Luciferase

"Not exactly," she said. "I improved your style. Given my profession, I'm better at flashing than any Photinus—male or female."

"Okay," said Vi

"Look, fella, I happen to be extremely attractive to Photuris men. Your limited standards of female beauty, those I don't care about. I don't need to please you. All I have to do is rip your head off then eat you."

Vi

It shouldn't have entirely surprised him to learn there was a class of firefly that ate fireflies.

"Okay, I guess I can accept that, but tell me something. Where are these Photuris men that you are supposed to attract?"

"What do you mean?"

"I wasn't hatched yesterday. I know every guy around here, by his style and his signal. If there were any Photuris men around, I'd know that. So where are they?"

"Top predators are rare," she admitted.

"You've never met a male at all? Getting pretty late in the season."

"I've met a lot of men of your species. Your type is very common. I ate about as many of you as I have legs."

"What were their names?" Vi

"I knew what they wanted," she said. "What's to talk about?"

"Everything," he said. "There's everything to talk about. Love is a carnival! It's an adventure! There should be tenderness in all this, there should be soulfulness! The unexamined light is not worth flashing! A man and woman in sexual union are the very hinge of futurity! They are the opened door to the renewal of life. Flesh in a fertile unity, that is the gate through which all else must pass …"

"You're kind of a cute guy, for a Photinus."

"I keep in shape."

"You came here to mate, not to talk philosophy. Sex is what you wanted, isn't it? Go on, admit that."

"Well, yeah. Of course I wanted it."

"Well, you're not so bad-looking. Suppose that I let you just do it. When you're nice and tired afterward, will you let me devour you without putting up a big fuss about it?"

Vi

"We have chemistry," he admitted. "Frankly, I'm tempted."

"Well, what's stopping you?"

He drew a breath. "I've got a counter-proposal. Why don't you let me go? Then, as a reward, I'll send you three or four other Photinus males to make up for the loss of me."

"Would you really do that? Why?"

"I've got my reasons. It just so happens that certain flyers are aesthetically offensive. Those guys are unfit, and they shouldn't be reproducing. Seriously."

"I'm supposed to eat rivals whose work isn't up to your artistic standards?"

"Have you seen those clowns by the bramble pile? Every night they fly those tight little circles …"

She laughed. "You mean them? They're the shallow end of the gene pool! They couldn't tell my sophisticated repartee from some dirty come-on! They're beneath me."

"You're not being reasonable here. Do you want someone to appreciate your charm, or do you want food?"

She pulled in irritation at her soiled wing. It peeled free from the nettle's furry surface. "What's your name, anyway?"

"Vi

"I'm Dolores."

"Hi."

"I've heard stories about situations like this," she said slowly. "Once I heard about a sister who actually fell for a Photinus guy."

"No kidding."

"He was so sweet that she just chewed his two midlegs off. Because she wanted him to fly off and reproduce and put more men like himself into the breeding population."

"That's a great evolutionary gambit, but I don't want my legs eaten off," Vi

"You should watch it, carrying on that way," she said. Reflexively, she flashed in response. Her flashes were hugely powerful, torrents of carnivorous vitality. "A little guy like you, you could blow some valve in your abdomen."

"Does that matter, Dolores? Summer's going to end! I'll die of natural causes! Let me go. I'll creep on back to you at the end of my lifespan. You can eat me then! What difference does that make to either one of us?"

"I might die before you came back," she said. "I might starve to death."

"So what? So what if we both burn out tonight in one last great performance? You don't scare me."

She backed away. "You have guts and talent," she admitted. "You can glow."

"I thought I was hot stuff till I met you," he said. Light poured from him. Now they were duetting. She had a wild, feral, overwhelming gift for expression. It was like standing next to the sun.

The nettle leaf trembled gently. Another lightning bug had arrived.

He was long and spindly and thin. He was too tall, and his proportions were off.

"What have we got here?" he drawled.

"I'm Vi

The stranger looked at Dolores quizzically. "Why is this piece of meat talking?"

"You're a Photuris male," said Dolores in awe. "At last! Where have you been all my life?"

"I'm a rarity, babe, the only one in these parts. You and the suppertime here sure are making a big, bright ruckus. I never flew by this little nettle patch before, but you're hard to miss tonight. When do we eat?"

"Did you flash on your way here?" said Vi

"Why would I bother? I know where she is." He turned to Dolores. "Would you kill him now, please? I'm hungry."

"Wait a minute," said Vi

"I beg your pardon?"

"It's a professional interest. She's a mimic, right? She mimics how a Photinus flashes. Are you a mimic too?"

"I can mimic fourteen different genres of flashing," said the stranger.

"Okay, fine, yeah, I get that, very impressive. You're great at pastiche. But I'm asking you: how do you yourself flash, as a Photuris? What do you bring to the table, creatively speaking?"

"Well," said the stranger, "with an incident like this one, I don't need to flash at all. I can just watch her mimicking you. Then we eat you, and we reproduce, and everything's hunky-dory."

Vi

"Is that true?" said Dolores.

With a groan of disbelief, the stranger lit up. "Okay, fine, be that way! You want a guy to flash at you, no problem, I can ripple through all kinds of patterns. You name it, I can do it. Whatever the market demands."

"That's not his point," said Dolores. "His point was, you can't communicate with me as a man of my own species should communicate with a woman."

"But we're carnivores! We exploit the flashing system in order to eat people who flash."

"Does this mean you're incapable of a sincere expression in your own idiom?"

"You need to knock those weird ideas out of your head," said the stranger. "So what I don't have a unique Photuris signal! Who cares? I don't need one, and I don't want one. I'll tell you what I do want and need—and you'd better give it to me. I want to eat his head and thorax. You can eat the rest of him, but leave those parts for me."

"Why?"

"Especially those big glands in his neck."