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12 - Let the Ants Try · Space Odyssey Sci-Fi Anthology

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  Speaker 1: Let the Ants Try by James mc cray. This is
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  Speaker 1: a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Yvette Di Let the Ants Try by James
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  Speaker 1: mc cray, Doctor Silva. Gordy looked at the radioactive sneer
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: that had been Detroit. Then he looked down at the
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  Speaker 1: boiling ant hill. Why not, he thought, excitedly. Why not?
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  Speaker 1: Gordy survived the three hour wall even though Detroit didn't.
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  Speaker 1: He was on his way to Washington with his blueprints
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: and models in his bag when the bombs struck. He
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  Speaker 1: had left his wife behind in the city, and not
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  Speaker 1: even a trace of her body was ever found. The children,
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  Speaker 1: of course, weren't as lucky as that there a summer
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  Speaker 1: camp was less than twenty miles away and unfortunately in
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  Speaker 1: the direction of the prevailing wind, but they were not
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  Speaker 1: in any pain. Until the last few days of the
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  Speaker 1: month they had left to live, Gordy managed to fight
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  Speaker 1: his way back through the snarled frantic airline controls to them,
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  Speaker 1: even though he knew they would certainly die of radiation
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  Speaker 1: sickness and they suspected it. There was still a whole
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  Speaker 1: blessed week of companionship before the pain got too bad.
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  Speaker 1: That was about all the companionship Gordy had for the
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: whole year of nineteen sixty. He came back to Detroit
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  Speaker 1: as soon as the radioactivity had died down. He had
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  Speaker 1: nowhere else to go. He found a house on the
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  Speaker 1: outskirts of the city and tried to locate someone to
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  Speaker 1: buy it from, but the emergency administration laughed at him.
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  Speaker 1: Move in, if you're crazy enough to stay. When Gordy
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: thought about it, it occurred to him that he was
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: in a sort of state of shock. His fine trained
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: mind almost stopped functioning. He ate and slept, and when
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: it grew cold, he shivered and built fires. And that
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: was all. The War Department wrote him two or three times,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: And finally a government man came around to ask what
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  Speaker 1: had happened to the things that Gordy had promised to
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  Speaker 1: bring to Washington. But he looked queerly at the pink,
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  Speaker 1: hairless mice that fed unmolested in the filthy kitchen, and
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  Speaker 1: he stood a careful distance away from Gordy's hairy face
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  Speaker 1: and torn clothes. He said the Secretary sent me here,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: mister Gordy. He takes a personal interest in your discovery.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Gordy shook his head. The secretary is dead, he said.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: They were all killed when Washington went there's a new secretary,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: the man explained. He puffed on his cigarette and tossed
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: it into the patch. Gordy was scrabbling into a truck.
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  Speaker 1: Garden Arnold Cavanar, he knows a great deal about you,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: and he told me if Silver Gordy has a weapon,
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  Speaker 1: we must have it. Our strength has been shattered. Tell
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  Speaker 1: Gordy we need his help. Gordy crossed his hands like
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  Speaker 1: a lean Buddha. I haven't got a weapon, He said,
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  Speaker 1: you have something that can be used as a weapon.
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  Speaker 1: You wrote to Washington before the war came and said
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: the war is over, said Silver Gordy. The government man
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  Speaker 1: sighed and tried again, but in the end he went away.
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  Speaker 1: He never came back. The thing Gordy thought was undoubtedly
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: written off as a crackpot idea after the man made
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: his report. It was exactly that kind of discovery. Anyhow.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: It was May when John de Terry appeared. Gordy was
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: bathing his garden. Give me something to eat, said the
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  Speaker 1: voice behind Gordy's back. Silver. Gordy turned round and saw
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: the small, dirty man who spoke. He rubbed his mouth
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  Speaker 1: with the back of his hand. You'll have to work
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  Speaker 1: for it, he said, all right. The newcomers set down
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  Speaker 1: his pack. My name is John de Terry. I used
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  Speaker 1: to live here in Detroit Salver. Gordy said, so did I.
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  Speaker 1: Gordy fed the man and accepted a cigarette from him
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  Speaker 1: after they had eaten. The first puffs made him light headed.
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  Speaker 1: It had been that long since it smoked, and through
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  Speaker 1: the smoke he looked at John de Terry amiably enough
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  Speaker 1: company would be all right. He thought the pink mice
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  Speaker 1: had been company of a sort, but it turned out
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  Speaker 1: that the mutation that made them hairless had also given
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  Speaker 1: them an appetite for meat. And after the morning, when
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: he had awakened to find tiny tooth marks in his leg,
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  Speaker 1: he'd had to destroy them. And there had been no
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  Speaker 1: other animal sense, nothing but the ants. Are you going
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  Speaker 1: to stay, Gordy asked? Terry said, if I can, what's
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  Speaker 1: your name? When Gordy told him, some of the animal
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  Speaker 1: look went out of his eyes, and the wonder took
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  Speaker 1: its place. Doctor Silver Gordy, he asked, mathematics and physics
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  Speaker 1: in Pasadena. Yes, I used to teach at Pasadena and
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  Speaker 1: I studied there. John to Terry rubbed absently at his
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  Speaker 1: ruined clothes. That was a long time ago. You didn't
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  Speaker 1: know me. I majored in biology, but I knew you.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Gordy stood up and carefully put out the stub of
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  Speaker 1: his cigarette. Was too long ago, he said, I hardly remember.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Shall we work in the garden now? Together? They sweated
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: in the spring sunlight that afternoon, and Gordy discovered that
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  Speaker 1: what had been hard work for one man went quickly
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  Speaker 1: enough for two. They worked clear to the edge of
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  Speaker 1: the plot before the sun reached the horizon. John to
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Terry stopped and leaned on his spade, panting. He gestured
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  Speaker 1: to the rank growth beyond Gordy's patch. We can make
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: a bigger garden, he said, Clear out that truck and
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: plant more food. We might even he stopped. Gordy was
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  Speaker 1: shaking his head. You can't clear it out, said Gordy.
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  Speaker 1: It's rank stuff, a sort of crabgrass with a particularly
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  Speaker 1: tough route. I can't even cut us. It's all around here,
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  Speaker 1: and it's spreading de Terry grimaced. Mutation, I think so,
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  Speaker 1: and look. Gordy beckon to the other man and led
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  Speaker 1: him to the very edge of the cleared area. He
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  Speaker 1: bent down, picked up something red and wriggling between his
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  Speaker 1: thumb and forefinger. De Terry took it from his hand,
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  Speaker 1: another mutation. He brought the thing close to his eyes.
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  Speaker 1: It's almost like an ant, he said, except well, the
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  Speaker 1: thoraxe is all wrong, and its soft bodied. He fell
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  Speaker 1: silent examining the thing. He said something under his breath,
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  Speaker 1: and threw the insect from him. You wouldn't have a microscope,
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  Speaker 1: I suppose no, And yet that thing is hard to believe.
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  Speaker 1: It's an ant, but it doesn't seem to have a
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  Speaker 1: tracheal breathing system at all. It's something different. Everything's different,
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  Speaker 1: Gordy said. He pointed to a couple of abandoned rows.
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  Speaker 1: I had carrots there, at least I thought there were carrots.
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  Speaker 1: When I tried to eat them, they made me sick,
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  Speaker 1: he sighed heavily. Humanity has had its chance, John, he said.
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  Speaker 1: The atomic bomb wasn't enough. We had to turn everything
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  Speaker 1: into a weapon. Even I I made a weapon out
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  Speaker 1: of something that had nothing to do with war. And
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  Speaker 1: our weapons have blown up in our faces. De Terry grinned.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe the ants will do better. It's their turn now,
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  Speaker 1: I wish it were. Gaudy stirred earth over the boiling
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  Speaker 1: entrance to an ant hole and watched the insects in
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  Speaker 1: their consternation. They're too small. I'm afraid why No, these
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  Speaker 1: ants are different, doctor Gordy. Insects have always been small
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  Speaker 1: because their breathing system is so poor. But these are mutated.
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  Speaker 1: I think I think they actually have lungs. They could grow,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: doctor Gordy, And if ants were the size of men,
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  Speaker 1: they had ruled the world lunged ants. Gordy's eyes gleamed.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps they will rule the world, John, perhaps when the
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  Speaker 1: human race finally blows itself up once and for all.
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  Speaker 1: Did Terry shook his head and looked down again at
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  Speaker 1: his tattered, filthy clothes. The next blow up is the
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  Speaker 1: last blow up, he said. The ants came too late,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: by millions and millions of years. He picked up his spade.
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  Speaker 1: I'm hungry again, doc to Gordy, he said. They went
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  Speaker 1: back to the house, and without conversation, they ate. Gordy
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  Speaker 1: was preoccupied and to Terry was too new in the
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  Speaker 1: household to force him to talk. It was sundown when
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  Speaker 1: they had finished, and Gordy moved slowly to light a lamp.
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  Speaker 1: Then he stopped. It's your first night, John, he said.
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  Speaker 1: Come down to the cellar. We'll start the generator and
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  Speaker 1: have real electric lights in your honor. The Terry followed
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  Speaker 1: the older man down a flight of steps, groping in
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  Speaker 1: the dark by candlelight, they worked over a gasoline generator.
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  Speaker 1: It was stiff from disuse, but once it started it
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  Speaker 1: ran cleanly. I salvaged it from my own, Gordy explained
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  Speaker 1: the generator, and that he swept an arm toward a
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  Speaker 1: corner of the basement. I told you I invented a weapon,
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  Speaker 1: he added, that's it. The Terry looked. It was as
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  Speaker 1: much like a cage as anything, he thought, the height
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  Speaker 1: of a man, and almost cubicle. What does it do?
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  Speaker 1: He asked, for the first time in months. Silver Gaudy smiled.
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  Speaker 1: I can't tell you in English, he said, and I
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  Speaker 1: doubt that you speak mathematics. The closest I can come
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  Speaker 1: is to say that it displaces temporal coordinates. Is that gibberish?
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  Speaker 1: It is said to Terry? What does it do? Well.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: The War Department had a name for it, a name
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  Speaker 1: they borrowed from H. G. Wells. They called it a
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  Speaker 1: time machine, he met to Terry's shocked, bewildered stare, calmly,
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  Speaker 1: A time machine, he repeated. You see, John, we can
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  Speaker 1: give the answer chance after all of you. Like fourteen
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  Speaker 1: hours later, they stepped into the cage. Its batteries charged again,
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  Speaker 1: and its strange motor whining, And forty million years earlier,
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  Speaker 1: they stepped out on to quaking, humored soil. Gaudy felt
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  Speaker 1: himself trembling, and with an effort managed to stop. No
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  Speaker 1: dinosaurs or saber toothed tigers in sight, he reported, not
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  Speaker 1: for a long time yet to Terry agreed, then, my lord.
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  Speaker 1: He looked around him with his mouth open wide. There
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  Speaker 1: was no wind, and the air was warm and wet.
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  Speaker 1: Large trees were clustered quite thickly around them, or what
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  Speaker 1: looked like trees to Terry decided they were rather some
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  Speaker 1: sort of soft stemmed ferns or fungi. Overhead was deep cloud.
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  Speaker 1: Gaudy shivered, Give me the ants, he ordered silently to Terry.
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  Speaker 1: Handed them over. Gordy poked a hole in the soft
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  Speaker 1: earth with his finger and carefully tilted the flask, dropping
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  Speaker 1: one of the ant queens he had unearthed in the backyard.
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  Speaker 1: From her belly hung a slimy mass of eggs a
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  Speaker 1: few yards away. Should have been father, he thought, but
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  Speaker 1: he was afraid to get too far from de Terry
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  Speaker 1: in the machine. He made another hole and repeated the process.
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  Speaker 1: There were eight queens. When the eighth was buried, he
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  Speaker 1: flung the bottle away and came back to de Terry.
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  Speaker 1: That's it, he said. The Terry exhaled, his solemn face
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  Speaker 1: cracked in a sudden, embarrassed smile. I I guess I
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  Speaker 1: feel like God, he said. Good Lord, doctor Gordy, talk
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  Speaker 1: about your great moments in history. This is all of them.
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  Speaker 1: I've been thinking about it, and the only event I
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  Speaker 1: can remember that measures up is the flood, not even
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  Speaker 1: that we've created a race. If they survive, we have.
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  Speaker 1: Gordy wiped a drop of condensed moisture off the side
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  Speaker 1: of his time machine and puffed. I wonder how they'll
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  Speaker 1: get along with mankind, he said. They were silent for
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: a moment, considering. From somewhere in the fern jungle came
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: a raucous animal cry. Both men looked up in quick apprehension,
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  Speaker 1: but moments passed and the animal did not appear. Finally,
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  Speaker 1: De Terry said, maybe we'd better go back, all right. Stiffly,
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  Speaker 1: they climbed into the closet sized interior of the time machine.
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  Speaker 1: Gordy stood with his hand on the control wheel, thinking
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  Speaker 1: about the ants, assuming that they survived, assuming that in
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  Speaker 1: forty million years they grew larger and developed brains. What
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  Speaker 1: would happen? Would men be able to live in peace
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  Speaker 1: with them? Would it? Might it not make men brothers
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  Speaker 1: joined against an alien race? Might this thing prevent human war?
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  Speaker 1: And his thoughts took an insane leap. Could it have
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  Speaker 1: prevented the war that destroyed Gordy's family? Beside him, De
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  Speaker 1: Terry stirred restlessly. Gaudy jumped and turned the wheel and
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  Speaker 1: was in the dark mathematical vortex, which might have been
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  Speaker 1: a fourth dimension. They stopped the machine in the middle
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  Speaker 1: of a city, but the city was not Detroit. It
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  Speaker 1: was not a human city at all. The machine was
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  Speaker 1: at rest in a narrow street, half blocking it. Around
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  Speaker 1: them towered conical metal structures, some of them a hundred
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  Speaker 1: feet high. There were vehicles moving in the street. One
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  Speaker 1: coming toward them and stopping doctor Gordy. De Terry whispered,
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  Speaker 1: do you see them? Silver? Gordy swallowed, I see them,
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  Speaker 1: he said. He stepped out of the time machine and
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: stood waiting to greet the race to which he had
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  Speaker 1: given life. For these were the children of ants. In
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  Speaker 1: the three wheeled vehicle. Behind a transparent windshield, he could
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  Speaker 1: see them clearly. The Terry was standing close behind them now,
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  Speaker 1: and Gaudy could feel the younger man's body shaking. They're
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  Speaker 1: ugly things, Gordy said, mildly. Ugly, they're filthy. The untlike
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: creatures were as big as a man, but hard looking
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  Speaker 1: and as obnoxious as black beetles. Their eyes, Gordy saw
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  Speaker 1: with surprise, had mutated more than their bodies, for instead
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: of faceted insect eyes, they possessed iris, cornea, and pupil,
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: not round or vertical like a cat's eyes, or horizontal
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: like a horse's eyes, but irregular and blotchy. But they
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  Speaker 1: seemed like vertebrate's eyes, and they were strange and unnatural
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: in the parchment blackness of an ant's bulged head. Gordy
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  Speaker 1: stepped forward, and simultaneously the ants came out of their vehicle.
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  Speaker 1: For a moment they faced each other, the humans and
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  Speaker 1: the ants silently. What do I do now, Gordy asked
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  Speaker 1: to Terry over his shoulder. To Terry laughed or gasped.
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  Speaker 1: Gordy wasn't sure talk to them, he said, what else
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  Speaker 1: is there to do? Gordy swallowed. He resolutely did not
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  Speaker 1: attempt to speak in English to these creatures, knowing as
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: surely as he knew his name, that English and probably
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: any other language involving sound, would be incomprehensible to them.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: But he found himself smiling pacifically to them, and that was,
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  Speaker 1: of course as bad. The things had no expressions of
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  Speaker 1: their own that he could see, and certainly they would
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  Speaker 1: have no precedent to help interpret a human smile. Gordy
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: raised his hands in the semantically sound gesture of peace
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  Speaker 1: and waited to see what the insects would do. They
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: did nothing. Gordy bit his lip, and, feeling idiotic, bowed
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  Speaker 1: stiffly to the ants. The ants did nothing. De Terry
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: said from behind, try talking to them, doctor Gordy, that's silly,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: Gordy said, they can't hear, but it was no sillier
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: than anything else irritably, but making the words very clear,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: he said, we are friends. The ants did nothing. They
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  Speaker 1: just stood there with the unwinking, pupiled eyes fixed on Gordy.
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  Speaker 1: They didn't shift from foot to foot as a human might,
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  Speaker 1: or scratch themselves, or even show the small movement of
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  Speaker 1: human breathing. They just stood there. Oh, for Heaven's sake,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: said to Terry, here, let me try. He stepped in
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  Speaker 1: front of Gordy and faced the ant things. He pointed
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  Speaker 1: to himself. I am human, he said, Mammalian. He pointed
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  Speaker 1: to the ants. You are insects that He pointed to
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: the time machine took us to the past, where we
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: made it possible for you to exist. He waited for reaction,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: but there wasn't any. But Terry clicked his tongue and
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: began again. He pointed to the tapering metal structures. This
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: is your city, he said. Gordy, listening to him, felt
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: the hopelessness of the efforts. Something disturbed the thin hairs
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: at the back of his skull, and he reached absently
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: to smooth them down. His hand encountered something hard and inanimate,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: not cold, but like spongy wood, without temperature at all.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: He turned round Behind them were half a dozen larger ants. Drones,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: he thought, or did ants have drones? John, he said softly,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: and the inefficient, fragile looking pincer that had touched him
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: clamped his shoulder. There was no strength to it, he
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: thought at once, until he moved instinctively to get away,
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: and then a thousand sharp serrations slipped through the cloth
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: of his coat and into the skin. It was like
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: catching oneself on a cluster of tiny fishocks. He shouted, John,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: watch out, de Terry, bending low for the purpose of
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: pointing at the caterpillar treads of the ant vehicle straightened up, startled.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: He turned to run and was caught in a step.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Gordy heard him yell, but Gordy had troubles of his
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: own and could spare no further attention for to Terry.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: When two of the ants had him, Gordy stopped struggling.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: He felt warm blood roll down his arm, and the
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: pain was like being flayed. From where he hung between
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: the ants, he could see the first two still standing
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: before their vehicle, still motionless. There was a sour reek
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: in his nostrils, and he traced it to the ants
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: that held him and wondered if he smelled as bad
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: to them. The two smaller ants abruptly stirred and moved
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  Speaker 1: forward rapidly on eight thin legs to the time machine.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Gordy's captors turned and followed them, and for the first
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  Speaker 1: time since the scuffle, he saw to Terry. The young
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  Speaker 1: man was hanging limp from the lifted fore legs of
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: a single ant, with two more standing guard beside. There
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: was pulsing blood from a wound on to Terry's neck. Unconscious,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: Gordy thought mechanically and turned his head to watch the
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: ants at the machine. It was a disappointing sight. They
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: merely stood there and no one moved. Then Gordy heard
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: De Terry grunt and swear weakly. How are you, John,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: he called? The Terry grimaced, Not very good? What happened?
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Gordy shook his head and sought for words to answer,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: But the two ants turned in unison from the time
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  Speaker 1: machine and glided toward De Terry, and Gordy's words died
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  Speaker 1: in his throat. Delicately, one of them extended a foreleg
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  Speaker 1: to touch De Terry's chest. Gordy saw it coming, John.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: He shrieked, and then it was all over, and De
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: Terry's scream was harsh in his ear, and he turned
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: his head away. Dimly, from the corner of his eye
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: he could see the saw like claws moving up and down,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: but there was no life left in De Terry to protest.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Salva Gordy sat against a wall and looked at the
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: ants who were looking at him. If it hadn't been
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: for that which was done to De Terry, he thought,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: there would really be nothing to complain about. It was
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: true that the ants had given him none of the
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: comforts that humanity lavishes on even its criminals. But they
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: had fed him and allowed him to sleep when it
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: suited their convenience, of course, and there were small signs
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: that they were interested in his comfort in their fashion,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: when the pulpy mush they first offered him came up
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: thirty minutes later, his multi legged hosts brought him a
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: variety of foods, of which he was able to swallow
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: some fairly palatable fruits. He was housed in a warm room,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: and if it had neither chairs or windows, Gordy thought
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: that was only because ants had no use for these themselves,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: and he couldn't ask for them. That was the big drawback,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: He thought that, and the memory of John de Terry.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: He squirmed on the hard floor until his shoulder blades
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: found a new spot to prop themselves against, and stared
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: again at the committee of ants who had come to
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: see him. They were working an angular thing that looked
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: like a camera. At least it had a glittering something
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: that might a lens. Gordy stared into it sullenly. The
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: sour reek was in his nostrils again. Gordy admitted to
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: himself that things hadn't worked out, just as he had planned,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: deep under the surface of his mind, just now beginning
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: to come out where he could see it. There had
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: been a furtive hope. He had hoped that the rise
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: of the ants, with the help he had given them,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: would aid and speed the rise of mankind. For hatred,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: Gordy knew, started in the recoil from things that were different.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: A man's first enemy is his family, for he sees
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: them first, but he sides with them against the families
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: across the way. And still his neighbors are allies against
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: the ghettos and Harlems of his town. And his town
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: to him is the heart of the nation, and his
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: nation commands life, life and death in war. For Goudy,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: there had been a buried hope that a separate race
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: would make a whipping boy for the passions of humanity,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: and that if there were a struggle, it would not
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: be between man and man, but between the humans and
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: the ants. There had been this buried hope. But the
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: hope was denied, for the ants simply had not allowed
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: man to rise. The ants put up their camera like machine,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: and Gordy looked up in expectation. Half a dozen of
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: them left, and two stayed on. One was the smalllish
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: creature with a bangle on the foreleg, which seemed to
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: be his personal jailer, the other a stranger to Gordy
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: as far as he could tell. The two ants stood
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: motionless for a period of time that Gordy found tedious.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: He changed his position and lay on the floor and
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: thought of sleeping. But sleep would not come. There was
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: no evading the knowledge that he had wiped out his
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: own race, annihilated them by preventing them from birth fourteen
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: million years before his own time. He was like no
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: other murderers since Cane. Gaudy thought and wondered that he
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: felt no blood on his hands. There was a signal
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: that he could not perceive, and his guardian aunt came
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: forward to him nudged him outward from the wall. He
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: moved as he was directed out the low exit hole.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: He had to navigate it on hands and knees and
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: down a corridor to the bright day outside the light
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: set Gaudy blinking, half blind, he followed the bangled ant
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: across a square to a conical shed. More ants were
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: waiting there, circled around a litter of metal parts. Gawdy
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: recognized them at once. It was his time machine, stripped
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: piece by piece. After a moment, the ant nudged him
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: again impatiently, and Gordy understood what they wanted. They had
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: taken the machine apart for study, and they onted it
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: put together again. Pleased with the prospect of something to
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: do with his fingers and his brain, Gaudy grinned and
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: reached for the curious ant made tools. He ate four
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: times and slept once, never moving from the neighborhood of
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: the cone shaped shed, and then he was finished. Gordy
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: stepped back. It's all yours, he said, proudly. It'll take
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: you anywhere. A present from humanity to you. The ants
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: were very silent. Gordy looked to them and saw that
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: there were drone ants in the group, all still as statues. Hey,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: he said, in startlement, unthinking, and then the needle jawed
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: ant claw took him from behind. Gordy had a moment
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: of nausea, and then terror and hatred swept it away.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: Heedless of the needles that laced his skin, he struggled
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: and ticked against the creatures that held him. One arm
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: came free, leaving gobbets of flesh behind, and his heavy
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: shod foot plunged into a pulpy eye. The ant made
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: a whistling, gasping sound and stood erect on four hairy legs.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: Gordy felt himself jerked a dozen feet into the air,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: then flung free in the wild, silent agony of the ant.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: He crashed into the ground, cowering away from the staggering monster. Sobbing,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: he pushed himself to his feet. The machine was behind him.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: He turned and blundered into it, a step ahead of
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: the other ants, and spun the wheel. A hollow insect
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: leg detached from the ant that had been closest to him,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: was flopping about on the floor of the machine. It
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: had been that close. Gordy stopped the machine where it
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: had started on the same quivering primordial bog, and lay
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: crouched over the controls for a long time before he moved.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: He'd made a mistake, he and Terry. There weren't any
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: doubts left at all, and there was there might be
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: a way to write it. He looked out at the
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: coal measure forest. The fern trees were not the fern
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: trees he had seen before. The machine had been moved
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: in space, but the time he knew was identically the same.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Trust the machine. For that, he thought, I gave the
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: world to the ants right here, I can take it back.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: I can find the ants I buried and crush them
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: under foot, or intercept myself before I bury them. He
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: got out of the machine suddenly panicky. Urgency squinted his
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: eyes as he peered around him. Death had been very
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: close in the ant city. The reaction still left Gaudy
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: limp and was he safe here? He remembered the violent
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: animal scream he had heard before, and shuddered at the
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: thought of furnishing a casual meal to some dinosaur. While
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: the ant queens lived safely to produce their horrid young
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: A gleam of metal through the fern trees made his
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: heart leap. Burnished metal here could mean but one thing,
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: the machine around a clump of fern trees, their bases
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: covered with thick club mosses. He ran and saw the
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: machine ahead. He raced toward it, then came to a
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: sudden stop, slipping on the damp ground. For there were
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: two machines in sight. The father machine was his own,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: and through the screening masses he could see two figures
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: standing in it, his own and the Terry's. But the
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: nearer was a larger machine and a strange design, and
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: from it came a hastening mob, not a mob of men,
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: but of black insect shapes, racing toward him. Of course,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: thought Gordy as he turned hopelessly to run. Of course,
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: the ants had infinite time to work, in, time enough
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: to build a machine after the pattern of his own,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: and time to realize what they had to do to
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: him to insure their own race safety. Gordy stumbled, and
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: the first of the black things was upon him. As
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: his panicky lungs filled with air for the last time,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: Gaudy knew what animal had screamed in the depths of
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: the Coal Measure Forest. End of Let. The Ants Try
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: by James McCrae. Recording by Yvette di