The Flavors of Other Worlds

by Alan Dean Foster

  8

  That Creeping Sensation

  350 million years ago. Or 300 million years ago. What’s fifty million years when you’re talking about giant bugs?

  It’s the Carboniferous period, when oversized arthropods ruled the Earth. Most folks think of it as hot and humid, which it was. Fewer realize that there was a lot more oxygen in the atmosphere. More oxygen allows insects, who have an entirely different and generally less efficient respiratory system than mammals and reptiles and a number of other life forms, to grow larger. How much larger? Naw … I’m not going to do that work for you. If you’re curious to read how big the Protodonata and their fellow carboniferans grew, there’s plenty to read about them.

  Doing so got me to wondering what might happen to their descendents if the oxygen level in our atmosphere rose suddenly and significantly once again. Thanks to our own ignorance.…

  * * *

  “Code Four, Code Four!”

  Sgt. Lissa-Marie nodded to her partner and Corporal Gustafson acknowledged the alarm. It was the fourth Code Four of what had long since turned into a long hot one—both temperature-wise and professionally. She checked a floating readout: it declared that the temperature outside the sealed, climate-controlled truck cab was ninety-six degrees Fahrenheit at two in the afternoon. Happily the humidity was unusually low, floating right around the eighty percent mark.

  “Gun it,” she growled. From behind the wheel Gustafson nodded and floored the accelerator. Supplying instant torque, the electric motors mounted above each of the panel truck’s four wheels sent it leaping forward. As the sharp acceleration shoved her back into her seat she directed her voice to the omnidirectional pickup mounted in the roof.

  “What is it this time?”

  “Bees.” The human dispatcher’s reply was as terse as it was meaningful. “Nobody dead, but two teens on their way to Metro Emergency.”

  “They’re getting smarter.” Gustafson chewed his lower lip as he concentrated on his driving.

  “Manure,” she shot back. “You’re anthropomorphizing. That’s dangerous in work like ours.”

  Her younger subordinate shook his head as much as his tightly contoured seat would allow. “It’s true.” He refused to drop the contention. “They’re getting smarter. You can sense it. You can see it. They don’t just crawl around and wait to be smoked anymore. They react earlier. They’re …,” he glanced over at her, “they’re anticipating.”

  She shrugged and returned her gaze forward, out the armored windshield. “Just drive. If you insist, we can continue with your insane speculations after we’ve finished the job.”

  The streets of Atlanta’s outer ring were nearly deserted. Few people chose to spend money on an expensive personal vehicle anymore. Not when public transportation was so much cheaper and a steady stream of workers kept the rails and tunnels free of the insects that obscured windshields and clogged wheel wells after barely twenty minutes of driving. The lack of traffic certainly made things easier for the exterminator branch of the military to which the two people in the truck belonged. Lissa was musing on the vilm she had been reading when a sudden swerve by Gustafson caused her to lurch and curse. Her partner was apologetic.

  “Sorry. Roaches,” he explained.

  She nodded her understanding and relaxed anew. One three-foot roach wouldn’t damage the specially armored truck, but if they’d hit the arthropod head on they would have had to explain their carelessness to the cleanup crew back at base.

  As they neared their destination she lifted her reducer off its hook and made sure it fit snuggly over her nose and mouth. Like everyone else she hated having to wear the damn thing. No matter how much they improved and miniaturized the integrated cooling system, you still sweated twice as much behind the device. But it was necessary. It wouldn’t do to consistently suck air that was nearly forty percent oxygen and still rising. That might have been tolerable if the runaway atmosphere hadn’t also grown hotter and markedly more humid.

  At least she’d never been in a fire, she told herself. Like most people she shuddered at the thought. Given the current concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere, the smallest fire tended to erupt into an inferno in no time. Leave those worries to the fire brigades, she told herself. The multinational she worked for had enough to do trying to keep ahead of the bugs.

  As studies of the Carboniferous Era, the climate in Earth’s history nearest to that of the present day, had shown, the higher the oxygen content of the air, the bigger bugs could grow. Mankind’s loathing of the arthropods with whom he was compelled to share the planet had increased proportionately.

  “We’re here.” Gustafson brought the truck to a halt outside the single-family home.

  They didn’t have to look for the bees. They were all over the one-story residence they intended to appropriate. A cluster of civilian emergency vehicles was drawn up nearby. Occasionally a crack would sound from one of the tightly-sealed police cruisers and a six-inch bee would go down, obliterated by a blast of micro bugshot. Operating in such piecemeal fashion the cops could deal with the bees, but only by expending a lot of expensive ammunition and at the cost of causing serious collateral damage to the immediate neighborhood. Buttoned-up in their cruisers and guarding the perimeter they had established around the home, they had hunkered down to await the arrival of military specialists.

  That would be me and Gustafson, she knew.

  Already half dressed for the extirpation, she wiggled around in the truck cab as she donned the rest of her suit. An ancient apiarist would have looked on in amazement as she zipped up the one-piece reinforced Kevlar suit, armorglass helmet, and metalized boots. Once dressed, individual cooling systems were double-checked. Ten minutes trapped inside one of the sealed suits in the current heat and humidity would bring even a fit person down. The coolers were absolutely necessary, as were the tanks of poison spray the two exterminators affixed to their back plates. When each had concluded preparations, they took care to check the seals of one other’s suit. A few stings from the six-inch long bees contained more than enough venom to kill.

  “Let’s go,” she murmured. Gustafson shot her a look, nodded, and cracked the driver’s-side door.

  The bees pounced on them immediately. Exhibiting a determination and aggression unknown to their smaller ancestors, several dozen of them assailed the two bipedal figures that had started toward the house. The swarm covered that edifice entirely. From decorative chimney to broken windows it was blanketed by a heaving, throbbing, humming scrum of giant bees. Lissa grunted as one bee after another dove to fruitlessly slam its stinger into her impenetrable suit. Walking toward the house through such a persistent swarm was like stumbling around a boxing ring with your opponent allowed to hit you from any and every angle. And your opponent was an octopus.

  As they reached the front of the overrun house a nervous voice sounded on an open police channel on Lissa’s helmet communicator.

  “We think the Queen’s around back, near the swimming pool.”

  “Thanks.” She didn’t have to relay the information to Gustafson. The Corporal had picked up the same transmission.

  Working their way around to the back they found the swarm there even thicker than what they had encountered out front. Surrounded by increasingly agitated workers, the Queen had settled herself against a corner of the house where workers were already preparing hexagonal wax tubes to receive the first eggs. She never got the chance to lay them.

  “You know the routine.” Lissa muttered into her helmet pickup. “Start with the Queen, work back to front.”

  Holding his sprayer, her partner nodded even as he opened fire.

  The killing mist that would render the house uninhabitable began to send bees tumbling off the walls, roof, and one another. Most staggered drunkenly for a few seconds before collapsing in small black and orange heaps. Lissa kicked accumulating piles of plump, boldly striped bodies aside as she and Gustafson finished up in the back yard and started working their
way around to the front.

  “Ware ten o’clock!” she yelled as she raised the muzzle of her sprayer.

  The trio of foot-long yellow jackets, however, were only interested in taking a few of the now panicky live bees. Natural predators of such hives, they were the human’s allies in extirpation. Though even more formidable than the giant honeybees, they had no interest in the two suited humans. Which was a good thing, Lissa knew. A yellowjacket’s stinger could punch into an unprotected human like a stiletto.

  As she and the Corporal worked their way through the swarm she reflected on the unexpected turn of history. When the Greenhouse Effect had begun to set in, scientists had worried about the presumed surplus of carbon dioxide that was expected to result. They had failed to account for Earth’s astonishing ability to adapt to even fast-changing circumstances.

  With the increased heat and humidity, plant life had gone berserk. Rainforests like those of the Amazon and Congo that had once been under threat expanded outward. Loggers intent on cutting down the big, old trees paid no attention to the fecund explosion of ferns, cycads, and soft-bodied plants that flourished in their wake. A serious problem in temperate times, vines and creepers like the ubiquitous kudzu experienced rates of growth approaching the exponential.

  The great sucking sound which resulted was that of new vegetation taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and dumping oxygen in its wake. Their size restricted for eons by the inability of their primitive respiratory systems to extract enough oxygen from the atmosphere, arthropods responded to the new oxy-rich air by growing to sizes not seen since similar conditions existed more than 300 million years ago. Short-lived species were the first to adapt, with each new generation growing a little larger than its predecessor as it feasted on the increasingly oxygen-rich atmosphere.

  There had been no bees in the Carboniferous, she knew, because there had been no flowers. But modern plants had adapted to the radical climate change as eagerly as their more primitive ancestors. The result was fewer and increasingly less manageable beehives as bigger bees crowded out smaller competitors.

  Changes occurred with such startling rapidity that, in little over a hundred years insects, spiders, and their relatives had not only matched but in some cases surpassed the dimensions attained by their ancient relatives. This made for an increasingly uncomfortable co-existence with the supposedly still dominant simian species on the planet, but a very good living for Lissa and her hastily constituted branch of the military. Nearing fifty, she could remember when her company, one of many that had appeared in the wake of the Runaway, had been able to offer its enlisted personnel predictable hours and regular furloughs. Such downtime still existed, of course, but she was making so much combat pay that she felt unable to turn down the assignments that came her way.

  Sure enough, scarcely moments after they had finished their work and a pair of city front-loaders had begun the odious task of scooping up the thousands of dead bee bodies, the truck’s com whistled for attention.

  “We got a 42B.” Gustafson had removed his reducer and was leaning out the open door. The oxygen-dense air might be hazardous for long-term breathing, but it was great for making a quick recovery after a bit of heavy physical exertion. One just had to be careful not to rely on it too long. “Boy stepping on scorpion.”

  She shook her head as she approached the truck. “That’s 42A. 42B is scorpion stepping on boy.”

  Fortunately, the yard-long arthropod they trapped and killed half an hour later in the public playground hadn’t stung anyone. Nocturnal by nature, it had been disturbed by children who had been building a fort. They stood around and watched wide-eyed as the two exterminators hauled the chelatinous carcass away. The scorpion wasn’t such a big stretch, Lissa knew. Nine-inch long predecessors had thrived in equatorial rainforests as recently as the twenty-first century. It hadn’t taken much of an oxygen boost to grow them to their present frightening size.

  They were finishing coffee when the code two red call came in. Looks were exchanged in lieu of words. It was one call neither of them wanted to answer. As senior operative, it fell to Lissa.

  “Why us?” She spoke tersely into her tiny mouth pickup. “We’ve been hot on it all morning.”

  “Everyone’s been hot on it all morning.” The dispatcher on duty at the Atlanta Metropolitan Command Center sounded tired. He would not be moved, Lissa knew. “You’re the best, sergeant sweetheart. Take care of this one and I’ll let you and your buddy break for the rest of the day.”

  She looked over at Corporal Gustafson, who was hearing the same broadcast. Inside the sealed restaurant equipped with its own industrial-strength reducers they had no need for their face masks. She checked her chronometer. If they wrapped up the call early they would each gain a couple of hours of paid free time.

  “All right.” She was grumbling as she rose from the table. Other patrons regarded the two uniformed specialists with the respect due their unpleasant and dangerous calling. “But not because you called me the best, Lieutenant. Because you called me sweetheart.”

  “Don’t let it go to your head,” the officer finished. “Take care on this one.”

  A single descendant of Meganeura shadowed their truck as they sped through the city streets and out into the suburbs. Since this was an emergency call they had their lights and sirens on, but these didn’t dissuade the dragonfly. Its four-foot wingspan flashed iridescent in the heavy, humid air until, finally bored with riding in the truck’s airflow, it flashed off toward a nearby office building. Going after a goliath fly, Lissa mused as she let Gustafson focus on his driving. Or one of the city’s rapidly diminishing and badly overmatched population of pigeons. Unable to compete with the increasingly large and powerful insects, birds had suffered more than any other group under the Runaway.

  The family that had put in the emergency call were grateful for the arrival of the exterminator team, but refused to emerge from the house’s safe room where they had taken refuge.

  “It’s in the basement.” On the small heads-up display that floated in front of Lissa’s face, the mother looked utterly terrified. So did the two children huddled behind her. “We’ve had break-ins before. Ants mostly, when they can get across the electrical barrier, and roaches my son can handle with his baseball bat. But this is a first for us.”

  “Take it easy, ma’am. We’re on it.”

  Looking none too reassured, the woman nodded as the transmission ended. Lissa checked her gear and made sure her reducer was sealed against her face before nodding at Gustafson.

  “This’ll be your first time dealing with a chilopoda, won’t it?” Her partner nodded slowly. “Watch your chest. They always go for the chest.”

  Donning helmets, they exited the car and headed for the single-family home. No sprays this time. Not for this afternoon’s quarry. Both of them hefted pump guns.

  The front door had been left open, not to greet the arriving exterminators but in the forlorn hope that the invader might depart of its own volition. Not much chance of that, Lissa knew. Chilopoda favored surroundings that were dark and damp. Eying the family compound and the looming, nearby trees, she sighed. If people were going to live in the woods in this day and age …

  As they entered the basement the house’s proximity lights flicked on. A good sign. It meant that their quarry wasn’t moving. Gun barrel held parallel to the floor, she was first down the stairs. The basement was filled with the usual inconsequential detritus of single-family living: crates of goods meant to be given away that would remain in place forever, a couple of old electric bikes, lawn furniture, the home O2 reducer that allowed residents to move freely about the sealed building without having to don face masks, heavy-duty gardening gear, and more.

  A sound made her raise her left hand sharply in warning. Whispering into her mask, she pointed toward a far, unilluminated corner. Gustafson nodded and, without waiting, started toward it.

  “I’ll take care of it, Lissa. You just …”

&nb
sp; “No! Flanking movement or …!”

  Too late.

  The six-foot long centipede burst from its hiding place to leap straight at her startled companion. Its modern Amazonian ancestors had jumped into the air to catch and feed on bats. This oxygen-charged contemporary monster had no difficulty getting high enough off the ground to go straight for Gustafson’s throat. If it got its powerful mandibles into his neck above his shirt and below his helmet and started probing with the poison claws that protruded from its back end …

  She raised her gun and fired without thinking.

  Guts and goo sprayed everywhere as the pumper blew the monster in two. Still it wasn’t finished. As both halves twitched and jerked independently, she approached them with care. Two more shots shattered first the dangerous anterior claws and then the head containing the powerful, snapping mandibles.

  Turning, she found her partner on the ground, seated against a trunk while holding his weapon and staring. Walking over to him, she bent slightly as she extended a hand to help him up.

  “I …” he didn’t look at her, “I’m sorry, Lissa. It came out so fast that I …”

  She cut him off curtly. “Forget it. First encounter with a chilopoda, no need for excuses.”

  He stared at her. “You warned me. You said they were fast. The class manual talks about their quickness. But I didn’t …” His voice trailed away.

  She gave him a reassuring pat on the back. “Like I said, forget it. Visuals and words in a manual are one thing. Having it jump you in a basement is a little different. They make a tiger seem slow and an insurgent unarmed. Next time you’ll be ready.”

  He nodded somberly, and they climbed the stairs. The basement was a mess, but that was a task for a city or private cleanup crew. Back in the truck she kept expecting to be assigned another job as soon as they reported in that they had successfully completed this one. Surprisingly, the officer on duty seemed inclined to keep his word. The bugband stayed silent.