Barry Malzberg - Phase IV

Hubbs said, “That’s going to be a bit difficult, isn’t it? Turn on the microphones and the recorder, please.”

“Why don’t you call and have them send out a helicopter,” Lesko said.

“We’re back in contact again.”

Hubbs turned toward him and leaned on an elbow. “I would,” he said. “I share your feelings of sympathy. But I don’t think our bureaucrats would be too happy to know that we’ve had some fatalities. We’d be tied up in reports and explanations for days, and there are more important things to do.” He turned back toward the sealed glass enclosure. “The mantises are at one end of our maze now,” he said. “The ants at the other….”

Lesko said, “What are we going to do with the girl, then? We’ve got to do something. She won’t go away simply because you refuse to think of her, you know.”

“What is your concern with her?” Hubbs said. “You’re being wholly unprofessional about this, James.”

“My concern is that she’s in shock!” Lesko said loudly. “And we just cannot keep her here—”

“Don’t shout at me,” Hubbs said with deadly containment. “That is totally unnecessary.” He paused, went back to the board, and then, as if still being prodded, said, “The girl, obviously, is a problem to be dealt with in a few days. After we’ve finished. We’re making progress now, and we simply cannot be sidetracked.”

“If you won’t call the base,” Lesko said quietly, “then I will.”

“I’m very much afraid that that would end our mission. We would find ourselves swarming with personnel of the most odious type, and it would be impossible for us to complete our job here. We’re not in human relations or social work, Lesko; we’re involved in very difficult and, need I say, dangerous research here. This has become a very serious situation, and I don’t think that we’re out of the woods yet. The ants are entirely capable of gathering their remaining forces and striking yet again, and unless we are able to code out—”

“Forget our mission,” Lesko said. He looked at Hubbs in a level, deadly way, and before this, Hubbs’s eyes fell. Lesko stood, feeling the power coming into him. It all came down to physical intimidation, eventually.

Everything was based upon that. Call it an outcome of the evolution of individualization: the stronger life-forms could intimidate the weaker.

Implicit was the statement: I can supplant you.

“I’m going to call in,” he said. “Do you want to argue with me about this?”

Hubbs said nothing.

Lesko turned, reached for the microphone, and heard the door open behind him. Both men jumped, Hubbs actually reaching for the gun in his waistband. Kendra stood in the doorway, looking uneasy but back to herself. She was streaked here and there with lines that bore the shadows of yellow, her skin curiously opaque, but otherwise she looked merely tired. “I slept,” she said. “Then after a while I didn’t feel like sleeping anymore, so I got up. I remember everything. They’re all dead, aren’t they?”

“I guess so,” Lesko said.

“They’re all dead,” Hubbs said at the console. “It’s quite unfortunate, but they were warned.”

“It occurred to me,” she said to Lesko, ignoring Hubbs, “that I don’t even know your name.”

“My name is Jim Lesko. Jim. Come in,” he said, motioning. “We’re just starting to run some experiments, but it doesn’t matter. We have a moment or two.”

“We have nothing,” Hubbs said, his mouth tight. “We have no time at all. Time is beyond us; we must hurry.”

“I’ll go,” Kendra said.

“No,” said Lesko. He hit the arm of his chair, indicating that she was not to move. “You had a very close call,” he said gently.

“I remember,” she said. “I told you—I remember everything.”

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m ready to go home now,” Kendra said.

Lesko looked over at Hubbs. The scientist’s face was completely blank, his shoulders sjumped. “Are you?” Lesko said pointlessly. “All right. Good.

I mean it’s good that you want to go home but—”

“I’ll send a message,” Hubbs said, saving him. Lesko could not tell if it was deliberate or if Hubbs was simply being himself. Did he see what was going on here? “Someone can come by to get you tomorrow, take you out of the desert if that is convenient.”

“They killed my horse,” she said dully.

“All right,” Hubbs said after a moment. “I’ll put the call in.” His eyes were very nervous. “It would be best if you left here as quickly as possible; I agree with that.” He reached toward the microphone.

“They had no right to kill my horse,” Kendra said. “My grandfather was stupid, but at least it was his own choice. My grandmother too, and Clete.

But my horse had nothing to say about it.”

She reached toward the shelf above Hubbs, suddenly seized a vial, and raised it above her head. The glass twinkled in the fluorescence. Then she threw the vial to the floor, shattering it.

Hubbs and Lesko moved together, acting as a team for perhaps the first time. Ants, three of them, had rippled out on the floor, scurrying blindly for shelter, gelatinous fluid pouring from their bodies. Hubbs reached out and scooped them off the floor, careless of his safety, and as Lesko held out the vial, he inserted them, wriggling, one by one, into the open neck; then Lesko stoppered the vial and put it back on the rack. Hubbs, his face suffused with rage, stood to check the tracer mechanism; the ants had displaced it and it had ceased its printout. Lesko went to Kendra, pinned her arms carefully but harshly behind her back, and pulled her from the room, twisting them, giving enough pressure to force cooperation. She screamed then, the first sound in the room since the shattering of the vial.

“You killed my horse!” she was saying. “You killed everyone!” But Lesko had her under control; he brought her all the way down the corridor and shoved her into an aseptic cubicle, the end of which was her room, and then he bolted the door and came back to the laboratory.

His feelings were a complex blend of fury and sympathy, but he guessed that fury predominated. Hubbs was right. The work had to go forward; nothing could. stop them from that primary obligation, because only the work had reality, only the work had meaning… and if Hubbs were not able to continue his experiments, then they might indeed literally never get out of here. The ants were not fooling. There was nothing remotely comic about the situation. Yet, and he had to concede this, the girl was reacting normally… Hubbs and he were now so far from normal behavior that they were able to go forward with field studies in the aftermath of a tragedy that would have shattered, should have shattered, anyone in a normal condition; we are becoming monsters, Lesko thought, we are becoming the enemy, a wriggling mass of stimulus-response, and he went back into the laboratory, where he saw Hubbs, stunned, looking at the console, his body motionless. Above him, the ants and mantises moved within their separate vials. Hubbs’s eyes were deep and stricken. He turned toward Lesko and showed him his wrist. Near the major vein was a deep imprint where his thumb had pressed, but that was not what he was showing nor what Lesko saw. Lesko looked at the small red mark and its spreading corona of stain.

“You’ve been bitten,” Lesko said.

The yellow poison had shocked them. The ants could not feel pain, but they could sense their losses with the dull precision with which a building might note the loss of its foundation and crumple, and now, their troops decimated, the queens, solemn in their chambers, could feel what had happened and every implication of it. The enemy was cunning and clever; their deadly compound had struck at the heart of the troops, and the queens in their dead way felt every loss. Soldiers, those that had not been exposed to the chemical, hovered around the queens, protecting them. The queens, without thought or language, meditated.