"What's wrong?" said Bridgewell. He heard concern in her voice. He slapped at his leg, stopped the motion, drew a deep breath.

  "Nothing." Chavez hitched his chair closer to the table again. A waiter hovered at his shoulder, mopping the water with a towel and refilling the goblet. "Your conclusion." His voice strengthened. "I asked about your theory."

  "I know this sounds crazy," said Bridgewell. "I've read about how the Argentine fire ants got to Mobile, Alabama. And I damned well know about the bees—I told you that."

  Chavez felt the touch again, this time on his ankle. He tried unobtrusively to scratch and felt nothing. Just the touch. Just the tickling, chitinous touch.

  "Okay," Bridgewell continued. "All I can conclude is that somebody in South America's created some giant, mutant ants, and now they're marching north. Like the fire ants. Like the bees."

  "Excuse me a moment," said Chavez, standing.

  "Your face is white," said Bridgewell. "Can I help you?"

  "No." Chavez turned and, forcing himself not to run, walked to the restroom. In a stall, he lowered his trousers. As he had suspected, there was no creature on his leg. He sat on the toilet and scratched his skinny legs until the skin reddened and he felt the pain. "Damn it," he said to himself. "Stop." He took a pill from the case and downed it with water from the row of faucets. Then he stared at himself in the mirror and returned to the table.

  "You okay?" Bridgewell had not touched her food.

  He nodded. "I'm prey to any number of ailments; goes with the territory. I'm sorry to disturb your lunch."

  "I'm apparently disturbing yours more."

  "I offered." He picked up knife and fork and began cutting a slice of cold roast beef. "I offered—so follow this through. Please."

  Her voice softened. "I have the feeling this all ties together somehow with your wife."

  Chavez chewed the beef, swallowed without tasting it. "Did you look at the window?" Bridgewell looked blank. "The stained glass in the library."

  Her expression became mobile. "The spiral design? The double helix? I loved it. The colors are incredible."

  "It's exquisite; and it's my past." He took a long breath. "Annie gave it to me for my forty-first birthday. As well, it was our first anniversary. Additionally it was on the occasion of the award. It meant more to me than the trip to Stockholm." He looked at her sharply. "You said you did your homework. How much do you know?"

  "I know that you married late," said Bridgewell, "for your times."

  "Forty."

  "I know that your wife died of a freak accident two years later. I didn't follow-up."

  "You should have," said Chavez. "Annie and I had gone on a picnic in the Florida panhandle. We were driving from Memphis to Tampa. I was cleaning some catfish. Annie wandered off, cataloguing insects and plants. She was an amateur taxonomist. For whatever reason—God only knows—I don't—she disturbed a mound of fire ants. They swarmed over her. I heard her screaming. I ran to her and dragged her away and brushed off the ants. Neither of us had known about her protein allergy—she'd just been lucky enough never to have been bitten or stung." He hesitated and shook his head. "I got her to Pensacola. Annie died in anaphylactic shock. The passages swelled, closed off. She suffocated in the car."

  Bridgewell looked stricken. She started to say, "I'm sorry, Dr. Chavez. I had no—"

  He held up his hand gently. "Annie was eight months pregnant. In the hospital they tried to save our daughter. It didn't work." He shook his head again, as if clearing it. "You and Annie look a bit alike—coltish, I think is the word. I expect Patricia would have looked the same."

  The table narrowed. Bridgewell put her hand across the distance and touched his fingers. "You never remarried."

  "I disengaged myself from most sectors of life." His voice was dispassionate.

  "Why didn't you re-engage?"

  He realized he had turned his hand over, was allowing his fingers to curl gently around hers. The sensation was warmth. "I spent the first half of my life singleniindedly pursuing certain goals. It took an enormous investment of myself to open my life to Annie." As he had earlier in the morning when he'd first met Bridgewell, he felt profoundly weary. "I suppose I decided to take the easier course: to hold onto the past and call it good."

  She squeezed his hand. "I won't ask if it's been worth it."

  "What about you?" he said. "You seem to be in ferocious pursuit of your goals. Do you have a rest of your life hidden off to the side?"

  Bridgewell hesitated. "No. Not yet. I've kept my life directed, very concentrated, since—since everyone died. But someday . . ." Her voice trailed off. "I still have time."

  "Time," Chavez said, recognizing the sardonicism. "Don't count on it."

  Her voice very serious, she said, "Whatever happens, I won't let the past dictate to me."

  He felt her fingers tighten. "Never lecture someone three time your age," he said. "It's tough to be convincing." He laughed and banished the tension.

  "This is supposed to be an interview," she said, but 'didn't take her hand away.

  "Did you ever have an ant farm as a child?" Chavez said. She shook her head. "Then we're going to go see one this afternoon." He glanced at the food still in front of her. "Done?" She nodded. "Then let's go out to the university field station."

  They stood close together in the elevator. Bridgewell kept her back to the panoramic view. Chavez said, "I've given you no unequivocal statements about the New Mexico Project."

  "I know."

  "And if I should tell you now that there are indeed monstrous ant mutations—creatures large as horses—tramping toward us from the Mato Grosso?"

  This time she grinned and shook her head silently.

  "You think me mad, don't you?"

  "I still don't know when you're kidding," she said.

  "There are no giant ants," said Chavez. "Yet." And he refused to elaborate.

  The field station of the Wyoming State University at Casper was thirty kilometers south, toward the industrial complex at Douglas-River Bend. Two kilometers off the freeway, Scarlett clattered and protested across the potholed access road, but delivered them safely. They crossed the final rise and descended toward the white dome and the cluster of outbuildings.

  "That's huge," said Bridgewell. "Freestanding?"

  "Supported by internal pressure," said Chavez. "We needed something that could be erected quickly. It was necessary that we have a thoroughly controllable internal environment. It'll be hell to protect from the snow and wind come winter, but we shouldn't need it by then."

  There were two security checkpoints with uniformed guards. Armed men and women dubiously inspected the battered VW and its passengers, but waved them through when Chavez produced his identification.

  "This is incredible," said Bridgewell.

  "It wasn't my idea," said Chavez. "Rules."

  She parked Scarlett beside a slab-sided building that adjoined the dome. Chavez guided her inside, past another checkpoint in the lobby, past obsequious underlings in lab garb who said, "Good afternoon, Dr. Chavez," and into a sterile-appearing room lined with electronic gear.

  Chavez gestured at the rows of monitor screens. "We can't go into the dome today, but the entire installation is under surveillance through remotely controlled cameras." He began flipping switches. A dozen screens jumped to life in living color.

  "It's all jungle," Bridgewell said.

  "Rain forest." The cameras panned past vividly green trees, creepers, seemingly impenetrable undergrowth. "It's a reasonable duplication of the Brazilian interior. Now, listen." He touched other switches.

  At first the speakers seemed to be crackling with electronic noise. "What am I hearing?" she finally said.

  "What does it sound like?"

  She listened longer. "Eating?" She shivered. "It's like a thousand mouths eating."

  "Many more," Chavez said. "But you have the idea. Now watch."

  The camera eye of the set directly in front of her dollied in toward a wall of greenery wound round a tree. Chavez saw the leaves ripple, undulating smoothly as though they were the surface of an uneasy sea. He glanced at Bridgewell; she saw it too. "Is there wind in the dome?"

  "No," he said.

  The view moved in for a close-up. "Jesus!" said Bridgewell.

  Ants.

  Ants covered the tree, the undergrowth, the festooned vines.

  "You may have trouble with the scale," Chavez said. "They're about as big as your thumb."

  The ants swarmed in efficient concert, mandibles snipping like garden shears, stripping everything green, everything alive. Chavez stared at them and felt only a little hate. Most of the emotion had long since been burned from him.

  "Behold Eciton," said Chavez. "Drivexants, army ants, the maripunta, whatever label you'd like to assign/'

  "I've read about them," said Bridgewell. "I've seen documentaries and movies at one time or another. I never thought they'd be this frightening when they were next door."

  "There is fauna in the environment too. Would you like to see a more elaborate meal?"

  "I'll pass."

  Chavez watched the leaves ripple and vanish, bit by bit. Then he felt the tentative touch, the scurrying of segmented legs along his limbs. He reached out and tripped a single switch; all the pictures flickered and vanished. The two of them sat staring at the opaque gray monitors.

  "Those are the giant ants?" she finally said.

  "I told you the truth." He shook his head. "Not yet."

  "No kidding now," she said.

  "The following is a deliberate breach of national security," he said, "so they tell me." He raised his hands. "So what?" Chavez motioned toward the screens. "The maripunta apparently are mutating into a radically different form. It's not an obvious physical change, not like in Them! It's not by deliberate human agency, as with the bees. It may be through accidental human action—the Brazilian double-X nuclear station is suspected. We just don't know. What we do understand is that certain internal regulators in the maripunta have gone crazy."

  "And they're getting bigger?" She looked bewildered.

  He shook his head violently. "Do you know the square-cube law? No? It's a simple rule of nature. If an insect's dimensions are doubled, its strength and the area of its breathing passages are increased by a factor of four. But the mass is multiplied by eight. After a certain point, and that point isn't very high, the insect can't move or breathe. It collapses under its own mass."

  "No giant ants?" she said.

  "Not yet. Not exactly. The defective mechanism in the maripunta is one which controls the feeding and foraging phases. Ordinarily the ants—all the millions of them in a group—spend about two weeks in a nomadic phase. Then they alternate three weeks in place in a statary phase. That's how it used to be. Now only the nomadic phase remains."

  "So they're moving," said Bridgewell. "North?" She sat with hands on knees. Her fingers moved as though with independent life.

  "The maripunta are ravenous, breeding insanely, and headed our way. The fear is that, like the bees, the ants won't proceed linearly. Maybe they'll leapfrog aboard a charter aircraft. Maybe on a Honduran freighter. It's inevitable."

  Bridgewell clasped her hands; forced them to remain still in her lap.

  Chavez continued, "Thanks to slipshod internal Brazilian practices over the last few decades, the maripunta are resistant to every insecticide we've tried."

  "They're unstoppable?" Bridgewell said. "That's about it," said Chavez.

  "And that's why the public's been kept in the dark?" "Only partially. The other part is that we've found an answer." Chavez toyed with the monitor switches but stopped short of activating them. "The government agencies involved with this project fear that the public will misunderstand our solution to the problem. Next year's an election year." Chavez smiled ruefully. "There's a precedence to politics."

  Bridgewell glanced from the controls to his face. "You're part of the solution. How?"

  Chavez decisively flipped a switch and they again saw the ant-ravaged tree. The limbs were perceptibly barer. He left the sound down. "You know my background. You were correct in suspecting the New Mexico Project had something to do with recombinant DNA and genetic engineering. You're a good journalist. You were essentially right all down the line." He looked away from her toward the screen. "I and my people here are creating giant ants."

  Bridgewell's mouth dropped open slightly. "—but, you—" "Let me continue. The purpose of the Nevs^Mexico Project has been to tinker with the genetic makeup/of the maripunta—to create a virus-borne mutagen that will single out the queens. We've got that agent now."

  All correspondent again, Bridgewell said, "What will it do?" "At first we were attempting to readjust the ants' biological clocks and alter the nomadic phase. Didn't work; too sophisticated for what we can accomplish. So we settled for something more basic, more physical. We've altered the ants to make them huge." "Like in Them!"

  "Except that Them! was a metaphor. It stated a physical impossibility. Remember the square-cube law?" She nodded. "Sometime in the near future, bombers will be dropping payloads all across Brazil, Venezuela, the Guianas . . . anywhere we suspect the ants are. The weapon is dispersal bombs, aerosol cannisters containing the viral mutagen to trigger uncontrolled growth in each new generation of ants."

  "The square-cube law ..." said Bridgewell softly.

  "Exactly. We've created monsters—and gravity will kill them."

  "It'll work?"

  "It should." Then Chavez said very quietly, "I hope I live long enough to see the repercussions."

  Bridgewell said equally quietly, "I will file this story."

  "I know that."

  "Will it get you trouble?"

  "Probably nothing I can't handle." Chavez shrugged. "Look around you at this multi-million dollar installation. There were many more convenient places to erect it. I demanded it be built here." His smile was only a flicker. "When you're a giant in your field—and needed—the people in power tend to indulge you."

  "Thank you, Dr. Chavez," she said.

  "Dr. Chavez? After all this, it's still not Paul?"

  "Thanks, Paul."

  They drove north, back toward Casper, and watched the western photochemical sunset. The sun sank through the clouds in a splendor of reds. They talked very little. Chavez found the silence comfortable.

  Why didn 't you re-engage?

  The question no longer disturbed him. He hadn't truly addressed it. Yet it was no longer swept under the carpet. That made all the difference.

  I'll get to it, he thought. Chavez stared into the windshield sun-glare and saw his life bound up in a leaded pane like an am-bered insect.

  Bridgewell kept glancing at him silently as she drove up the long mountain road to Chavez's house. She passed the stand of spruce where she had hidden Scarlett earlier in the day and braked to a stop in front of the stone house. They each sat still for the moment.

  "You'll want to be filing your story," said Chavez.

  She nodded.

  "Now that you know the way up my tree, perhaps you'll return to visit in a more conventional way?"

  Bridgewell smiled. She leaned across the seat and kissed him on the lips. It was, Chavez thought, a more than filial kiss. "Now I'm not kidding," she said.

  Chavez got out of the Volkswagen and stood on the flagstone walk while Bridgewell backed Scarlett into the drive and turned around. As she started down the mountain, she turned and waved. Chavez waved. He stood there and watched until the car vanished around the first turn.

  He walked back to the house and found O'Hanlon waiting, arms folded against the twilight chill, on the stone step. Chavez hesitated beside her and they both looked down the drive and beyond. Casper's lights began to blossom into a growing constellation.

  "Does she remind you considerably of what Patricia might have been like?" said O'Hanlon.

  Chavez nodded, and then said quickly, "Don't go for easy Freud. There's more to it than that—or there may be."

  A slight smile tugged at O'Hanlon's lips. "Did I say anything?"

  "Well, no." Chavez stared down at the city. He said, with an attempt at great dignity, "We simply found, in a short time, that we liked each other very much."

  "I thought that might be it." O^Hanlon smiled a genuine smile. "Shall we go inside? Much longer out here and we'll be ice. I'll fix some chocolate."

  He reached for the door. "With brandy?"

  "All right."

  "And you'll join me?"

  "You know I ordinarily abstain, Dr. Chavez, but—" Her smile impossibly continued. "It is rather a special day, isn't it?" She preceded him through the warm doorway.

  Chavez followed with a final look at the city. Below the mountain, Casper's constellation winked and bloomed into the zodiac.

  Twelve hours later, the copyrighted story by Laynie Bridgewell made the national news and the wire services.

  Eighteen hours later, her story was denied by at least five governmental agencies of two sovereign nations.

  Twelve days later, Paul Chavez died quietly in his sleep, napping in the library.

  Twenty-two days later, squadrons of jet bombers dropped cargoes ot hissing aerosol bombs over a third of the South American continent. The world was saved. For a while, anyway The grotesquely enlarged bodies ofEciton burchelli would shortly litter the laterite tropical soil.

  Twenty-seven days later, at night, an intruder climbed up to the balcony of Paul Chavez's house on Casper Mountain and smashed the stained-glass picture in the French doors leading into the library. No item was stolen. Only the window was destroyed

  UNACCOMPANIED SONATA

  Orson Scott Card

  When Christian Haroldsen was six months old, preliminary tests showed a predisposition toward rhythm and a keen awareness of pitch. There were other tests, of course, and many possible routes still open to him. But rhythm and pitch were the governing signs of his own private zodiac, and already the reinforcement began. Mr. and Mrs. Haroldsen were provided with tapes of many kinds of sound and instructed to play them constantly, whether Christian was awake or asleep.

 

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