Insects 3: Specimen

by John Koloen

  “You live here?” he said, his eyes on a small cabin with several broken windows and a roof in want of shingles.

  Carolyn flashed a smile, shaking her head.

  “Nope,” she said, pointing to a small horse barn that had seen better days.

  “You live in a barn?” he asked incredulously.

  She laughed.

  “It’s behind the barn. You’ll see.”

  Boyd followed her as she led the way.

  “You live in a school bus?”

  “It’s not a school bus,” she said, with mock indignation. “It’s a conversion, an RV.”

  “I remember riding in one of these,” he said as they approached the yellow bus, studying it. The windows were opaque and painted to look as if children were inside. The flashing lights had been removed but otherwise it looked like a normal school bus.

  “My dad did the conversion,” Carolyn said proudly.

  “Does he own the ranch, too?”

  “I wish. He lives in Illinois. The people who own the ranch were looking for someone to keep an eye on things. I don’t pay rent or anything. They gave me a number to call if I see something.”

  “Something?”

  “Yeah, trespassers mostly.”

  “You see many of those?”

  “Nope. Doesn’t mean there aren’t any. It’s a big ranch. But this part of it isn’t used anymore. I love living here with all the trees and stuff.”

  The interior of the bus had been stripped of its seats and hardware and paneled throughout. It was arranged in compartments, with a full-size bed in the rear, a storage area, a shower and toilet, galley and lounge area with table and upholstered bench seats.

  “This is amazing,” Boyd said as he gawked at the interior. “Your dad did a great job.”

  “I know. I drove it from Illinois and didn’t have a problem.”

  As impressed as he was with the bus and rural location, he was enchanted by Carolyn McKenzie. It wasn’t long after they met that she’d told her friends about him, and following that first day at the ranch he became a regular visitor, spending more nights in the bus than his apartment. It wasn’t long before they spent weekends exploring the ranch’s many scenic views. Although his work didn’t suffer noticeably, his commitment to his job diminished to the point that he was resentful when Duncan ordered him to monitor the lab on alternate weekends.

  “I can’t do it myself,” Duncan told him. “Besides, it’s your job.”

  “I know.”

  “And the specimens must be close to producing the second cohort.”

  “I know, I know,” Boyd said peevishly. “It’s just that I’ve got a life, too.”

  “You mean you’ve got a girlfriend now.”

  “Yes, I have a girlfriend. So do you.”

  Duncan had always seen Boyd as his right hand man, someone he could rely on, someone who focused on the job at hand. Lately, he started questioning his assistant’s commitment to the project. More often than not, when he called him after work hours, he wasn’t on campus. He would drive in using Carolyn’s car if necessary, but tried to push things off until the next morning. In most cases, the rush to get things done was in Duncan’s head. Usually, things could wait until the next morning. But he was becoming anxious as the weeks passed and the juveniles turned into adults. He’d missed the birth of the first cohort and didn’t want to miss the second. On occasion, Boyd was so resistant to working weekends that Duncan started turning to his other, younger assistants who were more eager to impress their boss and lived on campus. What he didn’t know about them, how they would react in a crisis particularly, troubled him. Boyd had proven himself time and again in Brazil when it was a matter of life and death. Though he didn’t expect such dramatic incidents to occur at Biodynamism, he couldn’t help but wonder whether they could keep a secret the way Boyd did when the male specimen was injured.

  Would they cover for him?

  38

  FOLLOWING THE FIRST birth cohort, from which three dozen newborns were counted as they were distributed by his assistants into several aquaria, Duncan estimated that each female would produce roughly the same number of offspring. He’d guessed that there would be one female for every two males. But it was only a guess, since blaberus showed no external sex organ. They lacked the cerci and styli of cockroaches that they closely resembled, which were not ovoviviparous in any case. Sharks were ovoviviparous, but he didn’t regard them as relevant to understanding blaberus reproduction. He’d studied tachinidae flies, which were ovoviviparous, but many of them injected their eggs into a host instead of incubating within their own bodies. Besides, the great difference in size convinced him there was no comparison.

  However, he was confident that he would be able to identify the females after they were fully grown. He expected them to be slightly larger and with shorter antennae than the males, which he’d observed with his original specimens. Following the birth of the second cohort, Duncan planned to dissect several adults to identify gender differences as well as to describe their anatomy.

  Although he’d confirmed in his lab that the stalking behavior of the insects was apparent even after only two weeks of life, and that they grew into adults in a shockingly short time, he still felt as if he stood at square one. But that was his own fault. Like many scientists, once he’d accomplished something, he tended to dismiss its importance and focus instead on the next hurdle. As a result, he was seldom satisfied for long, always reaching for the next thing that was beyond his grasp.

  More than anything else, he wanted to witness the birth of the second cohort and as the days passed his anxiety increased, outpaced only by his escalating demands on his assistants, whom he feared would be the weak link in his project. He had cleared his deck. He hoped that Boyd and the others had done the same.

  39

  THE MONTHLY DIVISIONAL meeting was one of the few times Duncan saw Nolan Thomas in the flesh. At the first one, he did his best to ignore Thomas’s sutured face and smile that looked more like a frown. He could tell that Thomas struggled to enunciate words clearly, making his speech slow and deliberate. At this meeting, Duncan thought Thomas had his lisp under control or nearly so, though his face would still scare children. When the meeting ended, Thomas took Duncan aside in the hallway outside Cox’s office. At first, Duncan thought that finally he and Thomas would have a conversation, something the scientist had avoided since returning to work. Duncan, who was not good at it, tried to make small talk. But Thomas cut to the chase.

  “I need one of your adult females and I might not be able to give it back.”

  Duncan’s hopes for a conversation vanished. He noticed that Thomas’s lisp had returned.

  “We think they’re about to give birth.”

  “I know, that’s why I want it now.”

  “But why? I thought you were doing DNA analysis or something.”

  “I can’t really go into it. I just need it and I need it before it gives birth. Since, as you say, they’re ready, I need it now, today.”

  “What is it with you?”

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Duncan. I’m under a lot of pressure. Maybe you should talk to Gabe. He’ll tell you the same thing.”

  Duncan was angry and baffled.

  “This is just like last time, isn’t it. Am I working for you, or what?”

  “Talk to Gabe.”

  40

  DUNCAN DIDN’T HAVE to ask Cox. The same thing had happened when Thomas had ordered him to provide one of his original male specimens for DNA analysis. The specimen had been returned unharmed. Duncan realized the only reason Thomas would need a female was to harvest the eggs. Not knowing how many females were in the first cohort, nor the actual birthing process, the only way they had of sexing them was based on their size. As best Duncan could tell, the female adults were somewhat larger than the males, but this was only apparent when they were fully grown. The question he needed to answer was how the offspring emerged since there was no visible indication. If only
the original female hadn’t gone into hiding when she gave birth.

  Duncan described his conversation with Thomas and his need for a female specimen to Boyd.

  “I’m sure he must want the eggs,” Duncan said. “Why else would he—”

  “I guess I forgot to tell you this, but Gruber told me Dr. Thomas is going to clone the bugs. That’s why he needs a female.”

  Duncan raised his eyes to the ceiling and shook his head.

  “And you were gonna tell me when? Jesus, Cody, this is important stuff. You should’ve told me right away. Crap, I walked right into this, then.”

  “Sorry, boss. I thought I had but, you know, there’s so much going on it must’ve slipped my mind.”

  “You mean so much going on with your new girlfriend.”

  “That’s not fair. You know, I’m entitled to a life, too.”

  “So, what else did he say?”

  Boyd squirmed in his chair.

  “Out with it.”

  “He said something about our lab being closed down after Thomas has his clones. I didn’t think he was serious. I thought it was just one of those throwaway observations. You know?”

  Duncan groaned.

  “I mean, how is Gruber gonna know about stuff like that? I can ask him if you like.”

  “Don’t bother. I don’t know what’s what around here anyway. But we’d better cooperate with Thomas. Give him what he wants.”

  “How do we do that? All the tanks have adults or nearly adult bugs. You can’t just reach in and grab ’em.”

  “Give him the first one, the original. We know it’s a female and it’s isolated so it shouldn’t be a problem. But you do it, OK, not the other guys. Let’s just get this over with before she pumps out another load.”

  “They’ll kill it, right?”

  “Oh, yeah. He told me he’s not gonna give it back. I’d like to see how long she lives and how many times she gives birth, but we’ll figure that out with the others, assuming we’re still here.”

  “You know, we were lucky that one of those guys that we captured turned out to be female, right? How lucky was that?”

  Duncan smiled.

  “Can’t beat luck.”

  41

  DUNCAN WAS WRONG about the sex ratio, which was guesswork anyway. But he did observe one of the females giving birth in the open. Although he wasn’t certain until he reviewed the video, a tube appeared to punch an opening in its lower abdomen from which the newborns gushed out. Days later his assistants observed that none of the adults had openings in their abdomens.

  The second cohort had emerged five weeks after the first and the number of newborns could only be estimated because they were mixed in with adults from the first cohort and nobody dared to separate them. But it was apparent by the end of the week that there were far more newborns than could be expected from a two-to-one, male-to-female sex ratio. It was more likely the reverse, one male to two females or greater. What was known was that by the end of the week there were many hundreds of newborns scurrying about the aquaria.

  In the absence of actual data, Duncan struggled to estimate the size of the next cohort. His assistants had initially reported thirty-six newborns in the first cohort, but seeing for himself how difficult it was to keep track of them, he used a range of numbers for his calculations. He took thirty as his low end number and forty as the high end, though he believed that number to be unlikely. Based on a two-female-to-one male sex ratio, there would be about twenty-four females from the first cohort. If each of them produced thirty-five offspring, the result would be about eight hundred and seventy newborns, with about five hundred and eighty females. According to his admittedly uncertain estimates, the third cohort would result in more than twenty-one thousand newborns with more than fourteen thousand females. and five to six weeks later, the fourth cohort would then result in over a half million offspring.

  “That’s unbelievable,” Boyd said as Duncan met with his assistants to discuss the future. “You’re sure about that?”

  “More or less,” Duncan said, “but not by much.”

  Hearing this, Malcolm Chang and Jake Winston looked at each other in disbelief. Chang raised his hand.

  “Dr. Duncan,” he said, “what are we supposed to do?”

  “Well, this wouldn’t be a problem if we had our damned habitat that we were promised a month ago,” Duncan griped.

  The custom habitat had been designed in a U-shape, running thirty feet in length and ten feet in width. Each of these sections was two feet wide. With a variety of strategically located gates, the lab techs would have been able to move the specimens around like cattle in a feed lot. They would have been able to isolate them in such a way that they could kill off excessive numbers without endangering themselves or the remaining specimens. This was impossible to do with the existing equipment. Being able to isolate the insects also would have allowed them to clean various parts of the habitat safely. Something that also could not be accomplished in the present situation.

  “So, what are we supposed to do?” Winston asked.

  “For now, just keep doing your job.”

  “You know, it’s getting harder to feed them,” Chang said.

  “Yeah, just yesterday while Malcolm was dropping food into one of the tanks, several of the adults were watching him, at least that’s what it looked like to me. It was creepy.”

  Duncan gave Boyd a knowing look.

  “Did you put that in your notes?” Duncan asked.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Is that the first time you noticed this behavior?”

  “I’m not sure. Every time I’m in the lab I get the feeling they’re watching me as much as I’m watching them,” Chang said.

  “What I saw,” Winston said, “was some of them standing on their hind legs, like they were trying to get a better view of Malcolm.”

  “Those are great observations,” Duncan said, glancing at Boyd.

  “What are you looking at me for? They’re in the notes,” Boyd said. “They’re on the computer.”

  “I guess I overlooked them. But that’s neither here nor there. I think what we’re seeing is how blaberus is able to produce such large colonies. I just never imagined they could do it so quickly.”

  “So, what are we supposed to do?” Winston repeated.

  “Keep feeding them, make sure they have enough water until we figure something out. Obviously, we can’t let things slide for long.”

  Winston and Chang looked at each other skeptically. Following the meeting, after Duncan had left, his three assistants continued their discussion.

  “He just doesn’t get it,” Chang said boldly. “I’m afraid of those things. One of these days they’re gonna get out. I haven’t seen them do it, but you said they could jump, right?”

  Boyd nodded.

  “They sure could in the wild. Y’all don’t know this, but one of the first three males did jump, banged it’s head on the top and eventually died.”

  “Really?” Winston exclaimed. “Why didn’t somebody tell us about it?”

  “The boss didn’t want word to get out. He’s that way sometimes. He doesn’t like conflict. You should’ve seen how he avoided the media when they got after him.”

  “You gotta tell us about that sometime, what happened, you know.”

  “You got an hour or two?”

  “Sure,” Chang said enthusiastically.

  42

  CARRYING THROUGH HIS initial calculations, Howard Duncan saw that, by the fifth generation, the blaberus colony would expand to thirteen million and by the sixth there would be over three hundred million of them. The lab couldn’t even house four generations.

  Among the things he’d learned were two salient points: one, blaberus bred prolifically in captivity—though he had yet to discover the mechanism of fertilization—and, two, they grew into adulthood in four to five weeks. What he wanted to know now, needed to know, was their lifespan. Because outwardly they resembled cockroaches more
than anything else, and in the absence of a better proxy, he came up with a maximum range of between one hundred eighty and seven hundred days. German cockroaches, which were small, lived up to 200 days, Oriental cockroaches, which were up to twice the size of the German, lived up to 190 days while the American cockroach, which were up to twice the size of the Oriental, could live up to 700 days. The adult blaberus was at least twice the size of the American cockroach. Certainly, they couldn’t live twice as long as American cockroaches. No matter how he thought about it, it was clear that they would not die off nearly quickly enough.

  “When we get our habitat in place, we should be able to handle it because the ports and gates will let us funnel them where we want them to go. If the population gets too large, we should be able to funnel them into a tank where they can be killed.”

  “All of them?” Chang asked.

  “No, just the excess,” Duncan said. “This habitat will allow us to study their behavior in ways we can’t do now. We’ll be able to isolate the adults, at least some of them, so that we can determine how fertilization takes place.”

  “So when are we supposed to get the habitat?” Boyd asked. “We’ve been talking about this since we started.”

  “Gabe Cox is looking into it,” Duncan said. “I’ve told him we can’t wait any longer. He said he’d call the company. That was yesterday.”

  “So he hasn’t—”

  “No, he hasn’t called back,” Duncan said sharply, cutting off Jacob Winston. Immediately he regretted his harshness. Winston was a good worker and deserved better treatment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cut you off. Go ahead, Jake, finish.”

  Winston glanced at his peers knowingly.

  “I was just gonna ask what happens if we don’t get the habitat before the third generation. Do you think we can handle twenty thousand of them with what we have?”