Luciferase

Bruce Sterling

Luciferase

His flesh lit up with erotic need.

The urge within him was beyond comprehension. It was cosmic: its own pure justification.

Light shocked out of him in a tumbling chemical rush.

Someone smashed into him with a violent scrabble of claws. He lost his grip on the grass stem and fell spi

His assailant plummeted after him from the twilight sky. It was Peck, a spider. Peck hit the rotting leaf litter and rebounded on powerful legs. He spun his spiny carcass, his domed eyes searching for prey like a set of black periscopes.

"Peck, it's me. It's Vi

"I need to eat you right now," Peck said reasonably.

"Peck, you can't eat me, okay? Fireflies are poisonous."

Peck had molted since the last time their paths had crossed. His bristling, aggressive body had almost doubled in volume. Peck might be as dumb as a clod of earth, but you could never fault a jumping spider for audacity.

The nights were growing longer, and Vi

Peck's fierce attack had just damaged his left midleg. The complex joint between Vi

Peck looked a bit embarrassed. By his nature, Peck was susceptible to good sense; it was just that his all-consuming urge to leap, bite, and devour was more than he could handle. "Vi

"Yes, of course it was, and you've busted my leg. Get this straight, Peck: I'm a lightning bug. If you ever eat me, you're going to vomit and die."

"But I thought you were just a nice, tasty beetle."

"We've had this discussion before, Peck. I am a beetle. All lightning bugs are beetles. Beetles of the family Lampyridae."

Peck drummed the littered earth with his murderous spiny forelegs. "You're awfully soft-bodied for a beetle."

"I don't need any armor, because I've got toxins," Vi

"I don't like snails," Peck muttered. "Snails got no legs and they eat with their tongues. Plus they got big hard shells!"

Vi

When he had been a kid, all he had wanted to do was burrow, eat, and grow. No adult airborne displays. No burdensome public reputation as an artist. Yet he'd been so happy and excited, i

Vi

"I could chew your broken leg off," Peck mused. "Your legs aren't poisonous."

Vi

"Oh! She was so pretty!"

"How come you're still alive, then?"

"I tried my best to get close to her," Peck said gloomily. "I really hoofed it up for that chick. I did my big courtship peace-dance … But she gave me the brush-off. Wrong species."

"She didn't eat you," said Vi

The spider tore at the earth in embarrassment. Peck was reluctant to engage in such personal confidences, but, being a lone predator, he rarely had the chance to talk things out with a sympathetic listener. "I was so ticked off by that. Really, I felt like attacking her and eating her myself. But … well … that's just the way chicks are … All dames are trouble, basically …" Peck's distress was growing. "When, Vi

Vi

"It's all I can think about. I need to find the woman who's meant for me. I want to become one with her. I want to lay my body down … afterward, you know … Feeling so nice and tired then, done with all this struggle of life … Complete, like, fulfilledness … Fulfillitude …"

"'Serenity.' That's the word you're looking for, Peck."

"And I want her to eat me. I do. Maybe she'll eat me real nice and slow, while I'm all full of venom, paralyzed, and still alive!"

"Romance," Vi

Warmed by his own dreams, the spider danced on the tips of his spiny feet. "Some nice girl should be drinking my vital fluids. Think of the size of that egg sac and the pack of kids she'd have!"

"You're a one-woman guy. "

"I want true happiness. It's my right!"

Vi

"I just don't get it. Am I so bad? I'm trying to do the decent thing!"

"Let the ol' firefly give you a tip here, kid. You're being a chump. You could court three spider ladies, fertilize the eggs of the first two then sacrifice your body into the gut of number three. That way you'd convey the metabolic benefits from being devoured, plus you'd get a lot more genetic variety in your progeny. You follow me? Let the first two pay the price for their own child support!"

Peck thought this proposal over. "Hey, that's cold-blooded!"

"So?"

"You'd really treat women like that? What is with you?"

"Well, it's not like I'm given a choice." Vi

Once his supple aviator's body had given women what they craved, they never wanted to talk to him again. All that bioluminescent signalling and sophisticated communication, then a moment or two of physical bliss, then that sudden cold and that lasting emotional silence. The irony of this had not escaped Vi

"Can I ask you something personal?" said the spider. "How many girls have you been with?"

"Oh, about as many as I have legs," said Vi

"Was it that good for you?"

"It was tremendous! Except for Sylvia … That tramp!" Vi

"You sure are lucky, Vi

Spiders seemed pretty common to Vi