Paul Di Filippo - WikiWorld

“For the love of God, El!”

Elwood Grackle noticed her, finally. His face was flushed to a Clintonesque burgundy, and so was most of his bare chest. With a final shudder he jerked his useless fluids into the insect and fell forward, panting and dripping sweat onto the gleaming, jewel-toned carapace. The cockroach swallowed its final bright segment of fruit and chased it down with a tart bite of peel before throwing the curly remainder considerately into the faux fireplace.

Elwood detached with a squelch and a measure of insouciance. He pulled his ankled pants up awkwardly with one hand, reclaimed his shirt from the sofa back with the other. “How was the flight from Cairo, darling? You’re early.”

“I’m five hours late, you squamous fucker.”

“Well, yes, strictly speaking, but I was factoring in post-arrival press conferences, debriefings, and the like. Allow me to introduce Emma. Em, this is Kay.”

The roach’s voice resembled a bandsaw working its blade through a wet sandbag. “Your wedded bliss. Madame boss. Most honoured.”

“My wife, yes.” He toweled himself off with his shirt. “Em is our new Kaf.”

“Christ, so now you’re reduced to screwing a transgenic. The flight was gruesome, and so was Cairo. The noise of that place is indescribable.”

“Really? What’s it like?” He tucked himself away, donned the damp shirt, went to the bar to wash his hands lightly but firmly, and got out two tall frosty glasses from the fridge. He fished out a lime and slashed it. “A margarita, darling?”

“What do you mean, what’s it like? If I could describe it it wouldn’t be indescribable. Yes, I’ll have a drink, and why don’t you tell this filthy thing to clear off, I’m sick of the sight of it.”

“Your lovely bride is testy, Elwood. Felicitations, Madame, I was just leaving. I hope your mood is improved when next we meet.” Boldly flashing the progenitive trademark of the Abu Dhabi University biolabs branded onto its shell, the roach was out the door in a darting motion that eluded Kay’s swinging, still-shod foot with ease.

“I take it from your sour mood,” said Elwood, “that negotiations with the Egyptians were not successful.”

“My sour mood, as you so sympathetically phrase it, has more to do with your rutting.”

“Oh, don’t try to make me the villain. I sensed from your last phone call that you were already about as cheerful as a… as a drowning Micronesian. Your tiresome moodiness has been the status quo in our happy home for months.”

Kay was suddenly immensely weary. It was true. She’d been a fount of black despair lately. Not that she could help it. So much was going wrong for the nation. For the world!

She sagged down on the couch, hit the glutinous wet spot, recoiled and shot up again—awkwardly, given her half-shod condition—and spilled her drink. Considerately, Elwood jumped to support her, and guided her to the safe haven of a dry armchair. Her façade of professional and wifely fortitude crumbled. His familiar, solicitous touch! She began to weep.

El patted her shoulder. He went to mix her a replacement margarita, talking soothingly the while.

“There, dear, have a good cry. It’s not easy, helping steer the ship of state through these perilous times. Never forget, I’m always there for you, darling.”

“You’re never there,” she said, sobbing. “You’re always here.”

“Exactly, I’m always here for you. Look, you realize now that my little impulsive moment just now has no bearing on our marriage, or my love for you?”

“Are you insane? You were fucking a roach! What am I meant to think?”

El’s mouth twisted a little. “She’s a gift from the biolabs at Abu Dhabi University. For both of us. I was testing out all her advertised features.”

“A Kafka, for god’s sake. I’ve seen them in Cairo, you don’t need to explain them to me. Fifteen percent human genes.”

“Well, yes, but that’s a feature, not a bug. Sorry.” He raised his hands protectively in front of his face and tried not to grin. “But that’s what they are, dear. General factotum and bug of all trades.”

“What are you doing with one, that’s what I want to know? Surely for something that expensive we should have discussed—”

“No, I’m telling you. A gift! For you, really. It seems they sent one to every high-level bureaucrat in the current administration. Some potentate’s largesse, like the bestowal of the camel or virgin in days of yore.”

“Oh. Right.” Kay’s expression hardened. “In gratitude for President McMurtry’s new stance on Israel.”

“Probably. But hey, Big Mac didn’t exactly disavow American support, it was more a subtle shift in the—”

“Subtle! Subtle! About as subtle as getting home to find you screwing a bug . I’m going to bed. You can sleep on the couch. Oh, and wipe up the slime first.”

She hoped he could tell she didn’t mean it. He should be in the bed beside her. Because, really, there’s no place like home.

The Kafka, Emma, sucked in her stout belly and scrunched under the water heater. Her upstairs sleeping crate beckoned to her with its pheromone-laced organo-plastic shell, but she dared not approach it yet, given the hostility of the house’s queen female.

Trembling with the aftershock of insemination, Emma was also seething with anger. The bitch had called her a cockroach! Em gnawed at the drywall opening, shoveling the unpleasant residue aside into a white powdery pile, and dragged her carapace into the wall space. She was no more a roach than that fool Elwood was a… a… tarsier.

Beneath her forward feet, the rough-cut joists tasted of mouse droppings and something less appetizing. A cat had been in here. Not recently, though. Alert for danger, she forced herself to relax. Cockroach, indeed! Cretin! Em had eaten enough roaches to know the differences intimately—they were flat, their legs stuck out grossly, most were wingless. My belly, she told herself, settling onto it in the soothing grime, is rounded and womanly. My back is strong and mounded like the dome of a noble capitol building. My legs are sensitive and petite. I am a beetle, you stupid human cow. Hear me roar!

At the quivering tip of her abdomen, in the protruding ootheca, her rows of eggs glowed under the attentions of Elwood’s wrigglers. Babies! Soon! She yearned for motherhood.

Her irritation failed to subside. It wasn’t meant to be like this. They’d promised so much more, in the hatchery, along with their cynicism and, simultaneously, their rather pushy warrior faith. In the dim light, Em poked about and found the battered Avon paperback half-copy of Nabokov’s Pnin she’d been consuming. She managed three pages, gobbling them up as she committed the words to memory, before she fell asleep.

“I hope you’re planning on a shower before you come to bed, darling,” Kay told him, throwing off her underwear and moving in the dark. “I can’t bear the stink of the thing on you.”

Elwood’s voice came to her, from the open bathroom door, in the unlighted bedroom: “Sweetheart, you know I always—”

Kay slammed her toes into something and yelped in pain. In a moment, El was beside her, naked, smelling of rancid sex, wide-eyed. He flicked on the overhead light. “What? What’s the matter?”

“What the hell is it?” Kay cried, high-pitched. Her bare toe had struck a bulky off-white curved thing of some kind, as large as the kennel for a Bernese Mountain Dog and shiny as a polished egg, which it rather resembled. It had been squeezed in between her side of the bed and the sliding mirror fronting her closet.

“They brought it when they delivered the Kaf. It’s where she sleeps.”