John Cramer - Einstein's Bridge

“I’d love to,” said Alice. “I enjoy talking about my writing, and I think I do it well.”

“Good,” said Janet, “so let’s talk about what you have in mind for your next book.”

“Of course,” said Alice. She pointed to the outline she had placed on the desk. “As you will recall, the new novel is called F as in Fire Ants” she said cheerfully. “It’s set in Waxahachie, Texas.”

“Wax-a-hachie…” Janet repeated slowly. “An unusual name for a town, sounds Native American. Why does it sound so familiar?”

“Perhaps you remember it because it’s been in the news lately,” Alice answered. “It’s a small town south of Dallas, the county seat of Ellis County, Texas, where the Department of Energy has recently spent over eight billion dollars to build the Superconducting Super Collider, the world’s biggest particle accelerator. They had some start-up problems, but now the accelerator is completed and running. There have been several recent news reports and magazine features about it.”

Janet frowned and looked suspiciously down at the outline. “Wait a minute, Alice. Your new book isn’t science fiction, is it?” There was a rising note of alarm in her voice.

“No, of course not,” Alice assured her. “As I told you, it’s a techno-disaster thriller involving dangerous insects, strictly within the genre. Scientists from the SSC laboratory will be characters in the book, but I had scientists in C as in Cockroaches, too. Nasty ones. The most important characters are the Waxahachie townspeople and the local cotton farmers. The disaster element comes from colonies of fire ants, mutated by the radiation from the accelerator, that grow to enormous size and attack the community.”

“Fire ants?” Janet looked puzzled. “Is that something you invented?”

“Oh no,” said Alice, “they’re quite real. They’re a very nasty pest, an aggressive variety of ant that has been moving north into Texas from Mexico for the last few decades. They’re difficult to kill, they have a poisonous, debilitating bite, and they have a way of coordinating attacks so that a group of fire ants will crawl onto the victim and all bite at the same time. It’s believed that they use some kind of pheromone chemical to signal when it’s time to sting.”

Just then Albert Jukes, a newspaper in his hand, opened the door. “Excuse me for interrupting, but you’ve got to see this, Janet. Remember how Promotions decided to go for a full-page ad in the Times for the new Bush book? Well, it looks as if they had a minor typo in the copy!” He held up the page of advertising, which featured SODOM. BORIS, AND I BY GEORGE BUSH in very large letters.

“Oh God!” said Janet, striking her forehead.

“But think positive,” Alice said brightly. “Perhaps it will boost sales to gays!”

After Albert left to spread the news further and they had stopped laughing, Janet said, “It sounds like the fire ants of yours would be great at picnics.”

“Oh, they’ll definitely put in an appearance at a picnic,” said Alice, “but for the purposes of my novel an item of great interest is their tendency to attack electrical devices, particularly those that hum, and to eat the electrical insulation. Apparently they’re the main cause of electrical fires and the failure of large electrical appliances, particularly air conditioners, in the Waxahachie area. Think of that in relation to all the electrical equipment at the Superconducting Super Collider.”

Janet wrinkled her nose. “Are these big ants? They sound awful.”

“Actually not,” said Alice. “As ants go, they’re very small but very aggressive. They’ve already killed off most of the larger ant varieties in Texas, along with much of the small animal population like rabbits, moles, and field mice. Perhaps fire ants are so aggressive and poisonous as a way of compensating for their small size.” “Uh-huh.” Janet nodded. “I know men like that.”

Alice reviewed the project, going over the outline of the novel and her recent progress in writing and research and emphasizing her track record of always meeting her book deadlines. She could tell that Janet was growing progressively more enthusiastic. Now is the time, she decided, to bring up her request. She reminded herself that she must not let Janet know how important this was to her. She flashed her most charming smile. “I should mention that there’s a favor I’d like to ask of Wagner in connection with this book, Janet,” she said.

Janet suddenly looked suspicious. “What’s that?” she asked sharply.

“As with my other books, I’ll need to go to Waxahachie and do some on-location research and interviews for a few weeks. For that to be effective, I’ll need the cooperation of the people who run the Superconducting Super Collider laboratory. But if I tell them I’m there to do a disaster novel in which the laboratory is attacked by giant mutant fire ants, you can imagine what their reaction will be. I’d be about as welcome as an astrologer at an astrophysics convention.”

Janet frowned. “Astrologer?” she said. “I don’t understand.”

“I’ll need valid press credentials,” said Alice. “The Randolph Corporation, which owns Wagner, also publishes a big line of magazines. One of them is Search, the weekly science magazine. I need you to obtain press credentials for me from Search under my real name of Alice Lang that will get me into the SSC laboratory as a science reporter.”

Janet blinked, then rolled her eyes heavenward. “My God, I can’t do that, Alice,” she said. “Professional ethics are involved. If any news organization were caught giving out phony press credentials, they’d lose credibility, and nobody would trust their reporters.”

Nobody trusts their reporters now, Alice thought. “Look, Janet,” she said, “the credentials don’t have to be phony. As I told you, I was a full-time newspaper reporter when I wrote A as in Arachnids and B as in Blowflies. It was only after my husband was killed that I used the insurance money as a stake to quit my job and support myself with freelance writing. But I always liked writing science stories, and I found that I could do them better than the other reporters. Even though I don’t have much science training, I think I have a real knack for science reporting.” She didn’t mention that one of the reasons she quit the Democrat was because she wasn’t allowed to do more. They had nailed her to the Lifestyle section.

“In fact,” Alice continued, “Arachnids was based on a news story I did for the Democrat about a research project at Florida State University in which a lot of spiders escaped from their cages. I could perhaps arrange to do the SSC story for the Democrat — I still have friends there — but I’d get far more cooperation if I had press credentials from a national magazine. Search could commission Alice Lang to write a real story about the SSC laboratory. Perhaps about the women technicians and scientists there, or the effect of the laboratory on the lives of the townspeople. If afterward somebody named Alice Lancaster writes a successful disaster novel about the SSC, even if they discover the connection, it would be, shall we say, just a spin-off of the research for the magazine story.” She felt instinctively that she’d convinced Janet, and she smiled.

“Hmmm…” said Janet, brightening. “That’s not bad, Alice. If they commissioned you to do such a story, they would certainly provide you with press credentials and maybe even arrange some contacts for you. Slipping you into the laboratory would also make a good angle to reveal later when we promote the book. Come to think of it, I used to see a guy who now works for Search in editorial. I haven’t heard from him for a while, but he’s very nice. Perhaps it’s time for me to renew the acquaintance…” She reached for the telephone.