The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 6

THE LARGE ANT by Howard Fast

There is no need, at this late date, to introduce to anyone the author of “Citizen Tom Paine” and “Spartacus.” But for those of you who have not been aware that America’s foremost chronicler of historical rebellion has turned his hand to the literature of contemporary social and scientific revolution as well, I should note here that this and other Fast science-fantasies (mostly from F&SF) are now available in a Bantam Books collection, “Edge of Tomorrow.”

There have been all kinds of notions and guesses as to how it would end. One held that sooner or later there would be too many people; another that we would do each other in, and the atom bomb made that a very good likelihood. All sorts of notions, except the simple fact that we were what we were. We could find a way to feed any number of people and perhaps even a way to avoid wiping each other out with the bomb; those things we are very good at, but we have never been any good at changing ourselves or the way we behave.

I know. I am not a bad man or a cruel man; quite to the contrary, I am an ordinary, humane person, and I love my wife and my children and I get along with my neighbors. I am like a great many other men, and I do the things they would do and just as thoughtlessly. There it is in a nutshell.

I am also a writer, and I told Lieberman, the curator, and Fitzgerald, the government man, that I would like to write down the story. They shrugged their shoulders. “Go ahead,” they said, “because it won’t make one bit of difference.”

“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—”

“There’s no need to explain.” Flopper smiled, a trace of sadness on his face. “Some of our very best golfers have the same trouble.”

“I was lying in bed, reading, and I saw it at the foot of my bed. I had the club—”

“I understand.” Fitzgerald nodded.

“You avoid looking at it,” Flopper said.

“It turns my stomach.”

“Yes—yes, I suppose so.”

Lieberman said, “Would you mind telling us why you killed it, Mr. Morgan?”

“Why?”

“Yes—why?”

“I don’t understand you,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re driving at.”

“Sit down, please, Mr. Morgan.” Flopper nodded. “Try to relax. I’m sure this has been very tiring.”

“I still haven’t slept. I want a chance to dream before I say how trying.”

“We are not trying to upset you, Mr. Morgan,” Lieberman said. “We do feel, however, that certain aspects of this are very important. That is why I am asking you why you killed it. You must have had a reason. Did it seem about to attack you?”

“No.”

“Or make any sudden motion toward you?”

“No. It was just there.”

“Then why?”

“This is to no purpose,” Fitzgerald put in. “We know why he killed it.”

“Do you?”

“The answer is very simple, Mr. Morgan. You killed it because you are a human being.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Do you understand?”

“No, I don’t.”

‘Then why did you kill it?” Flopper put in.

“I was scared to death. I still am, to tell the truth.”

Lieberman said, “You are an intelligent man, Mr. Morgan. Let me show you something.” He then opened the doors of one of the wall cupboards, and there were eight jars of formaldehyde and in each jar a specimen like mine —and in each case mutilated by the violence of its death. I said nothing. I just stared.

Lieberman closed the cupboard doors. “All in five days.” He shrugged.

“A new race of ants,” I whispered stupidly.

“No. They’re not ants. Come here!” He motioned me to the desk and the other two joined me. Lieberman took a set of dissecting instruments out of his drawer, used one to turn the thing over and then pointed to the underpart of what would be the thorax in an insect.

“That looks like part of him, doesn’t it, Mr. Morgan?”

“Yes, it does.”

Using two of the tools, he found a fissure and pried the bottom apart. It came open like the belly of a bomber; it was a pocket, a pouch, a receptacle that the thing wore, and in it were four beautiful little tools or instruments or weapons, each about an inch and a half long. They were beautiful the way any object of functional purpose and loving creation is beautiful—the way the creature itself would have been beautiful, had it not been an insect and myself a man. Using tweezers, Lieberman took each instrument off the brackets that held it, offering each to me. I took each one, felt it, examined it, and put it down.

I had to look at the ant now, and I realized that I had not truly looked at it before. We don’t look carefully at a thing that is horrible or repugnant to us. You can’t look at anything through a screen of hatred. But now the hatred and the fear was dilute, and as I looked, I realized it was not an ant. It was nothing that I had ever seen or dreamed of.

All three men were watching me, and suddenly I was on the defensive. “I didn’t know! What do you expect when you see an insect that size?”

Lieberman nodded.

“What in the name of God is it?”

From his desk, Lieberman produced a bottle and four small glasses. He poured and we drank it neat. I would not have expected him to keep good Scotch in his desk.

“We don’t know,” Flopper said. “We don’t know what it is.”

Lieberman pointed to the broken skull, from which a white substance oozed. “Brain material—a great deal of it.”

“It could be a very intelligent creature,” Flopper nodded.

Lieberman said, “It is an insect in developmental structure. We know very little about intelligence in our insects. It’s not the same as what we call intelligence. It’s a collective phenomenon—as if you were to think of the component parts of our bodies. Each part is alive, but the intelligence is a result of the whole. If that same pattern were to extend to creatures like this one—”

“Suppose it were?”

“What?”

“The kind of collective intelligence you were talking about.”

“Oh? Well, I couldn’t say. It would be something beyond our wildest dreams. To us—well, what we are to an ordinary ant.”

“I don’t believe that,” I said shortly, and Fitzgerald, the government man, told me quietly, “Neither do we. We guess.”

“If it’s that intelligent, why didn’t it use one of those weapons on me?”

“Would that be a mark of intelligence?” Flopper asked mildly.

“Perhaps none of these are weapons,” Lieberman said.

“Don’t you know? Didn’t the others carry instruments?”

“They did,” Fitzgerald said shortly.

“Why? What were they?”

“We don’t know,” Lieberman said.

“But you can find out. We have scientists, engineers— good God, this is an age of fantastic instruments. Have them taken apart!”

“We have.”

“Then what have you found out?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you mean to tell me,” I said, “that you can find out nothing about these instruments—what they are, how they work, what their purpose is?”

“Exactly.” Flopper nodded. “Nothing, Mr. Morgan. They are meaningless to the finest engineers and technicians in the United States. You know the old story—suppose you gave a radio to Aristotle? What would he do with it? Where would he find power? And what would he receive with no one to send? It is not that these instruments are complex. They are actually very simple. We simply have no idea of what they can or should do.”

“But there must be a weapon of some kind.”

“Why?” Lieberman demanded. “Look at yourself, Mr. Morgan—a cultured and intelligent man, yet you cannot conceive of a mentality that does not include weapons as a prime necessity. Yet a weapon is an unusual thing, Mr. Morgan. An instrument of murder. We don’t think that way, because the weapon has become the symbol of the world we inhabit. Is that civilized, Mr. Morgan? Or is the weapon and civilization in the ultimate sense incompatible? Can you imagine a mentality to which the concept of murder is impossible—or let me say absent. We see everything through our own subjectivity. Why shouldn’t some other—this creature, for example—see the process of mentation out of his subjectivity? So he approaches a creature of our world —and he is slain. Why? What explanation? Tell me, Mr. Morgan, what conceivable explanation could we offer a wholly rational creature for this—” pointing to the thing on his desk. “I ask you most seriously. What explanation?”

“An accident?” I muttered.

“And the eight jars in my cupboard? Eight accidents?”

“I think, Dr. Lieberman,” Fitzgerald said, “that you can go a little too far in that direction.”

“Yes, you would think so. It’s a part of your own background. Mine is as a scientist. As a scientist, I try to be rational when I can. The creation of a structure of good and evil, or what we call morality and ethics, is a function of intelligence—and unquestionably the ultimate evil may be the destruction of conscious intelligence. That is why, so long ago, we at least recognized the injunction, ‘Thou shalt not kill!’ even if we never gave more than lip service to it. But to a collective intelligence, such as this might be a part of, the concept of murder would be monstrous beyond thought.”

I sat down and lit a cigarette. My hands were trembling. Flopper apologized. “We have been rather rough with you, Mr. Morgan. But over the past five days, eight other people have done just what you did. We are caught in the trap of being what we are.”

“But tell me—where do these things come from?”

“It doesn’t matter where they come from,” Flopper said hopelessly. “Perhaps from another planet—perhaps from inside this one—or the Moon or Mars. That doesn’t matter. Fitzgerald thinks they come from a smaller planet, because their movements are apparently slow on Earth. But Dr. Lieberman thinks that they move slowly because they have not discovered the need to move quickly. Meanwhile, they have the problem of murder and what to do with it. Heaven knows how many of them have died in other places—Africa, Asia, Europe.”

“Then why don’t you publicize this? Put a stop to it before it’s too late!”

“We’ve thought of that.” Fitzgerald nodded. “What then —panic, hysteria, charges that this is the result of the atom bomb? We can’t change. We are what we are.”

“They may go away,” I said,

“Yes, they may.” Lieberman nodded. “But if they are without the curse of murder, they may also be without the curse of fear. They may be social in the highest sense. What does society do with a murderer?”

“There are societies that put him to death—and there are other societies that recognize his sickness and lock him away, where he can kill no more.” Flopper said. “Of course, when a whole world is on trial, that’s another matter. We have atom bombs now and other things, and we are reaching out to the stars—”

“I’m inclined to think that they’ll run,” Fitzgerald put in. “They may just have that curse of fear, Doctor.”

“They may,” Lieberman admitted. “I hope so.”

But the more I think of it the more it seems to me that fear and hatred are the two sides of the same coin. I keep trying to think back, to re-create the moment when I saw it standing at the foot of my bed in the fishing shack. I keep trying to drag out of my memory a clear picture of what it looked like, whether behind that chitinous face and the two gently waving antennae there was any evidence of fear and anger. But the clearer the memory becomes, the more I seem to recall a certain wonderful dignity and repose. Not fear and not anger.

And more and more, as I go about my work, I get the feeling of what Flopper called “a world on trial.” I have no sense of anger myself. Like a criminal who can no longer live with himself, I am content to be judged.