Phase IV

I

Lesko’s Diary: When I awakened from a tortured nap, it could not have been more than an hour later, Hubbs himself was awake, suffering, and delirious. While I had been sleeping, Kendra had moved him from the laboratory to the cot we had given her and was attending him with a cold towel and a glass of water, while he thrashed and moaned on the sheets. I felt his forehead. It seemed to be a fever of a hundred and three, a hundred and four. There was just nothing to do.

“Take some water,” Kendra said to Hubbs and looked at me pleading, desperate. Hubbs pushed the water away. She put the cloth into the glass and gently wiped his forehead, and his eyes cleared a little. “Sick,” she said. “He’s awfully—”

“I know,” I said.

“We’ve got to get him out of here.”

“We’ve all got to get out of here,” I said. “I just don’t know how.” I was in a peculiar numb state where one can respond intelligently enough to all queries without being able to initiate anything. Now I looked at Kendra, unspeaking. “He is awfully sick,” I said, going back to that.

“Analysis,” Hubbs said in a thin voice, moving his head back and forth.

“What?” Kendra said, leaning over, mopping his brow again.

“It’s clear they have failed,” Hubbs said and stopped, took in a gasping breath, went on then. “They have failed to achieve—”

“Is there something you want?” she said. I touched her wrist gently, and she brought it back.

“Let him talk,” I said. I leaned over. “What have they failed to achieve?”

I said. “They have taken—”

“No,” he said, and the shaking and twitching of his head began again.

“They will have to learn that we have made up our minds—”

“Would you like something?” Kendra said. “If you want—”

“Please,” I said. I had gotten it into my head that Hubbs had something approaching an answer. Was it his delirium or mine? Who was to know.

“He’s trying to say something!”

Hurt, she went back, still holding the towel.

“We will have to tell them,” Hubbs said with terrible clarity, “that we are willing to pay the price. They understand who we are, what we are doing; and we will make them know that humanity itself will not suffer—”

“I’m going to play the radio,” Kendra said. She must have been slightly delirious herself. Understandable, understandable; everything comes together. “Music will make him feel better,” she said. “If only we can have a little music—”

She put on a console that was resting on an overhead shelf. I turned to tell her that communications were broken, that we could hear nothing, but was overwhelmed by the noise pouring out from the radio. It was the sounds of the ants. I could hear cilia cracking, the fine, slow, high beep of their communication.

“What is that?” I said and reached toward her.

“It’s only music,” she said. “It’s—”

I decided that she had gone insane. I reached out and hit her across the face, gently, but with enough sting in the follow through to leave a slight imprint. She gasped, backed away from me.

“Don’t you hear that?” I said. “Kendra, don’t you—”

Understanding came into her face. Something crumpled in her expression, and she heard the radio. “Oh, my God,” she said. “It isn’t music. It’s—”

“Of course it is,” Hubbs said. He had come off the couch and was standing there, weaving drunkenly. “How do you think that they were able to pick up on us?”

“Oh, my God,” Kendra said. She dropped the towel and turned toward the door.

“Not so fast,” Hubbs said. He was clearly delirious. He raised a hand and Kendra stopped. “Who did this?” he said. “Who set up the radio?”

“Hubbs—” I said.

The ant noises were louder yet. They moved up and down the scale of pitch, F-sharp major, I thought with lunatic precision. They sounded quite cheerful, considering the point of origin.

“You lousy bitch,” Hubbs said. “You set us up for this. You did it, didn’t you? Until you came to the station everything was fine. We had them on the run. You’re their agent.”

Kendra’s hand was against her cheek. “No,” she said. “No, that’s not so.”

I knew that this was not so. I reached an arm out toward her.

“Don’t listen,” I said. “He’s crazy. He’s sick. He’s—”

“You’re crazy,” she said. “You’re both crazy! You’re both crazy!” She turned and ran from the room, stumbling against a wall. Hubbs reached toward her, but I restrained him. I could hear her shrieks all the way down the hall, and then a door slammed.

“Let me at her,” Hubbs said wildly. “Let me at her now. I am not helpless. I will not be humiliated. I will not allow humanity to be vanquished by a group of ants. I am humanity’s representative, and they cannot do this to me.” He broke from my grip with maniacal strength and stumbled toward the shelf on which the radio was perched, still singing crisply away. He reached out a hand, seized the trembling wire.

He pulled it and the radio fell.

It fell to his feet, exploding with a fierce crash, little sparks and dazzling intimations of flame pouring from it, and Hubbs screamed with the heat and the impact, the scream turning into an ah! of satisfaction as he kicked the radio toward the wall. “Now!” he said. “Now let’s see if they can trace us!” and he lost his balance, a flame of illness going through him, collapsed against the shelf… and upset about twenty thousand dollars’

worth of technical equipment. Wires, tubing, coils, computer leads, burners, jars, dials, indices, thermometers fell from the shelf and exploded on the floor in a shower of translucence. Hubbs looked down at this with a slightly bemused expression, seemed almost clownish. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” he said. “I didn’t mean to do that.” Then something caught his attention on the floor. “Ah,” he said. “Aha!” He dropped to his knees, heedless of the glass splinters… and began to crawl.

I knew he was mad. Of course he was mad. But his insanity at that moment was no greater than my own. I could only think: wouldn’t it be strange if Kendra were indeed the agent? Then the madness went away like a blanket ripped off as I saw what Hubbs was doing.

There was, somewhere in the coils and splinters on the floor, an ant speeding through, probably from the radio, which was still sputtering.

Hubbs reached forward, his face alight, and then with a terrific scream brought his fist down on the ant. “I’ve got him!” he said. “I’ve got him now!” His face distorted, and I reached to pull him from the wreckage, hopelessly bellowing Kendra’s name, needing someone to take the burden of madness with me, and suddenly she was there. She had not fled into the desert after all. Together the two of us, struggling, were able to lift Hubbs to his feet and carry him out of the laboratory, down the corridor. “Look,” Hubbs whispered to me. He raised his hand slowly, then opened it fully. In the palm, I could see the pearl of a blood spot.

“I got him,” he said. Then he looked at Kendra. “I got him,” he said again. “Don’t you see? I got him. You aren’t the enemy. He is. Deeply apologize. Regret my terrible error. Most unscientific of me, really….”

And then he fainted quite neatly in her arms. I laid him on the floor while Kendra went back to the laboratory to get the cloth and the water, still fixated, no doubt, on the thought that if Hubbs could be brought back to his senses we might all, somehow, obtain release. She returned as I was leaning over him. Hubbs now prostrated on the floor, his eyes closing again. “I’m sorry,” she said and put the water down. “I’m sorry.”

She reached toward me and for one blank instant I thought she was going to touch, had no idea what madness had possessed her (were we going to copulate on this floor before Hubbs, howling screams of defiance to the ants?), and then she had turned, she was running, she was moving down the hall again and once more that sound of the slamming door.

“I’m terribly sorry,” Hubbs said in delirium on the floor. “All wrong, all wrong. Sorry—”

“Enough,” I said. “Enough, enough.” Enough of Hubbs, enough of ants, enough of delirium; I got up swaying and went down the hall, found the door where Kendra had bolted inward, and opened it to find her in the emergency access, sobbing against a wall, her body tilted in a crooked position. Like the field mouse. I reached toward her and touched her shoulder blade. She quivered once like a bird and then was still.

She came against me, her face into my chest. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just so sorry.” And I said it’s all right, it’s all right, meaningless, stupid babble I am sure, the things we can say to one another only when the situation has gone beyond words, and finally she was quiescent against me, and I could feel the slow pulse in the back of her neck as I rubbed it gently.

“Just hold me now,” she said. “Just hold me.”

I held her.

Otherwise, there was nothing at all.

II

“I want to apologize if I was irrational during the day,” Hubbs said. He was sitting on the pallet, and although he looked devastated, the fever had gone. He reached out, touched Kendra’s hand once, then turned toward Lesko. “I’m sorry. Everything has gone wrong.” He took a small sip of water, finishing the glass; Kendra took it from his hand and went into the galley for a refill. Lesko could hear the sound of the tap running; at least that was still working. Although God knew what if anything the ants had done to the chemistry… .

“Why don’t they kill us?” Lesko said. All the emotions of the day had gone from him; now like Hubbs he felt that he was looking down a long, flat tunnel of possibility, gray on either side. Cool breezes in the shaftway.

“They roast us by day, dare us to come out at night… why play games with us? What do they want? What do they want?”

Hubbs ran Kendra’s towel across his face. He seemed to have lost twenty pounds since his delirium, but his face was lucid and clear. “I’ve been thinking about caste,” he said. “Specialization among special insects.”

“Enough,” Lesko said. He stood, looked through the window. Now and then a spurt of flame came off the desert, showing a suggestion of moving forms.

Otherwise, a stillness. He had a feeling of having arrived at some end.

“Take it easy and try to go to sleep. Maybe the helicopter will be here in the morning.”

“Never,” Hubbs said. “They hate us back there. As far as they’re concerned, we’re merely boondoggling a special grant for some kind of esoteric research, and God forgive me, James, I encouraged that feeling. I wanted it that way; I felt that the more contempt they felt, the less interference we would find… and you see how successful that plan has been. No, we’ve got to deal with this here. On our own. We will win or we will lose… but fate is being decided here.”

“Don’t be that dramatic,” Lesko said. “It’s only our deaths that are at issue here.”

“Do you believe that, James?” Hubbs said. He looked up at Lesko. “Do you really believe that at all?”

Lesko shook his head and looked away from the window. “No,” he said.

“I do not. But it felt better.”

“I understand. But look,” Hubbs said quietly. “In every ant colony, there are clear segments, divisions, a hierarchy if you will. There are workers, winged males who are also soldiers… and there is the queen.”

“Presumably.”

“Ants are organized around the queen,” Hubbs said quietly. “She is immobile, powerless, except for the terrific force that she exerts upon these workers. She controls them and that is her power. They keep her alive, maintain her, and she is their heart and soul.”

“All right.”

“The heart and soul of their lives,” Hubbs said. “And whatever we are dealing with, these are still ants just as you and I would always be men.

Somewhere,” he said flatly, “there must be a queen.”

Lesko stood quietly, saying nothing. Just barely conscious of the fact that he had been waiting for the sound; a door creaked and Kendra came in, holding a fresh glass of water. She sat by Hubbs and helped him drink in small, greedy gulps, looking at him with compassion. Lesko reached out and took her hand. She left it in his palm, unresisting.

“If she died,” Hubbs said, “discipline and organization would crumple.

Chaos would result. They would no longer be able to function, and we would prevail after all.”

Kendra fed him more water. Lesko felt her hand, the firm surfaces leaving an impression upon his palm. He decided that on balance he liked Hubbs after all; the man was reacting with rare courage, he had more spiritual reserves than anyone would have calculated… but it was academic. All of this was. “The war’s over,” he said.

“Is it?”

“It has to be. They have the power,” Lesko said. “The only hope left is if our message somehow registered on them.” He paused. “And if they decide in their infinite mercy that we’re worth keeping alive.”

“You’re projecting a human emotion upon the irrelevant and the inhumane,” Hubbs said calmly. He pushed Kendra’s hand away without repudiation, simply as if he were doing it for emphasis. “I think that I could locate this queen and kill her.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Kendra said suddenly. “You’re very sick.”

“I’m not so sick that I can’t move. If we can find her, get a location from the transmitter, then I can track her. I’m not asking you to do this.” He coughed spasmodically; Kendra gave him more water. “I’m going to die, anyway,” Hubbs said. “I’m sure that the infection I’ve received is fatal; it’s just a matter of going in and out of delirium now, of various spells of weakness. The next time I may not recover. I’m willing to take this on myself. I’m not asking anyone else to do it.”

“We can’t locate the queen,” Lesko said.

“I think we can,” said Hubbs. He stood, weaving, then walked toward the door. “I’m going to go to the laboratory,” he said. “Is anyone going to come with me?”

“No,” Kendra said. “It’s not worth it. You can live. You can go on. You don’t have to do this—”

“Live?” Hubbs said at the door. “Go on? How long do you think we have, unless we do something desperate?” He stood still, Lesko and Kendra looking at him silently. “It’s not only us,” he said quietly. “Don’t you see that now? The stakes have gone far, far beyond Paradise City and what is going on within this enclosure. They want the world. The only way is to kill their queen.” He walked away, leaving Lesko and Kendra standing there.

“He’s quite right, you know,” Lesko said. “We’re doomed.”

“We may be doomed,” she said. “In fact, I know we’re doomed, but he can’t go out there; he can’t attack them, he-”

“Yes, he can,” Lesko said quietly. “And he’s going to. I’ve got to help him.”

“I think you’re crazy,” Kendra said. She said it quietly, there was less accusation than simply knowledge in her voice. “I think that all of you scientists are crazy.”

“That may well be true,” said Lesko. “But it would have to be this way.

Products of individual evolution. Everybody’s crazy, you know.”

He walked from the room.

After a time she followed him.

III

Up the corridor swung the invasion force guided by signals from its queen, through the darker pits and lighter pits of the enclosure, through the dusky caves where small objects hung from the ceiling like rope, through the slick, smooth walls themselves, and into the river, up the river for a while, and then into that large, damp enclosure where it nestled in comfortably, looking through the tunnels of light before it. Within its antennae, it felt the sounds of contentment from the queen, and waves of longing and pleasure came back from it in response as it hooked its cilia into the overhang and waited there, poised, ready to die for its queen, ready to live for its queen….

Something joggled it momentarily, but it hung on and then the joggling stopped.

“What’s going on, Kendra?” a voice said.

“I had an itch,” another voice said. “It felt like something was inside me.

But now it’s stopped.”

The queen purred.

IV

“They’re sending us a message,” Hubbs said.

Lesko walked over there. How many times had he walked through this laboratory to Hubbs’s side to see some horror? But this in its way was the worst of all. The printout was coming from the computer smoothly, evenly: over the printout a stylus was working, drawing a symbol on the empty paper, filling it with one repeated figure drawn over and over again. The stylus seemed to be gripped by some invisible but ritualistic hand, the figuring was neat, the movements precise and contained. It went on. A circle, then a shift of the stylus, and a dot. Circle and a dot. Circle and a dot. Lesko looked at it.

“They’ve found our channel,” Hubbs said. “Fair enough. We found theirs, so they found ours. She’s speaking to us.”

“Who?”

“Who?” Hubbs said and held his enlarged arm, which now could not move without support. “The queen,” he said.

Lesko looked at the printout. Circle and dot. Circle and dot. Circle and—“What does it mean?” he said.

“Think.”

“A circle with a dot. What does it mean?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Hubbs said. “I don’t care anymore.” He fumbled with the monitor, worked the tracking mechanism. “I’m going to try and locate the queen while she’s diverted. I think I know where to look now.”

He put the monitor on manual, tracked the camera laboriously.

Circle. Circle and dot. Lesko looked at it, feeling the sweat again and his heartbeat. Heartbeat Dah-dit. Dah-dit. Circle and dot. Dah dit. Circle and—

“We’ll find her,” Hubbs said quietly. “It’s attuned to size now, not movement. I know what we’re looking for now—”

“Circle and dot,” Lesko said. He was trying to think of something else, but his mind was blunted; he could see only what was feeding out ahead of him in the printout. Hypnosis, perhaps. The ants had control over their minds as well. But there was something terribly important, something he could not quite locate… . “Circle enclosing a dot,” he said. “Now I know how a rat feels in a maze. We’re rats in a maze. Wait a minute,” he said after a pause, feeling a vague, pulsing excitement. “Just wait a moment.”

The shackles seemed to be breaking; he could think again. “I think I see something.”

“Um,” Hubbs said, twirling the monitor, completely absorbed. “Of course. Where has that girl gone?” He squinted into the screen.

“Listen,” Lesko said. “We’re subjected to various stimuli and then we’re allowed our response. It’s almost like a controlled experiment in which we are the subjects.”

“That’s interesting,” Hubbs said. “Of course it has nothing to do with finding the queen.…”

“Almost as if,” Lesko went on, “they wanted to find out which rat was the strongest… or the smartest.”

“Smartest?”

“It’s an intelligence test,” Lesko said. “We’re being subjected to an intelligence test.”

“Ah,” Hubbs said, abstractedly. The breaking of the fever and his absorption with the monitor seemed to have restored his scientific mode.

“That’s interesting, James, although it means nothing.”

“Nothing? Don’t you see what’s happening? We’re not checking them?

They’re evaluating us!”

“Then they’re in for a surprise,” Hubbs said. “Because I’m going to find their queen and disevaluate them.”

Kendra came into the laboratory. She looked disheveled. Lesko looked at her and extended his arm. She huddled against him and he held her in.

“Look at this,” he said pointing to the tracing. “They’re sending us a message after all. Do you know what it represents?”

“I was frightened,” she said.

“We’re all frightened,” said Hubbs at the monitor. “But we’re going to go on, anyway.”

“What could the circle and the dot represent?” Lesko said again.

“Could it be this place?” Kendra said. Her eyes widened as if she only had realized then what she was saying. “This place?”

“I think you’re right,” Lesko said after a pause. She trembled; he held her more tightly. “Of course… . but what then would the dot represent?”

“Something they want?” she said.

He inhaled slowly and then breathed out air. “Someone they want,” he said. “This place and someone they want.”

“I think I’ve found their queen,” Hubbs said. “I think that I’m closing in on her now.”

“Something the ants want?” Kendra said as if hypnotized. “They want someone from this place? Is that it?”

“Yes,” Lesko said quietly. “I think that that’s it. But what could they want? Who?”

“You think they want someone,” she said.

He could feel the tremor in her body. “You really do?”

“That was what you said.”

“But why would they want someone?”

He stared at her and said, “They would want someone to talk to them.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Hubbs said again. “None of that matters. A frontal attack is the only answer. We are long past the stage of negotiation.”

Kendra ignored this. “You mean they might be angry at someone who did them some harm?”

“I don’t know,” Lesko said. Circle and dot. Circle and dot. Fluidly, the tracings poured out.

“I didn’t mean to hurt them,” she said. “It was an accident. I was upset.

I didn’t mean to smash the container, but it just happened.” Her eyes were black. “They couldn’t want to hurt me,” she said. Her body fluttered.

“They’ve got to understand—”

“Please, Kendra,” Lesko said. “They don’t want you. They want only communication of some kind. They don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“I didn’t mean it,” she said. “I didn’t mean to hurt them. It was an accident, that was all it was.” Circle and dot. “No,” she said then. “You can’t protect me. No one can. They’re going to get what they want.”

“You’re wrong, Kendra.”

“What would they do with that person if he came out and tried to talk with them?” Kendra said. Circle and dot.

“I don’t know,” Lesko said.

“If that person explained what had happened and offered to try and help them… would the ants be kind?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“Would they let the others go free?”

Lesko slowly turned his head, looked at her. Her face was luminous and sad. “Kendra—” he said.

“If they would let the others go free, then I would go to them,” she said.

“Please—” he said to her and then did not know what he would have said then because Hubbs was suddenly bellowing with triumph over in his corner. Lesko gently moved from Kendra and looked at the man. He was standing, holding his glasses, his face triumphant.

“Come here, James,” he said. “I’ve got their queen.”

He walked over to Hubbs.

And behind him, Kendra left the laboratory.

He did not even see her go.

V

On the monitor, tracking in extreme closeup, Lesko could see a low range of what appeared to be mountains; amidst those mountains were three dead volcanoes. The mounds, of course, enormously magnified. The volcanoes were spaced evenly apart and before them was what seemed to be a faint oblong shape, rising in outline through the sound.

Hubbs touched him on the shoulder and Lesko jumped.

“She’s in there,” Hubbs said.

Lesko stared at him and then looked back at the monitor. Was it in his mind or did he detect a faint movement?

“I’m going to get her,” Hubbs said.

VI

Kendra thought, Oh, it was a lovely evening, just a lovely evening for a little walk on the desert, and she wished that she had thought of this before, long before, just a quiet walk on the desert, a stroll through the sands to get her thoughts in order. Lesko, the younger one, was attractive and maybe she had been distracted by him, but lustful thoughts were the antithesis of beauty, and it was beauty that she was seeking, beauty on the desert, and so she walked from the hatch into the clear, cold air, feeling the breeze ruffle her, and she wished that she had done this a long time ago, walk away from it, that was, be on her own so she would have a chance to get her thoughts in order without this distraction. Everybody was trying to distract her, but now freed of lustful thoughts, she could take a little stroll on the desert and decide what to do next. Maybe she could talk things over with the ants, even. Certainly, there was nothing that they could not work out together if only she could show them that she was a good person, as good as they were. Not that they were persons of course.

All right, she would remember that. But they were lovely things.

What a nice evening, what a lovely evening, she murmured, feeling the wind blow through her hair as she walked along. She seemed to be stumbling a little, something wrong with her balance. Not enough fresh air, that was all. Too much being cooped up in that stultifying laboratory, thinking lustful thoughts, when all the time she could have been out in the cold, clear air. She felt song burble within her and let it come out, trailing her sounds to the heavens. How lovely, how profoundly mystic the heavens were! why she had never thought there were so many stars. How sweet to walk in the pilgrim’s way, she sang, leaning on the everlasting arms, a snatch of hymn that she had heard, must have heard when she was a child, just a little girl with her horse Ginger, Ginger and she in the pilgrim’s way together. How bright the path grows from day to day, leaning on the everlasting path, the hymn went on, and she sang it with a lovely lilt, admiring her voice; how sweet it was to be singing hymns in the desert, free of lust, free at last. She stopped. Something nestled against her toe and brought her to a halt before she fell. She stood there weaving, confused (were they out to get her, even in the desert? but what then of poor Clete and her grandparents; would they allow her to be assaulted here?), and looked down toward her feet, her adorable little feet someone had once called them, the toes like firm little cylinders balancing her on the sand… and from between them an ant had appeared. She looked down upon it. Hello, little friend.

Amazing how benign she felt toward the ants. It had hardly been their fault that these terrible things had happened to her. No, it was all those lustful thoughts obsessing her, to say nothing of the bad air in the laboratory. Poor housekeeping. “Hello, little friend,” she said, looking down at the ant. How sweet to walk in the pilgrim’s way. Circle and dot.

“I want you to listen.” Her voice felt faint, speaking was an effort. Thin desert air, of course. Whoever got the idea that desert air was good for the lungs? Hers were parched. “Please listen to me,” she said.

The ant stood between her toes in what she took to be a polite posture of attention. It was listening to her. All of the ants were her little friends now, and she was going to explain to them exactly what was on her mind and what she could do for them, and thus would be inaugurated a new era of peaceful cooperation. Between her and the ants, and as for those two lustful types in the laboratory, she could send them right to hell. Hell.

Funny the words in which she was thinking. Ordinarily, she cursed. Very unusual circumstances of course. “I’m not afraid of you,” she said to the ant. “We can work together.”

The ant bit her.

The pain was so terrible it sent tears to her eyes, and she realized that she was standing on a desert, weakened as if by a terrible siege, babbling to herself, suffering from extreme pain. She raised her foot. The pain was terrific. It went through her in delicate pulsations, increasing. Was this what Hubbs had felt? Oh, how terrible if he had felt this way! “Why,” she said to the ant. “Why did you do this to me?” and the ant bit her again.

She screamed and tried to hobble away. In the pilgrim’s way. She had to get back to the laboratory and tell them what had happened. Only they could help her; she had to get back. Pain went through the foot on the ground. The ant had bitten her there.

She fell to the ground. The pain was absolutely paralyzing. She could not move. “Why are you doing this to me?” she said. “My God, why are you doing it?” She extended a hand. The ant bit her on the palm. Blood rose and she felt nausea. “I didn’t want to hurt you!” she cried. “I thought that we could be friends; I thought that we could work together!” And then the biting came over her again: the ant or maybe it was ants by this time, a mass of them attacking (she could not tell; she could tell nothing) were swarming, raging, moving over her; she felt the bites like welts rising all over her body, and with each of them that terrible clarity increased. She could see everything now. She understood everything. Kendra rolled on her back, looked up at the sky, immobile as a tree trunk, and the ants went to work all over her body.

“I see,” she said, her voice distinct, feeling herself beginning to depart from the pain as if a different, intact Kendra was rising and rising, flat to the sky, as large as a spaceship, covering the stars. “I see now. We could never have worked together, could we? Because what you want and what we want is entirely different and always would be. We would have to be enemies, wouldn’t we? We would have to destroy one another.”

The bites were gentle now, almost as if soporifics were being injected into her system, and she was no longer on the desert. She was floating free.

She was no longer Kendra but something both more and less than Kendra, floating, detached, ascending. In that ascension she saw everything: for a stricken moment she knew everything that had happened to her and what was happening next, and then peace covered her like a shroud and for a while, in that way, she felt nothing at all, awaiting the next and final phase.

VII

The colony fed.

VIII

Lesko’s Diary: I did not even notice that Kendra had gone until minutes had elapsed and by that time it was too late to follow her: where would I have looked? Where, after all, would she be, and what could I have done? I realize that these questions have the aspect of rationalization, but my position must be made clear; this journal will be found someday, I have great faith in that if nothing else, and it is important that my position be made absolutely clear because if nothing else I will stand by my genuine and sincere feelings for this girl (who has touched me profoundly) and my belief that there was nothing, absolutely nothing that I could have done once I realized that she had left the laboratory, was no longer in the station. Hubbs was struggling with his boots, groaning, grunting. “Where are the grenades?” he said. He was serious. The man was serious. He was out to destroy the queen.

“You used them up when you destroyed the towers,” I said to him, looking at the monitor, looking through the windows to see if there was any trace of Kendra. She might well have wandered out upon the desert, and if I had seen any evidence of this, any trace of her whereabouts either through window or monitor, I would have pursued her whatever the risks, but I did not and what was the point? I had to help Hubbs. I had to stand by Hubbs. His condition was disastrous, his mission desperate, what would it have benefited any of us—assuming that Kendra was dead—for two to have gone wandering out on the desert to be assaulted and killed by the ants while the third carried on alone? I believed this. I believe it even now. This is not reason but common, scientific fact; a logical intelligence at work, the product of individual evolution. I believe that I am going mad.

“They couldn’t,” Hubbs said, grunting, trying to get on his equipment.

“All of them?”

“Every one,” I said. I continued to work the monitors and at the same time to make my notes in this journal. I wanted to get it up to date as rapidly as possible, because I had the feeling that I might not be writing much longer. Things seemed to be struggling on the desert floor again.

“There isn’t a grenade in the house,” I said and giggled.

“Well,” Hubbs said. “We’ll have to devise something else.” Suddenly he stopped struggling, looked at me with a despairing expression. “James?”

he said. “I can’t seem to get on my boots.”

I looked at him and some comprehension of the absurdity of our position must have worked its way into me before it departed again. I went back to the monitor. “Please, James,” he said. “You’re going to have to give me some help with these; I can’t go bootless onto the desert. They’ll attack me.”

“You know?” I said, looking at him, “you’re talking about going out of here, getting through that circle, tramping miles through the desert, destroying an ant colony full of malevolent, poisonous ants that are presided over by a monstrous queen… but you can’t even get your boots on.”

“James—”

“Sit down, Hubbs,” I said. “It won’t work. The only thing to do is to continue working on the area of communications and try to hit them either on the noise belt or with a message of some sort. That’s the only way—”

Hubbs snatched the paper out of my hands, crashed it, and threw it, trembling, against a wall. “No,” he said.

I could have killed him then, but it was only—I realized this instantly—what the ants wanted. It would have saved them the trouble. I sat there, gripping the sides of the chair and said again, “It’s hopeless, Hubbs.”

“No, it isn’t. I am going to show them. I will show them that man will not give in.” He was crying.

“Did I tell you?” I said, through his sobs. “I was able to figure out their first message. With Kendra’s help. Didn’t you hear? The circle is this place and the dot is you. They want you.”

“Or one of us.”

“Oh, no,” I said, shaking my head. I felt a manic certainty. “Kendra made that mistake and that’s why she’s lost out there somewhere. She thought that anyone would do. But it’s only you, Hubbs. It was you all the time. You’re our leader. How they respect you!”

“Then they’re going to have me,” Hubbs said.

He staggered back to his chair and tried once again to put his boots on.

Hopeless. The man, drained by delirium, shaken by obsession, could no longer function. He collapsed over himself, mumbling like an old man.

And something hit the windows.

It hit with a hard, spattering sound, opening into an aqueous rush. I looked out and saw that liquefied matter of some sort was striking us. The source seemed to be the mounds, but it was hard to tell. The monitor itself, the camera covered with the substance, had gone blank. A shrill keening began again. The patches hitting the windows were becoming darker. They looked like nothing more than liquefied human flesh.

Hubbs stood. He was not weaving. “That’s it,” he said. “There has to be an end to this. It will not go on any longer.” His voice was very steady. “Do you see it now, James?” he said. “You must help me.”

He pointed to his boots. The barrage had stopped; the desert hung clear before us like a painting. “Help me,” he said.

I helped him.

IX

Through the monitor Lesko was able to follow Hubbs’s walk toward the mounds. He had wanted to go with him, but Hubbs had said no, this was ridiculous. “The girl is dead,” he said. “Don’t you know that, James? And if they kill the two of us then there will be no one left to defend humanity.

It’s only you and I against them now, James, and we must have at least two chances; we can’t let them have both of us at once. If nothing else, we’re buying time. I will go and if I don’t succeed, you can try it your way.

Goodbye, James. This is the way it must be,” and then Hubbs had gone quickly through the hatch. Lesko had let him go. The point was that the man was absolutely right. Kendra was dead and all of the others were dead and the ants had won everything… but they still had the two wild cards, their individual chances to destroy the mounds of the queen, and he could not halve their chances. He let the old man go. He watched through the monitor.

Hubbs walked through the desert, confident for a while, his stride steadier than it had been in days. In his hand, he carried the dead grenade launcher, large enough, heavy enough, blunt enough to strike the queen’s mound a killing blow… if he could get there. He waved once or twice, looking almost jaunty, the monitor picking him up in the colors of blood that still streaked the lenses of the camera, and Lesko, his hands curled, studying the monitor intently, allowed himself the wild thought that Hubbs was going to get through… that the man was going to make it; he would destroy the queen’s mound and with it the network of the colony. It was a tribute to humanity, that was all it was, this wracked, broken, trembling man, suffering from fever and a fatal infection, was still alive, still out there on the desert… moving implacably toward his goal. It’s man! Lesko found himself thinking; it’s the unconquerable human spirit, and what indeed was there to say about a man like Hubbs who had placed loyalty to his fellow creatures above loyalty to himself, heading out there bravely, the last defender as it were of millions of years of evolution, and Lesko thought he was going to make it, going to make it, Hubbs waved at him again through the monitor and then stopped, pointing downward. He had reached the mound. He raised the grenade launcher over his head.

Lesko held his breath.

And a swarm of ants came out of the mound.

They were red and green, these ants, the monitor, rushing in to track them, showing that telltale spot of yellow on their bellies, that luminiscent pearl of immunity, and as they came out of the mound in a swarm, Lesko realized that he had underestimated their numbers all of the time; not only had they misjudged the situation entirely… they had misjudged the number of queens. There was not one queen; there were probably a hundred nestled under the surfaces of the desert… and then he gave a great despairing cry because the ants were all over Hubbs now, hundreds, thousands, millions, swarming and thrusting their bodies at him until he was a solid jellied mass of green and red, and then the thing on the sands trembled and fell, the launcher also, ant-covered, falling away from him, and as Lesko watched in a kind of suspended attention, feeling linked to the monitor as if he were merely another ingredient within it, the mass on the ground ceased to struggle and then diminished. The bulge of red and green became a carpet of red and green.

The ants were feeding.

And as he watched, they consumed Hubbs.

In the last of the blood streaks, he saw the ants lying satiated on the desert as far as the monitor’s range could cover, a solid, beautiful layer of green and red under the twinkling stars, and he cried then: did not cry for Hubbs so much—because Hubbs was already dead, had been dead from the moment he had left the hatchway, if not long before that—but for millions of years of evolution that everyone had believed in, poor stricken creatures, as being the will of Creation and Eternity… and which were now, it was quite obvious to Lesko, merely a twitch, an aberration, a little mistake that was being rectified cosmically before it could have gotten out of hand.

“Damn you!” he said. “Goddamn you all!” But he knew what he was talking of, and it was not the ants, and because it was the only responsible posture after all, he found himself laughing as the monitor showed the towers seal up and begin to grow at an enormous rate as if waving in triumph.….

X

Lesko’s Diary: But even now as I sit here, writing the last of this, bringing it up to date and beyond, working out the final moves, I would still like to believe, and this is the paramount insanity, that given time, we could have come to some kind of understanding. They cannot regard us so cheaply. We may have been a mistake, but we were an elegant mistake, goddamn it. We had our points. We had things to say in our behalf. Even if it was only a misjudgment, something gone wrong in the flux of things, and it should have been the ants all the time… there were the pyramids, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Einstein, quasar theory, the Coronado Institute, the very species of intelligence that has, at the least, enabled me to identify exactly what has happened to us….

Doesn’t this count? Doesn’t it count in our behalf? Maybe we were the wrong inheritors of the planet and after a few million years the Creator has come around to restore the balance; even so we had our points. I find it necessary to believe this. Could the ants compose a fugue or write War and Peace? How would they make out in ballet? How would they choreograph or play the flute? Of course I am delirious, but these are legitimate questions. We cannot be shoveled off so cheaply.

But of course we can. Of course we can. That is exactly the point. There is no rational accommodation of interests; there is no agreement. We are an aberration to them, and there is no more possibility of dialogue than an exterminator would consider a dialogue with roaches before unleashing his spray can and paint. We do not even exist to them. And there is going to be no agreement of any sort. They may not even see us.

Sitting here over the last few hours—they have not overrun the station, they have all the time in the world, perhaps they are merely awaiting final instructions or then again they may relish this—I have made some calculations about their rate of expansion, using their intelligence, their powers of organization, their network of communications, and my general knowledge. Knowledge of their poisons, their ability to adapt genetically, and the control factors that underlie their activities; I believe that after this test run they will move rather quickly into other desert areas, taking over the countryside first and then laying siege to the towns and the cities.

I believe that they will learn as they advance, anticipating our moves and always staying a move ahead, and as best as I can calculate, we have—all of us, Siberians, Eskimos, housewives in Dayton, Ohio, all of us—perhaps two more months.

Or perhaps far less if this is merely a dry run for certain techniques that they will put into immediate production.

We have only one chance, which is no chance at all, and yet it would be to utterly give up not to take it… and that is the counterattack suggested by Hubbs and which he gave his life for… a direct assault on their queen. I know that they are going to do to me what has been done to him and that there cannot be more than ten minutes of life as I know it remaining to me… but I am writing these last lines with my boots on, my heavy gear, holding another grenade launcher and a rifle at the ready… and I am going to go out there and try it as well.

I wish that it weren’t me. I wish that none of this had ever happened. I wish that it were all a dream, just as our very presence on this planet has, to those cosmic forces, been a dream and that I could rectify it, just as they have rectified it, simply by waking up and setting the reverse gear in motion… but it is no dream. This is real. This is the world, what is left of it, and like Hubbs and Kendra I must die out on the desert in an attempt to hold it together. I could do no less for them. I could do no less for humanity.

Do I romanticize? Sentimentalize? What has humanity ever done for me that I should be so sacrificing for humanity? But that is the problem, the heart of the nightmare… we are humanity and ask ourselves such questions. Self-interest versus altruism; preservation versus sacrifice.

The ants do not even consider it.

I am going to go out there. I do not feel very much like dying, particularly since these last few days with Kendra have, however terrible, given me an understanding of what life might be like. But it must be done.

If I fail, and I do not see how I can succeed because there may be two queens out there under those mounds or thousands, I do not know what form the future may take… but I am sure that they have their plans.

I would really rather not think about their plans.

I am going to go out there now.

God help us all. But who is God?

XI

Lesko stumbled through the desert in an abscess of red and green, shrugging off the bites, which he could barely feel through the heavy metal gear. That had been Hubbs’s mistake; he had been rubberized but Lesko was metallized. Metallic Lesko, clever, clever Lesko, he staggered through the desert for a hundred feet or a mile, it was all the same to him, and he came to the mounds and looked down upon them. And there in the slight crevice between them was a clear, black, hole pooled with liquid in which could only be the queen herself, and he raised the grenade—

—And the ground shifted beneath his feet.

—And Lesko fell into the opening.

It seemed to him incredible at first that he could fall because he was so much larger than this opening, surely it could not be more than a foot, a foot and a half across, but he entered very easily and then, slickly, he was sliding down. Green and gold on the sides, the fall effortless for all of its velocity, and Lesko did not feel fear so much as curiosity; where would he land? Into what rabbit hole had the ants plunged him? He landed on his feet with a small jolt before he could consider this further and found himself in an enclosure permeated by a hum; he turned then and saw the dead eyes of the queen. There was the queen. He had been falling toward her all the time. He lifted the grenade launcher and walked toward her.

The queen hummed.

He lifted the launcher and the humming decreased in pitch. He could bring it down and smash the queen. She was a dead, brown husk with a thousand holes for eyes. He could break her like ash. He did not. He stood there.

Kendra came from somewhere.

She was dressed in flowing white, and her eyes were filled with love. She raised her hands to him, then her arms, and Lesko dropped the grenade launcher. It fell without sound. She came against him and he felt her body, inhaled the gentle scent that came from her. He stroked her hair. She huddled against him. Under the queen’s eyes, he kissed her forehead.

Kendra looked at him. She could see his suffering, he knew. She could tell what it had cost him to come. To merge with her. To be both more and less than himself. She pointed toward the queen.

“Do they want us?” he said.

She held her hand level and in her eyes he saw words. Then it was as if he could see into her mind, and there was no need at all for words. There was communication on a different level. He was no longer Lesko; she was no longer Kendra. She was Kendralesko; he was Leskokendra; they were one creature.

He moved toward the queen.

The queen received him, and he saw—

XII

The landscape: black trees with blue leaves against a yellow sky, the sky like a dome, plunging, billowing, becoming a red ocean, the foam yellow heaving on the violet rocks, the green sun splashing red spray in front of it; the birds, the dark birds, the purple birds, folding into the grayness and the rose, the bloody, full lips of the rose as it leaned forward to kiss the air as it came from a flower and then the landscape shifting, stripped, a bare tree like a face in the glow of something that was and was not the sun, rays protruding from that illumination like hands, the hands lifting—

—A huge granite rock suspending it over the floor that became an ocean, and the ocean flowing, flowing into a naked women, a kendraleskoleskokendra lying on a beach and from between her legs the sun bursting forth and the colony folded and flowing over them as—

XIII

They mounted a hill in another place open against the sky. Lesko saw the sun and it was in her hair, shining like a firmament through Kendra’s hair. The sun was inside her; she was the sun, his queen then, and he closed against her. Her voice was in his mind without words.

“We have a choice,” she was saying. “They’ve given us a choice.”

“Yes,” he said, also without words, understanding then, feeling that he understood everything at last and was drawn unto the queen, his queen, fingers flowing, both of them flowing, and then they were wound and falling together—

XIV

Down a long tube that terminated in air, he and she fell through it together and—

XV

From that tube was an embryo, eyes growing, legs bursting through, first fishlike, then birdlike, mammalian, and then it was an ant and then it was not; instead it had become a human fetus, the fetus growing, growing and filling the landscape until at last it possessed it fully, no longer a fetus but a baby, a child, clustering with animals: lions, birds, bears, huge towers in the distance with indeciperable writing upon it on which more animals gamboled, and the child walked toward it slowly, carrying the sun in his hand, the universe in a fold of its flesh, all of eternity in a palm—

XVI

“What is this?” Hubbs said and came to light.

XVII

“We’re saved,” Eldridge said, and then he saw—

XVIII

“What has happened?” Mildred said and—

XIX

Clete was running, running desperately, screaming, but he could not get away and then—

XX

HUBBSELDRIDGEMILDREDCELETE: On a mountain somewhere folded together in the talons of a stone, gripped in a fist that was a heart—

XXI

LESKOKENDRA: Looked at the thing on the other side of the mountain.

Between it and them were the heads of ants. Ants were perched on their little cilia, looking at them with understanding and compassion. Eyes blinked; the ants signaled and they signaled back. The crawling thing on the other side of the mountain labored toward them and then stopped as the ants stroked it.

The dead green and yellow light came from behind them as they held together on the mountain. It bathed them and they felt its warmth. It was all that they—and the thing on the other side—would ever need.

A voice said, “Clear all channels. Clear all channels. Please clear all channels,” and phase five began.