“Acherontia styx,” Pilcher said. “It’s named for two rivers in Hell. Your man, he drops the bodies in a river every time—did I read that?”
“Yes,” Starling said. “Is it rare?”
“In this part of the world it is. There aren’t any at all in nature.”
“Where’s it from?” Starling leaned her face close to the mesh roof of the case. Her breath stirred the fur on the moth’s back. She jerked back when it squeaked and fiercely flapped its wings. She could feel the tiny breeze it made.
“Malaysia. There’s a European type too, called atropos, but this one and the one in Klaus’ mouth are Malaysian.”
“So somebody raised it.”
Pilcher nodded. “Yes,” he said when she didn’t look at him. “It had to be shipped from Malaysia as an egg or more likely as a pupa. Nobody’s ever been able to get them to lay eggs in captivity. They mate, but no eggs. The hard part is finding the caterpillar in the jungle. After that, they’re not hard to raise.”
“You said they can fight.”
“The proboscis is sharp and stout, and they’ll jam it in your finger if you fool with them. It’s an unusual weapon and alcohol doesn’t affect it in preserved specimens. That helped us narrow the field so we could identify it so fast.” Pilcher seemed suddenly embarrassed, as though he had boasted. “They’re tough too,” he hurried on to say. “They go in beehives and Bogart honey. One time we were collecting in Sabah, Borneo, and they’d come to the light behind the youth hostel. It was weird to hear them, we’d be—”
“Where did this one come from?”
“A swap with the Malaysian government. I don’t know what we traded. It was funny, there we were in the dark, waiting with this cyanide bucket, when—”
“What kind of customs declaration came with this one? Do you have records of that? Do they have to be cleared out of Malaysia? Who would have that?”
“You’re in a hurry. Look, I’ve written down all the stuff we have and the places to put ads if you want to do that kind of thing. Come on, I’ll take you out.”
They crossed the vast floor in silence. In the light of the elevator, Starling could see that Pilcher was as tired as she was.
“You stayed up with this,” she said. “That was a good thing to do. I didn’t mean to be a
brupt before, I just—”
“I hope they get him. I hope you’re through with this soon,” he said. “I put down a couple of chemicals he might be buying if he’s putting up soft specimens.… Officer Starling, I’d like to get to know you.”
“Maybe I should call you when I can.”
“You definitely should, absolutely, I’d like that,” Pilcher said.
The elevator closed and Pilcher and Starling were gone. The floor devoted to man was still and no human figure moved, not the tattooed, not the mummified, the bound feet didn’t stir.
The fire lights glowed red in the Insect Zoo, reflected in ten thousand active eyes of the older phylum. The humidifier hummed and hissed. Beneath the cover, in the black cage, the Death’s-head Moth climbed down the nightshade. She moved across the floor, her wings trailing like a cape, and found the bit of honeycomb in her dish. Grasping the honeycomb in her powerful front legs, she uncoiled her sharp proboscis and plunged it through the wax cap of a honey cell. Now she sat sucking quietly while all around her in the dark the chirps and whirs resumed, and with them the tiny tillings and killings.
CHAPTER 41
Catherine Baker Martin down in the hateful dark. Dark swarmed behind her eyelids and, in jerky seconds of sleep, she dreamed the dark came into her. Dark came insidious, up her nose and into her ears, damp fingers of dark proposed themselves to each of her body openings. She put her hand over her mouth and nose, put her other hand over her vagina, clenched her buttocks, turned one ear to the mattress and sacrificed the other ear to the intrusion of the dark. With the dark came a sound, and she jerked awake. A familiar busy sound, a sewing machine. Variable speed. Slow, now fast.
Up in the basement the lights were on—she could see a feeble disc of yellow high above her where the small hatch in the well lid stood open. The poodle barked a couple of times and the unearthly voice was talking to it, muffled.
Sewing. Sewing was so wrong down here. Sewing belongs to the light. The sunny sewing room of Catherine’s childhood flashed so welcome in her mind … the housekeeper, dear Bea Love, at the machine … her little cat batted at the blowing curtain.
The voice blew it all away, fussing at the poodle.
“Precious, put that down. You’ll stick yourself with a pin and then where will we be? I’m almost done. Yes, Darlingheart. You get a Chew-wy when we get through-y, you get a Chew-wy doody doody doo.”
Catherine did not know how long she had been captive. She knew that she had washed twice—the last time she had stood up in the light, wanting him to see her body, not sure if he was looking down from behind the blinding light. Catherine Baker Martin naked was a show-stopper, a girl and a half in all directions, and she knew it. She wanted him to see. She wanted out of the pit. Close enough to fuck is close enough to fight—she said it silently to herself over and over as she washed. She was getting very little to eat and she knew she’d better do it while she had her strength. She knew she would fight him. She knew she could fight. Would it be better to fuck him first, fuck him as many times as he could do it and wear him out? She knew if she could ever get her legs around his neck she could send him home to Jesus in about a second and a half. Can I stand to do that? You’re damned right I can. Balls and eyes, balls and eyes, ballsandeyes. But there had been no sound from above as she finished washing and put on the fresh jumpsuit. There was no reply to her offers as the bath bucket swayed up on its flimsy string and was replaced by her toilet bucket.
She waited now, hours later, listening to the sewing machine. She did not call out to him. In time, maybe a thousand breaths, she heard him going up the stairs, talking to the dog, saying something, “—breakfast when I get back.” He left the basement light on. Sometimes he did that.
Toenails and footsteps on the kitchen floor above. The dog whining. She believed her captor was leaving. Sometimes he went away for a long time.