Barry Malzberg - Phase IV

All right, she would remember that. But they were lovely things.

What a nice evening, what a lovely evening, she murmured, feeling the wind blow through her hair as she walked along. She seemed to be stumbling a little, something wrong with her balance. Not enough fresh air, that was all. Too much being cooped up in that stultifying laboratory, thinking lustful thoughts, when all the time she could have been out in the cold, clear air. She felt song burble within her and let it come out, trailing her sounds to the heavens. How lovely, how profoundly mystic the heavens were! why she had never thought there were so many stars. How sweet to walk in the pilgrim’s way, she sang, leaning on the everlasting arms, a snatch of hymn that she had heard, must have heard when she was a child, just a little girl with her horse Ginger, Ginger and she in the pilgrim’s way together. How bright the path grows from day to day, leaning on the everlasting path, the hymn went on, and she sang it with a lovely lilt, admiring her voice; how sweet it was to be singing hymns in the desert, free of lust, free at last. She stopped. Something nestled against her toe and brought her to a halt before she fell. She stood there weaving, confused (were they out to get her, even in the desert? but what then of poor Clete and her grandparents; would they allow her to be assaulted here?), and looked down toward her feet, her adorable little feet someone had once called them, the toes like firm little cylinders balancing her on the sand… and from between them an ant had appeared. She looked down upon it. Hello, little friend.

Amazing how benign she felt toward the ants. It had hardly been their fault that these terrible things had happened to her. No, it was all those lustful thoughts obsessing her, to say nothing of the bad air in the laboratory. Poor housekeeping. “Hello, little friend,” she said, looking down at the ant. How sweet to walk in the pilgrim’s way. Circle and dot.

“I want you to listen.” Her voice felt faint, speaking was an effort. Thin desert air, of course. Whoever got the idea that desert air was good for the lungs? Hers were parched. “Please listen to me,” she said.

The ant stood between her toes in what she took to be a polite posture of attention. It was listening to her. All of the ants were her little friends now, and she was going to explain to them exactly what was on her mind and what she could do for them, and thus would be inaugurated a new era of peaceful cooperation. Between her and the ants, and as for those two lustful types in the laboratory, she could send them right to hell. Hell.

Funny the words in which she was thinking. Ordinarily, she cursed. Very unusual circumstances of course. “I’m not afraid of you,” she said to the ant. “We can work together.”

The ant bit her.

The pain was so terrible it sent tears to her eyes, and she realized that she was standing on a desert, weakened as if by a terrible siege, babbling to herself, suffering from extreme pain. She raised her foot. The pain was terrific. It went through her in delicate pulsations, increasing. Was this what Hubbs had felt? Oh, how terrible if he had felt this way! “Why,” she said to the ant. “Why did you do this to me?” and the ant bit her again.

She screamed and tried to hobble away. In the pilgrim’s way. She had to get back to the laboratory and tell them what had happened. Only they could help her; she had to get back. Pain went through the foot on the ground. The ant had bitten her there.

She fell to the ground. The pain was absolutely paralyzing. She could not move. “Why are you doing this to me?” she said. “My God, why are you doing it?” She extended a hand. The ant bit her on the palm. Blood rose and she felt nausea. “I didn’t want to hurt you!” she cried. “I thought that we could be friends; I thought that we could work together!” And then the biting came over her again: the ant or maybe it was ants by this time, a mass of them attacking (she could not tell; she could tell nothing) were swarming, raging, moving over her; she felt the bites like welts rising all over her body, and with each of them that terrible clarity increased. She could see everything now. She understood everything. Kendra rolled on her back, looked up at the sky, immobile as a tree trunk, and the ants went to work all over her body.

“I see,” she said, her voice distinct, feeling herself beginning to depart from the pain as if a different, intact Kendra was rising and rising, flat to the sky, as large as a spaceship, covering the stars. “I see now. We could never have worked together, could we? Because what you want and what we want is entirely different and always would be. We would have to be enemies, wouldn’t we? We would have to destroy one another.”

The bites were gentle now, almost as if soporifics were being injected into her system, and she was no longer on the desert. She was floating free.

She was no longer Kendra but something both more and less than Kendra, floating, detached, ascending. In that ascension she saw everything: for a stricken moment she knew everything that had happened to her and what was happening next, and then peace covered her like a shroud and for a while, in that way, she felt nothing at all, awaiting the next and final phase.

The colony fed.

Lesko’s Diary: I did not even notice that Kendra had gone until minutes had elapsed and by that time it was too late to follow her: where would I have looked? Where, after all, would she be, and what could I have done? I realize that these questions have the aspect of rationalization, but my position must be made clear; this journal will be found someday, I have great faith in that if nothing else, and it is important that my position be made absolutely clear because if nothing else I will stand by my genuine and sincere feelings for this girl (who has touched me profoundly) and my belief that there was nothing, absolutely nothing that I could have done once I realized that she had left the laboratory, was no longer in the station. Hubbs was struggling with his boots, groaning, grunting. “Where are the grenades?” he said. He was serious. The man was serious. He was out to destroy the queen.

“You used them up when you destroyed the towers,” I said to him, looking at the monitor, looking through the windows to see if there was any trace of Kendra. She might well have wandered out upon the desert, and if I had seen any evidence of this, any trace of her whereabouts either through window or monitor, I would have pursued her whatever the risks, but I did not and what was the point? I had to help Hubbs. I had to stand by Hubbs. His condition was disastrous, his mission desperate, what would it have benefited any of us—assuming that Kendra was dead—for two to have gone wandering out on the desert to be assaulted and killed by the ants while the third carried on alone? I believed this. I believe it even now. This is not reason but common, scientific fact; a logical intelligence at work, the product of individual evolution. I believe that I am going mad.

“They couldn’t,” Hubbs said, grunting, trying to get on his equipment.

“All of them?”

“Every one,” I said. I continued to work the monitors and at the same time to make my notes in this journal. I wanted to get it up to date as rapidly as possible, because I had the feeling that I might not be writing much longer. Things seemed to be struggling on the desert floor again.

“There isn’t a grenade in the house,” I said and giggled.

“Well,” Hubbs said. “We’ll have to devise something else.” Suddenly he stopped struggling, looked at me with a despairing expression. “James?”