Vauna stood for a few minutes, but her soul stayed put, and she could not hear the pillar sing.
“Now that everyone’s back,” Todd said, winking at Vauna as she came into the tent. “We can decide on the strategy for the final assault.”
“What do you think went wrong at Pine Gap?” Shorty said.
“I think the geography was against us,” Todd said. “The ants were moving in a line, and they flowed around the barrier we built. But here…”
He pulled out a map of Arnhem.
“They’re already gathered in one place for us,” he said. “There’s no place for them to go.”
“Except up,” Shorty joked.
“Let’s be serious,” he said. “I say we encircle their super-colony and hit them with everything we’ve got, everything that’s permitted. The cyfluthrin and bifenthrin derivatives, arylpyrazoles, heteropyrazoles, and lithium perfluorooctane sulfonate.”
Shorty nodded, but Vauna withheld judgment.
“As for attractants,” he continued, “I say we use everything. Sucrose, maltose, fructose, lithium salts, molasses. Everything.”
“The whole kitchen sink, eh,” Vauna said.
“You have different thoughts?” Todd said. “I’d love to hear them.”
“We’ve got a potent ant-killing force right here,” Vauna said. “We just have to unleash its power.”
“What is it?”
“Ants.”
Todd nodded, thoughtfully.
“You mean…” Shorty said, “we get the ants to turn on each other?”
“That’s a great idea, Vauna!” Todd said. “The basic ant alarm pheromone is a mix of undecane and formic acid.”
“I thought that only worked on some ants,” Vauna said.
“That’s right,” he said. “Some ants only respond to this call to arms by running around like crazy to avoid predators. We need them to actually attack each other.”
After consulting some papers, Todd added, “Maybe we could mix in dimethylated C27 hydrocarbons. That elicits aggression in carpenter ants. And pyrazines and alkylpyrazines. That drives fire ants crazy.”
The plan became clearer.
They had to be sure to out-compete the appeasement chemical, decyl butyrate, that the ants were using to keep all the disparate types pacified and cooperative.
If they used enough of the aggression chemicals, the ants could only respond in one way.
Vauna imagined the horror show that would happen.
Ants would attack, attempting to dismember each other at the joints. But, unlike a human head, an ant head doesn’t stop moving when separated from the body. A chopped-off ant head could keep biting, keep slashing with antennae, keep injecting formic acid for quite a while. Sometimes an ant warrior would clamp its jaws onto the leg of an enemy. If its body were cut off, the head would still stay clamped on, hindering its foe, even in death.
The three scientists would don protective suits as they sprayed the alarm and aggression pheromones on the ants.
The plan should work, even if they had the concentrations wrong. The ants themselves would make more pheromones, creating a feedback loop that would destroy them all.
The internecine ant war would be horrific, but there was no other way.
Now that the plan was settled, Shorty excused herself again to find some stubbies to drink.
Todd and Vauna were finally alone again.
They stared at each other, nervously.
Finally, Todd broke the silence by saying with a smile, almost as a joke, “Who are you, you magnificent and mysterious being from another land?”
“Who are you?” Vauna said.
“I don’t know!”
“I don’t know, either!”
“You know how, when I first got here,” Todd said, “I told you I thought of myself as Joshua?”
Vauna nodded.
“I’ve re-thought that,” he said.
“No more genocide?”
He smiled a tight-lipped smile. “I don’t think I’m Joshua. I think I’m Jacob.”
“Why,” Vauna said with a laugh, “because now you’ve seen a ladder from heaven to earth? With angels going up and down?”
“No,” Todd said. “I hadn’t even thought of that, but that’s clever.” His face became serious. “No, Jacob went into a foreign land and worked very hard for a long time…” He looked deeply into Vauna’s eyes. “To prove himself worthy…for the girl…he loved…”
With that, he leaned in to kiss her.
But she twisted her body.
And pushed him away.
Not sure what to say, Vauna blurted, “Didn’t that story end with Jacob getting tricked and having to do two seven-year stints?”
“It’s not a perfect analogy. I hope.”
Vauna shook her head.
“I do like you…” she said.
Todd threw up his hands in exasperation. “You know, my dating pool is very small. There are only a few hundred ant scientists in the entire world. And you’re a myrmecophilous eremologist and I’m an eremophilous myrmecologist! What could be more perfect than that?”
Vauna smiled at him, very sadly. “I can’t do this again…”
“Why? Why? Why?”
“Because of who I am,” she said. “Because of everything that’s happened to me. I don’t think I’m capable of loving anyone again.”
Todd looked into her eyes, sadly. “Tell me everything.”
“I told you I grew up very poor, on what you’d call a reservation,” she said. “And it was horrible. Horrible. I escaped through books. But instead of encouraging me, other blacks shot me down. ‘That’s a white thing to do,’ they said. They called me ‘Oreo’. Or ‘Coconut girl.’”
Todd looked at her, not comprehending.
“Black on the outside, white on the inside,” she said. “And so I tried to fit in, in white society. Have you ever had someone say ‘Happy birthday’ to you when it’s not your birthday?”
“Once or twice.”
“Happens to me all the time!” Vauna said. “If any other black girl had a birthday, I was being congratulated—because they couldn’t be bothered to tell us apart. It only hurt worse that they were trying to be nice.”
Vauna was now crying deep sobs.
“I try to walk down the streets, but it’s just not safe,” she cried. “Men catcalling, grabbing you. Saying the most awful things…”
“And that’s why you go to the outback,” Todd said. “To get away?”
She wiped away her tears. “It’s not so bad out there. Maybe I just don’t like talking to people. But the red boomers don’t care what color you are. Or the blue-tongued skinks. They’ll stick their tongues out at anyone.” She laughed sadly.
“I’m not like that!” Todd protested. “Come away with me!”
“I can’t!”
“Why not?”
“Because you—-”
Todd turtled his neck back. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Oh, Todd,” Vauna said, stroking his white hand with her black fingers. “Do you know what I see what I look at you?”
“No, I don’t. Tell me.”
“I see someone else behind your eyes. Someone who hurt you very badly. Long ago.”
Todd was silent.
“I don’t know her name. But I can tell you this. She couldn’t identify ant species. She probably wasn’t even a scientist. Maybe she was jealous of your success and fame and world traveling. And she drank diet Coca-Cola, and was very upset when you forgot that.”