CHAPTER 8

The outlying environment of Sauerkraut reminded Abner of militarily occupied territory. Three quarters of the farm houses were shuttered, their yards overgrown, obviously unoccupied. Many of their fields were fallow. The occupied and maintained ones stood out like ragged islands.

“This is grim,” Bunty remarked.

“When a hostile force occupies a region, in war, the natives have to flee or accommodate,” Abner said. “I have seen it. There is no point in stopping at any house; they will be afraid of us, or of retaliation if they show us any courtesy. We shall have to deal directly with the conquerors.”

“Which will be sopaths.”

“Yes.”

“They have to know we’re coming, and our mission.”

“Yes. We’re like a foreign embassy entering under flag of truce. They may not honor it.”

“They will for a while,” Nefer said. “They’ll know you are coming in for a reason, and they’ll want to know that reason. Otherwise you could have skipped it.”

“But will they believe that we just want to solve the riddle of the twin towns, and maybe fathom the secret of sopath births?”

“Maybe.” Abner brought out his cell phone and called Pariah. “We are nearing the target. Is the unit in place and zeroed in?”

“It is. Response will be thirty seconds from your directive. First one a warning, second one for effect.”

“Good enough,” Abner said. “I suspect we’ll need it.”

“Unit?” Bunty asked.

“Military hardware I asked them to set up overnight. We’re not playing games here.”

“Indeed we are not,” she agreed.

“Background for the rest of you,” Abner said. “It seems that Sauerkraut is governed by a teen-aged female sopath named Topsy, said to be as beautiful and vicious as they come.”

“Topsy?” Clark asked. “What’s she doing with a cute name?”

“You never can tell,” Nefer said. “I chose mine because I heard of Queen Nefertiti and it also sounds like Never. She has to have some nasty reason.”

“Surely so,” Abner agreed. “She came to power about a year ago, ruthlessly eliminating competitors. She’s young but smart, and it seems knows how to make people do her bidding. She rewards grown souler men with sex, and grown souler women with other favors, such as getting the men of their choice. The men’s first desire is for Topsy, but they know they won’t get any part of her unless they obey her whims, so they settle for the other women when Topsy tells them to. It’s cynical but effective.”

“She’s a sopath, all right,” Nefer said. “Are you sure you can handle her, Abner? She’ll be worse than me.”

“Pariah seems to think that I can.”

“It’s his secret weapon,” Bunty said. “Personal magnetism, otherwise known as raw sex appeal. Women of any age are attracted to him. You may have noticed.”

Nefer and Dreda laughed. They had noticed.

“I will have to get her close to me and keep her there for a while,” Abner said. “I will try to play it straight, presenting my mission, but if that doesn’t work, we’ll just have to hope that the secret weapon, as Bunty puts it, does. There is a serious risk regardless. We can still turn back.”

“No,” the children said together.

“I’m not sure you’re considering just how ugly it may become.”

“Daddy, we know about sopaths,” Dreda said bravely.

Abner let it drop, hoping this deadly gamble would play out successfully. The family had seen less of the viciousness of sopaths than he had.

There was a structure ahead. It turned out to be a check point, covered by a machine gun. Abner glided up to it and stopped.

“Who are you?” the young teen guard demanded.

“I am Abner Slate, representing Pariah. This is my family.”

“Why are you here?”

“There is a mystery about Sweetpea and Sauerkraut. No sopaths are born there, and few soulers here. We want to know why.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

The kid consulted briefly on his cell phone. That sort of thing was of course part of what the sopaths needed money for. They might have preferred to be completely isolated from the rest of the world, but had discovered that this was not feasible.

Then he evidently got his orders. “Get out of the car.”

Rather than try to argue with possibly trigger-happy minions, Abner obliged. “Do it,” he murmured.

The five of them got out. They were marched to an adjacent building and separated. None of them offered any resistance.

Abner found himself in a chamber by himself. He sat and waited about half an hour. He knew they would get around to him soon enough. They had to bring in their authorities. Topsy herself, with luck.

A gruff older man entered. “You’re no sopath,” Abner said.

“I work for them,” the man said.

“I’ll bet.” The fact that a person had a soul did not guarantee he would be ethical or independent. Sex and threats could be powerful persuaders.

“Now here’s the situation,” the man said. “You came to spy on us and mess us up. What we want to know is why. Tell us, and maybe you’ll see your family again.”

Abner remembered military interrogation procedures. This was not very sophisticated. “We came to find out why so many sopaths are born here.”

“You lie.”

Uh-huh. He was definitely dealing with amateurs. “What is the basis of this charge?”

“We got it from your two younger children.”

And doubtless lying similarly to the others about what Abner said. Standard operating procedure. “I doubt it. What of the older girl?”

“She collapsed in tears before we even asked.”

That just might be true. Nefer was playing a dangerous game with them. Evidently they hadn’t recognized her as a sopath herself. They surely would before long, however. “And what of my wife?”

“She clammed up. But she’ll squeal soon enough when we torture the children.”

There was the threat. They were clumsy, but had the essence. “You won’t be doing that.”

“Why not?”

“Because the moment you do, I’ll be annoyed.” Abner smiled. “You wouldn’t like me when I’m annoyed.”

The man frowned. “You’re some joker, you know that?”

“This has gone far enough. Bring us back together, unharmed. We’re here to meet with your superiors.”

“Oh? And what if we don’t?”

Abner moved too quickly for the man to react. In an instant he had him in a firm headlock. “That would annoy me.”

The man tried to cry out, but Abner cut off his wind with a twist of his wrist against the windpipe. “I could kill you in a few seconds. But you’re not worth bothering with. You’re just a flunky. Now call your supervisor in here.” He eased up a little.

“The hell!”

Abner shifted his grip slightly. Now it was a pain hold. “I didn’t hear that. Will you cooperate?”

“The—”

This time the pain hold made the man groan in agony. “Do I have to reach him over your dead body? Now get in line and I’ll let you go.”

The man took a moment to recover. Then he called “Autopsy! He’s got me in a hold.”

Abner was about to make him hurt again. But then a young woman appeared. “I will take it from here, Jud,” she said.

So the mistress of Kraut really had come. That was a break. Not the childish Topsy, but the brutally suggestive Autopsy. As Nefer had said: she must have her reason. Maybe it was to make her seem less threatening to outsiders, while insiders knew how vicious she was.

Abner let the man go. He scrambled to his feet and out the door. Abner was left with the woman.

And what a woman she was. Her face was lovely almost beyond description, perfectly made up. She wore a low cut gown that showed more than half of her rouged breasts. Her fair hair was bound with a sparkling jeweled comb. She took a seat on the chair and crossed her right leg over the left not at the knee but midway along the calf so that her shapely thigh was exposed all the way to the buttock. The effect was compelling. This was like Nefer on steroids. “I am Autopsy,” she said.

“You’re a teen sopath!” Abner said, affecting surprise. She looked seventeen but was surely younger.

She leaned forward, showing more of her breasts. “Don’t fool with me, Abner Slate. I saw you coming. Tell me what I want to know and I will let you touch me.”

“We are here to try to discover why one town has no sopath births while the other has mostly sopath births. That could have global significance. Tell me that and I will leave you alone.”

“You understand of course that we will not hesitate to torture your wife and children to death in front of you. Or to reward you with a fantastic experience if you cooperate.”

She was speaking literally, but it was not his role to be cowed. “Cut out the threats and temptations, Autopsy. I will not be moved by either.”

“Oh? I am curious to verify your constancy. Perhaps I will strip us both naked and sit on your lap and fondle your penis while we watch the smallest girl writhe and scream as we burn out her eyes with red-hot pokers. Which distraction will interest you more?”

She wasn’t bluffing. She was a sopath with power. It was time to halt this. “Here is why you won’t do any of that. I have been in constant touch with the Pariah home office via a private signal you can’t intercept. The moment I give the word, or cease to communicate, they will alert the state authorities who will do what they have been eager to do: raid you and kill all of you as rogue sopaths. All they need is a pretext, and I am that pretext. I will see that they capture rather than kill you personally, and if any of my family have been harmed, I will hold you securely bound and naked on my lap as I rape you with the hot poker you have prepared for my daughter. I suspect your body will writhe and scream in a most interesting manner.”

She gazed at him, unconcerned. “I wonder.”

“It is simple enough to have the proof of my threat. Start your torture.”

“I think you’re bluffing. You’re a man, so you desire me and want to have sex with me. You’re a souler, so you don’t like hurting people, while it doesn’t bother us at all.”

“You are the one bluffing, bitch. You have no interest in torturing anyone unless you have something to gain by it. I, in contrast, care about my family, and will be motivated by vengeance. When the raid manifests you will flee to try to save your own hide, while I will make good on my threat. There’s nothing quite as vicious as a motivated souler with a hard military background.”

“That is true. We have some here.” She studied him thoughtfully. “What do you want?”

“I want the answer to my question. Give it to me and I will leave you alone and see that Pariah does too. That’s a bargain for you.”

“We don’t have the answer!” she snapped, her poise beginning to fray.

“I’ll be damned. You mean it.”

“Yes I mean it! All we want is to be left alone. We can’t give you what you want.”

Abner wasn’t sure whether she was lying, because to sopaths the truth was merely one option among many. This still needed to be played out. “Then I can’t give you what you want. We may simply have to clean you out and start over here with a study group.”

She sighed. “Well, I tried to make nice. Now we’ll do it my way. Follow me.” She got up and walked out of the room.

Abner followed, involuntarily admiring her flexing buttocks under the tight skirt. He could have caught her and subdued her with a pain hold, but was pretty sure that would not work a second time. Her guards would instantly appear with guns. Her very ability to turn her back on him showed her confidence in her own safety.

They came to a larger room. There was Dreda, tied naked to a board. “Daddy!” she cried hopefully.

Abner saw that Bunty, Clark, and Nefer were seated on chairs across the room, facing the torture site. They were all naked, and all looked grim. They had evidently been told the same thing he had.

There were four male guards armed with knives, standing to the sides of the room. The thing about knives was that they were better for stages of torture than guns were. A gun was either fired or not fired, while a knife could cut off small sections at a time.

“We shall sit and watch the persuasion,” Autopsy said. “Strip and sit, Abner Slate.” She indicated a chair for him at the near end of the row.

She was inadvertently playing into his hands.

Abner removed his clothing and took the seat, retaining only the cell phone in his left hand. The fact that they had not taken it indicated either their confidence or their caution.

Autopsy stripped also and stood before him for a moment gloriously nude. Then she sat on his lap, her plush buttocks pressing warmly against his thighs. She reached down between her spread thighs, and took hold of his penis, exactly as she had threatened. She massaged it, and it hardened in her hand. It was now erect between her thighs. She had ferocious sex appeal, an animal magnetism that her mere appearance could not entirely account for. He abhorred the necessity of being so close to this vicious creature, yet his body was reacting forcefully. No wonder she governed here!

“So you’re doing exactly what you threatened to,” Abner said, keeping his voice calm.

“Exactly,” she agreed sweetly, giving his penis a pull. “I am turned on by torture. How about you?”

“I will not allow it.”

Autopsy glanced at the guards. “Proceed,” she said.

One of the guards left the room. He returned a moment later with a poker that glowed red at its business end. It had been in a fire, made ready for this ugly use. He advanced on Dreda.

“All you need to do is promise to leave here and be silent about our control of this town,” Autopsy murmured in his ear. “I know that as a Pariah official you will keep your word in a way a sopath would not.”

“I will keep my given word,” he agreed. “I have not given it except in this respect: Your doom is sealed the moment that poker touches my child.”

“And when you do promise, not only will she go free unharmed, but I will give you the fuck of your life.” She reached down to catch his right hand and bring it to her bare right breast. She pressed it in, causing it to massage the flesh. His estimate had been correct: she was like Nefer on steroids. There was the same kind of animal magnetism about her that others had described about him, and he desired her fiercely.

“It will not be my penis that enters you,” he said, though his member was now rigid and on the verge of jettisoning. She was a sopath, but she had one of the finest bodies he had ever encountered, and she knew it. She must have achieved her position among sopaths, including the girls, by being the most physically attractive.

The man pointed the poker at Dreda’s face and pushed it slowly forward, centering on her left eye. Terrified, she urinated on the floor.

Abner watched. He had to keep Autopsy close to him as long as possible, hoping that Pariah’s confidence in his secret weapon was not misplaced. That meant allowing this revolting challenge to proceed until his hand was forced. Dreda had depended on him to protect her, and he intended to do that, but she was in serious doubt now. How he wished he could reassure her!

Autopsy put her thighs together, squeezing his turgid member between them. How well she knew her power! “Desire is beating horror,” she remarked. “So far.”

“You can’t bluff him,” Nefer said. “Under that souler mask there’s one extremely tough man.”

“We shall see,” Autopsy said, tightening her thighs to put additional pressure on his penis.

There needed to be a more immediate show of force. “Deliver the warning shell,” Abner said into the phone.

“How long before detonation?” Autopsy inquired as if it were routine. She must have let him keep the phone so she could call his bluff.

“About thirty seconds.”

“Wait thirty seconds,” she told the poker bearer.

He held the poker in place, about two inches before Dreda’s eye. She was quietly sobbing, fearing the worst.

Then the shell exploded in the intersection outside the house with an authoritative boom. The building rattled.

“I’ll be damned,” Autopsy said, startled. He felt it in her momentary clench of thighs, and pause of breath beneath her breast. “You do have us covered.”

“Did you think I walked into this nest of scorpions, with my family, unprepared?” Abner asked rhetorically. “We of Pariah do know something about handling sopaths.”

She remained on his lap, reassessing the situation. “So it seems. We have guards to stop anyone from driving or walking in. How did you get the bomb there, and set it off?”

“It’s a mortar,” Abner said. “That’s a mini-cannon that hurls shells in a high arc, to land and detonate like bombs. You can’t defend against it. We have it zeroed in on this site. The next round will be for effect.”

“You’d bomb yourself and your family to get at us? I don’t think so.”

“When the alternative is torture? We’ll soon know, won’t we?” Abner asked, squeezing her breast a bit too hard. He could merge sadism with sex when he chose to. He needed her to accept that he was indeed a tough man.

“Then we’d better get on with it.” Autopsy glanced at the poker man and opened her mouth.

Abner raised the phone to his face. Bluff and counter bluff, not about their abilities, but their nerve. If Autopsy thought she could still make Abner yield, she would. But she didn’t want to have that poker raping her, and he didn’t want to have to do it. But he could, and would. He was already furious about the way Dreda was being terrorized.

Autopsy slapped the phone out of his hand. It dropped to the floor and skidded before the chairs. Bunty dived for it, but a guard intercepted her and held her tightly against him. He was evidently eager to rape her the moment he was given leave.

Clark tried for the phone, but another guard kicked it back the way it had come. Autopsy slid off Abner’s lap, reached lithely down, and scooped it up.

Only to discover herself caught from behind, with a knife at her throat. While the others had focused on the phone, Nefer had focused on Autopsy. “Try to bluff me, cow!” she hissed.

The guards, seeing their mistress captive, froze in place. The poker retreated from Dreda’s face. Abner retrieved the phone from Autopsy’s hand. She had lost their contest of wills, by not letting him call in the strike.

“You’re a sopath!” Autopsy said, amazed. “You serve a souler?”

Nefer shrugged without letting the knife blade waver. “There’s just something about him. I love him.”

“And he keeps you in his family? You must be one hell of a young fuck!”

“I am, but he doesn’t know it yet.” She looked at Abner. “Do I kill her? You know we can’t trust her. Those goons won’t wait forever without orders.”

Abner hesitated deliberately. “You kill her, you take her place,” he said. “It’s the way an anarchist society works. They’ll obey you. It could be a good deal for you. A sopath-controlled town. Power and an easy life.”

“Yes, but I’ll still serve you, and you won’t want to stay here. There’s nothing I want here, when you go. I’d be in constant fear of getting knocked off by the next power-hungry sopath bitch.”

Abner made his decision. “Then let her go. We already have the situation in hand, and she could be useful.”

“She could also be one really hot fuck,” Nefer agreed, slowly releasing the woman. “She’s got the body I don’t have yet.”

Right on target. Abner’s erection remained, in plain sight of everyone, desiring the sopath leader even now. He had underestimated her sheer sexual appeal.

Autopsy got to her feet. “Loose the child,” she said to the guards. “Then get out of here. The issue has been settled; the operation is under new management.” She turned to Abner, inhaling. “Tell your mortar crew to ease off. We don’t want some trigger-happy joker shelling this house while we’re in it. We haven’t fucked yet.” She glanced at his stiff penis, knowing that this aspect of her power remained. Like Nefer, she could bide her time when she needed to.

Abner lifted his cell phone and did so. Meanwhile the guards freed Dreda, and she came running across to Abner. He swept her up and held her tightly, comforting her as she sobbed. She had known he would protect her if he could, but had not been sure he could. He had not been sure either, if his threat did not dissuade the sopath.

“You’re right,” Autopsy said to Nefer. “There’s something about him. Just being close to him makes me want to fuck him.” Which was her way of saying that she was getting a crush on him, as Nefer had. It seemed that sopaths had no natural limitations apart from conscience; when they got turned on by someone, they plunged in all the way in mere minutes. That could be a worthwhile lever, and was in this case. Pariah had gambled on it and on him to implement it, and won. Autopsy wanted sex with him, yes, but this was beyond that, and would not end if she seduced him. Exactly as Nefer had discovered.

“He has that effect,” Bunty said.

“But there’s one thing I don’t get,” Autopsy said. “I know why you made her let me go, Abner, because I made your penis hot and you really want that fuck. All men do. You just want to fuck me on your own terms, not mine. It’s a power thing. But you, Nefer—you’re a sopath like me, and you want to fuck him too. You could have saved the competition by killing me. He gave you leave to do it. You know I can seduce him before you can, because I’ve got the hardware you lack, and once he fucks me, he’ll have no interest in you. Why did you throw away your chance like that?”

“Because I love him,” Nefer said. “I’ll do anything he wants me to. So will you. He’s got the power.”

Autopsy surveyed Abner again. “He does. I’ve never felt anything like this. Fucking’s always been a business for me, and I’m good at it. I’ve fucked every man in Kraut, most of them multiple times. They can never get enough of me. All I ever felt before for a man was contempt. A man will throw away everything just to get his penis into my slit before it bursts. Just to pump his gism into me. I enjoy sex but it doesn’t govern me like that. That’s weakness.”

“Abner won’t. He has this thing about not fucking children.”

“So I have discovered. But I’m not a child, just young. I made him hard, but I didn’t make him try to get into me. He’s strong. I think he really would have raped me with that poker if I hurt his child. I admire that. But this is more. I want him to want me. I want him to possess me. I want him to—to love me.”

“That’s the hell of it,” Nefer said. “He won’t. He hates sopaths, and usually kills them. He loves Bunty, and she’s the only one he’ll fuck, and if anyone touches her or the children he’ll kill them. I’ve worked with him; I know. Love is like a magic spell cast over you that you can’t fight. You don’t even want to fight it. You just want to be with him and do anything he wants you to, knowing you’ll never get any more than the satisfaction of pleasing him.”

“That is weird.” Autopsy shook her head. “But true. It’s the way the men are with me. I wanted to get close to him the moment I saw him.”

“Yep,” Nefer agreed. “You thought you were seducing him, but he was seducing you, not for sex, but for love, which is worse. And that’s why I made him let you go. Now you’re his captive, his love slave, same as me, and if there’s any way you can be useful, you’ll do it. You must know a lot about this place. Maybe you’ll help us complete our mission.”

Nefer smiled. “For that, maybe he just might fuck you, if Bunty tells him to. Just as he’d fuck me, if she told him to. It’s a faint hope, but it’s all there is.”

Autopsy glanced at Bunty, who nodded.

“Weird,” Autopsy repeated. She seemed to be in a partial daze, overwhelmed by the unfamiliar emotion. For the first time in her life she wanted to give rather than to take. It was contrary to her sopath nature.

Nefer had done Abner the favor of clarifying Autopsy’s newfound loyalty to him. It was time for him to take over. He held Dreda close and spoke over her head. “Autopsy, I am leaving you in command of Sauerkraut, under me,” he said. “I could have killed you at any time, or shelled the house, but wanted to play out the scene. Are you satisfied that your choices are to obey me and live, or oppose me and die?”

“Not entirely, because if it weren’t for this emotion, this love, I could get rid of you soon enough. This is my town. But I do want to fuck you, and to make you like me. Give me that, and I’ll do what else you say, no limits, as she says.”

Abner answered cautiously, aware that this extremely attractive sopath was now dangerous in other than a purely physical way. When he saw her torturing Dreda he hated her, but now she was on his side. Nefer had slowly gotten him to like her, and Autopsy was apt to do the same despite his knowledge of her vicious nature. “Not at this time. You will have to satisfy me that you are sufficiently useful for my purpose. That may take time.”

“See?” Nefer said. “He’s playing you as he plays me, and you know it, but all you can do is beg for more.”

Autopsy nodded. “Just let me be close to you, Abner. I’m not used to this, but I’m a quick study.”

She surely was, to have survived and achieved power as a teen. She had made expert use of her power over men. “I want your full effort to fathom the mystery of these two towns,” he said. “To figure out why the one has no sopath births while the other has mostly sopath births. If we can get that answer, I will probably depart and leave you here as you were, giving you what you want.”

“I don’t want it anymore,” Autopsy said. “I want to go with you, as Nefer does.” She smiled with a suggestion of humor. “To be your love slave.” She glanced at Bunty. “Your concubine, for when your wife’s not in the mood. I am always in the mood.”

“I can’t promise that.”

“Or have you stay here, and work with you. Just so long as it’s close to you.”

Abner was surprised. “That might be possible, depending on what we discover. We do need a new place to settle.”

“I’ll try as hard as I possibly can,” Autopsy promised. “Anything I know, anything I can get for you, it’s yours.”

“That should suffice.”

“Kiss her,” Nefer advised, satisfied with the way of it. “To seal the deal.”

Abner glanced at Bunty, who nodded again. So he took Autopsy in his arms and kissed her on the lips. He felt her melting. He had indeed made another conquest.

She remained infernally tempting. How long would he be able to hold out against her seduction?

After that they all dressed and adjourned to more comfortable quarters. The guards were gone, food was served, and Autopsy was resplendent in a more modest dress that hardly masked her beauty. She looked like the world’s loveliest Girl Back Home. It was hard to believe that she had sat naked on his lap while fondling his penis, or that she had ordered Dreda tortured. Dreda, however, refused to look at her. Her second brush with a hostile sopath had not been any more pleasant than her first.

“I am convinced that the secret is hiding in plain sight,” Abner said. “Maybe if we review the history of the two towns we’ll happen upon it.” He looked at Autopsy. “You must have been close to the first sopath born here. I am not inquiring into your personal history, merely the larger situation. When did the sopaths start?”

“I could have been the first,” she agreed. “My family was the first to move here after the fruities left, and I was born soon after.”

“Fruities?”

“The cult freaks. Their canon was to be fruitful and multiply, like in the Bible, and did they ever! I think they just liked to fuck. They thought nothing of having ten or twelve children in a family. Their women were almost continuously pregnant, including the single ones.”

“Then they left,” Bunty said. “Somewhat abruptly, I understand. Why?”

“No one knows. They seemed to be doing great, then suddenly they moved far far away, leaving their houses empty. Something must’ve scared them off, like a toxic nuclear waste dump buried under the town, poisoning everything. Except it wasn’t. My folks checked that out, before I ditched them. No waste, no radiation. The environment was fine, and nobody since has suffered any problems. The town’s clean, except for the sopaths.”

“Much of it looked deserted as we drove in,” Abner said. “Empty houses, fallow fields, as if a blight struck it.

Autopsy laughed. “That was us. The sopaths. We did so much damage that folk started moving out as fast as they had moved in. So now we’re trying to get more settlers in, especially responsible older soulers, but they’re wary. I could persuade the men, but their wives won’t let them be within a hundred miles of here. So there’s just not enough people here.”

“While there are plenty in Sweetpea,” Bunty said. “And work for visiting sopaths too.”

“We need the money. We put the fear of hell into any soaps we send there, so they behave. Anything the Sweets want, we’ll provide if we can, for cash.”

Soap? A nickname for sopath. Abner knew the children would pick right up on it.

“So we understand,” Bunty said. “Including child prostitutes.”

“Sure. Why not? There’s a market.”

“The question is,” Abner reminded them, “why the disparity in sopath births. How do the two towns differ?”

Autopsy shrugged. “Got me. They had that slaughter, then nothing.”

Something jogged Abner’s mind. “Kraut had huge families, while Sweet had half its population wiped out a few years later. Is there a connection?”

“The fruities,” Clark said. “Did they have sopaths?”

“Dunno,” Autopsy said. “I hear they were close-mouthed about personal things.”

“It was really before the time of the sopaths,” Abner said. “You’re the oldest sopath we have encountered.”

“This just seems to be the place for us,” Autopsy agreed.

“I wonder,” Bunty said. “Abner, you mused on whether there could be a connection between Sweetpea’s tragedy and Sauerkraut’s fertile cultists. The one town had a serious loss of population, while the other was rapidly gaining. Could Kraut have simply run out of available souls?”

“More would have been drawn in from elsewhere,” Abner said.

“Are we sure of that? How long does it take for souls to find their hosts? Maybe it’s not instantaneous.”

“I’m not clear what you’re getting at.”

“Are souls like little clouds?” Clark asked. “Drifting?”

That made it come together for Abner. “A soul without a host—how does it travel? It has no legs or wings, I think.”

“Clouds go where the wind goes,” Clark said. “I’ve watched them.”

“And what wind moves spirits without substance?” Bunty asked.

It was coming together. “They could simply remain where they are, where people died and left them,” Abner said. “Maybe spreading out a bit, but not moving far. So where many people die, like in a hospital, there could be many souls.”

“Many births occur in hospitals,” Bunty said. “Probably more than deaths. No surplus of souls there.”

“Sweetpea!” Clark said. “Half the people died! Big pile of souls!”

“And Sauerkraut,” Bunty said. “Where the fruities used up all the souls.”

“The bastards!” Autopsy swore. “I was born in a damn vacuum!”

“While if your folks had moved to Sweetpea, you’d have had a soul,” Clark said, pleased with himself for discovering it.

“I believe we’ve got it,” Abner said. “The locality of souls. Where we lived it was residential, with a good birth rate and the few who died moved first to retirement communities elsewhere. So we had an increasing number of sopaths.”

“If I had known,” Bunty said soberly, “I’d have visited a retirement community to give birth.”

“But you know, it won’t last,” Abner said. “Soon enough those extra souls in Sweetpea will be used up, and then they’ll be just like other places.”

“So we have a formidable insight,” Bunty agreed. “But not a solution.”

“That comes next,” Abner said.