Bees (first half)

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  Pearl’s expression showed readiness for anything, even the Bureau of Conformity closing in. Her mother used to say, "Whatever happens, you were born to it." That homily did not mean much until now.

    She leaves para-survival in time to pick up some sleaze exiting the parlors. In the dark of the alley, she shucks her boots and fatigues, stuffs them in the bag on her rocket and stops short of the junction of alley and street changed ‒ a leopard without spots: flesh-tight shorts and see-through chemise, sexual offerings oozing out of her skin.

  In 30 seconds with moves made smooth by a thousand applications, her lips, toenails and fingernails glisten green. Powder flakes off her skin, removing the sweat from practice, to leave it glowing, germ free and smelling like dew. Her eyes case the street, her nose sniffs the ambiance, and her ears hearken before she steps from the alley.

  A mark spots her and staggers out from under a drug-infusion sign. He glances up and down the street.

Promises snake out of Pearl's hips. Barefoot, her shapely body undulates toward him. He stumbles against her, then pushes her into a doorway.

  His breath does lavender justice. His eyes fix on her sharp and clear. She stiffens. Acid surges into her mouth, her breath staccatos, her palms moisten so that she fears she cannot grasp the stiletto on her hip. He whispers, "Get the hell out of here. They know all about you."

  Her heart racing, Pearl rushes into the alley. The man had said "They know all about you." He resumes his stagger through litter and does not glance back.

  As she flies for her rocket, her muscles overact, nearly impelling her past the seat. When she races onto the street, she must order herself to slow down, to appear normal. Even though her mind screams for her to use her skills, she does not dare peer back.

  Her apartment lies two blocks north of the strip. It has back and front stairs. She runs up the back. Those who track her signature have expertise, so they too take the back route, pausing only to eliminate a derelict sleeping in the filth of the landing.

He wakes just in time to discover which of the five will kill him. The agent with the birthmark face who does it says that makes one less vermin for the roles. He kisses his baser before sliding it into its sheath.

  Now they can get that reject. Leader One's brief lists the vitals: "Pearl Magenta Shaw, 29, 5' 10", 76 kg, inferior class, illegal para-survivalist, unlicensed prostitute."

  While the derelict suffers throes, the agents group in queue, then creep along the corridor. A portal hisses shut, and they break into a run for the loft. Without hesitation, Leader One disintegrates the door with her blast-stick. In scuttles the Bureau of Conformity (the BOC), low and fast through the smoke. Not until the five setup for crossfire do they realize the outcast has escaped. Leader One snarls, "No matter. We’ll get her."

  Still in her working clothes, Pearl leaps into the speeder. She checks the dials, fires it up, and soon the craft shrinks to only a speck in the night. She slides from terror to safety to elation. Pushes back into the cushion, sighs, programs sleep for the dark side then blanks out. While the speeder cuts its path, she dreams of the BOC on her trail.

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  Directed by the chip in her brain, the entity, with her possessions and supplies, leaves the speeder in a clearing lined with 40-foot pines deep in the forest. The air of predawn fails to freshen her, and her daily need calls.

  In the rush, she forgot her kit. Everyone gets free infusions. They keep people returning to their districts. The kits contain 6 infusions for vacations and travel. One can only get them in his or her district.

  Some have attempted to tough it, but deprivation thwarts them. It produces agony, if not death, through stages. First, Pearl's muscles slow. Second, befuddled, her mind idles like an android on pause.

  She removes branches from the pines abutting the clearing and constructs a hanger. The speeder slides in and buries itself until only the top of the conning shows, exudes sealant over its skin then shuts down everything but the link.

  Through the connection with her mind, the ship has digitized Pearl's remembrances and emotions, although in her state only one stands out: Running knock-kneed and bare foot down to the creek to catch crawdads for supper. Off to the right, an old man with brown juice dribbling off his lips glares at her over the bushes. Terror when he yanks her to the ground by her hair, his fists pulping her.

  She had run home after with mud still on cheeks creased with tears. She never told, and only she and the ship interface have it logged. She has forgotten much of what happened except the smell of the old man and the pain that comes whenever she scams some ancient. In the back of every con lingers the old man with juice dripping from his chin.

  If only the computer could strip her of that slap, but it cannot in the face of infusion. Furiously, she buries the conning with rocks and dirt carried with bloody hands until only a mound of detritus lies under the pine. Twenty-five meters away, exhausted, she sits back against a tree and waits without anticipation.

  Free speech surfaces. One fuckin' slave no more with BOC up her ass. Yeah, the withdrawal pain might prove worth it. The third stage – euphoria.

  She has done something few do; she escaped the BOC. They will not find her here in Alberidaho because she has disabled the transmission algorithm. Even if they did, she would kill herself before letting them take her.

  The link copies her fear. One last thing to do for the entity before severing. The ship mind gives her instructions to bring about death.

  Pearl has fought hard for freedom. Her training will bode well here. She acknowledges the ship, rejects its suggestion, and the link closes forever.

  She trembles dazed ‒ alone for real, but then it happens for the first time – no concerns push her in any one direction. Just nothing; no ruminations at all, no ship link to guide her. "Yo, mother!" Fourth, hallucination.

  She floats up or, at least, so it seems. The tops of trees extend in all directions. No haze, no searchers, no BOC. And down there huddling against a trunk, shivering, sits her body.

  She will build her hut in the tallest tree. Shit, I'll float free in the woods. That she lives hits her as unbelievable. She rockets down, views through her eyes again and suffers gloom with no one telling her what to do. No tricks to abuse her, pummel her, make her bleed. She wonders, Can freedom make me forget that? Slavery falls in so easy if you play the game. Working hard for freedom. I've already put in the bolts. Old Abe Lincoln left out that from all he said. Fifth brings disillusion.

  A searcher streaks overhead. It slows into a curve and roams back over her. Pearl scans through leaves that make the ship appear to stutter. The searcher circles lower until it skims the trees. It hovers over her clearing for several minutes, then shoots off.

  Her eyes close, and she dives into dreaming of die now struggling with freedom comes hard. Sixth – unconsciousness. When she awakes, they still fight in her mind. Then, she chooses. Not given. Not forced. Freedom to worry about the BOC catching her. Freedom to suffer. Seventh ‒ false hope arrives.

  She jerks her head toward the sky. Only the whites of her eyes show. Her body twists, every muscle jerking like frog legs in a pan, then she collapses on the ground with pain so intense she cannot speak. She prays for the BOC to find her, to give her an infusion. Eighth ‒ extreme pain. She lies against the tree ready for death, hardly breathing. Ninth ‒ sick despair.

  After two days, she wakes thinking about Screw, Freda, Thump and the rest of her para-survivalist gang. If the BOC knew about me, what of them? Have they rounded them up?

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  Withdrawal passed during the hiatus, and she strides about almost healthy. One day in the meadow near her tree, she searches for berries. Suddenly in a gully that runs up to her tree house, something unseen moves in shadow.

  Pearl freezes. An old man coalesces from the dark into a halo of sunlight to her left. Shaggy hair and gray beard tumble over the sackcloth covering his body. His back bends forward like a bow. Old-man smell returns to Pearl's nostrils. She screams into her sleeve for him to face away, but his head keeps turning like a dog trying to locate a growl.  

  She crouches lower. That movement sends pebbles clattering down to the bottom of the gully. The man fixes his eyes where they have landed. He greets her with a boisterous "halloo." As he checks the path the stones have taken in their plunge, his neck twists 90 degrees right, and his head snaps up like a marionette's whose strings have jerked. Then, he collapses.

  Too smart to fall for that ploy, keeping a bush in between her and the old man, Pearl crawls backwards toward the protection of the forest. The man has not shown himself or made any further sound by the time she stands a few trees in.

  Keeping to the shadows, she slinks from tree to tree. Moves two steps toward him, stops, watches, maneuvers again, and again, until poised close enough to wield her blade.

  She cannot do it. Something about his closed eyes. She scans his lips for brown stains, hand on the knife that clings to her hip.

The man's lids slit open, and he labors up rheumy eyes that startle Pearl. Jumping back, she loses her balance and rolls two meters down the embankment, sputtering in the dust.

  The old man whines, "No leper me, gout, just gout."

  Slime for dinner. My knife about to sever his jugular, and him just a gimp. What the hell can she say? She rasps, "Name is Pearl." But she has caution left over. Pain fomenting deep in her mind orders her to kill him.

  His grimace drifts up from the dirt. For a moment, he squints through the rays of the sun, "My name's Gilgamesh. Black pearls are the most precious, I've heard."

  He reaches down and grabs her wrist. She flinches. The old man resident in her nostrils says mayhem. He pulls, and she scrabbles up the incline until they face each other. "Come back to my shack for some dinner."

  Pearl prays. Crap cuz. He’s trying to get me alone. No BOC lookout or eavesdrop device, fuckin' please.

  He still shakes from his attack, so warily, Pearl helps him stagger along near a stream. They enter a canopy of pines that darkens the air when, like a ghost, his cabin rushes toward her from under of a cliff.

  Her mind does not let her find a cabin. Instead, she visualizes a prison. But Gilgamesh grabs her elbow and guides her in. Trout and potatoes sizzle on a wood-burner. Aroma from a pot perfumes the room. No conveniences, just smells and untested company.

  She searches for the device all lookouts have. Finds no evidence of the BOC, and her trepidation lifts. Her sanity reasserts itself, and she no longer has to creep like a slug.

  She daydreams while Gilgamesh busies himself with cooking. He seems attuned and lets her alone. When she comes out of it, she finds herself dallying over a bit of trout then gulps it down. Nerves jangling, she offers herself up. Keeping an eye on him, she tells Gilgamesh about her previous life and escape from the BOC. The words jumble out of her mouth. Despite freedom of speech, traitor, traitor impregnates her conscious ‒ illegal, unlicensed, having fled the BOC.

  Fear threatens her. Gilgamesh smiles and sits calmly listening. She might have told him about a day at the beach for all the consternation he shows. After a half hour, she runs out of tale. Trying to keep to school speech, trying to keep her hands from shaking, she turns her attention to him. "What do you do out here in the woods?"

  He shoves some trout into his mouth. "Just gettin’ on, me and my bees. Not agridroids, now. My naturals may be the only ones left to man."

  Pearl has never experienced bees. Gilgamesh pauses while firing up a cob packed with tobacco. He tells Pearl that bees have produced billions of pounds of honey for man. His beehives sit in a hollow, which gets sun late. Searchers do not angle scan, so they miss them.

  Hives? Pearl concludes that she has much to learn about freedom. But comfort descends. A lookout would never say that. An old man and his bees – hiding from searchers. Space, a fellow peg. 

  Still, she vibes that a trap has sprung from somewhere. Pearl persuades herself that the BOC has figured out where she hangs out now. The circling searcher? Maybe she did not cover her plane well enough. Odd that Gilgamesh showed up so soon after the searcher made its rounds.

  Everyone needs a little money. Where does he get his? Do they pay him to keep a lookout in this section of the wilderness? Best not to show her ignorance. "How come you do this?"

  "I guess you might call me an individualist." Without her asking, he fashions her a cigarette. When she raises her eyebrows, he shrugs and tells her that decades ago vested interests had suppressed its use by haranguing the public, diverting research away from tobacco safety and health. "Thus, we have the infusions, But my bees couldn’t care less; they imbibe my specials. They like to fly through the smoke. Makes them drunk."

  Pearl laughs for the first time since she left Pius, her ex. This guy lies a bit far out, true. But she lights up and takes a drag. As she relaxes, enjoying her right to do something unhealthy, she wonders, Will Gilgamesh, his bees and I entwine, or will this affair just yield a breather in my new life without the BOC?

  A free woman’s time passes faster than that of the slave. Gilgamesh makes an end of their chatter, yawns, "Will you help me with my bees in the morning? This gout has put me down."

  After saying that she will, Pearl plops on a mattress close to the stove. Pine needles spill their odor. An owl hoots. Leaves rustle. Searchers, like wraiths, glide on the wind. But no reject she, just a whore. So, by what right do I seek freedom only for myself?

  Through the dusk she recognizes the old man skulking. He comes to tell why she prostitutes herself, and that she will never find freedom. She opens her arms to his blows. He tears her apart. Oh, God! She stretches out her arms again, and he fades into thousands of bees humming, calming her, sending her honey.

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  Shy of 13, Amber yearns to become a minister of song in the Church of the Forward Eye. She came up with this idea while playing in its child band. She kneels by her bed praying to God to help her with her dream, but her attention jerks off the prayer. Clump, clump, her uncle stumbles drunk down the hall toward her room.

  Her first reaction, leap to the door and lock it before he gets here to abuse her again; it will not work – he has a key. So, she keeps praying for God to help her. Her uncle opens then locks the door and leers at her.

  He calls her his little Ambergie. He throws her on the bed. Then on top of her, his alcohol slobber wets her blouse. She keeps praying until she notices lying on her bedside table the knife she used for slicing potatoes. As he continues to maul her, she plunges the knife into his throat. His life's blood pulses onto her bosom.

  She strains to get out from under his body. Quickly, she changes and runs screaming under her breath out the door into the night. As if pursued by demons, she runs through streets and alleys far from home, trying to escape what she has done; she has murdered, denied herself her grand mission.

  She hides on the streets for months, starving. Filthy and disheveled, she pushes open the door to a BOC recruiting station.

  The Bureau, a modern-age emulator of the French Foreign Legion, recruits volunteers with shady pasts, forgiven in exchange for unquestioning service. The BOC provides a haven for those with no future. It wields unchallenged power, and even the president must fall in line with its wishes. She signs the papers.

  After years exemplary, she becomes a leader one. Failure brought her to the BOC. No way will failure visit her anymore. Pride will not let it. Now, she and her crew hover in their searcher over a forest.

  She tells the station chief that they have lost the reject near the preserve; she went to ground. "Could she exist long in this wilderness?" She could have spoken to him, but she prefers sending questions chip to chip when dealing with bureaucrats who record voices.

  The SC responds that Shaw's dossier states, "Her splices must have failed before she fled." He pauses. "Have you verified her location?"

  "Yes. With eighty-five percent certainty. She's botched, probably gone feral by now. Must have survived withdrawal."

The SC throws some figures into his predictor. The feedback screen flashes a conclusion that Shaw could survive with help.

Social graces superfluous, Leader One does not thank the SC. She turns away and chips a message to her crew, "Lift off mark 1643, unrestricted search and destroy."

  She fathoms now where Shaw hides – with that keeper who breeds insects, trying to avoid detection under the trees. “We’ll incinerate them with one blast.”

​

  While the BOC ratchets shut the jacket, the captive moans: Not fair, imprisoned on the edge of time. Perhaps a scheme will do – the prisoner opens her eyes to kill the BOC with beams.

  But the killer has changed guise – a meter away, paws jabbing the air, head cocked, a gray squirrel named “Charlie” spits out rodentese.

  While stirring a pot, Gilgamesh tells Pearl that Charlie wants some nuts. The bag hangs on the wall above her. Pearl rubs away night and tosses the critter six that he chomps down as soon as they land.

  Charlie would come every morning unless something had scared him out in the woods. This morning the forest must have provided safety, for he leaps from shelf to chair to rafter to sill and back around. He pauses briefly on the edge of the table to watch Gilgamesh serve up porridge sweetened with honey then bounds away when Pearl comes over.

  Before eating, Gilgamesh opens a trap door in the wall. Shortly, dozens of bees fly around, landing on the table, walking on plates, cups and the other implements like a band of inspectors.

  "This is one of my experiments, to show bees what I'm doing with their honey. I want them to learn that their production goes beyond the feeding of bees. These guys here seem interested, eh?"

  Well, Pearl cannot tell but she wants to learn more. After breakfast, peering left and right into the shadows, she follows Gilgamesh out to the hives. Tubes lace the space between the hives, cages, feed stations and hut. Gilgamesh inspects and airs the hives, regaling her the while with the history of bees and results of his experiments. "I've back bred my bees toward their ancestor, that solitary insect that sprang from wasps over 200 million years ago. The difference – my bees can choose to make honey or not."

  Pearl trembles. BOC geneticists use back breeding in their attempts to make docile slaves. But, the old man shows no sign of prevaricating. So, what can a free person do? A smile brushes her lips. She can make up her mind then do what decided. She grins at the old man.

  Gilgamesh detaches a hive from the tube runs. "I need to put these bees out, but gout has wrapped me up. I would take them in a few weeks when this attack has dissipated, although that would be too late. Can they survive in the wild without me? That's the big question."

  Pearl flinches. Vomit city! Will he ask me to do it? I've got to get myself together before I start tromping off on somebody else’s errands.

  Gilgamesh gazes at her with a silent question then says, "If I don’t get them out now, I’ll lose a year. The flowers that will lure them stop blooming in a week or two. I need you to put them close to the preserve where they can sense the blooms. They must go now. Later, I’ll follow up on them. Will you do it?"

  Something about another being asking for help makes Pearl amiable. Two outcasts should stand as one, but she figures agreeing to do this might expose her to searchers.

  The words of a prayer of her mother run through her mind, ...and preserve us from evil. She decides; she will go to the preserve. Clouds roil in a cold wind. Pearl scrunches her shoulders and follows Gilgamesh back to his cabin.

  No sound comes from the forest. The creatures hide, alert of something coming to violate their peace. Foxes in their dens, moles in their burrows, birds in their nests, mice and voles under the leaves, all aware. Even the insects creep, and the bees have ceased their buzzing. Pearl and Gilgamesh enter the cabin and shut the door against the wind....

  She awakes fitful, not to a squirrel’s demands, but to crows cawing. She hopes that Charlie will show up before she leaves, so she can say goodbye, but Gilgamesh says, "He'll hole up until the crows stop their warnings of movement in the woods."

  After breakfast, through the trees and shrubbery, Pearl treks back to the hut she built to hide in. She had constructed the hut 20 meters up in the highest fir tree on the hill so she could peer into leas pockmarking the woods.

  She lowers her rope ladder with a signal embedded in her scriber. After examining the threads she had placed on it, she determines they have not shifted, and, she climbs up to the hut.

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  A new story will post on or about 1 May 2026

  To get the book Eve Valor: click here.

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