Read Online The Perseids and Other Stories by Robert Charles Wilson - Free Book Online
Authors: Robert Charles Wilson
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becoming a writer, or just a career paranoid?”
I laughed. “Neither one.” Though the laughter was a little forced.
“Well, then, since we’re only playing, here’s another notion for you. Living things—species capable of evolving—don’t just live. They eat.”
(Hunt
, I thought.) “They die. And most important of all: they reproduce.”
You’ve probably heard of the hunting wasp. The hunting wasp paralyzes insects (the tarantula is a popular choice) and uses the still-living bodies to incubate and feed its young.
It’s everybody’s favorite Hymenoptera horror story. You can’t help imagining how the tarantula must feel, immobilized but for its frantic heartbeat, the wasp larvae beginning to stir inside it … stir, and feed.
But maybe the tarantula isn’t only paralyzed. Maybe it’s entranced. Maybe wasp venom is a kind of insect ambrosia—
soma
,
amrta, kykeon.
Maybe the tarantula sees God, feels God turning in hungry spirals deep inside it.
I think that would be worse—don’t you?
Was I in love with Robin Slattery? I think this narrative doesn’t make that absolutely clear—too many second thoughts since—but yes, I was in love with Robin. In love with the way she looked at me (that mix of deference and pity), the way she moved, her strange blend of erudition and ignorance (the only Shakespeare she had read was
The Tempest
, but she had read it five times and attended a performance at Stratford), her skinny legs, her pyrotechnic fashion sense (one day black Goth, next day tartan miniskirt and knee socks).
I paid her the close attention of a lover, and because I did I knew by spring (the Eta Aquarids … early May) that things had changed.
She spent a night at my place, something she had been doing less often lately. We went into the bedroom with the sound of soca tapes pulsing like a heartbeat from the shop downstairs. I had covered one wall with astronomical photographs, stuck to the plaster with pushpins. She looked at the wall and said, “This is why men shouldn’t be allowed to live alone—they do things like this.”
“Is that a proposition?” I was feeling, I guess, reckless.
“No,” she said, looking worried, “I only meant….”
“I know.”
“I mean, it’s not exactly
Good Housekeeping.”
“Right.”
We went to bed troubled. We made love, but tentatively, and later, when she had turned on her side and her breathing was night-quiet, I left the bed and walked naked to the kitchen.
I didn’t need to turn on lights. The moon cast a gray radiance through the rippled glass of the kitchen window. I only wanted to sit a while in the cool of an empty room.
But I guess Robin hadn’t been sleeping after all, because she came to the kitchen wrapped in my bath robe, standing in the silver light like a quizzical, barefoot monk.
“Keeping the night watch,” I said.
She leaned against a wall. “It’s lonely, isn’t it?”
I just looked at her. Wished I could see her eyes.
“Lonely,” she said, “out there on the African plains.”
I wondered if her intuition was right, if there was a gene, a defective sequence of DNA, that marked me and set me apart from everyone else. The image of the watchman-hominid was a powerful one. I pictured that theoretical ancestor of mine. Our hominid ancestors were small, vulnerable, as much animal as human. The tribe sleeps. The watchman doesn’t. I imagine him awake in the long exile of the night, rump against a rock in a sea of wild grasses, shivering when the wind blows, watching the horizon for danger. The horizon and the sky.
What does he see?
The stars in their silent migrations. The annual meteor showers. A comet, perhaps, falling sunward from the far reefs of the solar system.
What does he feel?
Yes: lonely.
And often afraid.
In the morning, Robin said, “As a relationship, I don’t think we’re working. There’s this
distance
… I mean, it’s lonely for me, too …”
But she didn’t really want to talk
I laughed. “Neither one.” Though the laughter was a little forced.
“Well, then, since we’re only playing, here’s another notion for you. Living things—species capable of evolving—don’t just live. They eat.”
(Hunt
, I thought.) “They die. And most important of all: they reproduce.”
You’ve probably heard of the hunting wasp. The hunting wasp paralyzes insects (the tarantula is a popular choice) and uses the still-living bodies to incubate and feed its young.
It’s everybody’s favorite Hymenoptera horror story. You can’t help imagining how the tarantula must feel, immobilized but for its frantic heartbeat, the wasp larvae beginning to stir inside it … stir, and feed.
But maybe the tarantula isn’t only paralyzed. Maybe it’s entranced. Maybe wasp venom is a kind of insect ambrosia—
soma
,
amrta, kykeon.
Maybe the tarantula sees God, feels God turning in hungry spirals deep inside it.
I think that would be worse—don’t you?
Was I in love with Robin Slattery? I think this narrative doesn’t make that absolutely clear—too many second thoughts since—but yes, I was in love with Robin. In love with the way she looked at me (that mix of deference and pity), the way she moved, her strange blend of erudition and ignorance (the only Shakespeare she had read was
The Tempest
, but she had read it five times and attended a performance at Stratford), her skinny legs, her pyrotechnic fashion sense (one day black Goth, next day tartan miniskirt and knee socks).
I paid her the close attention of a lover, and because I did I knew by spring (the Eta Aquarids … early May) that things had changed.
She spent a night at my place, something she had been doing less often lately. We went into the bedroom with the sound of soca tapes pulsing like a heartbeat from the shop downstairs. I had covered one wall with astronomical photographs, stuck to the plaster with pushpins. She looked at the wall and said, “This is why men shouldn’t be allowed to live alone—they do things like this.”
“Is that a proposition?” I was feeling, I guess, reckless.
“No,” she said, looking worried, “I only meant….”
“I know.”
“I mean, it’s not exactly
Good Housekeeping.”
“Right.”
We went to bed troubled. We made love, but tentatively, and later, when she had turned on her side and her breathing was night-quiet, I left the bed and walked naked to the kitchen.
I didn’t need to turn on lights. The moon cast a gray radiance through the rippled glass of the kitchen window. I only wanted to sit a while in the cool of an empty room.
But I guess Robin hadn’t been sleeping after all, because she came to the kitchen wrapped in my bath robe, standing in the silver light like a quizzical, barefoot monk.
“Keeping the night watch,” I said.
She leaned against a wall. “It’s lonely, isn’t it?”
I just looked at her. Wished I could see her eyes.
“Lonely,” she said, “out there on the African plains.”
I wondered if her intuition was right, if there was a gene, a defective sequence of DNA, that marked me and set me apart from everyone else. The image of the watchman-hominid was a powerful one. I pictured that theoretical ancestor of mine. Our hominid ancestors were small, vulnerable, as much animal as human. The tribe sleeps. The watchman doesn’t. I imagine him awake in the long exile of the night, rump against a rock in a sea of wild grasses, shivering when the wind blows, watching the horizon for danger. The horizon and the sky.
What does he see?
The stars in their silent migrations. The annual meteor showers. A comet, perhaps, falling sunward from the far reefs of the solar system.
What does he feel?
Yes: lonely.
And often afraid.
In the morning, Robin said, “As a relationship, I don’t think we’re working. There’s this
distance
… I mean, it’s lonely for me, too …”
But she didn’t really want to talk
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