatures, and to respect them; he was no longer repulsed by such digestion. Was it any worse than putting undigested food into one's body and breaking it down internally and defecating the residue, as mammals did? So the firefly had become beautiful again to him; he had learned tolerance.

So it was done by earthly creatures. But what kind of a firefly could make a man its prey?

A big one, obviously. A big, biiig one!

”Oh, d.a.m.n!” Cyrano breathed in awe and delight. This case had suddenly a.s.sumed a new dimension!

Geode returned with a woman. Cyrano watched them approach. She was of middle height and slight build, in her thirties, and might have been winsome in her prime but was so no longer. Her figure wasn't bad, actually; she didn't run to fat. But the description Mid had relayed certainly fit: she was a mouse, timid, una.s.suming, nondescript. The kind of person no one noticed unless he had to.

But she had information he wanted, so he noticed her, for the moment. She had been close by when the man was taken, and might have some additional hint of the nature of the firefly.