The Other Things

by Jonathan Dransfield

  Mo looked startled. ‘What? Them? Wow! Let’s get digging!’ With that, Mo threw himself into the task. Alim directed him, while he busied himself carefully cleaning up the beautifully preserved horned trilobite.

  They didn’t find anything on the scale or significance of Mary’s triumphs, but by the end of the afternoon they had amassed a respectable number of interesting specimens. So many, in fact, that Alim had to carry the bag on their happy walk back to the hotel. He was very proud of Mo, not only for his skills in finding the right rocks, but also because he remembered all the creatures’ names and their periods.

  Unspoken, but drifting in the evening air between them, was a joint thought: ‘How can we spend more time together?’

  Gale Crater

  Aeolis Quadrangle Mars

  5.4S 137.8E

  Diameter: 154km

  Age: 3.5 billion years old

  Geology: Impact crater and ancient river bed

  On the riverbed in the Gale Crater, the rover was still struggling to split any rocks. It was clumsily trying to find more evidence to confirm that those extraordinary impressions were true fossils and prove, in the rose-coloured half-light of another world, that it had made a discovery of greater significance than even Mary Anning’s finds.

  Chapter 3

  Jane, Ford and the President

  The Farm

  During the long night of the near miss, Jane had been glued to the television since the early hours. This was so out of character that Jane had to force herself to watch. She had no option; it was the big event that had dominated her and Ford’s lives for months, and this was the only way she could be close to him when it all came to a climax. As the drama of the night unfolded, her relief was palpable that Ford had been right – about the asteroid, at least!

  Her shock grew about consequential events unfolding around the globe. She flinched when the endless rolls of thunder broke over the farm and echoed around their verdant valley. That had not been part of Ford’s brief! Dawn was finally approaching. As Jane switched off the TV, her weary mind was at ease that they had been spared this threat from outer space, and happy that normal life would return.

  There was no point in going to bed and she decided to assuage her annoyance with Ford by indulging in breakfast. Jane wandered into her gingham-fringed kitchen and took the ripest banana from the bowl, slowly shaving off slices onto her muesli. The coffee percolator gurgled and steamed as the early morning light worked its way through the Georgian panes. An entomologist, she now had research to catch up on.

  Jane

  Before starting work, she toyed with the idea of getting the house in order and addressing the chaos that had accumulated over the past tense weeks. Order, order, order! With order you can think, even feel in control again. At least she didn’t need to make the bed. Reclined on the sofa during her all-night vigil, Jane had slipped in and out of slumber, to the point where the whole event had gained a dreamlike quality.

  Back in the bedroom, as her second cup of coffee blew away any remnants of fatigue, she changed her mind. Ants today, not earwigs! There was always more action with the ants, and if her ‘platoon’ were still active they were easy to follow. Her ‘platoon’ were a group of thirty workers she had marked with nail varnish. Red, pink, blue, gold and white; six in each squad like the Brownies. She laughed at her own chipped red nails as she put on her old blue working smock.

  Jane walked out into a glorious morning. The few morning clouds were flecked with gold and the old farmyard buildings glowed around her. There was a faint scuffle from the stables and in the distance she could hear the sheep. Through the yard and 100 yards up the track was the main ant’s nest.

  Sometimes she could entice Ford to help, or Buzz, his grandson, who would always volunteer enthusiastically. Her attempt at marking the ants was only a partial success. For creatures so sensitive to pheromones, the overpowering chemicals of the wet varnish at first drove them mad. Luckily the less than exact art of applying the varnish gave sufficient variation in shape to identify most of her participants. At least a dozen were easily confused; however, 15 ants were easy to identify and she’d named them all: Barry, John, Roddy, Llewelyn, Dylan, Dudley, Owen, Thomas, Richard, Burton, Tom, Jones, Huw, Davies and Catatonia. Her names were scientifically incorrect, as worker ants are female – and not Welsh.

  Jane’s core view of life was that all living beings had to have something in common, because they had come from a long-distant common ancestor. Each had found a place to survive and thrive, and was part of a 3-billion-year success story of survival and diversity. She knew that she shared a great deal of understanding with her dog and horses, and believed this would not suddenly vanish when you worked your way down the animal orders. The question was, what was left when you got to an ant? Obviously, you couldn’t share a joke with an earwig, but in observing their behaviour, you could attempt to define their awareness and intelligence. Her thesis was that by studying the different ways individuals addressed a problem or each other, you could pick apart a conscious level of decision-making. The earwigs and ants were very good subjects, as earwigs lived more solitary lives and ants exhibited the collective awareness of the hive.

  Dudley

  Dudley appeared. This was good, as Dudley was often an early bird. She marked it down. Out through the leaf mould she scurried, with Jane tracking her movements. At first she followed the pre-set trail, antennae waving to pick up the scent. Jane would generally track an ant as far as she could, taking notes. She was convinced that the ant would change its behaviour if it was aware of being observed, and the closer she got, the more the behaviour might be affected, so observation was always a balancing act. She lost Dudley.

  She had lost Dudley because the ant had exhibited the very behaviour she was looking for. The ant had gone off the trail, as some random synapse had triggered. Dudley seldom exhibited any individual behaviour. She was one of the nest. Her value in life was wholly about supporting the hive and her actions were mostly imprinted in her tiny brain as she developed in the cocoon. Ants had been in existence for hundreds of millions of years, and the same set of instructions had consistently served the colonies well.

  The ant was now in the undergrowth. Dudley had lived with a heightened reaction to threat due to Jane’s interventions. Shadows meant predators. In the undergrowth the ant could function with more ease. It was a predator itself. Hunting was a time when the ant could flip from automation to individual perception, like a pilot turning off the autopilot. Ants can see very well at close quarters, and around these grass roots there was always an effective place to ambush. This undergrowth with its dappled light, moisture and fallen leaf shelters was brimming with life: mites, spiders and grubs. Jane had followed Dudley for 20 yards before losing her, distracted by the persistence of the rumble in the air. In the open an ant would skittle for a few inches and stop, skittle again, more or less in a straight line. Here Dudley was always on the move, rustling each clump of roots to and fro, keeping close to the stalks in the hope of catching something as she came out of the blind side.

  After the third attempt Dudley had just backed off. Antennae waving, picking up something, she felt a vibration on her leg bristles. Limbs thrusting, she set off again, catching a flash of movement between the grass stems. Immediately, opening her jaws, she hauled herself past the roots and darted her head and body at a small black ant. To humans, all this happens in a flash, but to an ant, real time is slowed. As Dudley lunged, the smaller ant saw the massive brown jaws flashing, and attempted to raise its abdomen in defence. Instantly Dudley thrust her left-centre leg, swinging its body to twist around the prey. Grasped by its central thorax and held aloft, the smaller ant could only squirt acid ineffectually towards the air.

  Bam! Job done, ant dead. Dudley’s automatic reactions took over. She tracked back to the nest, the black ant frozen in the grip of her jaws. Twenty yards for an ant is, size for size, the equivalent of 5 miles for humans. However, an ant makes very light
work of it, running straight and without stopping for 10 minutes – the equivalent of 30mph – to reach home. Time and distance are all relative in our different worlds.

  Jane was delighted to see Dudley return successfully, but regretted missing the action. She sat back from her notepad. Even 100 yards away from the farm, she felt lost in the landscape. From the track she could look down on the shingle and corrugated roofs, the bleached wood and rusting iron cladding, towards the green fields and plains beyond the road. Over her shoulder the woods started halfway up the hill. She was in one of the special places on their estate where she could just sit and reflect. She adjusted her hat against the midday sun and felt the first pangs of hunger for lunch.

  ‘May as well break now and have a longer session later,’ she thought.

  The few clouds of the early morning had all but vanished and the shade of the kitchen was welcome. She turned on the radio. ‘Oh the water, oh the shining big sea water…’ sang a youthful Truck Longfellow as she rummaged in the fridge. Ignoring the jelly rolls, she picked out some cheese and tomatoes.

  The phone rang, and Ford’s face showed on the screen. ‘Hi, baby, are you OK?’ His voice was gravelly with tiredness.

  ‘I’m fine, but how was it with you? I saw some of the crew on Pure News!’ Jane replied.

  ‘Jane, it was awesome! Wow, it was close! Just seeing it come over, and the speed of it!’ Ford paused and swallowed. ‘Guess what? I’m going to be home early. They’ve laid on a chopper. They said they want me home for a phone call. Can you pick me up from Talladega? About five?’

  The rest of the afternoon went quickly. After a light lunch Jane retired to her study. She wrote up her notes and worked on the next episode of ‘A Bug’s Life’. Jane split her work time between pure research and journalism. Before she met Ford, the painstaking nature of research had driven her to distraction. He had given her this insight: science is not like doing a jigsaw, where each of the pieces is put in place until you have a comprehensive image or theory. Ford marvelled at the ancient philosophers who, by using logic, had worked out many of the discoveries known today. Atoms, the movement of the planets and even quantum theory had all been conjectured long before there were the means to prove them.

  Ford’s conviction was that if there was no life in the universe, it would be pretty pointless. By accident or design, our very existence gives it significance. We bear witness and understand, and by following our natural logic, like Einstein on the tram, we could make fairly good guesses about the nature of things. Ford likened it to a potter who understood the clay in her hands and could shape it into a jug or bowl. The scientist could form a theory through an understanding of their subject and their reasoning skills, and then test it, like the potter, with experiment to see if it too would hold water.

  This perspective had freed Jane to follow her intuition. Her theories about the consciousness of ants had come as a revelation. It seemed logical to her that ants were normally driven by the ancestral, pheromone-induced, collective behaviour patterns of the colony, but the individual worker had to have some level of self-awareness and decision-making capability in areas such as hunting. Her personification of the insects in her articles helped her imagine this and then she could direct her research along a more natural path for her.

  Tonight she would cook her favourite dish – Ynys Môns eggs. A recipe from a book called English Food, the irony of which still amused her. Ynys Môn – Welsh for Anglesey, the last stronghold of the Druids against the onslaught of the Romans, the English and Sunday drinking.

  Jane took the Land Rover and parked up on one of the cracked concrete parking lots of their local airport. As the chug of the engine died, she heard a helicopter in the distance. It approached the hard standing and nimbly landed. As the rotors slowed, a figure jumped out. Head slightly bowed, he hoisted a bag over his shoulder and made for the terminus. The chopper revved and lifted off, turning on its axis into the open blue sky. Jane skipped off to greet her partner. A draught of cool air hit her as she entered the building. A dismal place, it had the sort of twentieth-century aluminium-framed ugliness that was a sad replacement for the charm and embodiment of pioneering spirit of the original wooden aerodrome.

  Talladega

  Lincoln, Alabama, USA

  33.3N 86.1W

  Altitude: 529ft

  Geology: Forested uplands and flood plains

  Ford shambled through the barriers and his fatigue immediately lifted as he saw Jane. Her younger spirit rekindled his heart as he stooped slightly in their embrace. His bag swung off his shoulder and gently bumped her in the back, adding bruising impetus to the firmly planted kiss.

  The sun cast long shadows on the way home. The dog, Macks, barked as Ford and Jane entered the farmyard and rushed to its master as he climbed out of the vehicle. The pair had been comparing notes on the night’s event on their journey home. Jane left it until they were safe in their own environment to ask, why the helicopter and why the phone call? Ford’s response was guarded. They’d told him the White House was going to call, but now he was doubting it. Surely the president was far too busy visiting and encouraging the flooded communities of the eastern seaboard to break off and call Ford?

  Jane poured them both a Menorcan-strength G&T and took a satisfying gulp before attending to dinner. As they settled down to eat, the phone rang. It sounded muffled to Ford, whose ears were still recovering from the boom, but nevertheless the unmistakable voice of Luther Garvey boomed through.

  ‘Ford, I wanted to say that without your diligence we would not have been prepared for all this. It could have been like The Day of the Triffids, but at least all the emergency services were on standby.’ Luther’s voice lowered to a growl. ‘I’d like to thank you in person. Can you keep your diary open to meet me in Washington in two weeks’ time?’

  Jane had been enduring Ford’s heightened anxiety of the last few weeks, aware of what was happening but excluded. She had held on to the prospect of normality that would follow this event. The request, even by the president, to ‘keep diaries open’ released her pent-up rage.

  ‘Well, stuff him! Interrupting our dinner! We are due some peace and quiet. I’ve had more of this disaster crap than I can take! If that bloody thing had hit us there’d be no sodding diaries or bloody meetings. Who does he think he is dragging you off when you deserve a holiday?’

  She looked Ford in the eyes for a good five seconds. Then, with her crooked smile, she decided to let it go and announced, ‘Dinner!’

  ‘Oh, good grief, I’m turning into my pa!’ Ford patted himself all over as he stumbled out of his bedroom. His hair stood on end as he continually rubbed it to think. ‘Where’s my watch?’ He pulled it out of his dressing-gown pocket. ‘What the hell…?’

  Jane was smirking as she followed him out of the bedroom, carrying papers, her glasses on her head.

  ‘Deep breath, Fordy,’ she said with a yawn. He ignored her, still rummaging and bumping his way around the living room. ‘You really should do yoga, you know.’ Jane was gently mocking him now.

  Ford pictured his father in the lotus position and giggled half hysterically.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Jane laughed too.

  ‘Nothing really. Where’s the charger? The thingy charger, where is it? Oh God, that’s all I need.’ Ford wasn’t thinking.

  ‘Try Buzz’s room.’

  Finally, with all his essential belongings together for the day ahead, Ford sat down. He put everything on the table in lines. They sat silently at the sun-bleached table as Jane poured coffee and Ford rubbed his hair.

  ‘Oh God, honey… How can I be getting nervous about the flight when it’s me who flies the damn plane?’

  Jane held his hand gently. ‘I wish you wouldn’t fly. You’re going to be distracted.’ She then let go. ‘Look, he’s only going to say thank you. You don’t have to do anything. Breathe, relax, be yourself – it’ll be fine.’

  ‘Tie!’ Ford jumped up, hands on head. ‘I need a t
ie!’

  ‘Oh, come on, Ford. You’ve talked to him enough, you’ve met him…’

  ‘Once! I’ve met him once, and not in the White House. Today it’s the Oval Office!’

  Ford checked everything on the table again, making sure.

  ‘I’d better go.’ They embraced and Jane stroked his face.

  ‘You’re going to be great. I am so proud of you – you brilliant man!’

  Flight Route

  Ford decided to take his car, not the camper van, to the airport. He couldn’t afford to break down. Ford kept his beloved North American T28 Trojan plane at a nearby airfield, but he barely noticed the journey this morning. There was a clear blue sky, perfect for flying, with the wind sock showing just a faint breeze. It was only when he placed his belongings and kit on the passenger seat that he started to look forward to his flight.

  Flying was one of Ford’s great passions – the sky to him was freedom. He had his best ideas there in the blueness, without people. Ford had 600 miles to cover, following the forests north-east to Washington. He wagged the rudder and set the trim, throttled up and into the sky.

  Although Ford loved the speed of his beloved aircraft, far below he had always wanted to walk the route of the Appalachian Trail. He imagined himself and Buzz making the hike together, although he knew Buzz was hard to involve in anything that didn’t involve a screen and some nifty finger work. Ford occasionally let Buzz have a go in the plane, operating the lever and the joystick. It broke the boredom of the long flight from New Mexico. Buzz was a natural, with amazing hand–eye coordination – something Ford liked to believe had been inherited from him.

  Eventually, with his radio turned up high, Ford neared his destination. Descending into any large airport was always fraught, but today Ford had been given special clearance. He was going to see the ‘main man’ and everyone seemed to know.

  The runway seemed ridiculously large for his compact two-seater. The scale was so hard to judge and he bumped his way onto the runway. Darn! He had so wanted to land gracefully.