Part 38 (2/2)

Now, isn't that a tale for your edification, Firefly? This is what you do, placing a spell of s.e.xual desire and performance on your victims, and in the process humiliating them. But there is a catch to it, for you are being swallowed by that very pa.s.sion you have used. Now it is in you, and will govern you.

The firefly continued its slow motion. It was a.s.similating the new flesh-but in the process was also a.s.similating the mind of that flesh. The details of the concepts were confusing, but the underlying feeling was strong. The firefly was faced with intellect and feeling far greater than its own. Because it was equipped to a.s.similate whatever it consumed, and did so automatically, it had no defense against this, and indeed did not understand the need for any defense. The new mind was taking over from the old, and the new feeling was registering where there had been little or none before.

By the time the night had pa.s.sed, the firefly understood human intellect and felt human pa.s.sion. Like the kobold, it was doomed just when it achieved its desire.

For as it sought to hide under the brush and leaves of the forest floor, a man approached it-and instead of lying low, it rose up and made itself known to that man.

* 45 - GEODE FACED THE firefly, seeing it for the first time. It was a brownish lump of protoplasm, amoeba-like in its ability to extend pseudopods and flow into them. It humped up before him, not even trying to hide. Yet it was not generating pheromones, either, for he was having no reaction. It was as though the thing were trying to meet him.

The situation was unreal. No monster had come to the cabin, and there had been no imperative s.e.xual performance; their stakeout had fallen flat. Frank and May had returned to town to catch up on sleep in the wee hours, while Geode had gone back to the house, turned off the alarm during its thirty-second warning period, and come upstairs to release none from her confinement in the security closet.

Now he remembered every detail with stark clarity, and he reviewed the sequence, hoping to find some hint for understanding of the present situation.

There had been no alarm, and no doors had been opened. The security closet remained secure, with just a sliver of light showing under its door. He turned the key in the special lock, deactivating the alarm, and opened the door. He suffered an erection as he did so, he presumed from eagerness to be with her again.

There he found the clothes and bones of none. The lovely gold and gem dragonfly Mid had given her remained pinned to her blouse. The firefly had come and taken her. It had been the lingering pheromones, not his own desire, that had prompted his excitement.

Numbed, he found his way to his room and picked up the knife he had set down. With this he could deal with just about anything. Then he set out on the trail of the firefly. It was in his mind that he would kill it first, and then himself. He knew he should have called Mid, or May Flowers, but he could tolerate no delay; the monster might be just ahead.

In the cool predawn dimness he saw a shape above the house, outlined against the pale sky. He oriented on it: was it the firefly? No, it was only the great homed owl, perched on the top of the television antenna.

”Did you see the firefly?” he asked it.

”I don't eat fireflies,” the owl replied.

”This isn't that kind. It's a-thing maybe the size of a man, that maybe crawls along the ground like a big slug.”

”Oh, that firefly,” the owl said. ”Does it make a keening noise as it travels?”

Geode was taken aback. ”Does it?”

”It does. It went toward the pond.”

”Thank you.” Geode walked toward the pond that bounded the southwest section of the ranch. There was no direct access, so he cut through the jungle, his boots and body brus.h.i.+ng past the thickly growing palmettos.

His nose and p.e.n.i.s guided him: if he got an erection when he sniffed, he was on the right trail. He tracked the firefly through the thick of the jungle toward the verge of the pond. Progress was slow because it was still dark in here and he didn't want to lose the scent. He had to backtrack constantly, sniffing again and again, getting down on his belly to put his nose to the ground like a bloodhound, squirming all around, heedless of the briars and roots until he felt the tug of the pheromones.

Even so it was chancy. He found himself near the lake. Fortunately, he encountered a rabbit nibbling on shoots. ”Did you see the firefly?”

”Two nights ago I saw one flas.h.i.+ng,” the rabbit replied.

”I mean the monster.”

”Oh, that. It oozed down toward the pond.”

That put him back on the track. He reoriented, and caught the s.e.xual smell again. He made his way through the hardwood hammock of laurel oaks, down toward the marshy fringe of the pond.

Now the dawn came with a thin layer of cloud to the east, and island-clouds scattered across the welkin, their bases in shades of gray and their tops in shades of orange, and the huge blazing red ball of the sun striking through the ma.s.sed foliage. In that glory of the new day, near the overgrown sh.o.r.e of the pond that inlet from the lake west of the house, beside a large leaning hickory tree, he found it. There was the firefly, a sluglike glob of substance without eyes, ears, arms, legs, or anything else familiar, just a globular ma.s.s.

He had the knife ready. He knew the thing would die readily if he just cut it open and sliced up the pieces. It looked like a bag of dirty water. But he hesitated. There was something about it.

”You know I have come to kill you,” he said to it. ”Why aren't you fleeing me?”

”I cannot flee you,” it replied. ”I love you.”

Geode was numb, and he knew that others, even May Flowers, would think him crazy. none was the only one who had truly understood about the way he talked to animals; May did not challenge it, but didn't accept it either. But even none might have looked askance if she heard him talking to the firefly, and to hear it say it loved him-!

Was this a dream? It seemed unreal enough to be one.

Hope flared. If this were a dream-maybe none wasn't dead! He could wake, and she would be there beside him, to love and be loved by him. Or he would wake and find himself still on stakeout by the cabin; he could go and find her in the security closet, and untie her, and she would have proved she was not the firefly, and they could be together forever.

But he seemed awake. That wasn't good.

He tried again. ”If you love me, you should not have taken the woman I love. Now you must die.”

”I took the woman who loves you, and now I love you. If you kill me, you destroy her too.”

”I saw her bones! She is dead!”

”She left her bones behind. She changed her form, but not her nature. I am her.”

Geode felt a cold s.h.i.+ver. none had thought she was the firefly; now the firefly said this was true!

”You cannot be her. I saw her bones! She was human, and she died, and I shall too-and you.”

”How may I convince you?” the firefly asked.

”Not by using my own crazy imagination!” he snapped. ”I know animals don't really talk; it's just the way I relate to them. Anything you tell me is my own imagination. I won't let you fool me that way.”

”I will tell you your name: Geode,” it said. ”I will tell you hers: none, also known as Jade, as Nymph, as Teensa, as Chloe, as anything she chooses, and now as Firefly. I will tell you anything about her.”

”All from my mind, not yours!” he protested. ”I tell you, I'm not crazy enough to fool myself about the death of my beloved! You shall not escape my vengeance that way!”

”Suppose I tell you about the plain young woman and the lost child?” it asked.

”I don't care about anyone else, only about none!”

”The young woman had little or no social life because she was neither robustly endowed nor beautiful of face. She was brown-skinned, which meant her family didn't have much money. She was a decent person, but men took no note of that, seeing no further than the superficial. This is all too often the way of men.”

”I know it is!” Geode exclaimed. ”And none was plain until she came to me, and then she was beautiful. But I don't care about any other woman, plain or beautiful.”

”One day she was walking to the store in a tough neighborhood, and she saw a lost child. It was a little brown boy about two years old, bawling, and the other people were ignoring him. The cars were whizzing by, dangerously close; he could wander into them at any time, as he wasn't looking where he was going.”

”I don't care about someone's lost child!” Geode said. ”This has nothing to do with none!”

”So the young woman, Enid, hurriedly crossed the street, dodging the cars, and caught up the little boy. 'What is your name?' she asked him, but he just kept on crying.

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