SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

These ants didn’t have guards like that.

Except now they did.

Two of them were holding a tiny, sharp twig between them.

Todd had seen ants use tools before. They were miniature bulldozers, moving earth to build nests, throwing pebbles to block up the tunnels of rivals.

And now they had spears?

“Hey, Shorty,” Vauna said, “stick your finger in there.”

“I’m not falling for that!”

Todd laughed. “I shall sacrifice this my body, for the sake of science.” He waved his index finger at the ants and then quickly jerked it back. “Ow!”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know! But it stung.”

“Do it again!”

Todd held up his finger. “For science!” Cautiously this time, he inched his hand closer to the stream of ants. Slowly he moved, studying the ants’ response.

“Do you see that?”

The two ants holding the spear were bobbing and weaving. The tip of the twig moved, tracking Todd’s finger.

Ants had discovered the principle of the lever.

“Amazing!”

“Give me a firm place to stand and I shall move the earth,” Todd joked, looking at Vauna.

Vauna’s eyes opened wide. Her body went stiff.

“What’s wrong?” Todd asked.

“Reminds me of a weird rumor I heard,” she said. “I should check it out in the morning.”

“What?” he said. “You’re not coming with us?”

“With you—- where?”

“Shorty and I are going back to Rhodes Farm,” he said. “You want to steam kill some ants with us? We could really use the help.”

“And…” Shorty said, “as my supervisor, you really should supervise my work.”

“Fine, fine,” Vauna said. “I guess I’m outvoted. I’ll see you in the morning.”

As Vauna got up to leave, Shorty winked at Todd.

Early the next morning, Todd and Shorty had new heat-resistant hoses and dozens of lances packed into the ute.

The water tank was full, and supplemented with a smaller tank. They even had a back-up generator and more power drills. And plenty of gas to power the generators.

Only one element was missing.

Where was Vauna?

Shorty shot her a message. A few minutes later, she answered that she’d be right there.

Vauna arrived just as Todd and Shorty finished loading the cement and ant repellent.

“Vauna! Great!” Todd exclaimed. “We’re all ready to go. I had a question for you—-”

“I’m sorry, Todd,” she said. “I can’t go with you.”

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s these weird rumors from north of Marree,” she said. “I have to go investigate.”

“Maybe we could all go together?”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “Oz is a big place. The Rhodes farm is two hours east. I’m going at least three hours north. We’d never make it in time.”

“So…what is it?”

Vauna shook her head. “You’d think I had a roo loose in the paddock if I told you what I’ve heard. I’ll let you know if it turns out to be anything.”

“Then we’ll be short-staffed at the farm,” Shorty said. “C’mon, Vauna, we need you.”

“No,” she said. “Zoe’s pulling in her best farmhands. There will be heaps of people to help you.”

As Vauna turned to walk away, she said over her shoulder, “For science!”

Todd tried to hide his disappointment. When she was out of earshot, he asked Shorty, “What was that all about?”

“Sometimes,” Shorty said, “she just needs to go walkabout.” She climbed into the ute. “But don’t worry. She always comes back.”

Todd climbed in and they drove off.

“Eventually.”

Two hours later, Todd and Shorty arrived at the Rhodes farm.

It seemed oddly still and quiet.

They parked at the porch of the freshly-painted farmhouse, where Zoe had asked them to meet.

“She sure keeps a tidy farm,” Todd said. No rusted silos or caved-in barns here.

Shorty rang the doorbell.

No answer.

It seemed unlikely that the bell didn’t work.

After a few polite seconds, Todd knocked.

Still no answer.

When he knocked a second time, a hand clasped him on the shoulder.

“We did it!” Zoe yelled, her face an explosion of delight.

“Did what?”

Zoe pointed at the fields.

“Between my shovel and your hot water, we did it!”

Todd looked at the corn field, stunned.

The ants were all gone.

“Goodonya, mate!”

In the distance, three farmhands, all Aborigines, were working on a tractor. None of them were swatting themselves free of ants.

“We bopped them in the nose and they, well, buggered off!”

“No, Zoe,” Todd said, shaking his head. “It’s just…This doesn’t make any sense. Ants don’t have feelings. You can’t just scare them off by killing a few. They’ll climb over their colonymates’ dead bodies to complete a mission.”

“As long as they’re gone,” Zoe said, “I don’t care.”

Shorty reached for an ear of corn. “Mind if I celebrate? I haven’t had fresh corn on the cob in years.”

Zoe waved her on.

Todd wasn’t in the mood for celebrating. Zoe could have just called to tell him the ants were gone. Then he could have gone with Vauna on her scientific adventure.

A serious expression came over Zoe’s face. “What I was really worried about was the government.”

“The government?”

“They’ve been seizing failed farms,” Zoe said. “You know, no one had been able to tame this land in 40,000 years. And my family did it in just a few generations. But we’re just one bad crop from losing this place and having it given back to—-” Zoe glanced at the tractor.

“Zoe!” Shorty shouted.

She ushered them over to the cornstalk, pointing at one ear, the husk partially peeled back.

“Is it supposed to look like this?”

Zoe snapped the ear off the plant. In two quick and elegant gestures, she had stripped off the husk and silk.

“What the—-”

There was not a single kernel on the corn.

Had it not grown properly?

If a kernel isn’t fertilized, it makes a shallow white dome. But here were small yellow-gray depressions, scars where the kernels should have been.

No, these kernels had been pollinated. The silk was dry and brown as it should have been.

Todd examined the ear with his mag lens, then checked several others. They were the same.

All the kernels had been surgically removed.

By tiny ant mandibles.

Zoe was standing in the middle of her corn field, without any corn to harvest.

After months of disk plowing, planting, watering, detasseling, fertilizing, and pollinating, she had nothing to show. The harvesters were due next week, and she had nothing. Nothing!

The government was going to take her farm and give it away.

It was too much to bear.

She started slamming her fists into the soil.

After a few moments, she calmed down, and sat in the dirt.

Shorty and Todd joined her.

“If it’s any consolation,” Todd began slowly, “yours is not the only farm overrun by ants. Last time I talked to your department of agriculture, they said they were getting funding to make sure the affected farms didn’t go under.”

“So…the government is going to actually help instead of just taking our money?”

“In this case,” Todd said, “I think so. And here’s another thing. Ants are really good at re-distributing nutrients in the soil. Better than earthworms.” He put a reassuring hand on Zoe’s shoulder. “I’ll bet you that your next crop is going to be the best one ever.”

Zoe started crying.

As Todd and Shorty got back into the ute, Shorty asked, “Have you ever seen ants strip an entire field?”