The sign hung over the gate to the compound: Science Kills. It loomed over the community library, and the community medical center. Anyone engaging in a science experiment would be branded and expelled from the compound. Wasn’t it scientists who released an aberrant EB virus into the public? Wasn’t it their vaccine search that created a virulent monstrosity, one that ravaged the globe and wiped out 98% of its human population? Although...that number was never absolutely determined because there were no statisticians, no government agents left to give a reckoning.
Andros hid the vial of super honey in a false panel of his personal hive. Apiary attendants were starting to show up for work. Across the endless expanse of hives the workers fanned out.
“Morning, Nicholas.”
Andros greeted his chief assistant, and Nicholas responded with his invariable question.
“Quiet last night?”
“Yep. Pretty quiet.”
Andros lived at the apiary. Everyone else had a mate, a home, a child. Andros had been on the list for a mate. He was still waiting, so he stayed at the apiary. Bees and honey were his life.
“By the way,” Nicholas turned to him with an afterthought. “How’s that gash?”
Andros looked at his right hand and held up his sixth digit, which was wrapped in a makeshift bandage.
“Pretty good.”
Two days ago the wound had been raw, deep and bloody. It had been that way because Andros inflicted it on himself. He had slashed it on a plow blade to find out if his super honey healed as he hoped it would.
Nicholas was wagging his head.
“You sure do heal up quick. I thought for sure you might lose that finger.”
“Nope,” Andros answered. “Though I do have one to spare.” That was an old joke, repeated throughout the compound. Polydactyls were quite common in the community. Andros had to be careful, though, that Nicholas didn’t get suspicious. The experiment had worked. The super honey had healed the wound fast. Its edges were pulling together already. Next time he’d be more discreet, inflict a wound somewhere on his body where no one could see.
Research of any kind was forbidden, but research into immunity was especially taboo. Work on viral immunity had produced the pathogen that almost wiped out the human race. Scientists had designed an organism that eviscerated human white blood cells. When the pathogen escaped the lab, no one was immune because its assault was on native immunity, the species’ first defense.
Andros understood the plague’s history. As chief apiarist he had access to the community library, and he read about the rogue scientist who released the mutated EB virus. But once in the library, he started to read other books, censored books, about inheritance.
The temptation to experiment was overwhelming. He had the bees. He imagined what he would do with them, and his new knowledge.
He talked to his bees.
“You are my legacy,” he said. “I know they will never let me mate, have children. I end here with no offspring, no evidence of my existence. My mark on the world I will make through you. We will show them! No more gangrene. No more sepsis. We will build such a super strain of honey that it will cure all infections.”
Andros was not angry, but he was bitter. He recalled the conversation with the archivist, who kept records on everyone’s parentage. The records went back generations. Mating was strictly controlled to prevent the appearance of pathological mutations.
“There is a slim chance,” the archivist had reported, “that we will find a mate, in a distant compound. It’s hard with polydactyls. Most of you are sterilized before puberty. You’re one of the lucky ones. No concomitant genetic anomalies are evident.”
“Lucky?” Andros sputtered. And then he stopped himself. His ability to find a mate was entirely dependent on the archivist. He had to stay in the man’s good graces.
That conversation was five years ago. From time to time he would check in with the archivist.
“Sorry, Andros. No luck. But we won’t give up, will we?”
Andros knew the archivist was conservative, but it was more than that. Perhaps the compound did not want Andros to mate with someone who would take him away from the bees. Everyone knew he had a magic touch with his charges. Honey was gold. It healed, and it supplemented the diet. It was also currency, traded for wheat, citrus, walnuts. Even fuel.
The compound could not afford to lose Andros. That’s why they let him live at the apiary, let him have his private hives. A rare privilege.
The rash first appeared on his belly. Maybe it wouldn’t go further. There had been several cases of this strange virus in the compound. It was mostly innocuous, but polydactyls were hit hardest.
The rash spread to his chest, and then the headache struck. It was blinding. And a fever. He tried to conceal the illness but the flush spread across his cheeks.
“Andros, you alright?” Nicholas was the first to notice. Would he report it?
The others saw. Soon leaders heard Andros was ill.
“I’m OK,” he assured them. But the rule, the fast rule in the compound was that anyone with a contagious illness had to be confined to the medical center. Andros was removed.
“My bees…,” he called to Nicholas.
“Don’t worry. I know how you care for them. I’ll try to be as good with them as you are.”
Andros wasn’t worried about that. He was worried about discovery. Would Nicholas notice the difference between his hive and the others? Not likely. It was not in the way the bees looked, or behaved, or lived. It was in their genes, hidden.
Andros was feverish, and not thinking clearly. He knew Nicholas would find the vial of super honey. That wouldn’t matter. It didn’t have a label. It wouldn’t be particularly suspicious even though it was hidden. Only later did Andros remember the true danger, the one oversight that would betray him.
His notes.
Three weeks the fever raged. Three weeks he wasn’t entirely conscious. When he came out of it, when he was ready to go home, the compound commander met him at the door with an armed contingent.
“This is everything we believe is yours, personally. As you know most of your provisions belong to the compound and they will stay here.”
They had found the notes. That sank in quickly. He was to be branded and expelled.
“What about my bees?”
“Those freaks of nature you were breeding. They have been destroyed, their hives burned, anything connected to them incinerated. We have to protect nature.”
“You ignorant fool. Do you know what you have done? There was magic in that honey. It could have cured….”
The commander cut him off.
“You are either sick, or evil. Doesn’t matter. You are dangerous. We will give you provisions enough for a week, cuttings to start growing your own food. No matter what you’ve done, we wish you well, Andros. One weapon for self defense, a sword.”
Andros followed the armed contingent to the barn and the forging iron. The small brand would mark him forever so that no compound anywhere would give him refuge.
Andros passed the hives on the way to the gate. Nothing for him there anymore. His babies, and his life’s work, were gone.
“Science Kills”
The sign was the last thing he saw when he left the compound.
He was alone. He’d never been outside. Fear gripped him.
Then he saw...it was beautiful! Fields of wild flowers stretched into the distance. Bees. The air was rich with them. They swarmed in the sun and filled their bellies with the bounty of nature.
Andros breathed deeply. He was alone, and he was free. They took his bees, but not his knowledge. He would start again. He would survive. And maybe, just maybe out here he’d find a mate, and he would truly have children. Maybe not perfect children, but his children.
Andros picked up his belongings and walked through the ungroomed grasses into the brilliantly colored landscape. He had discovered already one gift the compound did not give him: hope.
Image credit: geralt on Pixabay
The story was written in response to the Inkwell's Prompt #11, World Building.
