The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris [37]
“Let's say I don't know diddly. I want you to tell me the whole thing.”
“Okay, this is a pupa, an immature insect, in a chrysalis--- that's the cocoon that holds it while it transforms itself from a larva into an adult,” Pilcher said.
“Obtect pupa, Pilch?” Roden wrinkled his nose to hold his glasses up.
“Yeah, I think so. You want to pull down Chu on the immature insects? Okay, this is the pupal stage of a large insect. Most of the more advanced insects have a pupal stage. A lot of them spend the winter this way.”
“Book or look, Pilch?” Roden said.
“I'll look.” Pilcher moved the specimen to the stage of a microscope and hunched over it with a dental probe in his hand. “Here we go: No distinct respiratory organs on the dorsocephalic region, spiracles on the mesothorax and some abdominals, let's start with that.”
“Ummhumm,” Roden said, turning pages in a small manual. “Functional mandibles?”
“Nope.”
“Paired galeae of maxillae on the ventro meson?”
“Yep, yep.”
“Where are the antennae?”
“Adjacent to the mesal margin of the wings. Two pairs of wings, the inside pair are completely covered up. Only the bottom three abdominal segments are free. Little pointy cremaster--- I'd say Lepidoptera.”
“That's what it says here,” Roden said.
“It's the family that includes the butterflies and moths. Covers a lot of territory,” Pilcher said.
“It's gonna be tough if the wings are soaked. I'll pull the references,” Roden said. “I guess there's no way I can keep you from talking about me while I'm gone.”
“I guess not,” Pilcher said. “Roden's all right,” he told Starling as soon as Roden left the room.
“I'm sure he is.”
“Are you now.” Pilcher seemed amused. “We were undergraduates together, working and glomming any kind of fellowship we could. He got one where he had to sit down in a coal mine waiting for proton decay. He just stayed in the dark too long. He's all right. Just don't mention proton decay.”
“I'll try to talk around it.”
Pilcher turned away from the bright light. “It's a big family, Lepidoptera. Maybe thirty thousand butterflies and a hundred thirty thousand moths. I'd like to take it out of the chrysalis--- I'll have to if we're going to narrow it down.”
“Okay. Can you do it in one piece?”
“I think so. See, this one had started out on its own power before it died. It had started an irregular fracture in the chrysalis right here. This may take a little while.”
Pilcher spread the natural split in the case and eased the insect out. The bunched wings were soaked. Spreading them was like working with a wet, wadded facial tissue. No pattern was visible.
Roden was back with the books.
“Ready?” Pitcher said. “Okay, the prothoracic femur is concealed.”
“What about pilifers?”
“No pilifers,” Pitcher said. “Would you turn out the light, Officer Starling?”
She waited by the wall switch until Pilcher's penlight came on. He stood back from the table and shined it on the specimen. The insect's eyes glowed in the dark, reflecting the narrow beam.
“Owlet,” Roden said.
“Probably, but which one?” Pilcher said. “Give us the lights, please. It's a Noctuid, Officer Starling--- a night moth. How many Noctuids are there, Roden?”
"Twentysix hundred and... about twentysix hun?dred have been described.
“Not many this big, though. Okay, let's see you shine, my man.”
Roden's wiry red head covered the microscope.
“We have to go to chaetaxy now--- studying the skin of the insect to narrow it down to one species,” Pitcher said. “Roden's the best at it.”
Starling had the sense that a kindness had passed in the room.
Roden responded by starting a fierce argument with Pilcher over whether the specimen's larval warts were arranged in circles or not. It raged on through the ar?rangement of the hairs on the abdomen.
“Erebus odora,” Roden said at last.
“Let's go look,” Pilcher said.
They took the specimen with them, down in the elevator to the level just above the great stuffed ele?phant and back into an enormous quad filled with pale green boxes. What was formerly a great hall had