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

In their previous lives, the ants had only built down, and out.

Now they were building up.

The blacks were fascinated by, and very possessive of, the ants’ construction project, the only one of its kind in the world.

They began patrolling the border between Arnhem and the rest of Australia. Their goal: to keep out the balanda, the white man who had taken their land and given them smallpox. The ones who threw them in gaol on trumped-up charges and beat them to death in their cells, with no fear of repercussion.

No, the white man was not welcome here.

This was the blacks’ land.

This was their time.

And so they came.

And came.

Some came in business suits, some in T-shirts. Some came barefoot, stripped to the waist, their dark skin painted in white stripes like a snake, or dotted like a cowrie shell.

Some spoke to Jesus. Some to the Wandjina, the ancestral spirits that dreamed the world into existence. Some believed Jesus was a Wandjina. And they listened as the spirits spoke back to them.

They said the ants were building a ribbon up into the heavens, a road reuniting mother earth and grandmother sky.

And as the ants built and blacks gathered around them, waving their flags of unity, whites massed at the border, looking in.

One white army general fumed and foamed about the military dangers of the ants’ ribbon. He rode the lead vehicle of a column of armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles.

Right up to the Arnhem gate.

The gatekeeper said to him:

“G’day, mate, may I please see your permit?”

Permit? His permit was a Vulcan cannon and .50 caliber machine gun.

The gate stayed down, though, blackfellas massed behind it. Telephone calls were made rapid fire.

These quickly went up to the PM, who backed up the gatekeeper. He said he’d have the general’s head if he crashed the gate.

And so, in frustration, the general unholstered his sidearm and shot it into the air.

At that moment, several black soldiers climbed out the caravan, leaving their positions and strolling across the border into Arnhem, from where there would now be no extradition.

As Todd and Shorty set up their portable chemistry lab, Vauna—with no particular expertise in such matters—excused herself to wander off.

Todd hated to see her leave, and wondered if she would come back.

She strolled through the crowds gathered at the base of the ribbon.

Maybe her family was here.

She had never seen so many black faces in one place, or in such variety.

Some had black blood mixed with white, some with Japanese or Pakistani. Some had last names like Harris or Thompson, some Yunupingu or Nullyarimma. Some spoke only English, some also Yolnju or Tarawalla or Pitjantjatjara. Some represented the last of their tongues. When they died, their languages would die with them.

Vauna did not find her family, but she ran into a man from a nothing town in the Kimberly. You can’t walk down the street, he said, without kicking beer bottles. There’s no work there, nothing to learn, nothing to do but get pissed on grog. But now, experiencing this Black Woodstock, he was changed. He would throw away the bottle. When he got back, he would bring in teachers. He would make sure his town had electricity. And computers. He would make something out of his life.

Several groups of men sat in small circles, dreaming. Long ago their ancestors had sat around sacred stones, dreaming them into existence. Now they sat near the ants’ ribbon—the world’s largest lingam—dreaming into existence a new generation and a fairer Australia.

A painted old woman sat in the dust, cross-legged. “Listen, you mob,” she said. “Let your souls sail between heaven and earth. The whitefella too young to know and too old to understand. Let your souls sail a little long ways up the pillar, and listen to the singing. Listen.”

Vauna stood for a few minutes, but her soul stayed put, and she could not hear the pillar sing.

“Now that everyone’s back,” Todd said, winking at Vauna as she came into the tent. “We can decide on the strategy for the final assault.”

“What do you think went wrong at Pine Gap?” Shorty said.

“I think the geography was against us,” Todd said. “The ants were moving in a line, and they flowed around the barrier we built. But here…”

He pulled out a map of Arnhem.

“They’re already gathered in one place for us,” he said. “There’s no place for them to go.”

“Except up,” Shorty joked.

“Let’s be serious,” he said. “I say we encircle their super-colony and hit them with everything we’ve got, everything that’s permitted. The cyfluthrin and bifenthrin derivatives, arylpyrazoles, heteropyrazoles, and lithium perfluorooctane sulfonate.”

Shorty nodded, but Vauna withheld judgment.

“As for attractants,” he continued, “I say we use everything. Sucrose, maltose, fructose, lithium salts, molasses. Everything.”

“The whole kitchen sink, eh,” Vauna said.

“You have different thoughts?” Todd said. “I’d love to hear them.”

“We’ve got a potent ant-killing force right here,” Vauna said. “We just have to unleash its power.”

“What is it?”

“Ants.”

Todd nodded, thoughtfully.

“You mean…” Shorty said, “we get the ants to turn on each other?”

“That’s a great idea, Vauna!” Todd said. “The basic ant alarm pheromone is a mix of undecane and formic acid.”

“I thought that only worked on some ants,” Vauna said.

“That’s right,” he said. “Some ants only respond to this call to arms by running around like crazy to avoid predators. We need them to actually attack each other.”

After consulting some papers, Todd added, “Maybe we could mix in dimethylated C27 hydrocarbons. That elicits aggression in carpenter ants. And pyrazines and alkylpyrazines. That drives fire ants crazy.”

The plan became clearer.

They had to be sure to out-compete the appeasement chemical, decyl butyrate, that the ants were using to keep all the disparate types pacified and cooperative.

If they used enough of the aggression chemicals, the ants could only respond in one way.

Vauna imagined the horror show that would happen.

Ants would attack, attempting to dismember each other at the joints. But, unlike a human head, an ant head doesn’t stop moving when separated from the body. A chopped-off ant head could keep biting, keep slashing with antennae, keep injecting formic acid for quite a while. Sometimes an ant warrior would clamp its jaws onto the leg of an enemy. If its body were cut off, the head would still stay clamped on, hindering its foe, even in death.

The three scientists would don protective suits as they sprayed the alarm and aggression pheromones on the ants.

The plan should work, even if they had the concentrations wrong. The ants themselves would make more pheromones, creating a feedback loop that would destroy them all.

The internecine ant war would be horrific, but there was no other way.

Now that the plan was settled, Shorty excused herself again to find some stubbies to drink.

Todd and Vauna were finally alone again.

They stared at each other, nervously.

Finally, Todd broke the silence by saying with a smile, almost as a joke, “Who are you, you magnificent and mysterious being from another land?”

“Who are you?” Vauna said.

“I don’t know!”

“I don’t know, either!”

“You know how, when I first got here,” Todd said, “I told you I thought of myself as Joshua?”

Vauna nodded.

“I’ve re-thought that,” he said.