فصل 40

CHAPTER 40

“Officer Starling, Dr. Pilcher said he’d meet you in the Insect Zoo. I’ll take you over there,” the guard said.

To reach the Insect Zoo from the Constitution Avenue side of the museum, you must take the elevator one level above the great stuffed elephant and cross a vast floor devoted to the study of man.

Tiers of skulls were first, rising and spreading, representing the explosion of human population since the time of Christ.

Starling and the guard moved in a dim landscape peopled with figures illustrating human origin and variation. Here were displays of ritual—tattoos, bound feet, tooth modification, Peruvian surgery, mummification.

“Did you ever see Wilhelm von Ellenbogen?” the guard asked, shining his light into a case.

“I don’t believe I have,” Starling said without slowing her pace.

“You should come sometime when the lights are up and take a look at him. Buried him in Philadelphia in the eighteenth century? Turned right to soap when the ground water hit him.” The Insect Zoo is a large room, dim now and loud with chirps and whirs. Cages and cases of live insects fill it. Children particularly like the zoo and troop through it all day. At night, left to themselves, the insects are busy. A few of the cases were lit with red, and the fire exit signs burned fiercely red in the dim room.

“Dr. Pilcher?” the guard called from the door.

“Here,” Pilcher said, holding a penlight up as a beacon.

“Will you bring this lady out?”

“Yes, thank you, Officer.”

Starling took her own small flashlight out of her purse and found the switch already on, the batteries dead. The flash of anger she felt reminded her that she was tired and she had to bear down.

“Hello, Officer Starling.”

“Dr. Pilcher.”

“How about ‘Professor Pilcher’?”

“Are you a professor?”

“No, but I’m not a doctor either. What I am is glad to see you. Want to look at some bugs?” “Sure. Where’s Dr. Roden?”

“He made most of the progress over the last two nights with chaetaxy and finally he had to crash. Did you see the bug before we started on it?” “No.”

“It was just mush, really.”

“But you got it, you figured it out.”

“Yep. Just now.” He stopped at a mesh cage. “First let me show you a moth like the one you brought in Monday. This is not exactly the same as yours, but the same family, an owlet.” The beam of his flashlight found the large sheeny blue moth sitting on a small branch, its wings folded. Pilcher blew air at it and instantly the fierce face of an owl appeared as the moth flared the undersides of its wings at them, the eye-spots on the wings glaring like the last sight a rat ever sees. “This one’s Caligo beltrao—fairly common. But with this Klaus specimen, you’re talking some heavy moths. Come on.” At the end of the room was a case set back in a niche with a rail in front of it. The case was beyond the reach of children and it was covered with a cloth. A small humidifier hummed beside it.

“We keep it behind glass to protect people’s fingers—it can fight. It likes the damp too, and glass keeps the humidity in.” Pilcher lifted the cage carefully by its handles and moved it to the front of the niche. He lifted off the cover and turned on a small light above the cage.

“This is the Death’s-head Moth,” he said. “That’s nightshade she’s sitting on—we’re hoping she’ll lay.” The moth was wonderful and terrible to see, its large brown-black wings tented like a cloak, and on its wide furry back, the signature device that has struck fear in men for as long as men have come upon it suddenly in their happy gardens. The domed skull, a skull that is both skull and face, watching from its dark eyes, the cheekbones, the zygomatic arch traced exquisitely beside the eyes.

“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 abrupt 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.