Barry Malzberg - Phase IV

“I mean that,” Lesko said.

This thing is already getting to me, he thought, and it’s going to destroy me unless I’m careful.

The towers glinted at them.

The towers had been waiting for this, and now at last it had come. The signals were clear and strong; contact was being attempted. The creatures had at last acknowledged their existence, and in one way or the other were trying to bridge the gap of communication. All was as had been scheduled.

Everything was moving along.

The queens in a stupor that was and was not conscious, revolved slowly, empty eyes staring into the darkness. Somewhere grids clicked; a series of impulses began, and those impulses coded toward a new level. Eggs began to drop limpidly from the bodies of the queens at a faster rate.

Everything was in order now. Everything was proceeding as it should.

Patiently, the towers waited.

“I’m not going to go,” Eldridge said a little later. “I can’t. I’ve got my life here.”

“You shouldn’t,” Kendra said. She had come back to the house after the scientists had left and had needed to hear little from Mildred or see much of her grandfather before she knew what had happened. “I’ll stay with you.”

“I know why you’ll stay with him,” Mildred said dryly. “You want to stay around where that younger one is. That Lesko, was that his name?”

Eldridge looked at his granddaughter and saw her faint blush. “No harm in that,” he said. “I’ll take her under any conditions. I need her. I need both of you. I want to stay.”

“These aren’t usual ants,” Mildred said. “Don’t you realize that?”

“I try not to realize anything,” Eldridge said. He stood and walked to the door, looked out at the landscape, now deceptively quiet under the sunset.

“Mostly I just go on.”

“What are they planning to do?” Kendra said. “Hubbs and Lesko I mean.”

“Apparently they’re working with computers of some sort,” Eldridge said. “Computers and insecticides. Maybe the computers are whipping up a batch of insecticide for all I know. I’m not a technical man; I don’t know what the hell computers do these days. But they want to use some sophisticated devices to get at the problem.”

“They don’t even know what the problem is,” Mildred said softly.

“I know what it is,” Eldridge said grimly. “It’s a lot of ants, that’s what it is. Killer ants. There was an incident like this in South America not so many years ago, and they had to burn up a hundred square miles of countryside to get rid of them, but they did. They did it. I’ve got ditches and oil, and I’ll do the same goddamned thing. They’re not going to take over this place. I’ve backed out of everything else, out this is my life, and I’ve made my stand here.” He was trembling. “Goddamned ants,” he said.

“All right,” Kendra said. She went to the old man and took his hand.

“All right. Don’t get emotional. We’re all going to stay.”

“This is my goddamned life,” Eldridge said. “Doesn’t anyone understand that?”

He looked out at the desert.

Surely it was a trick of light, but something seemed to be stirring out there.

Lesko’s Diary: Two days in here and I can see that this is not going to be a ten-day job. Or a two-week job or a three-week job or even necessarily a two-month job. We are in here for the duration. Already I have that same murky feeling about the station that long-term enlisted men have about their barracks, the feeling that long-married men have about their hated wives. This is my life. This is what contains me. Meanwhile, Hubbs continues with insane cheerfulness.

The thing is that the ants have not made an appearance. The terrain has been absolutely quiet since we settled in here, almost as if they were watching us and had decided to reconnoiter. (Is this paranoia? Am I ascribing an intelligence to the ants that they do not possess? I would not know this; for one thing, I have never seen them.) Hubbs plays with his computers; the stylographs whisk out geometric patterns that essentially indicate that nothing is being received; the corps of engineers, having dropped hardware, software, provisions, and reading materials on us, have taken off to the west, gratefully no doubt, leaving us to our own devices. Because there is absolutely no research or deductions I can make in the complete absence of data, I have spent these forty-eight hours verging toward an insanity compounded of boredom, an insanity in no way helped by the fact that I continue to feel that there is something peculiarly ominous going on here that we do not understand. The towers for one thing. But Hubbs is perfectly content. He has arrived at what no doubt is his ideal situation. He has a sterile, aseptic environment, a young male associate who he regards only as furniture, his comforting computers, printouts, readouts, binary codes, and speculations, and all the empty space any man could ever need. Not so much as a single feeling or emotion could threaten him in this situation… unless, of course, the ants march. So far they have not. For all I know, the whole series of reports and findings may be the deliberate imaginings of land developers who, faced with a dying property, decided to produce a little mass hysteria in order to evacuate the land and collect their insurance. If they have insurance. This is an idea.

Eldridge is holding out. I know this, for this morning I saw Kendra riding on her horse past the station; I also saw in the distance Clete on the tractor, kicking up more sand clouds as he continued to work on his ditches. Kendra seemed to linger for a moment toward the rear, and for a moment I thought of going out and speaking to her, reaching a hand, inviting her in, holding her, telling her what I thought… any number, in short, of foolish, insane gestures that would have converted a difficult situation into an impossible one. I cannot allow my emotional state to interfere with the business of this project, whatever it is, and although I am touched deeply by this girl in ways that I cannot even know, the fact is that I have barely spoken to her, she exists only in my mind… and furthermore I have no desire to incur Hubbs’s wrath. I am working under him; we must get along. I know instinctively that he would be infuriated were I to attempt a relationship with this girl, and he would be right. For one thing, Eldridge is under government order to vacate this area along with his family, which means that I would be consorting—would I not?—with a felon.

Hubbs knows that Eldridge is holding out, of course, but he has obviously decided, at least for the moment, to make nothing of it. He has his computers to keep him busy; also I think that he is obsessed with the idea that the ants may appear outside or within the station at any moment to launch a vicious attack. He wants to be ready for them, hardly sidetracked in the subissue that Eldridge’s eviction would surely be.

Besides that, and to look at this perfectly objectively, what could Hubbs do if Eldridge defied him? (Which Eldridge already has, although circuitously, of course.) Eldridge is sixty-five, but a tough old bastard for all of that, and although Clete might even be a little older, he has the aspect of a man who knows how to handle a rifle and probably has a few stashed away in that tractor of his. Would a fifty-year-old laureate from the Coronado Institute be willing to take on two tough old southwestern geezers, particularly in the presence of women who might not be entirely sympathetic to this? I can follow this line of argument myself, so surely Hubbs can. I have a certain sympathy for his position, although, of course, it is quite limited.