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.
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.”