Eating Memories (14 page)

“Not like that.”

He was frightened, confused. “Like what?”

Donna rubbed her arm hard where his hand had been. “I don’t know. It’s a touch like feathers. I don’t like it.”

Because he couldn’t understand what she wanted, Morgan left the kitchen. He sat contentedly in the living room and watched her move back and forth from the sink to the stove in her prescribed, safe place.

* * *

The drive back to Plano in the morning was disturbing. Above him the sun sat unblinking in the blue gaze of the autumn sky. The only gravity that kept Morgan from flying off the earth, the only power that kept him warm, was the traffic.

Inside the research station, Morgan started to calm. By the time he had eased himself into the chair and slipped the controls of the mini-robot onto his hands, his hands had stopped shaking. Shirley bent down with the helmet. At the last moment, he brought his palms up and pushed it away. The leads on his fingers clicked against the heavy plastic of the headgear.

“What do I look like?” he asked her.

Her eyebrows raised and lowered, doing a little formal dance of confusion. “Huh?”

“When I’m in command of the unit. What do I look like? I’ve never seen anyone do it. Do I look funny?”

She shrugged and put the helmet into his lap. It was heavy and no one, particularly the petite Shirley, could hold it for very long. “You twitch a little when you walk. You don’t really take the steps. You know that. But your muscles and your arms act as if they do.” She started to lift the helmet again.

He stopped her. “And when I kill?”

All animation left her face. “The mandibles are the thumb and forefinger of your right hand.”

“I know.”

“Then why do you ask?”

“I want to know how it looks to you.”

“They move. Together and apart. It’s not much to see, really.”

He licked his lips nervously. “Do I smile when I do it?”

“No,” she said softly. “No.” Then she slipped the helmet over his head.

* * *

The maimed body of the pharaoh was still at the start of the tunnel. Morgan touched it as he went by. It didn’t tell any new stories.

At the chamber, the death messages were already getting old and the invicta bodies had been carried away. He took the right-hand corridor this time. The tunnel was old, well-used. He could taste the remains of pharaohs, the original builders, and the spicy tang of the new tenants.

The Pharaohs had left simple food markers, directional signal; the invictas had left tart splashes of paranoia.

After a few yards, the tunnel made a slow S curve downwards. In the center of the S, he caught the shadow of antennae coming his way. The invicta was on him before it knew he was there. It was a Yellow; and the job he had done of marking it, Morgan noticed, was sloppy. The yellow paint lay in an uneven zigzag up its forehead, making the cranium appear as if it were an egg about to birth the sun.

The ant backed away hurriedly, trying to turn. Morgan caught it just at the wasp waist and squeezed, cutting the scout in half. In the close confines of the tunnel, it writhed, stroking agony and hatred on the walls, on Morgan’s face.

Bending forward over the broken body, Morgan sank his steel mandibles on either side of the paint and into its brain. The ant died in inert silence, the pebbled eyes wide, not with astonishment, but with an absolute lack of expression. The slender red legs twitched and then curled in the silent, insectile body language of death.

Morgan had to crawl over the corpse to go on.

A few more feet downwards, the tunnel branched. He caught the first whiff of excitement: the smell of busy ants carrying food to the heart of the nest. The trail was a few days old.

He hurried down the left-hand corridor and, in only a few feet, came to another fork. The taste on the floor was newer. Emerging from that tunnel, he surprised an entire line of food gatherers marching back from the surface.

The first invicta by the gap turned to touch him. Morgan caught the yellow-streaked antennae in his jaws and snapped. The ant backed away in astonished pain, dropping its load of food.

Morgan shouldered his way out into the new tunnel. The ants, both blues and yellows, had skittered away a few inches to stand indecisively bottlenecked. The ones traveling away from Morgan dropped their food, doubled back and attacked.

A pair of serrated jaws clicked and slid off Morgan’s metal shoulder. Legs thin as reeds fought for purchase on his slick back. He heard a tap-tap-tap on his underside as an invicta battered its stinger futilely against his belly.

He cut through them slowly, having to stop every inch and wipe his jaws clean, having to struggle for every bit of tunnel. They tried to shove him back, but he weighed more. Lower into the corridor he fought, three invictas clinging to his shoulders, a puree of dying ants behind him.

When he came to the next tunnel mouth, he crawled inside and dropped to his belly, exhausted. The invictas prowled around him for a while, touching, tasting. Finally, they went away.

Morgan put a feeler up to his head. They’d branded him with scent.

Murderer.

Since he wasn’t moving, he wondered if Shirley would take off his helmet. She didn’t. He lay on the cool floor of the tunnel and nearly went to sleep. A long while later, still exhausted, he rose and followed the alarmed trail of the workers downward.

A few yards down, the now-empty tunnel branched. Wearily, he swept his light over the dark entrance. Sight told him nothing. Taste did. The line of workers had split, too.

He took the entrance on his left. It turned and dipped, righted itself, and then dipped precipitously again. At the bottom of the long hill, his headlights caught an oily glint.

Suspicious, he halted. Bang. Something hit him in the back and suddenly he was tumbling, the attacking invicta tumbling with him. He dug his legs into the side of the corridor, but momentum had hold. He rolled end-over-end until he hit the pool of honey at the bottom, the invicta under him.

The servo motors whined as he fought to free his legs from the ooze. There was a bright flash and a sizzle as the right foreleg burned out. He nearly collapsed on top of the ant.

That’s when he noticed the invicta wasn’t moving much. It didn’t seem at all surprised. It wouldn’t be, of course. As a Blue, it knew him. And it knew what he wanted. It had never hoped for escape.

Morgan struggled for a moment; then gave up in exhaustion. To his front, the invicta’s hive brothers were sealing them both in the tunnel. Morgan could feel the feathery touch of the doomed invicta’s legs against his waist, his shoulder.

Morgan’s legs failed. He dropped over the fallen invicta, chest to chest, belly to belly. He put his head down slowly until his face touched that of the trapped ant. The huge eyes told him nothing. The antennae stroked gently down the side of Morgan’s cheek, not saying much, either, really.

The ant didn’t talk of hatred. He didn’t even talk of fear. It seemed that the ant was speaking more to himself than he was to Morgan. He talked of the hive, and of queens tucked in, and of the brittle fragility of pupae.

Morgan didn’t move. Cradled in Morgan’s metal arms, the ant stroked him, and told of food sharing and the hatching of eggs in the dark.

* * *

Abrupt light made him blink. “You okay?” Novotny asked.

Morgan, mouth open, eyes slitted, didn’t answer. He wondered where the gentle, dying ant was.

“Hey! Hey! Morgan! Rise and shine!” Novotny shoved his face into Morgan’s.

Morgan raised his hand and, tenderly cupped Novotny’s warm cheek.

The tech jerked away. “Shit,” he said, wiping the side of his face and glancing around nervously to see if anyone was laughing.

Nobody was.

“Get up,” Shirley said. “Let’s go take a walk down the hall.”

Morgan’s legs were unsteady. Shirley helped him.

“What the fuck’s happening to you?” Shirley asked, when they had closed the door behind them.

At the entrance to the locker room, Morgan paused and then went in. “Take a shower,” he mumbled.

Shirley followed him. “You still think they talk to you, don’t you?”

He tried to unbutton his shirt. His fingers wouldn’t work.

“They’re just ants, Steve.”

For some reason, he was highly aware of her next to him. One second she hadn’t been there, the next moment she was the only real thing in the room. He grabbed her and shoved her against the steel lockers. The impact was metallic, loud. He pressed his body against hers: belly to belly, chest to chest. He rubbed his head against her cheek. Her skin was a blank page.

“Get off me!” She shoved.

He stumbled away.

With brisk hands, she wiped the touch of him off her. Morgan wondered if he had left his scent markers behind: the scent of longing, the scent of regret.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “Tomorrow you kill the Yellow queens, and then you take a vacation or something. Go skiing.” _

He shuddered as he imagined Colorado and its wide, dizzying expanse of sky. “I don’t ski.”

She backed up. “Do something.’ Go somewhere. You’re getting weird.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. Then he remembered he was probably staring, and looked quickly away.

* * *

After turning off the ten o’clock news, Donna fell asleep and left Morgan awake, his arm crooked over his forehead, his eyes open to the ceiling. The space between the slats in the mini-blinds had captured a stripe of gray light-blasted city sky and a single blue star.

After a while he pulled his pajama bottoms down, rolled her over and slid his body over hers. She made a protesting sound in the back of her throat. Her legs parted sleepily and he thrust himself partially in.

Then he lay there.

In the apartments around him, he imagined the moving of bodies. He could even hear their faint sounds: water running in a tub; footsteps on the ceiling. It made him feel safe.

Then, in the dim glow from the street lamp outside the window, he saw her eyes pop open. “What are you doing?” she whispered.

“Nothing.” He caged her slender shoulders between his elbows.

She moved her hips. “Are you going to come, or what?”

Lowering his head to hers to smell, not to kiss; be freed his right arm and caressed her cheek. His thumb and forefinger spoke of death. He couldn’t help that.

“I said, are you going to come?”

“I don’t know.”

She moved her hips again. He lost what little erection he had had. With a wet, limp plop, he fell out of her.

There was a flurry of movement under him. With hard fists and sharp nails, Donna fought her way out of bed. His chest was bruised. The scratches stung. She’d succeeded in hurting him, something the ants had never managed.

“Jesus Christ,” Donna spat.

There was the slam of the bathroom door. The sound of the water running in his own shower. A little while later, she came out and got dressed. Her hair was wet.

In the light from the bathroom, she opened a drawer and began flinging things out into a shopping bag.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

She didn’t look up from her task. “Leaving.”

Morgan reached down and pulled the sheet up to his chin.

“Listen,” she said and paused. “There’s somebody else. I’ve been seeing him for a while.”

Morgan thought of another man with Donna. Infidelity. It seemed that the word should have had some meaning. Aimlessly, he rolled it around in his mind. “Don’t leave.”

“God. I don’t believe this. You don’t ask who. You don’t even ask when.”

It didn’t matter. Lying back down on the pillow, he listened to the sharp, angry sounds of Donna’s departure. “Please,” he whispered.

There was a bang as a drawer was slammed closed. He looked down to see her bent in silent grief over the dresser. Underwear, hers and his, was scattered on the floor.

“I won’t touch you again. Not ever. I promise. Just don’t leave.”

She shook her head slowly. Her eyes were closed. “We can’t live like this.”

Oh, yes, we can,
he thought. The point wasn’t touching, it wasn’t making love. The point was having her enclosed in the dark apartment walls and knowing she was there. “You can sleep with him, okay? You can sleep with anybody. Please. Just don’t leave me.”

She left anyway. When she was gone, Morgan rose and walked, disoriented, through the once safe chambers of the house.

* * *

After putting his helmet on, he went down the way he had gone before, past the dead Pharaoh, past the battle chamber. He made an excursion down the long, winding tunnel to the honey and the last inoperative unit. Before the wall the invictas had hastily constructed, the last robot lay humped on the curled, still body of the ant.

Morgan reached out :carefully and touched one of the invicta’s dead legs. He would have saved the Blue if he could have; but when Novotny had pulled the helmet off him, the full, dumb weight of the robot had pressed down, shoving the ant under the ooze. It had quickly and peacefully drowned.

He turned and looked up the long tunnel, realizing at last what an opening he’d given the invictas. His nerves on edge, he crawled his difficult way up the loose gravel of the tunnel. Only when he was at the top of the incline did he relax.

There was one other corridor. He started down it. Surprisingly close to the entrance, he found the first of the queens’ chambers.

There were hundreds of them.

The bodies of the huge females filled the far end of the room, their fecund scent making the atmosphere thick. Slowly, gracefully, as if she knew fate had arrived in the form of the smaller silvered body, the nearest queen turned her velvet eyes towards him.

He started forward, but something tugged at his arm. Looking around he saw the first worker he had seen all day.

The ant, a Yellow, dropped off him and started to sway. Morgan understood scent language. He’d never been around live ants long enough to learn the meanings of the dance.

He watched it. Backwards and forwards it went. Sideways, its antennae making patterns in the air. Behind the worker, a crowd of Blues and Yellows had gathered, all waiting.