Barry Malzberg - Phase IV

“Did you say five degrees?”

“Five degrees in an hour and a half,” Hubbs said. “I’ve been sitting here and watching it, and it’s been very interesting, let me tell you. It’s fascinating to watch a thermometer inch its way up when it’s really measuring your survival. The sun is far from full strength, of course; I don’t think we’ve begun to see what we will. Now watch this.”

Lesko stared as Hubbs worked the controls of the television monitor.

Now Lesko could see a closeup of the mounds outside, the remote camera closing in; the mounds under inspection were not solid but intersticed, a collection of channels in a network that seemed to be more open than closed, a dull whirring aspect of inner light that reminded Lesko of the look of the galaxies in a slide show. “Did you say five degrees?” Lesko said, putting a finger inside his collar and pushing it away gently. It was definitely a nervous reaction, he thought, and yet it seemed definably hotter. He was sweating.

“This is fascinating,” Hubbs said. “Just watch the monitors, pay some attention for once in your life to something actually going on.” His tone was bantering not harsh. “You know,” he said, “if there weren’t lives at stake here, if those filthy little buggers weren’t actual murderers, I suppose one could see beauty in this. Wouldn’t you agree?”

The camera tracked in, picking up movement as programmed, and a single ant burst into focus. Lesko, fascinated now, watched it bobble in front of the camera. It was almost as if it were bowing, pleased with its new role as a star of stage and screen. Then the camera tracked in to the underbelly, and Lesko’s eyes widened.

The ant, below all of its cilia, was yellow.

He turned to Hubbs, his fingers scrappling at the shelf where momentarily he had to support himself. “My God,” he said. “It’s—”

“Yellow,” Hubbs said helpfully. “It’s quite yellow.”

“It’s apparently integrated—”

Hubbs had had more time to think about this. His voice was calm and soothing, although, Lesko thought, slightly mad. “Isn’t it a beautiful adaptation?” he said. “They are absolutely fantastic. We challenge and they respond. They’re most attentive.”

More ants appeared in the picture, scuttling, rounding the first who reared on his hind legs as if distressed to share any part of the camera.

Then, instinct predominating, it joined the gathering mass and they marched off. They looked quite intent and busy. Happy ants.

Well-oriented into their subculture. Highly motivated and flourishing with stimulus-response. No anomie for them, Lesko thought, and wondered if he was giggling; no, these ants were psychically in excellent condition.

There seemed to be no lag between their efforts and their goals, their intentions and their activities. The genius of the gestalt. The superiority of parallel evolution. Lesko found that he was breathing through his mouth, gasping, really; he closed it and turned away, went to the window, and looked at the sands of the desert, more innocent without remote magnification.

“We’re going to fry in here,” he said.

“You know what my question is?” Hubbs said, turning from the monitor, which now showed an abcess no less empty than what Lesko saw through the window. “I have a very simple question. What do they want?

What are their goals?” His eyes gleamed; he wiped sweat from his forehead and inspected it. “They definitely are after something.”

Lesko’s control snapped. It went suddenly, like a rubber band overextended. “They have no goals!” he said loudly. “Now stop personalizing them. And you ought to get that bite looked at.”

“Now you’re wrong,” Hubbs said quietly. “You’re just not looking at the realities of this, James. You saw how they disabled that truck and killed those unfortunate people. And now this—”

“Listen to me,” Lesko said with growing anger; he turned from the window, his voice rising to a shout, “I came here to do three weeks of science in the sun. To assist you in trying to establish some interconnection with ants that are neither malevolent nor benevolent but simply appear to be a mutated species doing antlike things in a more than antlike way. All right? I did not sign up for a goddamned war against a bunch of goddamned ants, and what the hell did you shoot off the top of those towers for? Why? Why?” His throat was hoarse; he coughed, hawked, spat to the side, and rubbed the spittle into dryness. Hubbs watched him quietly, not moving. After a little while, Lesko felt his rage pass as quickly as it had come. “I repeat,” he said in his most reasonable voice, “why did you destroy the towers?”

“Bait.”

“Bait?” Lesko said, stunned. “What are you—”

“Well, look here now,” Hubbs said, and Lesko made his final decision right then: the man was mad; he had been uncertain about it for a while, but no longer. It was entirely clear. “Look here, I had to get them to attack.

Didn’t I? They’re rather intelligent you know. I thought you observed the geometric pattern in the field. What have you been doing if you haven’t picked up on that by now?”

“You saw intelligence?” Lesko said quietly.

“Of couse I saw it.”

“What does intelligence have to do with any of it? There are dead people—”

“Intelligence,” Hubbs says, “is the key to design, my boy. Once we realize that we are dealing with an intelligence equal to ours, if entirely different in origin and function, we are trembling on the verge of the truly significant. It is no longer, as you put it, three weeks of research in the sun, but possibly the most important project in the history of the National Science Institute. Or don’t you know that?”

“I don’t know anything now. I’m shocked,” Lesko said. “I’m shocked and I’m getting sick and the temperature is rising—”

Hubbs looked at him, saying nothing. For a little while, Lesko did not know what the man’s expression was, then it came to him. Of course.

Hubbs was crazy, and his look was a look of triumph.

“Why didn’t you say something?” he said. “If you were so impressed by their intelligence and the rising Significance—”

“Why didn’t you?” Hubbs said. “You knew it, didn’t you? You know those are no ordinary ants we’re dealing with, that we’ve got a malevolent, active intelligence on our hands out there, one whose evolutionary process can instantly adapt to survival and counterattack. Don’t deny it, James!

You know that’s exactly what we have!”

“All right,” Lesko said. “I knew it.” He felt as if he was staggering through one of those idiotic obligatory scenes at the end of a dramatic second act when characters talk to one another ponderously, wrapping up all the things that they have been doing since the rise of curtain. Making things easier for the audience. But this was displacement, he thought, feeling sick; he was trying to think of this as a play and his conversation with Hubbs as a second act curtain, but outside there were real ants on a real desert… and they were out to kill them. “I didn’t even want to discuss it with you,” he said. “You weren’t interested in their intelligence!

All you wanted to do was to kill them, and now you’ve given them the message.”

“You should have talked it over with me,” Hubbs said. “We should have talked it over with one another. We knew what we had, didn’t we? But nobody wanted to talk. I was very much afraid that you’d be terrified and run away, and I needed you.”

“To go out into the desert,” Lesko said and nodded. “To go out into the desert and check out some dead people, that’s what you needed me for. Well, the hell with all of that. When is the goddamned helicopter coming.”