"Ja, Günther Schmidt. What is it?" I couldn't see Günther, but I heard him banging around under the desk; one of his specimens had probably gotten loose. He clicked his tongue like he always did when he was concentrating. (I'd grown very familiar with the sound on our honeymoon, and it always left me in a good mood.)
"Hi, teddy bear," I said.
Günther shot up so fast his glasses fell off. I winced at the crack of his skull on his chair.
"Gummibärchen!" He clambered into his chair, a capture jar in hand. He wiggled his eyebrows. "You are after a little preview of the weekend, ja?"
"No, sweetie. Sorry. I've gotta work."
Günther swore—in German—and I just stopped myself from doing the same.
"Mike is a scheisshund," Günther said. He rubbed his head so his streaky grey hair went everywhere. "It can't wait? I packed the 'Shorts.'"
Every nerve ending in my body went poink. The Shorts. The ones from the German-Martian engineering colony. The ones Günther had replaced three times after I tore them. Off. And then some.
"'Schnitzel inside?'" My mouth went dry when Günther nodded and a sly smile crept across his face.
Mike was a dead man.
But I shook my head. I didn't want to have to face both Mike and Fred Gold. Fred was five feet even, ninety pounds sopping wet, and the first person in history to make an AI shut itself down from sheer mortification.
"Sorry, teddy bear. Not even for schnitzel."
Günther's smile fell. "What's more important than schnitzel?"
"We got Ants."
And I cringed inside when Günther jumped and smacked his head on the back of his chair again.
"Welche spezies?" he roared. "Gott in himmel—"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, teddy bear, settle down!" I held out my hands to the videophone camera, but Günther kept bouncing in his chair like a five-year-old on candy. "English! English!"
Günther bounced again, but stiffened. He straightened his shoulders, pushed his glasses up his nose, and did the little tapping dance with his feet that meant he was only pretending to be a sane, rational adult. The steady click-click-click of his shoes made my eye twitch. I sighed.
"Which species?" he said. He turned as red as the Shorts.
"Blue ones."
Günther sat up. A creeping feeling ran up and down my spine, and I tried to remember where I'd seen the species before.
"How large?" said Günther. "Worker? Soldier?" He twitched in joy, and said, "Queen?"
I measured against my forearm. "Fifteen centimeters? Six inches? Worker. Ran straight back inside."
And in Günther's overjoyed scream, I remembered which species it was: Caerulus kalii. Discovered by Günther himself. Named during his Hindu mythology kick because they had six arms, were blue, and could clean a rabbit to the bone in fifteen seconds flat. I covered my face with both hands and wished I had never called him in the first place.
"Is there a colony?" he said. "Do you have a queen? How many did you see?"
"I don't know, Günther. I only saw the one. I've got to go in there tonight and see if there are any more."
Günther clasped his hands together. "Liebling, I will be your eternal servant if you could bring me live samples. I've never found a queen."
Oh, brother. "Günther, there's not that much schnitzel in the world."
"There could be! For you!"
I stamped my robotic foot against the floor. "Günther, hear that?" I rapped my leg with my knuckles. "Hear the ringing? I'm not an entomologist anymore. I'm an exterminator. I don't study them. I squish them."
He gave me his puppy eyes. "Please?" He bent down and rustled in something for a moment, then came up holding the Shorts. "There's schnitzel inside."
"Günther . . ."
If he weren't stuck on Ceres eleven months a year, it wouldn't be so bad. But until he decided he liked bees with non-necrotizing stingers and butterflies that ate nectar rather than blood, long weekends it was. I put up my hands.
"Fine, I'll see what I can do. First mandible that gets near me, though, and I'm turning the place into an abattoir."
Günther kissed the videophone camera. When he drew back, his lip print clung to the lens, and he grinned like he'd just been pithed.
"Ich liebe dich," he said. I forced a smile to hide the fact that I'd gone all gooey inside. (It's the German. And the schnitzel. And, well, Günther.)
"I'll see you when I finish the job, teddy bear," I said. "At least long enough to ruin another pair of Shorts."
Günther wiggled his eyebrows. As soon as we hung up, I rolled back my sleeves.
I was gonna find me some Ants.
* * *
The problem with Ants is twofold.
Y'see, while Earth ants are prone to milking aphids and starting wars, and are commonly possessed of a venom that makes you itch like the end of the world, they're pretty easy to deal with. I step, they squish.
Ants, on the other hand, always with a capital A, are intelligent little buggers. They tend to develop things like language or technology. It might not be high technology, but they'll at least build a machine to milk the aphids. This means that they're subject to quarantine. Ever since that mess between the Cetacean Republic, the animal rights loons, and Norway, the last thing we need on this planet is another intelligent species.
Since they are intelligent, though, that means that the quicker they die, the less likely anyone is to pass a law to keep the damn things alive.
So I put on my body armor. It's a carbon-bonded suit, kinda like a wetsuit. Günther thinks it's sexy as hell. I think it needs another two inches in the bustline.
Armored up, and armed with a respirator, a canister of hydrogen cyanide, and an up-to-date will, I hit the cargo bay. Mike saluted. I gave him the finger and entered my passcode for the quarantine door.
Inside, I turned on my headlight. All around sat crate upon crate of electronics, courtesy of LunaCorp. (As a kid, I always liked to watch the giant glowing logo wax and wane across the moon's face.) No Ants. However, a few of the crates had been opened. I crept closer, gripping the nozzle of my cyanide sprayer.
All I found was an empty cardboard box. "NEW!" it read. "TRANSLATRON 3000! BABIES! FOREIGN DELEGATES! FUN WITH YOUR DOG!"
"Hell, Fred, what are you up to now?" LunaCorp had come out with at least three universal translators in the previous fifteen years, all banned on Earth. One of them was almost entirely responsible for the mess with the whales, the loons, and Norway. Fred probably got the new model on discount for that very reason.
For the same reason, I didn't much like the idea of the Ants getting hold of them. Fred was bad enough, and all he cared about was the value of his alleged shareholders. But Ants? Intelligent Ants?
I charged the sprayer hose with fresh cyanide and put my finger on the trigger. My robotic leg tensed for the first squish.
The steel shipping crates felt cold through my armor as I crept through the dark. Every time I put my foot down, I braced for a crunch that never came. A crackle came from above. Mechanical. An amplifier. I tensed.
And yelped when something dropped from the ceiling onto my head.
I fired a burst of cyanide powder at the ceiling. The Ant—a worker—skittered down the side of my head and sat on my boobs. It clicked its tiny jaws. I aimed the cyanide nozzle at it.
"Kore, tsuiteru?" a mechanical voice said.
Now, I've eaten in enough sushi bars to know what Japanese sounds like, but don't ask me to understand more than, "Two beers and another dragon roll, please." The Ant on my chest cocked its head, then looked back over its shoulder and clicked. Another whine. A bunch of languages I didn't understand. I raised an eyebrow and lowered the nozzle a couple of inches.
And then, "Prüfung, eine, zwei, drei."
Testing. One, two, three.
I was gonna kill Fred.
I gripped my forehead just above my goggles. Under my breath, I said, "Great. You can get your own damn samples, Günther Schmidt."<
br />
A rapid crackle. The Ant on my boobs tensed. The mechanical voice said, "It knows the four-armed queen!"
"The what?" I picked up the Ant by the thorax. It wriggled. The amplifier screamed.
"Put me down! The four-armed queen who speaks the sacred tongue! She'll smite you!"
I started to ask what the hell the sacred tongue was. A hundred tiny clicks rose on every side, and the amplifier whispered before it got swallowed in feedback.
Günther. Clicking. Damn it.
Just to be sure, I clicked my tongue, once. The sounds all around me stopped. Going hot in the face, I did my impression of Günther on our honeymoon.
The cargo bay echoed with triumph.
"The four-armed queen's delegate has spoken!" the amplifier said. "We are home!"
Home? I lifted my cyanide nozzle. No animal rights loons were going to show up on my watch, especially over a herd of bloodthirsty Ants. I knocked the Ant off my boobs and pinned it on its back with the cyanide nozzle. A hush fell through the cargo bay. If I didn't know any better, I'd think the Ant was cowering.
"Have we angered the four-armed queen?" said the amplifier. Somehow, though, the voice was louder. Deeper. Like getting in trouble in front of your whole kindergarten. I hesitated. And looked up.
Two Ants were watching me. One was a foot long. The other was a foot long plus a bulbous, rippling, pale blue abdomen. A queen. Both wore clay crowns.
The queen had feathers on her head. Grey feathers. Streaky. And glasses made of twigs.
I sagged. The Ant beneath my cyanide nozzle wriggled free. Günther was never going to let me live this down.
I took a step back. A squeal of the amp made me lift my robotic foot just in time to see an Ant cowering from my boot. I nudged the Ant away, and a swarm of its fellow workers rushed to calm it down. They looked a bit thin, really. For Ants. I had the strangest thought that they were refugees.
"What's going on here?" I said, and the translator's amplifier spat forth a series of clicks and clacks.
"We come to find the four-armed queen!" said the queen Ant. A steady stream of workers took the eggs she laid even as she spoke. "Our nest is gone! She will gather us in her mandibles and carry us to—"
The translator whined. I'm pretty sure it meant "Paradise." Somehow, I didn't think these guys had Günther's tanks on Ceres in mind.
"Look." I crouched to look the Ant queen and king more or less in their dozen eyes. "You've really got Günther—"
"Hail the queen!" said the Ants.
I sighed. "You've got him all wrong. He's not a god. He's not even a queen."
The queen stiffened. "The four-armed queen is a king? Where is his queen?"
I hesitated. "Yeah, about that. You're talking to her."
I heard the silence that swept through the cargo bay. Next thing I knew, a hundred Ants swarmed up my body. I screamed. They pushed me on my butt. A huge soldier crawled up between my legs.
"Hey, hey, hey, buddy!" I shoved her away. "Keep off the queen!"
The soldier only clicked like a schoolmarm and crawled straight back up me. Ants. Everywhere. Swarming up and down and left and right. I felt the cyanide nozzle slip from my hand. No way to fight. No way to get them off me. So I did the only thing I could.
I lifted my robotic foot and brought it down on the first thing that moved.
In the stunned silence after the crunch, I realized exactly how stupid an idea that was.
A dozen clicks echoed from all sides. I looked down my body to see every soldier in the colony standing with mandibles ready to take a bite. My suit was tough, but an entire colony of half-starved, carnivorous Ants? Yeah. I held my breath—it was that or hyperventilate—and felt the workers ease my leg aside.
A single worker lay in a blue-and-green smear. It lifted its head, clicked once, and slumped to the cargo bay floor. A few workers eased it free and carried it to the queen, who took it in two of her arms and rocked it. I had never seen either an ant or an Ant do anything like it. And, believe me, I've seen my share of Ants.
The queen clicked. The amp said, "That's that, then. Not even the four-armed king wants us."
You know, I used to think insects were cute. Stupid, but cute. Maybe it was the queen's Günther suit, and maybe it was the rocking. Maybe it was the dozen sets of half-inch-long mandibles poised to tear my flesh and my total lack of defense. But, damn it, for a second there, I almost felt sorry for the crunchy little things.
Okay, so I did feel sorry for them. It happens.
I lifted my head. The soldiers tensed, but I sat up in a series of slow movements and held up my hands.
"Sorry. It was an accident."
A few clicks. The amp said, "Yeah, right."
"Will this ship be leaving the planet again?" said the queen. She held herself tall, but she wouldn't look at me. She almost seemed to be putting on a brave face for the others.
"Yeah. A few days." I folded my arms and rested them on my knees. My robotic leg twitched—it does that when I get upset—and I pressed the reset button at my hip to steady myself. I looked at the Ants. The workers slunk into the shadows of Fred's crates. At an order from the king, the soldiers backed away, too.
Damn it.
Some weekend it had turned out to be. And, to make things worse, Günther would be back to Ceres on Monday. No matter how much we loved each other, he needed more than just me to keep him on Earth.
I stopped.
No, it was a stupid idea.
But . . .
* * *
Mike just about screamed me deaf when he found out I'd sent Günther into the Paul Bunyan. (Günther had just about screamed me deaf, too, but in German and between kissing me until my lips were numb.) Mike's problem had to do with words like "insurance," "liability," "termination." Big words. Legal words. I'm an entomologist, not a lawyer; I pretended not to understand him.
Fred, too, had issues. He screamed words like "shareholders," "profit margin," "livelihood," and "lawsuit." He didn't listen to me—Fred's good at that—but he listened to Günther, whose counter-argument mentioned "species," as well as "endangered," "legal status," and the killer, "contraband technology."
Yeah. Fred got real quiet after that.
Finally, Fred stormed out—he muttered something about his lawyer—and Mike followed. (Mike said something about my continuing paycheck. Again, I pretended not to understand him.) Günther took another look inside the cargo bay. He came out grinning.
"So, ja," he said. "A good research project? I like the queen's self-decoration."
I rolled my eyes. "You would. Look, is the Ceres Station going to let you bring an entirely unknown species into the labs? You know how mad they got when you lost the Heliotrope Jumping Spider."
Günther shrugged. "I found it."
"Yeah, by following the holes it had dissolved through the walls to the life-support unit. Günther, look." I ran a hand through my hair. "There's only one planet in the entire solar system that's got enough animal rights loons to let you keep these guys."
Günther bared his teeth. "Gummibärchen—Sarah—You saw what happened to Norway—"
"Well, we're not in Norway. We're in America. Hell, what about Germany? You're always saying you can't get a decent home-cooked meal off-world."
"Mars isn't too bad." But Günther shuffled his feet and looked between me and the Paul Bunyan.
"But it's not the same," I said.
"But the permits. Gummibärchen, they'll have to stay in quarantine for months. We'll have to stay with them—"
"Please?" I said. My robotic leg creaked as I came close enough to put my arms around his neck (and my boobs against his chest). "I'll help you, teddy bear. I might even give up exterminating if you're there to stop me."
Günther opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked down at my boobs and gulped.
"What about Mike?" he said.
"Mike who?" I said, and I kissed him.
After a few moments, Günther drew his head back and sighed.
"I suppose I can videocommute."
I chuckled. Stupid Ants. They were kind of cute.
But enough about Ants. And Ceres. And Mike. And Fred.
It was time to get me some schnitzel.
* * *
Last Things: Cold Comfort in the Far Future
Written by Gregory Benford
Illustrated by Andrew Probert
Jim Baen's Universe-Vol 2 Num 2 Page 30
