The Micronauts

by Gordon Williams

  “Maybe we’re the first people on earth to see paradise,” Bruce said reflectively. Khomich watched Magruder murmuring into the radio. Then he palmed the aerial back into its slot.

  “We’re here in Section Fifteen,” he said, pointing at his map. “If anybody needs to go to the bathroom, now’s the time—we don’t want to stop any more than we can help.”

  “i need to, but— ” Anne Richards made a little grimace—“I’m scared to go into the bushes on my own.”

  “I’ll go with you,” said Lena Davidson.

  Looking like a pantomime stage prop, as big as a football, the red and black ladybird was moving slowly down the rough green bark toward a seething tribe of aphids, delicate little creatures with opaque yellow bodies and black legs. When an aphid came near the smooth black head, it was suddenly grabbed and dragged under the ladybird’s jaws. Its thin black legs were still moving jerkily as the ladybird chewed methodically through the soft yellow body. Oblivious to what was happening, other aphids wandered round the ladybird’s red and black shell, climbing over its splayed legs. Nearby a female aphid gave birth to a fully-formed miniature version of herself, one of the twenty or so daughters she would have that day, forcing it out of a hole at the rear of her abdomen. The ladybird went on munching, turning the carcass this way and that to consume all the juicy parts. When only the heads and legs were left, it simply moved forward and started munching on yet another aphid, the newly-born baby.

  Having watched all this in a state of almost hypnotic revulsion, Anne Richards lost her temper.

  “You bloody murderer,” she said angrily, pushing at the shiny red and black shell with her stick. Until then the air had been cloyingly sweet with the heavy odor of

  honeydew—the excess sugar sap excreted by the greenfly aphids—but from the alerted ladybird came the foul stench of its defensive spray, a gas so repugnant they had to hold their noses. The red and black shell rose, in two equal sections and it flew off with a whirring noise. The other aphids were walking unconcernedly round the half-eaten corpse of the baby whose existence had lasted less than sixty seconds.

  “I suppose you think I’m silly but I hate to see creatures dying,” she said to Lena.

  “The ladybird will die if it doesn’t eat.”

  “I suppose so. It’s all—well, so complex. Tell me honestly, Lena—you really think Professor Bruce and Khomich were sent by the Commissioner to eliminate George?”

  “Taking all our materials without official permission is just the excuse Towne needs—you know very well he stamps down on anybody who looks like a rival for his job. Once they have George in custody, I wouldn’t give a snap for your chances of ever seeing him again.”

  “What will happen after we abandon them?”

  Lena shrugged. “Does it matter? They’re Towne’s bully-boys, aren’t they? You worried what happens to a master thug like Khomich?”

  “Not really, I suppose. It just seems so—well, brutal.” She looked up at the seething family of aphids. “Just like the insects.”

  “Insects are automatons—they’re biologically programmed to display fantastic skills, but they don’t have any brains. You shouldn’t be sentimental about them— ”

  ‘That’s what’s wrong with us—we can imagine the worst.”

  “It’s just as well insects don’t have imaginations or they’d have taken over the world by now.”

  “What a horrible thought! Let’s get back among people . ”

  Lena smiled tolerantly.

  They passed under a lavender shrub, its gnarled stems as thick as tree trunks. From the gray leaves came

  not a delicate perfume, but a strong smell of tar. Suddenly, they were walking under a host of low-flying midges as big as swallows. They swung at them with their sticks but the very force of air in front of the swishing stick seemed to shunt the delicate little bloodsuckers to safety. They passed under the gray-green leaves of a sweet william catchfly, its bright pink flowers almost fluorescent in the sunshine. Still the midges danced above them.

  ‘‘A scientist once came up with an interesting observation,” Bruce said. ‘‘If all you knew was a midge and you measured it scientifically from every aspect of aerodynamics, you could prove conclusively that it’s theoretically impossible for the albatross to fly.”

  ‘‘Why is that?” Carr asked.

  ‘‘The midge beats its wings around one thousand times a second—it’s got a system of automatic muscle contraction. Yet the albatross—with its massive weight—can glide along for hours without hardly moving its wings.”

  ‘‘So scientists don’t know everything?” Carr said cheerfully.

  ‘‘No—but they know what they don’t know.”

  Carr frowned, trying to work that out. They came out -onto an open patch of light sandy soil which Magruder said was the start of the old kitchen garden. ‘‘Scientists can be pretty stupid,” Magruder said cheerfully. ‘‘Did Jany tell you about his fabulous giant wheat? They were using polyploidy—you know, extra chromosomes—and they came up with a beauty—an ear of wheat so big it could have fed the world! Only one snag—the ear was so heavy every single stalk would have needed to be tied to its own stake! Even the big brains at WFC couldn’t see a way to harvest that without— ”

  The soil erupted round Magruder’s feet. He had a glimpse of two big blades the color of iron clamping onto his ankle. For a moment, his face was petrified with fear—then he let out a scream that echoed far into the topmost branches of the biggest shrubs.

  ‘‘It’s dragging me down. Help me, help me!"

  “It’s dragging me down. Help me, help me!”

  They drew their pistols, but there was nothing to aim at. Magruder’s leg was dragged this way and that in explosive flurries of dry soil. He clutched at the earth but the drag on his ankle was relentless.

  “Do something, for Christ’s sake!”

  Their faces stared down at him, eyes wide with horror and disbelief. Most of his left leg was out of sight. Again he was dragged a few inches nearer the sinking earth of the hole.

  “Shoot it,’’ he begged. He was now flat on his back.

  “Give me a knife,” Bruce snapped. Only Magruder had a knife. Bruce knelt beside him. Magruder was yelling with pain, head twisting from side to side. His hips reached the crumbling rim of the hole before Bruce could slide the knife out of its canvas sheath. His leg was now fully extended. His body was too big to slide down into the hole but the unseen creature only tightened its remorseless grip.

  Bruce lay down full-length and sank both his arms into the hole.

  “What is it, for God’s sake?” Magruder shouted.

  “Just hold on—it’s a tiger beetle larva—I’m feeling for its prothorax, if I can get the knife into the soft spot— ”

  “Oh, Jesus.” Magruder went limp in a faint. Immediately, his body was jerked deeper into the soil. Carr and Robinson at last conquered the shock which had frozen their reflexes. They got hold of his arms.

  “You want to pull his leg out of its socket?” Bruce growled, face red with the exertion of stretching down as far as Magruder’s foot. “Somebody get hold of me in case I’m pulled down.”

  Halfway down the vertical hole which was both its home and its hunting-ground, the tiger beetle larva stiffened its grotesquely misshapen body, sensing that its victim was no longer resisting, its huge head jerking with an electric savagery, the ploughshare mandibles tightening with a grip that was ecstatic in its ferocity. It had no real brain—but it needed no brain. Millions of years had gone into the perfection of its murderous skills. It had never been taught how to drag other creatures down into the stinking darkness of its lair, yet it had never been defeated, never deprived of its horrendous feasts.

  In a frenzy of anticipation for the meal to come, its primitive but highly efficient nervous system failed to respond to any danger signals. Again, it jerked savagely at Carr’s inert body.

  Bruce’s hands felt across the cold, horn-like chitin of
the prothorax head. He had his eyes closed, trying to translate tactile outlines into mental pictures, praying that he would not drop the knife to the bottom of the pit and be forced to try pulling the brute’s head off with his bare hands, a battle he could not win. It was like wrestling with an armor-plated crocodile, an embrace with something so repulsive and so malignantly ferocious he had to bite his lip to stop his hands from recoiling involuntarily. Then he touched the soft membrane behind the prothorax.

  In the narrow space, shoving his arms down the length of Magruder’s leg and then past the huge head, he could not afford even one mistake. Eyes still closed, waves of blood surging through his head, he slowly maneuvered the knife, getting it into a double-handed grip, leaning so far down only the hands on his ankles prevented him from sliding over the rim of the ever- widening hole.

  He held his breath—and rammed the blade into the soft skin, forcing it deep into the prothorax.

  A stench of insect blood flooded up into his nostrils from the darkness below.

  The larva twisted and threshed—and then began to slip. He let its weight slide off the knife. He lay with his

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  face on the soil, not caring about the grit on his eyes and lips. Then he was sick—down into the hole ...

  It took half an hour for Magruder to stop sobbing. Leaning on Carr and Robinson, he tested his leg. His face was pale and drawn, as if he had aged ten years.

  “It’s numb,” he said in bewilderment.

  “I don’t think there’s anything broken,” Anne said, running her hands down his skin and gently twisting his foot. “You may have deadened a nerve.”

  “Can you walk?” Khomich demanded.

  The other two stood back. He took a step—and then sat down heavily, wincing with pain.

  “No good,” said Khomich, “we’ll have to leave him.”

  “Leave me? You can’t do that!”

  Anne looked at Lena Davidson. The Australian girl frowned at her to say nothing.

  Magruder looked beseechingly at each face in turn. “You can’t leave me. You couldn’t get back to me before tomorrow night.”

  “You have your pistol and your prod,” Khomich said.

  Magruder became desperate, hearing nobody speaking on his behalf. “Let’s call Control, maybe they can— ” his mouth fell open. He looked down, slapping his hand on his belt. He twisted, looking behind his back. “The radio!”

  “You’ve lost the radio?” Khomich barked.

  “Look—the clip’s broken—it must have fallen down that hole!”

  They went to the edge of the hole. They could see nothing. They brought out their torches. At the bottom of the pit, they saw only earth.

  “We need the radio,” Khomich said. “Corporal, tie a rope around your— ”

  Carr’s eyes widened incredulously.

  “Climb down there? Not me. I wouldn’t go down there for a million marks!”

  “I am not giving you money, I am giving you an order!”

  “Stuff your order. If you’re such a bloody hero, you go down.”

  “Corporal!” Robinson said angrily. He turned on Khomich. “Look, sir, we’d have to dig out that earth and get ropes round that thing and pull it out of there before we could see the radio—it might take hours. I think we should press on, sir.”

  Khomich’s eyes seemed to swell. His cheeks were red. He started to fumble for his pistol, still glaring evilly at Carr. “I gave you an order, Corporal,” he hissed. “We are on field-duty and therefore you can be executed for refusal to obey an order.”

  Carr began to back away. Bruce frowned. “He isn’t serious, is he?” he said incredulously to Robinson.

  The Englishman nodded.

  “Are you just going to stand here and watch him do

  it?”

  Robinson didn’t know what to do. Khomich was well within his authority to execute Carr summarily for insubordination and from the look on his face he intended to do it. Short of physically stopping him—an even worse breach of discipline—there was nothing he could do.

  “I should keep out of this, sir,” he said quietly to Bruce.

  “I shall count to five,” Khomich said. Carr looked this way and that, preparing to dive for cover. “One,” Khomich said loudly, “two— ”

  Bruce pulled out his own pistol. “Okay then, Khomich,” he said, “you shoot Carr and I’ll shoot you. Then Robinson can shoot me. I guess that leaves the ladies to finish off Robinson. Funny way to run a rescue party.”

  “Shut up, Mister Professor. This man is a soldier, he will do what I tell him, or— ”

  “You’re a fool, Khomich. If the radio is under that creature, it’s bound to be smashed flat. You going to kill a man for the sake of some broken micro-circuits and a plastic casing?”

  Khomich hesitated.

  “I think he’s right actually, sir,” Robinson said.

  Khomich stared at the ground, his chin trembling with suppressed fury. Then he shoved the pistol into his

  waistband. ‘‘We are wasting time,” he growled. ‘‘We will leave this man and proceed— ”

  ‘‘No we won’t,” Bruce said firmly. ‘‘We’re here to save lives, remember?”

  ‘‘We are here to arrest a damned criminal traitor!”

  ‘‘What do you mean—a criminal traitor?” Anne demanded.

  For a moment, Khomich lost all control. ‘‘Your husband is conspiring against the Commissioner,” he ranted. ‘‘You and all these scientists will be put under arrest and tried and— ” he turned away abruptly.

  ‘‘Is that right?” she asked Bruce.

  ‘‘We’re not here to give him the WFC Star of Merit but there’s no order to arrest him. He’ll have some explaining to do, that’s all. Now—let’s stop wasting time. Robinson, you cover the rear. Carr—give Magruder your shoulder. We’ll head for— ”

  ‘‘Just a minute,” Robinson protested, ‘‘you can’t give us orders, you’re only— ”

  Bruce put his index finger on the young Englishman’s chest. ‘‘I don’t want to hear any more crap from you, son. You were prepared to stand there and let him shoot the corporal, so that rules you out as a source of common sense and logic. I’ve been deluding myself this was some kind of nature ramble—well, from here on, we’ll call it a sacred mission, with only one aim—to get out of this damned garden alive!”

  As if to underline the lesson, everything they now saw seemed to proclaim the same threatening message. On a high branch, a praying mantis hugged the still quivering body of a large white butterfly to the terrible jaws of its green, anvil-shaped head, the two creatures locked in an embrace so intimate the ripping jaws might have been bestowing kisses. They walked on damp soil that seemed to seethe under them, soil that was no longer mere dirt to be shaken off their boots, but a dry sea in which lurked the living-machines of death. A robberfly snatched a honeybee out of the air and rammed its dagger-like proboscis into the bee’s abdomen, its gray

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  mouth-beard caressing the paralyzed bee as it sucked it dry. They walked in silence, beginning to contemplate their own stupidity, beginning to share the same doubts. Man was blind. Man had only one superior asset—his unrivalled capacity for violence. Take away that murderous asset and what was there? Helpless, blundering man who inherited no skills and who had to build useless pyramids to feed his own concept of grandeur. Man the clumsy newcomer—man who had no relationship with nature—man who would have come and gone before the beetles had even noticed him. Man who arrogantly described the dinosaurs as a passing phase and yet had been on the planet for only that brief sixty seconds before noon. Man the insecure, murdering clown who would be the swiftest passing phase of them all.

  They passed under the huge wooden wall of the old cucumber frame. In the damp shade under a broken plant pot, the gray woodlice trundled to safety from the vibrations of their feet, busy little armadillos leading a communal life that had lasted for millions of years and across wh
ich man was only a temporary shadow. That was the truth that faced them all—if man did not kill the other creatures of the earth they would have no reason for believing he existed. Man had to kill and slaughter because of his own agonizing insecurity, just to make the other creatures take him seriously.

  Without his murderous violence, man would never have survived long enough to know the meaning of words. Because of his violence, he would not survive long enough to discover the meaning of his own existence.

  They found themselves walking across a sheet of glass from the old cold frame of the kitchen garden, walking on their own mirror images. As they came to the fringe of weeds and grass at the edge of the glass, they were nauseated almost to fainting-pitch by the stench from what looked like the bloated body of a beached whale—but a whale wearing army boots.

  “Groebli!”

  “How do you know it’s Groebli?’’ Anne asked, looking near to hysteria.

  “Look at the hair,” Lena said brusquely.

  “Let’s get away from here—they can come out and bury him when the maggots have cleaned off the skeleton.”

  When they reached the beginning of the rockery slope, they had to stop to give Magruder a rest. Bruce nodded for Khomich to follow him to a short slope of hard, dry earth. They stood on a flat ledge of green- veined marble. In front of them, they could see the dead, yellow stalks of cabbages in the old kitchen garden and beyond that the cold frame. Overhead, the late afternoon sky was a haze of electric purple. From all sides and above, they heard the ceaseless dronings and hummings and chirpings and clickings of the unseen armies.

  “The shadows are lengthening,” Khomich said quietly.

  “I can’t see us making the top of this place before dark. I think we should look for a place to pitch the tents.”

  “I agree—a cave of some kind perhaps.” Khomich scraped his toe against the dull marble. “I acted like a hysterical woman. It will not happen again.”

  “Nobody can be sure how they’ll react in a completely new set of circumstances.”

  Khomich gave him a look of gratitude. “We can leave Magruder in the Safety Station—he won’t be in danger there and we can make faster time. Let’s hope Richards is still alive.”