“Thank you.” LeClerk rolled his head in a helpless gesture. “I guess that’s all I could hope for.”
They were silent for some time, gazing at the path and the different gardens around them.
“I need to start my shift. If there’s nothing else?”
“No, no. You can go.” George didn’t know what else to say, to acknowledge the loss LeClerk had suffered. His pain was so real, George had the feeling he could grab it with both hands, like a wriggling worm with poisonous spikes digging into the flesh, leaving it raw and bleeding. Once LeClerk had vanished, George turned to Andi.
“I’d say he didn’t do it.”
“Probably not. His emotions were genuine, strong. It felt like drowning. I don’t think the killer is capable of such deep emotions, especially for a victim.”
“Which means all our suspects have gone poof. Damn.”
“Yeah, damn.” Andi started down the path. “Let’s visit the bees. They are active today.”
They could hear the buzzing before they reached the hives. The busy sound transported George immediately to lazy summer days spent in the garden at his parents’ house, drinking cold lemonade and just letting time pass. A luxury he hadn’t indulged in for a long time. Andi went to the first hive in the row, looking at it with his head cocked to the side.
“Anything interesting?”
“The queen is getting old. The entire swarm feels it. Makes them restless. The workers have already decided to hatch several new queens this season.”
“I know they don’t make conscious decisions….”
“Not in the way you’d define conscious. It’s instinct. Knowing in the bones even though they have an exoskeleton.” Andi sighed, clearly annoyed about his inability to explain something that was absolutely obvious to him. George put a hand on his shoulder.
“Hey, we’ve talked about this. I may not understand immediately, but I won’t ever if you give up on me.”
“It’s a small miracle you haven’t given up on me.”
“I would never.” George looked at Andi, the buzzing of the bees growing louder in the sudden silence between them, not awkward or shy or loaded, just silence, acknowledgingin their boneswhat was true. Andi’s eyes lit up.
“It’s like a thousand minds in one, or one in a thousand, depends on how you want to see it, all tumbling thoughts and snippets of information, chaos if you’re at the wrong distance, but when you step back or close enough, you see order, the patterns in the chaos, the overruling mind. It’s so hard for blobs to imagine. I know there’s studies on social insects, arguing it’s all about the chemicals and the pheromones, forgetting that is all what blob brains are as well, that to be a mind you don’t have to be trapped in a bowl of bone, you don’t have to limit yourself to one body, two legs, two arms, you can have thousands, millions even, if you desire so, and every tiny bit makes you bigger, stronger, better, shows another facet you haven’t seen before, adds to what is already a complicated picture with hundreds of angles, and you can get more and more and more, it never stops, with each one born you grow, and each death is a lesson learned, a memory gained, in an endless cycle, and even if the individual dies, the mind survives, forever carrying on, true death lies in forgetting, not with them, they never ever forget until the last one of them is gone.”
“Wow. I think I get it better now. You say to you the hive is like one of these pictures, where lots of photos form a face or a city or whatever?”
“Yeah, like that. Each picture tells a story, and combined, there is an overlaying pattern. The queen is old. They need a new one.”
“Only this hive?”
Andi concentrated. “No, the third one from the other side, they have the same situation.”
“This sounds like something the beekeeper should be worrying about.”
“Usually, they change the queens well before they die to keep the gene-pool fresh. There’s a whole industry dedicated to breeding queens. It’s bizarre, and not yielding the results they’re hoping for. Worse, really.”
“Isn’t that always the case when humans interfere with the natural world?” George shook his head. They weren’t militant vegans or anything, but seeing documentaries about how meat was produced—the whole process one of exploitation not only of the animals but of the workers, the land, the water, all resources that should be treated with the utmost respect—in addition to Andi’s preference for a plant-based diet because of hisgeschenk, had made both of them almost completely vegetarian. Even before he’d met Andi, George had tried to only buy quality meat, and since he started cooking for his partner on a regular basis, his standards had only risen.
“I assume bees have similar problems to cattle?” George asked.
“Yes. Beekeepers use a lot of antibiotics to keep them healthy, which ultimately weakens them, and then there’s the Varroa mite, a nasty little fucker which latches on to bees and their larvae, sucking them out and causing serious deformities in the young bees. It’s all because humans always need more than they are given. There are studies showing that bees with a healthy social life, meaning lots of grooming, and more aggressive bees, have no problems with the mite because they bite them off their sisters. Bees that have been bred for maximum honey production and docility lack the grooming urge, as well as the aggressiveness that would compel them to kill the mites, aka the intruders. The solution is for the beekeeper to use ethanoic acid to kill the mites, which, of course, harms the bees as well. A clusterfuck.”
“I can see that.” George looked at the hives, which seemed so tranquil in the sun. “What’s with these bees? Are they of the docile variety?”
“They’re mixed. Somebody’s trying to make them sturdier. There are a lot of dead mites in all the hives. You can see the bodies at the entrances.”
“Because intruders must be terminated.” The voice came from the entrance to the garden. George turned, spotting a man in a beekeeper suit. He had his hat and veil still down, and George was able to see his gruff face with a wild black beard and dark brown eyes. He was tall, a good six foot two, and burly, with a paunch pressing the white suit outward. The man extended his hand. “I’m Bruce Sprenger, one of the facility managers for House Cusabo and the main beekeeper.”
“Nice to meet you.” George shook his hand. “I’m Detective George Donovan, and this is my partner, Detective Andrew Hayes.”
