“You’re a cad.”
“What are you gonna do, kill me and put me on a pin?”
“No, I’ll—”
A cough came from the doorway. I looked up guiltily to see Mrs. Kent standing there, watching me as if I had lost my mind.
“Err,” I said, hastily setting the fly down.
“I came up to see if you wanted lunch in the kitchen or if I should bring you up a tray,” she said.
“Oh. Uh. I’ll come down in just a minute. Let me just… err… finish up here.”
She nodded, so clearlynotcommenting on my behavior that it was practically a comment on its own. The floorboards creaked as she made her way back down the hall.
“This is all your fault,” I muttered to Rex, and imagined a squeaky snicker in return.
Painting Rex the fly took me nearly two days. It shouldn’t have, but I was most of the way through when I stopped to compare my work to my predecessor’s burying beetle, and had to start over in despair. In the end, I did not so much finish as realize that I had passed the point of diminishing returns and was now just making things worse.
This sort of thing happens a great deal in illustration, and I had been doing it long enough that I usually knew when to stop. Unfortunately, between the new position and the terrifyingly high bar set by the previous painter, I had listened too much to my own anxieties.
It’s as good as it’s going to be. I need to stop. If this is not the quality that he wanted, he may fire me if he wishes, but I cannot do better than this.
I was gloomily aware that I had failed to meet the standard set by my predecessor. Even if I hadn’t been, a quick glance atthe pages on the worktable would have shown me. My fly was competent and workmanlike, but it did not look as if it might suddenly walk off the page.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. I could notforcemyself to be a genius. If artists could do that… well, we would be a very different breed.
The hallway leading to Halder’s office seemed twice as long, and yet I was still at the door far before I was ready. I knocked and stepped inside.
“I have a sample for you, Doctor,” I said. My voice didn’t shake. I was rather proud of that.
“Very well. Let’s see what you have.” He held out his hand and I offered him the page, my hand trembling in a way that my voice had not. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to notice.
He gave Rex a cursory glance, grunted, and pulled out his own magnifying glass. I clasped my hands behind my back to keep from wringing them, digging my nails under the opposite cuffs. My fingers felt like ice against my wrists.
“Bristles on the meron,” he murmured, “longitudinal stripes on the thorax… yes. Competently done, Miss Wilson. Maintain this standard, and we shall have no difficulties.” He held the page out to me. I blinked at him, then down at the fly.
Some part of me wanted to ask if he was certain, or if he was looking at the right image. Did he notseehow shoddy it was compared to the work of my predecessor? Couldn’t hetellthat this was merely competent?
If it had been anyone else, I would have thought that he was lying to spare my feelings. But this was Halder, who, so far as I could tell, possessed the personal warmth of a guinea worm.
“Make certain that you do not confuse the larvae with any other fly,” he added, not looking up. “The screwworm is distinctive and must be illustrated with great accuracy. The mechanism of its burrowing is one central to my thesis.”
I swallowed. So this was the adult form of a screwworm,the bane of livestock throughout the region. I had not realized. “This is the variety that attacks cattle?” I asked.
“Cattle, sheep, horses, us—anything that it can lay eggs in.Hominivoraxis not picky about its diet.” He smiled crookedly. It was not a pleasant smile. “It is one of the few insects that we know of that prefers to devour the living but will feast on the dead as well. It is a delightfully efficient little beast. The female lays eggs in nostrils, eyes, and open wounds, and once the larvae hatch, they burrow as deeply as they can, seeking live flesh. You have perhaps half a day to wash the eggs away before they hatch. I have heard of newborns suffering infestations in the stump of the umbilical cord when they were not bathed properly in the first days after birth.”
“Good god,” I said, appalled. Rex was apparently a bloodthirsty little monster.
“Cleanliness is next to godliness, Miss Wilson, or so they say. But foulness provides rather more opportunity for scientific inquiry.” His smile grew, showing teeth. “You are most privileged, Miss Wilson. Your work may contribute, in some small way, to my life’s dream of the eradication of monsters that have preyed upon us for centuries. Now, was there anything else you wanted?”
“No, Doctor,” I murmured, and fled, feeling my skin crawling as if there were already eggs laid upon it.
Painting theC. hominivoraxlarva was, in some ways, much easier than the adult fly. In other ways though, it was obnoxious. Alcohol from the preservation process tends to bleach everything out, so I could never be sure of getting the colors quite right. Sure, it was white and fleshy, but was it thecorrectwhite and fleshy?
It’s possible to preserve many insect larvae by pinning them, but since you have to remove the internal organs to keep them from rotting, they tend to collapse. Then you must reinflate them, using one of a number of patented caterpillar inflaters.It’s worth it for things like caterpillars, where the color patterns are so important, but hardly anyone bothers with maggots. (I learned this, incidentally, over the course of a ten-minute lecture from Halder when I went to ask about the colors. I went back to my rooms and said, “Patented caterpillar inflater,” out loud several times and laughed so hard that Sally came to check on me.)
Nevertheless, after a great deal of lifting pigment and dabbing tiny smidges of gouache, I had something that bore more than a passing resemblance to the screwworm larva. I presented it to Halder, my stomach knotting almost as badly as the first time.This is it, this is the one, he’s going to look at it and think it’s just a blob and…
