The Sopaths (17 page)

“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.

CHAPTER 9

They pondered it the next few hours. Autopsy turned out to be a good hostess, having accepted the new reality, and they had an excellent hotel suite. They were sure it was bugged, but didn’t care.

“It’s only because she loves you, father,” Nefer said as they relaxed before the TV in the evening. “She wants you to be pleased with her, and to stay here. She knows she can’t stop you from leaving, and that you’re not going to take her into your family the way you did me, and anyway, she’d lose her base if she left here. She has to fuck those men regularly or they’ll start getting restive.” What she said seemed true, but her use of the term father signaled that it was false. She thought Autopsy was faking her conversion. Abner agreed. They had handled only the first round of their encounter.

“That makes me wonder, Abner,” Bunty said. “She said she has had sex with all the local men, and we have no reason to doubt it, because it’s how she maintains control. So why isn’t she pregnant? She surely doesn’t use any contraceptives.” Again, what she said made sense, but she didn’t trust the situation.

“That’s right,” Abner agreed. “We know sopaths can get pregnant, because the ones that service Sweetpea men do. And what about VD? In any large group of men, that’s bound to exist.”

“Daddy, what’s veedee?” Dreda asked. Her horror of the morning was subsiding.

“The letters V D stand for venereal disease,” Abner said. “It’s a group of illnesses that spread sexually. Most are treatable, but none of them are things anyone wants to have. It’s a practical reason for not having careless sex.”

“I’ll remember,” she promised.

“So if Topsy has sex with a lot of men, she should get pregnant or VD?” Clark asked. He had a natural curiosity about things, especially the supposedly naughty secrets.

“That’s it,” Abner agreed. “But she doesn’t seem to have had any trouble. Either she’s quite lucky, or she’s more careful than she suggests.”

“She’s a sopath,” Nefer said. “She won’t be careful. I’m not.”

“You’re too young to get pregnant, and have been lucky to avoid VD,” Abner said. “Your activity has been more limited. You’ve had sex with what, ten boys and men? She’s had sex with hundreds.”

“I guess you’re right. She should be knocked up or sick, and she isn’t.”

“Which may relate to our answer,” Bunty said. “If souls are local, then anyone living in a soul-poor area needs to prevent pregnancy, to avoid getting a sopath. They need good contraception.”

“That’s right,” Abner said. “We don’t need to control the global population, just bring the birthrate down to the level where souls are available. Especially in areas like this. Contraception can solve the sopath problem.”

“Contraception could have solved the population problem long ago,” Bunty said. “But too many people are like sopaths in that respect: they simply don’t bother. And try to persuade the major religions to preach contraception!”

“Which side are the religions really serving?” Nefer asked. “God or Satan? Not that I care, but I’m curious.”

They smiled, knowing it was a joke.

“We’re back with that problem,” Abner said. “We know how to solve the sopath challenge, but we can’t implement it because of religion, carelessness, and ignorance.”

“Unless there’s a way to have safe sex that those things won’t stop,” Bunty said. “This is probably a blind alley, but let’s ask Autopsy what her secret is.”

“She’ll say ‘Fuck me, Abner, and I’ll tell you,’” Nefer said, smiling. “I would.”

“Will she settle for holding my hand?”

“She’d rather hold your cock.” The others had to smile, appreciating the reference.

“I’ll offer my hand,” Abner said.

When it was time to sleep, Abner murmured “The watch continues.”

They all knew what that meant. He did not trust Autopsy despite her seeming conversion. She was probably faking it. She surely did love Abner, now, but that did not necessarily mean she accepted his family in the way Nefer did. Autopsy was older, and accustomed to having her own way. It was more likely that she would be scheming to eliminate the family so she could have Abner for herself. Because she knew Abner stood by his family, and probably meant the formidable threat he had made on Dreda’s behalf, Autopsy was being cautious. She would be looking for a way to get rid of them without implicating herself. Then, by her reckoning, Abner would have no choice but to take what was offered: repeated raw sex with the sopath.

“Do we have to, father?” Nefer asked. “We’re safe here, aren’t we, under Autopsy’s protection?” She was lying, meaning the opposite, as her continuing use of the term indicated.

“It’s good discipline,” Abner said. “We won’t always be in a protected situation. We need to stay in practice.”

“We understand, father,” Clark said. “It’s a pain, but we’ll do it.”

“A pain, father,” Dreda agreed. They were all on board, understanding that they remained in danger.

Nefer took the first watch, walking from room to room in the suite, checking frequently on everyone. Meanwhile Abner and Bunty, pretending assurance of their privacy, made enthusiastic love. Nefer, on her rounds, looked in on them, and nodded; what Autopsy viewed in her film would make her jealous as hell, if she were capable of jealousy.

Then Bunty took her turn on guard, and Nefer lay down beside Abner and took his hand. Again, Autopsy should be jealous, perhaps not of the hand holding specifically, but of Nefer’s freedom to lie beside him and touch him as he slept. Nefer was a sopath, and they all knew it, yet she had this privilege. It meant, among other things, that Abner could get friendly with a known sopath, if he trusted her. Autopsy would be pondering that.

The others, including Abner, took their turns. Thus they passed the night in a routine that signified their caution despite their words. That, too, Autopsy would note and ponder.

In the morning they met with Autopsy again, in the dining room for a lavish breakfast. She was conservatively garbed, showing no private flesh, and her hair was bound back into a bun. “I’ll tell you right off, I don’t use anything when I fuck,” she said. “I have no trouble with VD or pregnancy. I’m immune.”

“Here is our reasoning,” Abner said, not pretending to be surprised. It was a kind of game they were playing, with moves and counter-moves having implications beyond their seeming simplicity. Autopsy was spying on them, and they knew it, and she knew they knew it. “If there’s something protective you use, it’s very effective. We need to know whether it would work on a global scale.”

“There really isn’t. Only—” She broke off, pondering.

“There is something,” Nefer said.

“It’s the grotto.” She did not seem to be lying; this was something important to her.

“The what?”

“I go there every day, because it gives me a high. Probably it has no connection, but I can show it to you if you want.”

She wanted to show them something. They needed to find out why. Sopaths as a class were not into incidental sightseeing. What was really on her mind? “We had better see it,” Abner said.

“Give me your hand. I’ll take you there.”

There was no further doubt she knew of their evening dialogue. She was implying that she would settle for hand holding, as Nefer did. But of course she would not. It had to be a ploy. “Take us there,” Abner said, proffering his hand.

Autopsy took it and led him outside. Her fingers massaged his fingers as they walked, with a surprisingly erotic effect. “It’s a couple miles away, in the hills. We should drive.”

They got into the motor home, and Abner drove while Autopsy sat up front and put her hand on his arm, subtly massaging it too. She really was settling for that, for now, perhaps considering it an avenue to greater intimacy. He remembered how she had massaged his penis.

He wondered again why a sopath should desire contact with any souler. It seemed that even though she lacked a soul, she missed it, and touching him meant she was also touching his soul. Sexual intimacy would represent an even closer touch.

“This is nice out in the country,” Clark remarked from in back, evidently looking around. “Will you let us run around and play, father?” Something the children had no intention of doing. The family was staying close together.

“If you really want to, son.”

They remained on red alert. All of them understood that there was a vicious animal in their midst that only
looked
like a lovely young woman. Nefer had educated them well in that respect.

They parked in the hills below a wooded slope. Autopsy led him up to a small cave. The grotto was a quiet chamber overgrown with moss. “I don’t let anyone else come here,” she said. “It’s mine. I think the fruities knew of it, because I’ve found some of their trinkets here, but they didn’t mess it up. Maybe they liked the high.” She breathed deeply. “Feel it.”

They breathed deeply. There was a certain indefinable odor, not unpleasant, but it did nothing for Abner and evidently not for Clark. The girls, however—Bunty, Nefer, and Dreda—soon were truly appreciating it. “There
is
something,” Bunty murmured.

Abner looked at her. She was almost glowing, and her breasts seemed to be pushing against the cloth of her shirt, accentuating her sex appeal. She gazed at him with a certain barely-muted passion that made him want to have sex with her right there where she stood. He had a burgeoning erection that he suspected was partly her appearance and partly her subtle odor reaching his internal triggers.

“You feel it too,” Autopsy said wisely.

Abner looked at her, and saw the same sexual passion, unmuted. Then he looked at Nefer, and it was there too. Even little Dreda looked hungry for something. But not Clark, who looked uneasy about the kind of stares the girls were giving him. He could be having a sexual rush that he did not know how to handle. Abner sympathized.

“This is an aphrodisiac environment,” Abner said. “That turns on females, who it seems then turn on males with their pheromones or whatever. This explains a little, but not enough.”

“The moss,” Bunty said. “Maybe there’s fungus or lichen, with spores that act like pheromones, turning on people. But I’m not sure why, unless it’s simply a remarkable coincidence.”

“If it is restricted to a special environment, like a cave,” Abner said, “it could have trouble propagating. It could send spores out on the wind, but it might be more efficient to use an animal host, the way many plants use bees.”

“Flowers don’t make bees sexy,” Bunty said. “They provide them with sweet food as an inducement. Then their spores or equivalent get carried along when the bees travel.”

“But something that made human females like it, might then be able to spread as they interacted with others,” Abner said, working it out. “If the spores are delicate, needing a warm moist environment, sex could be a way to transfer them safely.”

“How about rabies?” Clark asked, edging toward the cave exit. “That makes animals really mad, and they bite and spread it in their spit.”

“Now there’s an idea,” Abner agreed. “If the spores emulated pheromones and made the host not mad but sexually turned on, that would do it.”

“What about no VD?” Nefer asked. Her eyes were wide, her breathing was fast and her mouth wet; she stood with her legs spread as if ready to accommodate intimacy. It was hard to believe she was only seven years old; she seemed to be suffering a genuine sexual arousal.

“A really sharp infection would try to keep a host healthy,” Abner said. “So it might fight off other infections, and maybe in the process pregnancy also, since its purpose is to maximize its opportunities to spread. It might want the area of contact, the sex organs, to be reserved for it alone.”

“That would explain a lot,” Autopsy said. “When I first came here I was six years old and ordinary. But soon I began developing, and I really got interested in sex, and men really got interested in me.”

“The fruities!” Nefer said. “They must have found this grotto, and discovered how it made their women sexy without babies. Only they
wanted
babies. So they got the hell out of here to avoid temptation.”

“That could certainly explain their abrupt departure,” Bunty agreed. “There’s no fanatic like a religious fanatic.”

Abner glanced again at Bunty, whose measurements seemed to have expanded. He suspected that only her strong interest in fathoming the erotic mystery of the grotto kept her from trying to get him alone for phenomenal passion. “We need to get samples of those spores, or whatever it is in the air here,” he said. “It just might be the perfect contraceptive.”

“If you want to drop the birth rate,” Bunty said, “Give women a contraceptive that not only protects them from VD, but also enhances their sexual desire and allure. They’ll use it often, and have no babies, regardless of their religious strictures. Sex appeal is the average woman’s real religion, because of the power it can give her over men.”

“We may just have our answer,” Abner said, excited. “Take samples to a laboratory, isolate the active ingredients, manufacture, package, and distribute them as a turn-on sexiness pill. We wouldn’t even have to mention its contraceptive aspect, to avoid religious feedback. People would use it regardless.”

“Samples?” Autopsy asked, frowning. This was it seemed not part of her agenda.

“Sections of the moss, the air, the earth, any water here,” he explained. “To get them analyzed in a chemical laboratory. To find out how this stuff works. To solve the population problem, and stop the births of more sopaths.”

“What’s in it for me?”

And of course she didn’t care about the possible good for the world. She had her own price.

“Persuade her,” Bunty said abruptly. “We’ll go search the motor. We should have some jars there for samples.” She glanced at the children and Nefer, and the four of them left the cave.

Abner realized that Bunty had had more than enough of the erotic arousal fostered by the grotto and needed to get herself and the girls out of it immediately. It wasn’t that she had any objection to sex, but that this artificial promotion of lust was not appropriate to the family setting. She was probably not keen on exposing Clark to the attention of aroused girls, either. Nefer was behaving, but in that environment she might see about seducing the boy, and Clark was surely willing.