Michael Palmer - Oath of Office

Humphries slipped back into his contemplative mode. “There’s certainly evidence of insect behavioral shifts as a result of, let’s say, light pollution, or thermal factors, or air pollution, or various forms of radiation. Have you followed what’s been happening to the honeybee population?”

“I have,” Darlene said while Lou was shaking his head. “Colony collapse disorder.”

“Right on, ma’am. The explanation for CCD is still widely disputed. The number of Western honeybee colonies have been declining quite impressively for a couple of decades, but more rapidly over recent years. Some of my colleagues are blaming biotic factors such as viruses or mites, but others purport that environmental shifts-cell phone radiation, pesticides, even genetically modified crops are to blame.”

Lou’s face lit up. “So, it’s possible that GMO crops caused the bees’ colony collapse?”

“Evidence for that is slim and certainly not proven as far as I know. It’s still a controversial subject at best.”

“Could the pollen from GMO crops be a contributing factor?” Darlene asked.

Humphries shook his head-a firm warning not to jump to any conclusions. “It’s almost impossible to say. If that were the case with your termites, I’d expect there would have been a corresponding mass kill event, or perhaps a dramatic reduction in the termite population. A full-on mutation would be something quite startling.”

“But assuming what I observed is fact, how would you explain it?” Lou asked. He felt like he was feeling his way down an endless pitch-black corridor.

“I couldn’t,” Humphries replied. “That’s my point. Not by nature, anyway.”

“Or by mutation,” Darlene added.

“Or by mutation.”

“So, what now?” she asked, unable to mask her disappointment.

“I’d say the best thing for us to do now is have a look at those bugs,” Humphries was saying, apparently unaware of the subtext going on between his visitors. “Dr. Lou, you promised to bring me some samples?”

Lou nodded, and he hoisted his briefcase from the carpeted floor.

Darlene’s eyes widened. “You had those flesh-eating bugs with you this entire time?”

Lou grinned sheepishly. “I didn’t want you to get creeped out before the expert was around to assure you that these guys can’t eat through glass.”

Lou handed Humphries two large covered baby food jars. In one of them, the bottom was nearly coated with termites. The other contained a single gigantic bug, pumpkin in color, with a segmented body, long scimitar-shaped pincers, and pure white disks where its eyes might have been.

“Joey, the collector I spoke to you about, assured me that the huge, puffed-up one is a queen.”

Darlene shivered and hunched her shoulders, perhaps again imagining the bugs were crawling up her arms. She glared at Lou but could not hold the reproving look very long. “No secrets next time,” she said, her eyes glinting.

“No secrets, pal,” Lou replied. “Next time I’m carrying carnivorous termites, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Oh, she’s the queen, all right,” Humphries was saying. “The queen of queens. My lab is next door. Let’s go there and have ourselves a closer inspection.”

Humphries took great care to maximize the limited space in his windowless lab. A Corian-covered counter extending out from the far wall provided enough surface area for three distinct workstations. There were microscopes, centrifuges, and other lab equipment resting on a table.

Glass-fronted cabinets contained shelving stocked with glass beakers, jars, flasks, and coils of plastic tubing. Dozens of scientific tomes were neatly arranged in a bookcase on one wall. At least three of them, Lou noted, were written or co-authored by Humphries himself. On the opposite wall stood several specimen cabinets, holding containers with various insects inside them, some living and some not.

Again, Darlene caught Lou’s eye and shivered.

Humphries crossed to the cabinets, where he retrieved a jar containing a small battalion of fairly large live ants. After slipping on a pair of latex gloves, he transferred the termites Lou had brought to a large flask and closed the opening with a rubber stopper. Next, he skillfully used a large dropper to remove half a dozen ants and deposited them into the flask. There was an instant rush of activity as the termites’ amber bodies swarmed the ants, which were nearly the size they were.

The attack was as ferocious as the one on the mouse in Joey’s bizarre terrarium.

Within seconds, there were no remnants of the ants whatsoever.

It took Lou most of a minute to realize he’d been holding his breath. He let the air out slowly. A glance at Darlene told him she had been doing the same thing.

Using a large magnifying glass, Humphries silently studied the termites with a child’s wide-eyed enthusiasm. “Just what I thought from the pictures you texted to me,” Humphries said. “Macrotermes bellicosus.”

“That’s their name?” Darlene asked. “It’s almost as scary as they are.”

“ Macro means ‘large’ and bellicosus means-”

“Warlike,” Lou and Darlene said in unison.

“You got it. M. bellicosus is an African breed. But these were found in Virginia?”

“That’s right,” Lou said. “In a town named Kings Ridge.”

“Well, obviously somebody imported them … illegally, I suspect. Or, I guess, accidentally. Macrotermes are builders-architectural masters.” Humphries put a stopper on the flask and set it back down on the table. “The African sun is a brutal force, which the bellicosus termite has managed to tame. Their mounds are the largest non-man-made structures in the world. They build thermoregulated chambers inside them that maintain a temperature of precisely eighty-eight to eighty-nine degrees, with ventilation ducts that continuously refresh their air supply. The temperature is critical because their primary food source, a fungus, won’t grow in any other temperature. I spent six months in Africa studying these critters. Marvels, really. Absolute marvels.”

“Ever see them eat a lion?” Lou asked. “Because the swarm I witnessed could probably do just that.”

“No,” Humphries said dismissively. “Their primary food source is that fungus, or else they chew up wood and digest whatever nutrients they can.”

“So how do you explain what you just saw?”

“That’s just it!” Humphries exclaimed with youthful exuberance. “I can’t!”

Lou and Darlene exchanged excited looks.

“So what’s next?” Lou asked.

“I’m going to dissect Her Majesty, if you don’t mind. I need to look at the queen.”

Within minutes, Humphries had the queen termite under a microscope. His fingers moved with remarkable delicacy and economy of motion. On occasion, he would pause to wipe sweat from his brow, a move that made the tattooed insects on his arm appear to come alive.

Lou and Darlene huddled close by and watched in silence.

“This is odd,” Humphries said, mostly to himself.

“What? What’s odd?” Lou asked.

He and Darlene had moved in closer. Their arms were touching, but neither attempted to pull away.

Humphries looked up from his microscope, his expression bewildered.

“This queen is about twice as large as the average M. bellicosus queen. This one here is more than ten centimeters. Her egg-laying capacity seems to have been doubled as well. Maybe tripled.”

“What does that mean?” Darlene asked.

“It means that if these insects exist in the natural world, they would probably have more egg-laying capacity than any creature on the planet. The fecundity of these termites suggests they could cause a very serious environmental imbalance.”