The Nest

by Gregory A. Douglas

  It was Elizabeth who interrupted, raising her hand as if she were attending a schoolroom lecture. “What causes the genes to change?”

  “I don’t want to get technical,” Hubbard answered, “but we do know that chemicals can start a mutation chain going. We call them ‘mutagens.’ They work by interfering with the normal DNA bases that ordinarily control development. . . .”

  Elizabeth responded thoughtfully, “And some chemical combinations in the dump may have caused ‘mutagens’ affecting the cockroaches?”

  “That’s one possibility, yes,” Wanda Lindstrom answered her.

  Russell Homer, following in sheer fascination, expressed an immediate thought, “But I only changed the poisons a couple of weeks ago. Could the ‘mutation’ happen that fast?”

  Hubbard declared, “Good point. The process would have to be going on for a long time. I mean, although the first mutation would have been a sudden variation, it would have taken years for the mutated group to prevail and multiply in the numbers your reports indicate.”

  Almost with relief, Homer said, “Then it probably wasn’t the new stuff I spread out there?”

  Hubbard said, “Probably not, though it might have helped. We just don’t know enough yet about what we’re dealing with. Wanda and I are going to work on the hypothesis—just our guess, as we’ve said—that these cockroaches have ­taken a phylogenetic turn. We think they may be more like the Hymenoptera—that’s the class of insects with strong social insects, like the ants, the bees, the wasps, the termites. There could be many causes. Maybe some radioactive material got into your dump over the years. Or some ship waste . . . I can tell you that just lately at the Oak Ridge Laboratory there has been a study of a chemical called ethylnitrosourea, or ‘ENU’ for convenience. It’s been shown to be five times more potent than radiation in causing mutations, in both plants and animals. Conceivably, we may be in a parallel situation.”

  Elias Johnson was leaning forward, his sea-­weathered elbows bare and rough on the cedar table. The windows were beginning to rattle with a modestly rising wind, but no one in the kitchen was giving any attention to the darkening of the clouds becoming noticeable over the swelling waves outside. All eyes and ears were for Peter Hubbard and Wanda Lindstrom.

  The woman now said, with force, “If these roaches have developed a social colony, then we would expect there to be a nest, a home base from which ‘commands’ are given. We should find a separation of activities much like termites and ants—such as worker roaches, and scout roaches, and foraging bands, all interconnected and communicating with each other constantly.”

  “How would they do that?” Amos Tarbell asked with a curiosity as acute as his growing dismay. He was thinking that the roach chase he and the other two men had barely escaped was devilish proof that the damn bugs were acting in concert and knew what they were doing!

  His answer came from the woman biologist with an undertone of her sympathy for the group. She knew that these people were being sledgehammered by a horror they could not come to terms with. “Cockroaches” sounded so minor an annoyance, it was hard to accept that they might destroy an island like Yarkie.

  FIVE

  “Before I go on,” Wanda Lindstrom said, “please understand that when I use a word like ‘commands,’ I don’t mean it in a human sense. I dislike anthropomorphism—which assigns human-­like emotions, purposes, values, and thinking to non-­humans. Creatures like these roaches are sentient, of course, in that they receive and respond to stimuli. But they don’t have ‘emotions.’ For example, people in cockroach research may say they are ‘nasty’ little beasts, ‘aggressive,’ ‘hostile,’ ‘ugly,’ ‘foul.’

  “All that name-­calling is irrelevant, really inapplicable. Roaches are ‘mean’ not out of hostility but because their stomachs crave food. If nothing else is around, they’ll eat another roach, even their own babies, as I said before. That doesn’t make them ‘cannibals.’ Roaches hide, but they’re not ‘sly.’ They conceal themselves, but it isn’t ‘guile.’ They attack, but it’s not ‘anger.’ The poet Tennyson said it very well: ‘Nature is neither red in tooth nor claw.’ ”

  Hubbard, who had seemed absorbed in cleaning his pipe, interposed, “We’re simply talking about animals making the most efficient responses to different environments. There’s solid research showing that plants put on courtship displays, and, as one botanist tells us, they show promiscuity, and fickleness, and even rape . . .”

  Bonnie protested, “Plants?”

  “That’s right,” both biologists said at the same time.

  Wanda Lindstrom picked up her theme. “It only emphasizes what I’ve been saying. We have to keep in mind that the insects don’t ‘know’ anything, no matter how purposeful their conduct may seem to be. They are driven by the purposes and urges of survival and propagation of the species, nothing more. Russell Homer wasn’t far wrong in seeing them as robots . . .”

  The young man blushed behind his Ahab beard, pleased to be singled out by this authority from Harvard.

  “I myself once wrote of termites as mechanical toys wound up by a God at play. Except that too often Nature is not playing any childish game. Certainly not here!”

  “Darn right!” Reed Brockshaw coughed.

  Peter Hubbard expanded on Wanda Lindstrom’s theme: “To put it another way, insects like these cockroaches are living out ancient, primitive compulsions, perhaps modified by mutation in certain particulars. Their activity may seem the result of ‘planning,’ or even of ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling.’ But there is absolutely no mental calculation as we know it. Dr. Lindstrom is right in seeing termites and their ilk as just traveling biological machines. I can think of these roaches as nothing, really, except mouths on legs. Mouths on legs,” he repeated. “Which doesn’t make them less dangerous!”

  Wanda Lindstrom completed the thought-­provoking image. “Just add sex organs, and a rudimentary nervous system, and you have Nature’s whole truth about a roach.”

  “Makes it easier to squash them!” Bonnie Taylor muttered balefully.

  Elias Johnson stayed on one track. “You both say something about their coming from a home base. If there’s billions, and new eggs all the time, that nest would have to be a damn big place, wouldn’t it?”

  Hubbard could see the old man was thinking ahead to tracking down the source of the invasion. “Possibly, but not necessarily very big,” he replied. “These cockroaches might live in layers on top of each other. That’s not typical of cockroaches and I could be wrong, but we needn’t necessarily look for a terribly large nest.” He stopped and turned to Elizabeth. “Last night, you did tell me about some kettle holes on the island. We should certainly look into that.”

  Before Elizabeth could respond, Amos Tarbell was inquiring, “Would these cockroaches have something like a queen bee, then?”

  Hubbard nodded. “Probably more like termites, who have a king and queen—if there’s a central nest at all,” he cautioned.

  Johnson remained alert and inquisitive. “Okay, we know how fish school together, and the way sharks can sense vibrations a long way, and how dolphins and whales actually talk to each other. But how in Old Scratch can bugs do all the communicating you’re talking about?”

  Elizabeth said at once, “Everyone who’s seen the roaches says something about their hissing noises. Could that be it?”

  Hubbard shook his head. “In the species that we know do hiss—like the Madagascar roaches—it’s a sign of disturbance. Actually, it’s more a puffing of air out of their bodies through the spiracles, certainly not the kind of communication the captain is asking about.” Hubbard stepped back. “That’s another of Dr. Lindstrom’s fields.”

  Wanda Lindstrom picked up at once, explaining, “A main way these roaches could be contacting each other would be through some specific chemicals we call phero­mones.” She pronounced the last word slowly—“pher-­o-­mones.” It was a key to their understanding of what must otherwise be incomprehensible. Sh
e saw they were all attention. She could wish her college students were always as alert. But then, students’ lives and livelihoods were not at stake . . .

  “Pheromones are absolutely basic to insect communication in cases of species social grouping,” she resumed. “Mostly, the chemicals travel through the air as odors. They can be very specific. For example, one chemical pheromone can be the signal for food, another for danger, and so on. Among the termites, interestingly enough, the queen and king of a nest produce a substance that inhibits reproduction by the other insects of the group. In this way, the royal couple maintains solid control of the generations—Nature’s way of continuing the specific characteristics it apparently wants to go on.”

  “Interesting kind of dictatorship,” Reed Brockshaw mentioned.

  “Nature doesn’t provide many models of democracy,” Hubbard commented blandly.

  His observation brought to Elizabeth’s mind a Churchill quote from her political science course: “Democracy is the worst of all systems, except for the alternatives . . .” It seemed true in the animal kingdom as well!

  Wanda Lindstrom underscored, “The pheromones are a key method of controlling and maintaining the specialization the colony requires—the workers, the nurses, and so on.

  “The chemicals are often laid down on trails, too. We mentioned the insect problem of handling food too large for an individual. Well, believe it or not, there is an insect, the fire ant, called Solenopsis, with a special gland to secrete a pheromone that summons its fellows to help move food it can’t manage alone. This chemical happens to function by evaporation, and the workers can easily follow its smell in the air right to the prey.”

  “Fascinating,” Bonnie said to Elizabeth, her eyes bright with interest. “I’m beginning to wish I’d taken biology!”

  Hubbard disengaged his pipe. “Tell them about trophallaxis, Wanda.”

  She laughed at the blank looks the scientific word evoked. “Don’t let that scare you. Trophallaxis happens to be a most dramatic aspect of insect communication. It means that one insect of a nest feeds another one by means of regurgitation, so whatever one insect eats travels through the colony in this form from one individual to another. In one experiment, individuals were fed a radioactive syrup outside the nest. When the brood was later examined, the stomach contents were found to be the same in every one of the insects. The radioactivity had been spread through all the members!”

  Ben Dorset slapped his thigh. “Never heard a fish story to beat that in my life!”

  “It’s wild!” Elizabeth shook her head in wonder. New vistas of Nature and its marvelous mechanisms were opening up absorbingly, though the occasion was dismal.

  Wanda Lindstrom was not through. “You can see that this process can control a colony in several ways. When one worker feels hunger or thirst, he is feeling pretty much what every other member of the society is feeling, and vice versa. Also, this common feeding helps transfer the various pheromones, meaning that all the individuals keep getting the same message.”

  Hubbard laughed from his seat. “Without room for misunderstanding!”

  Amos Tarbell did not laugh. “My God, we’re not up against cockroaches, we’re up against a monster!”

  Hubbard grew serious at once. “You’re right, Amos! When the insects all get to doing their automatic jobs, you’re talking about a fearsome machine. The fact is that insects do form superorganisms even more cunning—to be anthropomorphic for a moment—even more cunning than larger, vertebrate animals. You may be surprised to learn that termite nests are much more intricate than mammals make or even birds design. I myself have seen ant hills in the Serengeti as high as a man. For air-­conditioning in the African climate, the termites or ants build two towers, one to draw cool air down into the nest, the other to discharge the warm air. And they have specialized workers whose only job is to beat their wings to keep the air circulating!”

  “Man!” exclaimed Russell Homer, “I’d have got down off that tree a helluva lot faster if I’d known half of this before!”

  “That’s why it’s important for you to know it now!” Hubbard warned. “Conceivably, these roaches can be organized like wolf packs, or worse. You know, when army ants go on their raids, they do more intricate maneuvers than wolves, and wolves are wilely enough!”

  Amos Tarbell nervously fingered his large belt buckle with the official county insignia. “Which leads to the obvious question. What do we do about it?”

  Peter Hubbard frowned again. “We can’t lose anything by going on the assumption that our theory about a mutation is correct. So let’s figure there is a roach gathering place somewhere in the woods up on High Ridge, or near the dump. We try to find it.”

  The sheriff stood up briskly. “At the dump! Let’s get out there and fire it!”

  His friends were on their feet, glad again for action. “Right!”

  “Good idea!”

  “Let’s move!”

  “Not yet, please!” Peter Hubbard was waving his pipe at them.

  They waited, wondering why Hubbard would delay the obvious.

  “First of all, the new poisons have apparently changed the dump—if a nest was ever there in the first place. Second, a fire wouldn’t do the job anyway. A nest would be deep in the garbage. Before fire or even smoke could reach it, every insect and animal in the dump would be out of there.”

  “Even with gasoline?” Amos Tarbell wanted to know.

  “The top layer would burn, the rest would smolder. I’m afraid all you’d accomplish is to chase the cockroaches and rats out of the woods entirely!”

  Scott blurted. “Hell, that’s the last thing we want!”

  “Obviously,” Hubbard said.

  The sheriff shifted impatiently. “Then what do we do?”

  Johnson intervened and said, to Hubbard, “I want to get this clear. You’re saying the nest wouldn’t be at the dump?”

  “Odds are it would be someplace else,” the scientist repeated.

  Johnson said to the others, “Well, we know where the kettle holes are . . .”

  Tarbell made a sound of frustration, “Hell, Elias, they’re all over the island. Take us a month of Sundays . . .”

  Wanda Lindstrom suggested, “Why don’t we start by mapping where roaches have been seen so far?”

  The table buzzed agreement.

  Ben Dorset voiced a common reservation. “Suppose we decide on places to look, what do we use for protection?”

  Russell Homer offered, “Flashlights?”

  Hubbard shook his head, “Nowhere near strong enough.”

  Amos Tarbell said, “Guns are no damn good, I can tell you that.” His bullets and Ben’s might as well have been water pistols. It was funny to be wishing the cockroaches were wolves! You’d have something to shoot at, something you could use your own power on! Insects, it turned out, were a hell of a bigger challenge.

  Wanda Lindstrom inquired, “Do you have things like flares? Fire would keep the roaches away, I’m sure.”

  Craig Soaras answered, “The woods are too dry to chance fire, m’am!”

  “I may have a thought,” Peter Hubbard said. “Craig, you’re the fire chief, I understand. Do you ever use dry-­ice extinguishers?”

  Craig nodded quickly. “Sure do! It’s the only thing for some kinds of fires.” His voice rose with hopefulness. “You mean, we do a search carrying the tanks . . .”

  “Yes. All the kettle holes, for instance.”

  “We’d have to get a lot more tanks.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “I guess. From Chatham and towns around.”

  “Check that as soon as you can!”

  “I’ll phone up . . .”

  Reed interrupted Craig. “Let me call Doreen a minute first. I want to be sure she keeps the kids out of the woods.” The two went out quickly together.

  Ben Dorset, at Peter Hubbard’s side, asked anxiously, “What do we do if we find a nest?”

  “Let’s take one step a
t a time,” Hubbard said. He called across to Amos Tarbell. “Are there any houses on High Ridge that may be in danger? I mean, any places sitting close to the woods without clear spaces around them?”

  The sheriff needed only a moment to think. “The Laidlaws, maybe, and the Tintons for sure. I can phone them right now. Tell them we need to do more spraying around there . . .”

  Elias Johnson said, “Good idea, but I think you might just be driving by, more casual, Amos. Seem like less of a fuss, and tell them Scott will put them up at his hotel until we get the all-­clear. Right, Stephen?”

  The fat man nodded at once. It was far better than a general evacuation.

  Russell Homer came forward. “Peter,” he said to Dr. Hubbard, very conscious of the first-­name liberty he was taking, “you said you need more specimens. I’m sure I can get you some out at the dump.”

  “That may be too dangerous now,” Johnson worried.

  Homer had already figured he could come at the dump safely by boat, shovel some garbage into a metal can, and get back out fast. He told his plan with pride. Ben Dorset, looking out the window, shook his head. “It’s getting on to blow now, Russ. I think this’ll be a real bad one, and it can turn tricky up there . . .”

  “I’ll manage!” Russell wished he could show the two from Harvard the little lobster craft he had built himself—look, ma, no degrees! He had drawn the plans, shaped the planks, hammered the dowels, planed the boat, caulked it, engined it, and lovingly painted it bright blue with yellow stripes, like “a Portugee.” The boat was underpowered, but Russell Homer knew to the last degree what it would and would not do in any wind and any sea. “You’ll have your garbage!” he promised Wanda Lindstrom, not without a touch of swagger as he left the room.

  His opening the kitchen door brought a blast of wind and sent flying the papers on which the sheriff had drawn a rough map to mark the roach sightings so far.

  Elias Johnson pinched his nose and nodded toward the sky. “She’ll be nasty in another hour or two.”