Luciferase

Bruce Sterling Luciferase

His flesh lit up with erotic need.

The urge within him was beyond comprehension. It was cosmic: its own pure justification.

Light shocked out of him in a tumbling chemical rush.

Someone smashed into him with a violent scrabble of claws. He lost his grip on the grass stem and fell spinning into the dirt. He lay there stunned, legs folded tightly across his belly.

His assailant plummeted after him from the twilight sky. It was Peck, a spider. Peck hit the rotting leaf litter and rebounded on powerful legs. He spun his spiny carcass, his domed eyes searching for prey like a set of black periscopes.

"Peck, it's me. It's Vinnie." Wisely, Vinnie stifled his tremendous urge to flash. Peck would attack anything that lit his eight black eyes.

"I need to eat you right now," Peck said reasonably.

"Peck, you can't eat me, okay? Fireflies are poisonous."

Peck had molted since the last time their paths had crossed. His bristling, aggressive body had almost doubled in volume. Peck might be as dumb as a clod of earth, but you could never fault a jumping spider for audacity.

The nights were growing longer, and Vinnie wasn't getting any younger. He bent his flat head and striped thorax, tumbled sideways with an effort, then clambered to his long, hooked feet. He'd reached full size for a firefly, and the grueling effort of his nightly displays had cost him a lot of weight. He felt light-headed, giddy, and possessed by a frustrated lust.

Peck's fierce attack had just damaged his left midleg. The complex joint between Vinnie's coxa and femur had gone all leaky.

Peck looked a bit embarrassed. By his nature, Peck was susceptible to good sense; it was just that his all-consuming urge to leap, bite, and devour was more than he could handle. "Vinnie, was that you I jumped just now?"

"Yes, of course it was, and you've busted my leg. Get this straight, Peck: I'm a lightning bug. If you ever eat me, you're going to vomit and die."

"But I thought you were just a nice, tasty beetle."

"We've had this discussion before, Peck. I am a beetle. All lightning bugs are beetles. Beetles of the family Lampyridae."

Peck drummed the littered earth with his murderous spiny forelegs. "You're awfully soft-bodied for a beetle."

"I don't need any armor, because I've got toxins," Vinnie snapped. "I'm also built light ‘cause I fly! You want to eat something soft? Kill a snail!"

"I don't like snails," Peck muttered. "Snails got no legs and they eat with their tongues. Plus they got big hard shells!"

Vinnie sighed gustily through his spiracles. Why were spiders so mulish and picky? Snails were delicious. Vinnie himself had eaten snails, back when he was a grub.

When he had been a kid, all he had wanted to do was burrow, eat, and grow. No adult airborne displays. No burdensome public reputation as an artist. Yet he'd been so happy and excited, innocently writhing in the loamy dark. Kids were like that.

Vinnie leaned against a tall dandelion stem and unhinged his striped wing-covers. His left midleg was screwed up, but he was itching to get aloft and shine. "Peck, I forgive you. You're a dumb, meat-eating spider, but at least you don't use webs. Those are just plain irresponsible, webs."

"I could chew your broken leg off," Peck mused. "Your legs aren't poisonous."

Vinnie wriggled his damaged joint cautiously. "How'd things work out with that lady friend I recommended?"

"Oh! She was so pretty!"

"How come you're still alive, then?"

"I tried my best to get close to her," Peck said gloomily. "I really hoofed it up for that chick. I did my big courtship peace-dance … But she gave me the brush-off. Wrong species."

"She didn't eat you," said Vinnie. He was genuinely curious.

The spider tore at the earth in embarrassment. Peck was reluctant to engage in such personal confidences, but, being a lone predator, he rarely had the chance to talk things out with a sympathetic listener. "I was so ticked off by that. Really, I felt like attacking her and eating her myself. But … well … that's just the way chicks are … All dames are trouble, basically …" Peck's distress was growing. "When, Vinnie? When will I find a decent girl willing to eat me?"

Vinnie preened both his antennae. "It's a terrible thing, loneliness."

"It's all I can think about. I need to find the woman who's meant for me. I want to become one with her. I want to lay my body down … afterward, you know … Feeling so nice and tired then, done with all this struggle of life … Complete, like, fulfilledness … Fulfillitude …"

"'Serenity.' That's the word you're looking for, Peck."

"And I want her to eat me. I do. Maybe she'll eat me real nice and slow, while I'm all full of venom, paralyzed, and still alive!"

"Romance," Vinnie sighed. "No, Peck, you won't see me scoffing about it. Not after what I've been through."

Warmed by his own dreams, the spider danced on the tips of his spiny feet. "Some nice girl should be drinking my vital fluids. Think of the size of that egg sac and the pack of kids she'd have!"

"You're a one-woman guy. "

"I want true happiness. It's my right!"

Vinnie sniffed through his vent-holes. "Romance is one thing, kid. Happiness, that's another."

"I just don't get it. Am I so bad? I'm trying to do the decent thing!"

"Let the ol' firefly give you a tip here, kid. You're being a chump. You could court three spider ladies, fertilize the eggs of the first two then sacrifice your body into the gut of number three. That way you'd convey the metabolic benefits from being devoured, plus you'd get a lot more genetic variety in your progeny. You follow me? Let the first two pay the price for their own child support!"

Peck thought this proposal over. "Hey, that's cold-blooded!"

"So?"

"You'd really treat women like that? What is with you?"

"Well, it's not like I'm given a choice." Vinnie had never met a woman who showed any interest in devouring him. On the contrary, once the night's glowing courtship was consummated, Vinnie's ladies simply scrammed down from their leafy boudoirs to lay some fresh eggs in the dirt.

Once his supple aviator's body had given women what they craved, they never wanted to talk to him again. All that bioluminescent signalling and sophisticated communication, then a moment or two of physical bliss, then that sudden cold and that lasting emotional silence. The irony of this had not escaped Vinnie. It gnawed at the core of him.

"Can I ask you something personal?" said the spider. "How many girls have you been with?"

"Oh, about as many as I have legs," said Vinnie airily. "And I was right to do it. They were gorgeous! Every moment was so deeply felt! Who wouldn't go for such classy dames!"

"Was it that good for you?"

"It was tremendous! Except for Sylvia … That tramp!" Vinnie couldn't restrain his bitterness. He missed Sylvia worst of all. Sylvia was the one who just wasn't taken in by the story: the gallantries, the calculated showmanship … Sylvia frankly understood what a man really needed in life. And boy, could she ever give it. Yet she'd walked off to lay her eggs just like the rest of them.

"You sure are lucky, Vinnie. I've never even met a woman of my own species. Us top predators are rare!"

Spiders seemed pretty common to Vinnie. If there was a local "top" predator, it was the grass snake. The grass snake had teeth, a tongue, bones, scales, ate anything, never stopped growing, and apparently lived forever. Vinnie had been tempted to communicate with the grass snake, maybe ask for its name, but he didn't quite know how to open the conversation. "Did you try signalling for some women, Peck? Flashing? Make a loud mating call of any kind?"

"I can't pull stunts like that!" Peck protested. "Because my flesh isn't poisonous! Some bird would pick me off in a hot second." Peck ran one foreleg through his venomed fangs. "All this sex talk sure makes me hungry."