Ditbulls at the Gate
… realAlbert is caught between rox and a
hard place …
It was a rather tight pickle that Ritu and I found ourselves in, squeezed by two squadrons of battle-golems who were marching in the same direction. The first armed contingent, just ahead, battled their way forward against stiff resistance while a second band of ditto-warrior reinforcements drew up behind, ready to take over when the first bunch were depleted. Ritu and I had to step along carefully in order to stay between the two advancing groups, forging ahead through that awful, dank tunnel. Only a few dim glowbulbs, tacked onto bare stone walls, kept us from stumbling in the dark.
“Well, there’s one thing we can find satisfying,” I quipped, trying to lift my companion’s spirits. “At least our destination is near.”
Ritu didn’t seem amused by the irony, or cheered that we were finally approaching the goal we set out to visit Tuesday evening—the mountain villa where she spent weeks as a child, vacationing with her father. The trip had taken much longer than promised, by a route more circuitous and traumatic than either of us expected.
I kept searching for an alcove or crevice, any refuge to avoid being herded toward the harsh echoes of fighting—detonations and clanging ricochets—as the first squadron of battle-golems advanced against bitter resistance. But though Yosil Maharal’s secret access shaft twisted enough
to take advantage of softer layers in the rock, it never offered a safe place to duck and hide.
Lacking that, I’d give anything for a simple phone! I kept trying to use my implant, dialing for Base Security. But there weren’t any public links within line of sight and the tiny transceiver in my skull couldn’t transmit through stone. We were probably outside the boundaries of the Military Enclave by now, traversing deep under Urraca Mesa.
Serves you right, I thought. You could have called for help ages ago. But no, you had to play go-it-alone sleuth. Smart guy.
Ritu wasn’t much help offering alternatives. Still, I tried to keep up one side of a conversation, talking to her in a low voice as we hurried along.
“What puzzles me is how Beta penetrated the Defense Zone without someone like Chen to escort him inside. And how did he even know we were here?”
Ritu seemed unsteady, perched halfway between listlessness and tears after her recent ruthless treatment. It made me hesitate before asking, “Do you have any idea what Beta wanted you for?”
I saw conflict in her eyes—a wish to confide, battling against a habitual terror of something that must never be said aloud. When she finally spoke, the words came haltingly and tinged with bitterness.
“What does Beta want me for? Is that your question, Albert? What’s the ultimate thing that any male animal wants a female for?”
Her question made me blink. The answer might have seemed obvious a century ago, but sex just isn’t the all-transfixing force that it was in Grandpa’s day. How could it be? That urge is no harder to satisfy now than any other inherited Stone Age hunger, like the yearning for salt or fatty snack foods.
So, if not sex, what else could she be talking about? “Ritu, we don’t have time for riddles.”
Even in the dark, I saw symptoms of a carefully buttressed facade collapsing. The corners of her mouth moved—halfway between a tremor and a sardonic smile. Ritu wanted to divulge, but had to do it on her own terms, preserving a sliver of pride. A measure of distance and … yes … that old superiority.
“Albert, do you know what happens inside a chrysalis?”
“A chrys … you mean a cocoon? Like when a caterpillar—”
“—turns into a butterfly. People envision a simple transformation: the caterpillar’s legs turn into the butterfly’s legs, for instance. Seems logical, no? That the caterpillar’s head and brain would serve the butterfly in much
the same way? Continuity of memory and being. Metamorphosis was seen as a cosmetic change of outer tools and covering, while the entity within—”
“Ritu, what does any of this have to do with Beta?” I honestly couldn’t see a connection. The infamous ditnapper made his fortune offering cheap copies of highly coveted—and copyrighted—personalities like Gineen Wammaker. Ritu Maharal certainly had her own quirks, as unique as the maestra’s. But who would pay for bootleg copies of an administrator at Universal Kilns? What profit could Beta see in it?
Ritu ignored my interruption.
“People think the caterpillar changes into a butterfly, but that doesn’t happen! After spinning a chrysalis around itself, the caterpillar dissolves! The whole creature melts into nutrient soup, serving only to nourish a tiny embryo that feeds and grows into something else. Something altogether different!”
I glanced back nervously, weighing the distance of marching footsteps. “Ritu, I don’t get what you’re—”
“Caterpillar and butterfly share a lineage of chromosomes, Albert. But their genomes are separate, coexisting in parallel. They need each other the same way that a man needs a woman … to reproduce. Other than that—”
Ritu stopped walking because I had stopped, halting suddenly, my feet unable to move as I stared without blinking. Her revelation burst in my brain at last, just like a bomb.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m usually calm about new ideas. In fact, I’ve always tried to be a skeptic, especially when I’m walking around in realflesh. An archie-debunker, you might say. But right then, her words and their implications hurt so much that I wanted desperately to push them away, and all understanding with them.
“Ritu, you … can’t be saying …”
“ … that they’re paired creatures. Caterpillar and butterfly need each other, yet have in common no desires or values. No loves.”
I could hear the second contingent of war-golems coming up from behind, even more intimidating now that I had some inkling of their inner nature. Still, I couldn’t move without asking one more question. I met Ritu’s eyes. In the dimness, everything was gray.
“Which are you?” I asked.
She laughed, a bitter sound that bounced harshly off the tunnel walls.
“Oh, I’m the butterfly, Albert! Can’t you tell? I’m the one who gets to flutter in the sunlight, reproducing in blithe and blissful ignorance.
“That is, I used to be. Till last month, when I started to realize what was going on.”
My mouth felt dry as I followed up. “And Beta?”
The strain showed in her short, barked laugh. Ritu’s head jerked toward the sound of marching feet.
“Him? Oh, Beta works hard, I’ll give him that much. He’s the one with hungers. Ambitions. Voracious appetites.
“And one more thing,” she added. “He gets to remember.”