The Human Zero- The Science Fiction Stories Of Erle Stanley Gardner

by Matin Greenberg

  I moved my hands around fast an’ managed to slip the gold in my tom shirt. The girl was watchin’ me with those funny, liquid eyes of hers, but she didn’t say a word.

  There was a great big pile of small sticks between me an’ the ledge of gold. I figured it was kindlin’ wood that they kept for the fire. But finally my eyes got loose from the ledge of gold an’ what should I see but the sticks movin’. I looked again, an’ then I saw somethin’ else.

  It was a big ant heap made outa sticks an’ sawdust. Some of those sticks were eight or ten inches long and half an inch around. And the whole place was swarming with ants. They had their heads stickin’ out of the little holes between the sticks.

  They must be big ants, I thought; but I was interested in that gold ledge. There must have been millions of dollars in it. I took a couple of steps toward it, an’ then the ant heap just swarmed with life.

  They were big ants covered with sort of a white wool and they came out of there like somebody had given ’em an order.

  The girl shrieked somethin’ in a high-pitched voice, but I didn’t know whether it was at me or the ants.

  The ants swarmed into two columns of maybe eight or ten abreast in each column, an’ they started for me, swingin’ out in a big circle as though one was goin’ to come on one side, an’ one on the other.

  An’ then they stopped. The girl ran forward an’ put her arms on my shoulders an’ started caressin’ me, pattin’ my hair, cooin’ soft noises in my ears.

  I thought maybe she’d gone cuckoo, an’ I looked into her eyes, but they weren’t lookin’ at me, they were lookin’ at the ants, an’ they were wide with fear.

  An’ the ants were lookin’ at her. I could see their big eyes gazin’ steadylike at her. Then somethin’ else must have been said to ’em, although I did not hear anything. But all at once, just like an army presentin’ arms in response to an order, they threw up their long feelers an’ waved ’em gently back an’ forth. Then the girl took me by the arm an’ moved me away.

  “I should have told you,” she said, “never to go past the line of that path. The ants guard the yellow metal, and when one comes nearer than that they attack. There is no escape from those ants. I took you to them so you could help me with the feed. Now we will feed them.”

  That all sounded sorta cuckoo to me, but the whole business was cuckoo anyway.

  “Look here,” I tells this jane. “I’m willin’ to be the slave of a chief’s daughter—for a while. But I ain’t goin’ to be slave to no ant hill.”

  “That is not expected,” she said. “It is an honor to assist in feeding the ants, a sacred right. You only assist me. Never again must you come so near to the ants.”

  I did a lot of thinkin’. I wasn’t hankerin’ to come into an argument with those ants, but I was figurin’ to take a closer slant at that gold ledge.

  She took me away into the jungle where there was a pile of fruit dryin’ in the sun. It was a funny sort of fruit, an’ smelled sweet, like orange blossoms, only there was more of a honey smell to it.

  “Take your arms full,” she said.

  Well, it was my first experience bein’ a slave, but I couldn’t see as it was much different from bein’ a sailor, only the work was easier.

  I scooped up both arms full of the stuff. The smell made me a little dizzy at first, but I soon got used to it. The girl picked up some, too, an’ she led the way back to the ant pile.

  She had me put my load down an’ showed me how to arrange it in a long semicircle. I could see the ants watchin’ from out of the holes in the ant pile, but they did not do anything except watch.

  Finally the girl made a queer clicking sound with her tongue an’ teeth an’ the ants commenced to boil out again. This time they made for the fruit, an’ they went in order, just like a bunch of swell passengers on one of the big ocean liners. Some of ’em seemed to hold first meal ticket while the others remained on guard. Then there must have been some signal from the ants, because the girl didn’t say a word, but all of the first bunch of ants fell back an’ stood guard, an’ the second bunch of ants moved forward.

  They repeated that a couple of times. I watched ’em, too fascinated to say a word.

  After a while I heard steps, an’ the old goldsmith came along, puffin’ his pipe regular, a puff for every two steps. He reminded me of a freight engine, boilin’ along on a down grade, hittin’ her up regular.

  He didn’t say a word to me, nor to the ants, but the ants heard him cornin’ an’ they all formed into two lanes with their feelers wavin’ an’ the goldsmith walked down between those lanes an’ up to the gold ledge. There he stuck some more wood on the fire, raked away some ashes, an’ pawed out a bed of coals.

  Then I saw he had a hammer an’ a piece of metal that looked like a reddish iron. He pulled a skin away an’ I saw lots of lumps an’ stringers of pure gold. It was a yellow, frosty-lookin’ sort of gold, and it was so pure it glistened.

  He picked up some of the pieces an’ commenced to hammer ’em into ornaments.

  “What do yuh do with that stuff?” I asked the girl, wavin’ my hand careless like so she wouldn’t think I was much interested.

  “We trade it to the Fanti tribes,” she said. “It is of no use, too soft to make weapons, too heavy for arrow points; but they use it to wear around their fingers and ankles. They give us many skins for it, and sometimes they try to capture our territory and take the entire ledge. If I had my way we would stop making the ornaments. Our people do not like the metal, and never use it. Having it here just makes trouble for us, and the Fantis are fierce people. They are killing off our entire tribe.”

  I nodded as wise as a dozen owls on a limb.

  “Yeah,” I told her, “the stuff always makes trouble. Seems to me it’d be better to get rid of it.”

  The old goldsmith raised his head, twisted his pipe in his mouth and screwed his rheumy eyes at me. For a minute or two he acted like he was goin’ to say somethin’, an’ then he went back to his work.

  It was a close call. Right then I knew I’d been goin’ too fast. But I had my eye on that ledge o’ gold.

  I guess it was a Fanti that saved my life; if it hadn’t been for seein’ him, the ants would have got me sure. Those ants looked pretty fierce when I saw ’em boilin’ out in military formation, but by the time it came dark they didn’t seem so much.

  I got to thinkin’ things over. Bein’ a slave wasn’t near so bad as it might be, an’ one of these days I was goin’ to get away in the jungle an’ work down to a port. All I needed was to have about ninety pounds o’ pure gold on my back when I went out an’ I wouldn’t be workin’ as a sailor no more.

  Sittin’ there in the warm night, while the other folks had all rolled into their huts, I got to thinkin’ things over. As a slave, I wasn’t given a hut. I could sleep out. If the animals got bad I could either build up the fire or climb a tree. But there was fifty or sixty other slaves, mostly captured warriors of other tribes, an’ it wasn’t so bad.

  There was a place in the jungle where the hills formed a bottleneck, an’ there the tribe kept sentries so the Fantis couldn’t get in, an’ so the slaves couldn’t get out. Gettin’ through the jungle where there wasn’t a trail was plain impossible.

  I picked up a lot of this from the girl, an’ a lot from usin’ my eyes.

  Night time the ants didn’t see so much, an’ the gold seemed a lot more. I wondered how I could work it, an’ then a scheme hit me. I’d go out an’ make a quick run for the ledge, chop off a few chunks o’ quartz, an’ then beat it back quick. I’d be in an’ out before the ants could come boilin’ out of their thirty-foot ant hill. It seemed a cinch.

  I sneaked away an’ managed to find my way down the trail to the gold ledge. It was dark in the jungle. The stars were all misty, an’ a squall was workin’ somewheres out to sea. I could hear the thunder of the surf an’ smell the smells of the jungle. There wasn’t any noise outside of the poundin’ surf.

 
I’d taken my shoes off when I dropped onto the raft, an’ they’d got lost while I was rollin’ around in the water, so I was barefoot. The ground had been beaten hard by millions of bare feet, an’ so I made no noise. The hard part was tellin’ just when I got to the gold ledge, because I didn’t want to steer a wrong course an’ fetch up against the ant heap.

  I needn’t have worried. I smelled the faint smell o’ smoke, an’ then a pile o’ coals gleamed red against the black of the jungle night. It was the coals of the goldsmith’s fire. I chuckled to myself. What a simple bunch o’ people this tribe was!

  An’ then, all of a sudden, I knew someone else was there in the jungle. It was that funny feelin’ that a man can’t describe. It wasn’t a sound, because there wasn’t any sound. It wasn’t anything I could see, because it was as dark as the inside of a pocket. But it was somethin’ that just made my hair bristle.

  I slipped back from the path and into the dark of the jungle. Six feet from the trail an’ I was hidden as well as though I’d been buried.

  I got my eye up against a crack in the leaves an’ watched the coals of the camp fire, tryin’ to see if anything moved.

  All of a sudden those coals just blotted out. I thought maybe a leaf or a vine had got in front of my eyes, but there wasn’t. It was just somethin’ movin’ between me an’ the fire. An’ then it stepped to one side, an’ I saw it, a black man, naked, rushin’ into the cliff of gold. He worked fast, that boy. The light from the coals showed me just a blur of black motion as he chipped rocks from the ledge.

  Then he turned and sprinted out.

  I chuckled to myself. The boy had got my system. It was a cinch, nothin’ to it.

  An’ then there came a yell of pain. The black man began to do a devil’s dance, wavin’ his hands and legs. He’d got right in front of me, within ten feet he was, an’ I could just make him out when he moved.

  From the ground there came a faint whisperin’ noise, an’ then I could sense things crawlin’. I felt my blood turn to lukewarm water as I thought of the danger I was in. If those ants found me there—

  I was afraid to move, an’ I was afraid to stand still.

  But the black boy solved the problem for me. He made for a tree, climbin’ up a creeper like a monkey. Up in the tree, I could hear his hands goin’ as he tried to brush the ants off. And he kept up a low, moanin’ noise, sort of a chatter of agony.

  I couldn’t tell whether the ants were leavin’ him alone or whether they were watchin’ the bottom of the tree, waitin’ for him.

  But the creeper that he’d climbed up stretched against the starlit sky almost in front of my nose. I could see it faintly outlined against the stars. And then I noticed that it was ripplin’ and swayin’. For a minute I couldn’t make it out. Then I saw that those ants were swarmin’ up the tree.

  That was the end. The moanin’ became a yellin’, an’ then things began to thud to the ground. That must be the gold rock the fellow had packed away with him, probably in a skin bag slung over his shoulder.

  Then the sounds quit. Everything was silent. But I sensed the jungle was full of activity, a horrid activity that made me want to vomit. I could smell somethin’ that must have been blood, an’ there was a drip-drip from the tree branches.

  Then the coals flickered up an’ I could see a little more. The ground was black, swarmin’. The ants were goin’ back and forth, up an’ down the creepers, up into the tree.

  Finally somethin’ fell to the ground. It couldn’t have been a man, because it was too small, hardly bigger than a hunk o’ deer meat; but the firelight flickered on it, an’ I could see that the heap was all of a quiver. An’ it kept gettin’ smaller an’ smaller. Then I knew. The ants were finishin’ their work.

  I held my hands to my eyes, but I couldn’t shut out the sight. If I’d moved I was afraid the ants would turn to me. I hadn’t been across the deadline, but would the ants know it? I shuddered and turned sick.

  After a while I looked out again. The ground was bare. All of the ants were back in their pile of sticks. The last of the firelight flickered on a bunch o’ white bones. Near by was the gleam of yellow metal—gold from the rocks the Fanti had stolen.

  Sick, I went back along the trail, back to the camp, not tellin’ anybody where I’d been or what I’d seen. I still wanted that gold, but I didn’t want it the way I’d figured I did.

  I didn’t sleep much. They gave me a tanned skin for a bed and that was all. It was up to me to make myself comfortable on the ground. The ground was hard, but my bunk on the ship had been hard. It was the memory of that little black heap that kept gettin’ smaller an’ smaller that tortured my mind.

  I lived through the night, an’ I lived through the days that followed; but I saw a lot that a white man shouldn’t see. After all, I guess we think too much of life. Life didn’t mean so much to those people, an’ they didn’t feel it was so blamed precious.

  And I worked out a cinch scheme for the gold ledge. As the slave of Kk-Kk I had to assist her in feedin’ the ants. Every night I had to bring up some of the fruit. Kk-Kk wouldn’t let me feed it to ’em. It was the custom of the tribe that only the daughter of the chief could feed the ants. But I got close enough to find out a lot.

  Those ants were trained. Kk-Kk could walk among ’em an’ they took no notice of her. She was the one who fed ’em. The old goldsmith could walk through ’em whenever he wanted to, an’ they didn’t pay any attention to him. They’d been trained that way. But nobody else could cross the deadline. Let any one else come closer than that an’ they’d swarm out an’ get started with their sickenin’ business. Once they’d started there was no gettin’ away.

  I saw ’em at work a couple of times in the next week. They always managed to get behind the man at the gold ledge. Then they closed in on him. No matter how fast he ran they’d swarm up his legs as he went through ’em. Enough would get on him so he couldn’t go far, an’ there was always a solid formation of two-inch ants swarmin’ behind, ready to finish the work.

  But they fed ’em only one meal a day, in the afternoon. I got to figgerin’ what would happen if there should be two feeders. They couldn’t tell which was the official feeder, an’ they’d been trained to let the official feeder go to the gold ledge.

  I knew where they kept the pile of dried fruits that the ants liked so well. An’ I started goin’ out to the ant pile just before daybreak an’ givin’ ’em a breakfast. I’d take out a little of the fruit so there wouldn’t be any crumbs left by the time the goldsmith came to work.

  At first I could see the ants were suspicious, but they ate the fruit. There was one long, woolly fellow that seemed to be the big boss, an’ he reported to a glossy-backed ant that was a king or queen or somethin’. I got to be good friends with the boss. He’d come an’ eat outa my hand. Then he’d go back an’ wave his feelers at the king or queen, whichever it was, an’ finally, the old boy, or old girl, got so it was all right. There was nothin’ to it. I was jake a million, one of the regular guys. I could tell by a hundred little things, the way they waved their feelers, the way they came for the food. Oh, I got to know ’em pretty well.

  All of this time Kk-Kk was teachin’ me things about the life an’ customs of the tribe. I could see she was friendly. She’d had to learn the language of the goldsmith, so that if anything should happen to him she could educate another one as soon as the tribe captured him.

  For the tribe I didn’t have no particular love. You should have seen ’em in some of their devil-devil dances, or seen ’em in the full moon when they gave a banquet to their cousins, the monkeys. Nope, I figured that anything I could do to the tribe was somethin’ well done. But for Kk-Kk I had different feelin’s, an’ I could see that she had different feelin’s for me.

  An’ all this time the monkey-man was jealous. He was in love with Kk-Kk, an’ he wanted to buy her. In that country the woman didn’t have anything to say about who she married, or whether she was wife No. 1 or No. 50. A man got his wiv
es by buyin’ ’em, and he could have as many as he could buy an’ keep.

  After a coupla weeks I commenced taking the gold. At first I just got closer an’ closer to the deadline. I can yet feel the cold sweat there was on me the first time I crossed it. But the ants figgered I was a regular guy, part of the gang. They never said a word. Finally, I walked right up to the ledge, watchin’ the ground behind me like a hawk. Then I scooped out some o’ the crumbly quartz and worked the gold out of it. After that it was easy.

  I didn’t take much at any one time, because I didn’t want the goldsmith to miss anything. I wasn’t any hog. Ninety pounds I wanted, an’ ninety pounds was all I was goin’ to take, but I wasn’t a fool. I was goin’ to take it a little at a time.

  CHAPTER 4

  A Fanti Raid

  Then came the night of the big fight.

  I was asleep, wrapped up in my skin robes, not because of the cold, because the nights are warm an’ steamy down there, but to keep out as much of the damp as I could, an’ to shut out the night insects that liked my soft, white skin.

  There came a yell from a sentry up the pass, an’ then a lot o’ whoopin’ an’ then all hell broke loose.

  There was a little moon, an’ by the light o’ that moon I could see things happenin’.

  Our warriors came boilin’ outa their huts. One thing, they didn’t have to dress. All a guy had to do was grab a spear an’ shield, or climb up a tree with a bow an’ arrow, an’ that was all there was to it. He was dressed an’ ready for business.

  They evidently had the thing all rehearsed, ’cause some of ’em guarded the trail with spears, an’ used thick shields to ward off the poisoned arrows, an’ others swarmed up in the trees an’ shot little poisoned arrows into the thick of the mass of men that were runnin’ down the trail.