David Levine: Pupa

A spasm of pain made Ksho drop her forelimb-brush.

Xinecotic-ki Ksho always ached all over, from her mandibles to the tips of her third pair of limbs. Pain and hunger were the natural states of a Shacuthi juvenile—pain from constant rapid growth and hunger for the vast quantities of food she needed to sustain that growth—but this latest spasm was the bone-deep ache that meant her skin was getting to be too small. She had already molted seven times and knew this feeling well, but this next molt would be her last as a juvenile. After this molt she would pupate for three months, her ugly juvenile body replaced by a gleaming adult.

She was thrilled. She was terrified.

But for now, she had a job to do.

Ksho bent down and scrabbled with clumsy, weak two-fingered hands for the brush on the rough cloth of the floor, wishing she had an adult’s hands—gleaming three-fingered structures of chitin and bone, capable of powerful grasp and fine manipulation. Finally, using both of her first pair of hands, she managed to regain the brush and resumed her laborious progress to her parent Xinecotic’s grooming chamber, waddling along on stumpy little hind limbs barely capable of supporting her growing weight.

The delay probably saved her life.

Ksho did not scrape at the door before entering the grooming chamber. The scraping-board was for adults; juveniles came and went as their duties required, with no more notice or need for permission than the air that cooled the corridor. She paused for a moment with one hand on the door latch, making sure she had a firm grip on the brush, and at that moment she heard voices from within.

The unexpected sound made Ksho freeze, her skin tingling—an instinctive response honed over thousands of generations. Surely there could be no other adult in Xinecotic’s grooming chamber at this hour? The hour of grooming was inviolate, a time of quiet contemplation. But life had been strange ever since they had traveled to this cold and desolate place, and it had only become stranger in the last few months. Ksho worked the lower door latch, slid the door open a crack, and poked one eye into the room.

Xinecotic was not alone in her grooming chamber. Takacha, the head of the expedition, was there as well. Neither adult took any notice of Ksho’s eye peeping around the door’s edge. Ten or twelve of Ksho’s sisters were also present, buffing and polishing their parent’s gleaming limbs and torso. None of them seemed to be alarmed by Takacha’s presence in Xinecotic’s grooming chamber, but Ksho told herself she shouldn’t expect her younger siblings to be as observant as she. She was the eldest, after all, nearly ready to pupate.

“You should have realized,” Takacha was saying, “that you wouldn’t be able to maintain this deception forever.” As she spoke, a flavor of apprehension drifted through the slightly open door to Ksho’s fingers. Both adults were nervous, verging on terrified. Why?

“Don’t do this, Takacha.” Xinecotic was holding perfectly still, most unlike the usual rolling and preening of an adult being groomed. “You can stop this madness now, before any permanent harm is done. I’m authorized to offer clemency if you halt the operation immediately and surrender.”

Takacha chuttered, antennae lifting, as though Xinecotic had just said something funny. “Clemency.” She raised one hand, and Ksho’s already sour stomachs soured still further, with fear, as she realized Takacha held a weapon leveled at Xinecotic’s thorax. That explained her parent’s unnatural immobility. “You’ll have to offer far more than that to make abandoning this operation worthwhile.”

One of Ksho’s sisters ran out of grooming-wax and headed toward the wall niche for more. Neither adult paid her any heed. “Think, Takacha. What you’ve done so far is only a level-three offense, but harming an agent of the Grand Nest means death by suffocation. And if I don’t check in, there will be an investigation.”

“Oh, you will check in tomorrow, at twelve past the hour of waking, just as you have been doing every sixthday.” Xinecotic’s eyes twitched at the statement, and the flavor of anxiety that pervaded the room intensified. “Yes, we’ve been monitoring your communications. And we’re able to reproduce them as well. You won’t be missed until after our job here is done.”

Xinecotic bristled. “A bad clutch of eggs always hatches a bad swarm. One of your compatriots will betray you to the Grand Nest in exchange for leniency.”

All during this conversation Ksho’s mind raced—there must be something she could do to help her parent. But her soft little voice would never be heard more than a few rooms away, and even if she ran for help, no adult would listen to a juvenile. Even the structural failure alarms were deliberately out of reach of her stubby little limbs; everyone knew that juveniles, with their undeveloped brains, could not be trusted with such a responsibility.

But Ksho was almost an adult. Anyone could see how close she was to pupation. Surely she could use that fact to convince someone to come and help.

Just as she was about to slip her eye out of the door and ease it closed, Takacha buzzed “None of my compatriots would ever betray me! This nest is as one.”

This nest is as one. Takacha was saying that every single adult on the expedition was part of… whatever it was that Ksho’s parent was trying to stop. Something illegal. That meant that even if Ksho managed to get one of the adults here to believe her… it wouldn’t save Xinecotic.

Ksho trembled, immobilized by fear, her eye still peeping into the room.

“The Grand Nest is mired in tradition,” Takacha continued, the weapon still pointed at Xinecotic. “We are the future. What we are doing here may be prohibited today, but the children who hatch from eggs not yet even laid will hail us as the saviors of our species.”

And then, to Ksho’s horror, Takacha squeezed the weapon’s actuator. A sharp, acrid flavor filled the room as the weapon discharged its load onto Xinecotic, the powerful acid eating through chitin and muscle and revealing the bone beneath. Xinecotic hissed in pain and lunged toward Takacha, but she fired again, the acid spewing right into Ksho’s parent’s face. With a horrid gasping hiss she collapsed, eyes and antennae dissolving into a smoking ruin at Takacha’s feet.

Four of Ksho’s siblings had also been caught by the acid and writhed hissing on the floor. The rest stood stock-still, ancient instincts holding them rooted even as their parent, the only adult in hundreds of leagues who would care for them, lay dying within easy reach.

Ksho’s own body froze, trembling in terror. Takacha was already slipping the weapon into one of the folds of her garment and striding toward the door where Ksho stood. Ksho barely managed to pull her eye from the door and move out of the way before Takacha reached it. She brushed past Ksho, taking no notice whatsoever of the trembling juvenile. A moment later Ksho heard the nest’s weather door scrape open, then shut, leaving her alone with her dead parent and dying siblings.

The hideous flavors of acid and spilled bodily fluids suffused the air.

Ksho, too, was doomed, as were her sisters, even those who hadn’t been struck by the acid. The offspring of a deceased adult of eggbearing age were usually adopted by close relatives, but Xinecotic had no relatives at all in this tiny, isolated encampment. Ksho realized now why this was so—she had been one of the Grand Nest’s “wasps,” an undercover agent hidden in a nest of criminals. None of them would adopt even the smallest, most innocent grub of Xinecotic’s. Left alone, the younger ones would starve within days. Ksho, nearly an adult, was capable of feeding herself, but without a parent to watch over her during the long months of pupation she would surely be eaten by predators or succumb to parasites.