Judith Merril - The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 6

“You don’t think it would alarm people?”

“How can it alarm anyone when nobody will believe it?”

“If I could have a photograph or two.”

“Oh, no,” they said then. “No photographs.”

“What kind of sense does that make?” I asked them. “You are willing to let me write the story—why not the photographs so that people could believe me?”

“They still won’t believe you. They will just say you faked the photographs, but no one will believe you. It will make for more confusion, and if we have a chance of getting out of this, confusion won’t help.”

“What will help?”

They weren’t ready to say what, because they didn’t know. So here is what happened to me, in a very straightforward and ordinary manner.

Every summer, sometime in August, four good friends of mine and I go for a week’s fishing on the St. Regis chain of lakes in the Adirondacks. We rent the same shack each summer; we drift around in canoes, and sometimes we catch a few bass. The fishing isn’t very good, but we play cards well together, and we cook out and generally relax. This summer past, I had some things to do that couldn’t be put off. I arrived three days late, and the weather was so warm and even and beguiling that I decided to stay on by myself for a day or two after the others left. There was a small flat lawn in front of the shack, and I made up my mind to spend at least three or four hours at short putts. That was how I happened to have the putting iron next to my bed.

The first day I was alone, I opened a can of beans and a can of beer for my supper. Then I lay down in my bed with Life on the Mississippi, a pack of cigarettes, and an eight-ounce chocolate bar. There was nothing I had to do, no telephone, no demands and no newspapers. At that moment, I was about as contented as any man can be in these nervous times.

It was still light outside, and enough light came through the window above my head for me to read by. I was just reaching for a fresh cigarette, when I looked up and saw it on the foot of my bed. The edge of my hand was touching the golf club, and with a single motion I swept the club over and down, struck it a savage and accurate blow, and killed it. That was what I referred to before. Whatever kind of a man I am, I react as a man does. I think that any man, black, white or yellow, in China, Africa or Russia, would have done the same thing.

First I found that I was sweating all over, and then I knew I was going to be sick. I went outside to vomit, recalling that this hadn’t happened to me since 1943, on my way to Europe on a tub of a Liberty Ship. Then I felt better and was able to go back into the shack and look at it. It was quite dead, but I had already made up my mind that I was not going to sleep alone in this shack.

I couldn’t bear to touch it with my bare hands. With a piece of brown paper, I picked it up and dropped it into my fishing creel. That, I put into the trunk case of my car, along with what luggage I carried. Then I closed the door of the shack, got into my car and drove back to New York. I stopped once along the road, just before I reached the Thruway, to nap in the car for a little over an hour. It was almost dawn when I reached the city, and I had shaved, had a hot bath and changed my clothes before my wife awoke.

During breakfast, I explained that I was never much of a hand at the solitary business, and since she knew that, and since driving alone all night was by no means an extraordinary procedure for me, she didn’t press me with any questions. I had two eggs, coffee and a cigarette. Then I went into my study, lit another cigarette, and contemplated my fishing creel, which sat upon my desk.

My wife looked in, saw the creel, remarked that it had too ripe a smell, and asked me to remove it to the basement.

“I’m going to dress,” she said. The kids were still at camp. “I have a date with Ann for lunch—I had no idea you were coming back. Shall I break it?”

“No, please don’t. I can find things to do that have to be done.”

Then I sat and smoked some more, and finally I called the museum, and asked who the curator of insects was. They told me his name was Bertram Lieberman, and I asked to talk to him. He had a pleasant voice. I told him that my name was Morgan, and that I was a writer, and he politely indicated that he had seen my name and read something that I had written. That is formal procedure when a writer introduces himself to a thoughtful person.

I asked Lieberman if I could see him, and he said that he had a busy morning ahead of him. Could it be tomorrow?

“I am afraid it has to be now,” I said firmly.

“Oh? Some information you require?”

“No. I have a specimen for you.”

“Oh?” The “oh” was a cultivated, neutral interval. It asked and answered and said nothing. You have to develop that particular “oh.”

“Yes. I think you will be interested.”

“An insect?” he asked mildly.

“I think so.”

“Oh? Large?”

“Quite large,” I told him.

“Eleven o’clock? Can you be here then? On the main floor, to the right, as you enter.”

“I’ll be there,” I said.

“One thing—dead?”

“Yes, it’s dead.”

“Oh?” again. “I’ll be happy to see you at eleven o’clock, Mr. Morgan.”

My wife was dressed now. She opened the door to my study and said, “Do get rid of that fishing creel. It smells.”

“Yes, darling. I’ll get rid of it.”

“I should think you’d want a nap after driving all night.”

“Funny, but I’m not sleepy,” I said. “I think I’ll drop around to the museum.”

My wife said that was what she liked about me, that I never tired of places like museums, police courts and third-rate night clubs.

Anyway, aside from a racetrack, a museum is the most interesting and unexpected place in the world. It was unexpected to have two other men waiting for me, along with Mr. Lieberman, in his office. Lieberman was a skinny, sharp-faced man of about sixty. The government man, Fitzgerald, was small, dark-eyed, and wore gold-rimmed glasses. He was very alert, but he never told me what part of the government he represented. He just said “we,” and it meant the government. Flopper, the third man, was comfortable-looking, pudgy, and genial. He was a United States senator with an interest in entomology, although before this morning I would have taken better than even money that such a thing not only wasn’t, but could not be.

The room was large and square and plainly furnished, with shelves and cupboards on all walls.

We shook hands, and then Lieberman asked me, nodding at the creel, “Is that it?”

“That’s it.”

“May I?”

“Go ahead,” I told him. “It’s nothing that I want to stuff for the parlor. I’m making you a gift of it.”

“Thank you, Mr. Morgan,” he said, and then he opened the creel and looked inside. Then he straightened up, and the other two men looked at him inquiringly.

He nodded. “Yes.”

The senator closed his eyes for a long moment. Fitzgerald took off his glasses and wiped them industriously. Lieberman spread a piece of plastic on his desk, and then lifted the thing out of my creel and laid it on the plastic. The two men didn’t move, They just sat where they were and looked at it.

“What do you think it is, Mr. Morgan?” Lieberman asked.

“I thought that was your department.”

“Yes, of course. I only wanted your impression.”

“An ant. That’s my impression. It’s the first time I saw an ant fourteen, fifteen inches long. I hope it’s the last.”

“An understandable wish.” Lieberman nodded.

Fitzgerald said to me, “May I ask how you killed it?”

“With an iron. A golf club, I mean. I was doing a little fishing with some friends up at St. Regis in the Adirondacks, and I brought the iron for my short shots. They’re the worst part of my game, and when my friends left, I intended to stay on at our shack and do four or five hours of short putts. You see—”