The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction: 23rd Annual Collection (117 page)

Bell knew of several kinds of island lizard that reproduced parthenoge netically. Such species, when found, were always young, isolated, at risk. They were aberrations outside the main thrust of evolution. Most were doomed, in the long run, because sexual reproduction is a much better way to create the next generation. In sexual reproduction, genes mix and match, new phenotypes arise, gene frequencies shift like tides. Sexual reproduction shuffles the genetic deck from one generation to the next.

Parthenoge ne tic species, on the other hand, are locked-in, playing the same card over and over.

But not the insects in the back room.

The insects in the back room seemed to have a whole deck from which to deal, parthenoge ne tic or not. Such insects could adapt quickly, shifting morphotypes in a single generation. And then shift back the next. It was the next logical step – not just evolution, but the evolution of evolution. But how was it possible?

Bell thought of Cole, of what made men like him. That old argument, nature vs. nurture. In another time, in another place, Cole would have fit in. In another time, maybe Cole would have been a different person entirely.

The descendents of Vikings and Mongols today wore suits and ran corporations. Were veterinarians, or plumbers, or holy men. Perhaps tomorrow, or a thousand years from now, they’ll need to be Vikings and Mongols again.

Populations change. Needs change. Optimums change. And it all changes faster than selection can track.

From a biological perspective, it would be easy to produce the same kind of people again and again. Stable people. Good people. Again and again, generation after generation a one to one correlation between gene-set and expression.

But that’s not what you find when you look at humans.

Instead there is a plasticity in human nature. A carefully calibrated susceptibility to trauma.

What looks like a weak point in our species is in fact design.

Because the truth is that certain childhoods are supposed to fuck you up.

It is an adaptive response. Wired into us.

The ones who couldn’t adapt died out. Those gene sets which always produced the same kind of people – stable people, good people – no matter the environment, no matter the violence – those gene sets which always played the same card, again and again –

– died out.

Leaving behind the ones who could metamorphose.

We were not so different from these bugs.

Bell unloaded all this on Seana one day during lunch. They sat across from each other, sipping soft drinks. “The evolution of evolution?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Why would this happen in insects?” she asked.

“Because they’ve been here longest,” he said. But it was more than that. He thought of the ants and their aphids. The enzyme that clipped their wings. He thought of the different ways that insects solved their problems. “Because insects always choose the biological solution.”

Bell avoided Cole for days.

He told himself he was waiting for a good time to see the director, to tell her what had happened in the lemur tunnel. Told himself he wasn’t afraid that Cole would retaliate by telling about drinking together on zoo time, zoo property. Both were lies, but what he had the toughest time with was pure simple fear of Cole.

“Ridiculous,” he told himself “You’re a grown man and a professional.”

On the other hand, Cole obviously was dangerous.

Maybe he could get Cole to leave, to resign his service contract without anyone having to tell the director anything.

This seemed, on reflection, to be the best bet for an outcome where he, Bell, kept his job and got rid of the problem.

The reflection took place at home, on the sofa, in front of the TV, in his underwear.

When Lin crossed the room, he saw himself through her eyes. He looked like a bum.

She was thinking, he knew, what an asshole he was for buying beer.

He didn’t care.

Neither did she, it seemed.

She sat down on the couch beside him.

What was he? When had he turned into a person who said nothing, did nothing? What had he let himself turn into?

*  *  *

The next day, Bell followed Cole down to the supply shed and said, “We’re going to have a talk.”

Cole took a set of eight-foot pruning shears down from the wall rack, and turned to face Bell.

“Yeah,” he said.

Bell fumbled for a beginning, forgetting what he’d rehearsed.

Cole began whistling. He leaned on the pruning shears as if they were a wizard’s staff.

“I have to turn you in,” Bell said.

“For what?”

“Throwing rocks at the animals.”

Cole stared at him. His grip on the shears tightened. “I lose my temper sometimes. I have a temper, I admit.”

“That’s why you can’t be here.”

“Listen, I’ll work on it. I’ll be better.”

Cole shook his head. “I’m just letting you know as a courtesy. I have to report it.”

“You don’t have to do anything.”

“The other choice is that you leave today and don’t come back.”

“That’s not any choice at all.”

“There are other places you can do your service.”

“I like it here.”

“Here doesn’t like you anymore.”

“You know what I don’t like? I don’t think I like you trying to push me around.”

“Today is your last day here, one way or the other,” Bell said. “You can leave on your own, or you can be ushered out.”

“You really don’t want to do that.”

“You’re right, I don’t,” Bell said.

Cole’s face changed. “I’m warning you.”

Bell raised his walkie-talkie, never taking his eyes off Cole. “Garland,” he spoke into the handset. There was a squelch, then a voice, “Yeah.”

“You better come to the supply shed.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Now, Garland.”

Cole shoved Bell into the wall. Shoved him hard, so his teeth clacked.

And the rage was there again in the cutting torch eyes. Rage like nothing else mattered. Scarred hands curled into Bell’s shirt.

“This is your last chance,” Cole said.

Bell only smiled, feeling something shift inside him. He found suddenly that he was through being scared. “Fuck you,” he said.

Bell ducked the first blow, but the second caught him upside the head, splitting his brow open. Bell spun away, throwing an elbow that missed, and then they were both off balance, taking wild swings, and Cole grabbed at him, and they were falling. They hit the ground and rolled, wrestling for on the filthy floor. Cole came up on top, sitting on Bell’s legs. “I fucking warned you,” he hissed, and then he rained down punches until Garland tackled him.

After that, it was two on one, and Bell didn’t feel the least bit guilty about that.

The zoo super interviewed Bell for her report. They sat in her office. Behind her, against the wall, her fish swam their little circles. The superintendent leaned forward and laced her hands together on her desk.

She didn’t dig very deep. Seemed to think Cole’s behavior was its own explanation. “I think you need stitches,” she said.

Bell nodded. He touched his brow. His first zoo scar.

“He’ll be barred from the zoo, of course,” she said. “And I’ll insist that his community service hours be revoked.”

“What’s going to happen to him now?”

“Charges probably.”

“I don’t want to press charges.”

“Animal cruelty. The lemurs. He’s going back to jail.” She paused, then added, “When they find him.”

Bell looked at the fish, swimming in the aquarium. “He said he’s never going back.”

That evening, as he was closing up, Bell found Cole’s parting gift. Found it revealed, at first, in the presence of a door ajar.

The back room of the castle.

After the fight, Cole had climbed to his feet, wiped the blood from his face – and then walked off. Heading toward the gates. Even two on one, the fight had been about even, and when Cole had finally stepped back, wiped the blood from his face, and walked away, Bell and Gavin let him go. A draw. They’d assumed Cole left zoo property. But he hadn’t left.

He’d circled back around to the castle.

And he’d poured lye into each and every terrarium.

Several grubs were on the cement floor, ground into pulp with a boot.

Others were desiccated husks. Only a few still moved, writhing in the white powder. Bell stepped further into the room, surveying the carnage. He should have known. He should have known this was coming.

Bell’s inner alarm started bothering him on his way home that night.

Once a zookeeper developed an inner alarm, it worked everywhere.

In this case, it was less an alarm than a sense of something out of place. It got stronger as he closed in on the trailer park. At first he thought the alarm had something to do with Cole, but when he got home, he understood. The universe had an interesting sense of timing.

Lin was gone.

Not like gone to the store. Gone, left. Leaving him.

She left a note about it. The note explained. Blamed him.

Distantly, he heard himself curse.

All Bell could think, at first, was that she didn’t seem to have taken anything. Like there was nothing about their life worth bothering with. She had written the whole thing off, it seemed. Him. Their life. A total loss.

He made some growling noises.

She might be back. She might change her mind.

The stereo, after all, was really hers. She’d had it before they moved in together, and they’d never been able to afford a new one.

Somberly, he unplugged the stereo. In something like a trance, he planted it in the sink and turned on the water. Like a zombie, he let the water run and started searching the trailer for enough change to buy beer.

The next month passed in a haze.

Word filtered down, as word always did, and it turned out Cole had skipped town. The cops were still looking.

Not many of the grubs had survived Cole’s attack. The ones that did were scarred. Cole had been very thorough, even pouring lye in the terrarium on the floor. In all, only a handful of the grubs finished their cocoons. A few from the control cage. A few from the terrarium marked “heat.” But they were twisted things, these cocoons. Damaged things. His experiment was ruined. His hope was that he’d be able to get at least a few reproducing adults, start over. If the cocoons hatched at all.

And word had filtered down, too, that it would be bad for Cole when he was caught, because the list of charges had grown, and the warrant had sprouted teeth. Cole was facing time, real time, for what had happened. Bell knew Cole would need someone to blame.

He would blame Bell, and he would blame the zoo.

Several weeks later, Bell pulled into the parking lot and found there were fire trucks already in the lot. Hoses ran upward along the hill. Black smoke curled into the sky. Bell ran. He knew what he’d see before he saw it. The castle was engulfed in flame. The firefighters fought the blaze, but Bell knew it was too late. He imagined the animals inside baking. He imagined the sizzle and pop of burst skin, the soundless cries of dying snakes and lizards and frogs and bugs. He imagined his insects burning alive.

He looked around, searching for Cole, wondering if he’d stayed long enough to watch it burn.

When the fire was out, Bell walked through the ruins. The devastation was complete. Dead frogs and snakes and lizards. In the back room, he found the terrariums blackened and cracked. The insects inside charred and unrecognizable.

Except for one. The terrarium on the floor.

The terrarium with the heat sticker, now curled and blackened.

The cocoon was charred, split wide by the heat.

There was no grub inside.

*  *  *

They found Cole’s body later that day in the weeds behind the parking lot. Bell watched them load the body into the ambulance. Dark and swollen. It had been a bad death.

There were burns, minor, across his hands, like he’d come too close to his creation.

Burns and something else.

Something like stings.

Eyes swollen shut, anaphylactic shock.

Not everything burned in the fire.

Not all that burns is consumed. Cole had said that once.

Bell stood there for a long time, listening. Listening for a buzz like an electric light, but there was no sound. Only the sound of wind in the trees.

It was long gone, whatever it was. He just wished he could have seen what the grub had turned into. Next year it would be different.

Next year it would be a fruit eater, or a wasp, or a beetle. It would be what it needed to be.

It would be what the world made it.

Approaching home, Bell felt his inner alarm stir again.