Noctuidae Read Online Free PDF

to all fours beside her. She wriggled away fast and as far as the now oversized tandem bag allowed, which was not far. He watched her but let her go.
    —Okay. You need to follow me now. Keep low, be as quiet as you can, not a sound. Just trust me—you’ll understand when you see. And he swung his incurved arm like a swimmer, like a scythe.
    Pete began crawling toward the cave mouth, but Sue-Min’s thighs shook so bad she couldn’t keep his pace, even after she got free of the sleeping bags. A couple meters on he crooked his neck, looked back at her behind him, barely out from the bag, made mute jerking motions with his chin for her to follow, another inward sweep of his arm. Could he see how she trembled?
    She feared to set a precedent by taking his directions in any way, but she knew she needed to see it for herself, whatever it was. She steadied her legs some with deep breaths and effort and went on, shuffling over the dusty cobbles in her stocking feet silent as she could.
    A few meters from the edge Pete pulled back, chinwagged again for her to go on alone. And again her situation devolved to an undesirable choice. As she crawled past Pete she mouthed —My choice to go on. My choice, understand? He only stared back blank as she came to the edge where —Oh holy fucking shit!
    The dark shapeless form outside rose high above them to where a sort of huge translucent fan crowned it. Some forty meters up or more. Long, broad, veiny . . . petals . . . caught the scant moonlight, glinting in oily inconsistency purple red green white blue back to red, marking passage en route through other hues unknown from any crayon box. The colors bore the elusive character of iridescent insects, shimmering back and forth from bright indefinable luminescence to matte absence with a hidden and indefinable rhythm. She gaped at the display, altogether strange yet almost beautiful.
    The immense pitch bulk or trunk behind the array seemed immune to the moonlight, showing only as an enormous emptiness in the night. Despite its limited brightness Sue-Min somehow sensed a lack of life in the mass, an overall deadness as if it were a virus or remnant, a thing that lacked any animating spark.
    The deathly petalled spread hung overhead like the centerlight pop of a single stillborn firework, one lone frozen moment from a long forgotten Fourth of July. Behind it the unlit trunk rose above and hung below till blocked either way by the cave mouth such that she could not decide the direction of its source, whether it was child of the riven Earth beneath or progeny of the very sky it blocked from view.
    Was this great dark thing in the canyon some kind of massive night blooming cactus? Or was she witnessing the manifestation of a gigantic nocturnal beast, perhaps a Godzilla-sized star-nosed mole? Either way where had it been in the light? How could such an enormity simply appear?
    A muted crunch came from behind. She swung to see Pete on his feet beneath the bat roost, waving his hands in apparent attempt to roust the bats and shoo them out. She heard him whisper —Why aren’t you outside? It’s night! Get out! Get, get! Go!
    And after all why were the bats still inside this night? That didn’t seem right. She pressed herself to the pebbles as they flew overhead, none coming near her. Outside the attenuated moonlight caught the bats as they scattered. They seemed disoriented, flittering in twisted zigzags as if ill till one struck a blade of the object’s glimmering fan! She thought she saw the membrane twitch or ripple to intercept the bat, which stuck and hung there and as she watched began to dissipate, the veins glowing brighter right around it. She could see the bat’s essence streaming in toward the spread’s hidden center through the network of sinuous vessels. Their luminosity increased a moment then diminished and the bat was gone.
    Pete stood beside her. She almost gasped but her fear was internal enough for its force to seal her mouth.