The Insect Warriors
(1965)*
Rex Dean Levie
Chapter One
The giant ant tugged at the edge of the mushroom umbrella, trying to free a piece suitable for carrying. Arching its foot-long body double, the minim surged back and the fungus yielded, sending the insect onto its back in a shower of fragments.
Emerging from the debris, the ant scurried about its bounty, tapping it with its antennae to reassure itself that is was really free. Grasping the fragments, the minim started to lift it, only to stop as a slight sound from the undergrowth alerted it to the approach of an intruder. The insect dropped the mushroom-bit and turned to face the newcomer, antennae vibrating in an attempt to catch some identifying scent. The intruder, a man, stopped momentarily at the edge of the clearing, and, as the insect—failing to receive the desired proof of identity—set up a shrill stridulation, the man turned his head to locate the source of the cry.
Tall had not seen the minim under the cover of the fungus, and when the insect's alarm sounded, it took him a second to locate the source. He studied the ant perfunctorily recognizing the band pattern as that of a hill on the river. The insect caused him no apprehension, since a single ant, and a minim at that, could scarcely pose a threat. He would have to move, however, since on all sides answering shrills told him of the presence of a full-scale foraging party, and while an individual ant was little menace, a group of the insects could pose a nasty problem.
Tall flexed his shoulders to shift his armor into a more comfortable position and moved past the minim. A light stench of formic acid guiding him, he struck the backtrail to the hill and started down it. He knew that the ant tribes rarely ventured more than a half day's march from the city, and to judge by the sky, the actual distance was somewhat less. Since the hill was two days' march downstream from his goal, he would have at least two and a half days' march ahead.
Pausing, he allowed a caterpillar to rumble past, its bulk overshadowing the path and its multiple legs beating out an irregular tattoo. A tiny parasite astride the beast sat unconcerned as the hulk swayed itself up the trunk of milkweed to join several of its fellows three hundred feet above. A moment later a green blur announced the arrival of a grasshopper nymph, scarcely his own size. For a moment the nymph sat solemnly surveying the surroundings through goggled eyes, and then as Tall moved, it vanished with a crack of its enlarged hind legs.
As he strode along, Tall noted the presence of life all around him. A hunter at heart, he marked this area off in his mind as a particularly abundant source of game. He would have to see that it was hunted by his own kind in the future. On either hand, the plant life had closed in, and then suddenly it opened, leaving him at the entrance to a large clearing.
Pausing for a moment, he scanned the surroundings with inbred caution. The area immediately ahead seemed clear enough, but he froze as a flash of scarlet and gold was reflected back to him from the parapet of grasses to his right. Shifting slightly, he saw a spiderling, the young of one of the jumping species, flattened out on the ridged surface of a grass stem fifteen yards away. Just out of its first moult and a scant two feet long, it would be trusted to leave him alone—as a rule the jumpers did not trouble his kind.
Gifted with exceptional eyesight for an arthropod, the spider had also seen him, and with a rare curiosity it followed him movements. The spiderling rejected the strange object below as food. Tall's erect posture, his green body covered with lapped plated chitin, and the manner in which one of his forelimbs stretched into a length four times the length of the spiderling's body were all totally alien elements to the arachnid's limited experience.
Watching as the stranger started to move, the spider suddenly observed something of greater interest, as one of the multitude of gnats that hung over the clearing came down to rest. In a blaze of scarlet and gold the spider-hunter left its perch to bear the gnat to earth, three inch fangs driving into the joint at the gnat's neck. The dipteron shuddered and then lay still, and the arachnid settled to its meal.
Moving past the feeding spider, Tall started across the clearing, then stopped as from behind came the unmistakable shrill of trailing ants. Moving quickly off of the trail he watched the spider return to its perch with equal haste, and a moment later three minims and a soldier broke into the clearing, the leading two workers laden, the third free.
Reaching the abandoned carcass of the dipteron, the leading duo passed on, while the warrior and the unladen worker paused to investigate their find. Twice the size of his fellow and regal in burnished armor and needle jaws, the warriors waited until the minim had struggled under a burden as long as itself, and then led the way past where Tall stood half-concealed. The drained husk kept sliding on its back, and the minim with the fly wandered further and further away as Tall stepped into the pathway once more and followed the small band.
Almost ten feet wide of the trail on the sandy ground, the minim suddenly staggered more drunkenly than usual, and then vanished from sight. If the warrior had seen the disappearance he gave no sign, going on in the wake of the proceeding workers. Approaching the spot at which the ant had vanished, Tall found himself at the lip of a shallow cone dug into the sand of the clearing. At the bottom of the pit the minim was writhing in the grip of a massive pair of pincers attached to a spiny skull that had been exposed by the forward lunge.
Stepping back from the edge, Tall kicked a boulder the size of his head into the pit. Bounding down the slope in a shower of smaller debris, it struck the bare skull and the ant lion dropped its prey to dip his weapons and send on answering shower up the slope. Tal, well aware of the trick, was already on the trail, and the assassin returned to his hellish meal undisturbed.
Skirting another of the traps, Tall gained the far side of the clearing to find his way blocked by a large stand of grass into which the trail led to form a tunnel under a clump of dandelions. He had no desire to ender that dark and confined space where his weapons would be of little use in case of attack, and examining the ground, he decided that his best route was north, since it led in the general direction in which he wished to go.
Staying far enough away from the tangle to preclude any sudden attack, he noticed a cricket in its lair, its multifaceted-eyes gleaming faintly. The insect was twice his size, but it did not molest him, although at dusk it would have been different. Here was the story of his work, the herbivorous insects feeding on the plants, and the carnivores feeding upon them in turn—and some species that were not adverse to feeding upon him.
A crash from the undergrowth warned hi, and a moment later, a grate of grass burst outwards as a grotesquely carapaced insect charged into the pathway and spun to face him. As it broke cover, the brightly colored body blazing in the sun, the assassin bug caught his scent, and a moment later the spiked snout flashed down, then drew back to vibrate with a low moan against the armor of its own thorax. Lifting its front legs in menace, the thing began a scrabbled charge towards him.
Tall's spear had come off his shoulder at the first alarm, and he dropped to one knee, bracing the butt of his shaft against the found. The insect was four times his size, and Tall probably could have avoided the clumsy brute, but this was the egg-laying season, and the imperative of generations called for the death of female predators.
The assassin bug lifted its forelegs again to seize Tall, and at the same moment Tall guided the blade into the joint of the neck, the impact of the beast against the crossbar almost carrying his over backwards. The needle-pointed snout flicked in and out, and the spiked forelegs lashed towards him, yards short, as the insect hung impaled. Bracing himself against the strain, Tall rose to his feet, forcing his opponent up and denying it purchase for its legs. The spear point, now buried in the nerves at the joint, was well coated with venom, and slowly the insect grew still as the toxin did its work.
When he was sure that it was dead, Tall kicked the carcass off his spear and stepped back, leaning the shaft against his shoulder. Raising both hands to his grotesque triangular head, he twisted it to one side and pulled off the helmet to expose a crop of close grown red hair and a pair of keen blue eyes. Slipping off his chitin gauntlets and laying down spear and helmet, Tall drew a foot-long flint knife from his belt and with his foot rolled the fallen vampire over to expose the belly.
With a single cut he opened the soft skin to expose the ovaries beneath, bulging with eggs. A quick inspection assured him that they were infertile and he wiped the blade and returned it to his belt. Twenty generations of training demanded that both female predators and their eggs be destroyed whenever possible. Men existed in the world of insects only by grace of their great strength and greater wits, and each female insect killed was equal to a hundred more the next year. Even though men did not hunt these woods, the training was too strong to ignore.
Regaining his spear and helmet, his work done, he resealed the casque and slung the weapon over his shoulder. Such encounters were a part of being alive in his world, and a dozen steps later it was forgotten in the press of new sights and sounds.
As he had guessed, it was less than a half day's journey to the river, and despite having stopped for a lunch of grass stem and aphis honeydew, he had his first sight of water with two or three hours of daylight left. Emerging from the woods, he found himself at the top of a sheer drop that fell several hundred feet to a level stretch beside the water. Beneath him an immense tangle of brambles hugged the beach, stretching off downstream as far as he could see. He recognized the location, and at once knew that he was still a full two days downstream from the island that was his home.
In the afternoon sun, a gleam of silver cable marked the web of an orb spider among the brambles, and he could see the yellow and silver of the weaver in the center. Over ten times his size, the spider was of less danger than the tiny spiderling had been, since she never left her web to hunt, but as he turned away from the cliff he saw a trap of another type that raised the hairs on his neck.
On the center of the narrow cleared space that lay between the jungle and drop, lay a low rampart of stones loosely cemented with silk, and treading carefully to avoid any sound, he crept past it, spear at the ready. Keeping his eyes on the hole behind the parapet, alert to the least sign of the occupant, he worked his way along the base of the jungle, nearly stumbling on a pile of drained husks and shards of armor that marked the orgies held in the burrow. He had passed the hole and was beginning to relax when out of the jungle bounded another of the grasshopper nymphs, its flight taken at random, to land almost in the hole.
A rasping scramble from the bottom was followed by the emergence of an eight-legged horror, and the nymph, startled, vanished. Tall had frozen, but the spider, lashing at the air, sighted him and spun to charge down upon him. There was no time to brace for the charge, and the wolf spider weighted two or three tons. Aiming the spear into the oncoming mandibles, Tall held fast. It was a slender shaft, but it was his only chance. If the spear failed, the three-foot daggers of the wolf spider would make short work of his chitin armor, and he could not move fast enough to get clear.
The venom on the spear was concentrated from a black widow spider, bred for centuries for potency, and given enough time it would bring down anything that lived, but if he could not hold off the spider, its eventual demise would do him little good.
But it was the failure of the spear that saved him. As the beast struck, the supple shaft bent double under the impact, then snapped back, tossing Tall fifty yards up and away. A grass blade broke his fall and held him off of the ground, the end of the broken spear still in his hand.
Shaking off the shock, he rolled to a point that allowed him to see into the clearing below. The spider was spinning in an obscene dance as the ten-foot stub of the spear struck the ground again and again, driving the point deeper into its skull. The dim brain of the brute equated pain with attack, and its mandibles opened and closed in spasms as it strove to kill an opponent that was not there. The point drove home at last, and as the venom crippled the legs on one side, the spider spun at last over the lip of the cliff and fell to the beach below.
With double caution, since his sole weapon was now his knife, Tall descended from his perch and approached the edge. Far below he could see the darker splotch that marked his fallen foe, and he was reassured to see that it was definitely dead. The face here was seamed and split, and an hour later he stood on the beach beside the fallen spider, noticing that the hulk had already drawn the first ants.
Walking around the remains, he saw that the spearshaft had broken off within the skull, and that there was no chance to recover his blade. He would have to make a new spear before proceeding, and with this in mind he turned downstream towards the brambles, selecting a half dozen likely shapes of flint from the beach as he went.
In the cover of the briars, he knelt and chipped his stones into tools. A two-piece operation yielded him a two-foot-long, leaf-shaped spearhead, while another resulted in a crude but serviceable saw. As he was about to proceed, he noticed yet another chunk, which upon examination needed only superficial work and sharpening to yield him a beautifully shaped, double-bladed ax head. Finding a stout splinter, he split the end with his knife, and using silk from a reel at his belt, bound the ax head to the haft, stretching the material slightly and then releasing it to bind the head as tightly as though welded.
The nearer boles yielded him a spline long and straight enough to suit him, and a quarter of an hour later he had a weapon that was the twin of the one he had lost. The saw was discarded, but the ax had such a nice shape and balance that he kept it, tying it to his belt with a loop of silk.
One last task remained, and removing a flexible seedpod from his belt, he knelt and carefully removed the plug. With infinite caution to avoid touching the stuff with his bare hands, he coated the blade with a thick layer of sticky venom, transforming a merely formidable weapon into a deadly one. The discovery of the black widow venom had been one of the major factors in his race's survival.
Skirting the towering mound of the ant metropolis, he made good time down the beach, but two hours later the lowness of the sun and the growing shadows in the gorge warned him that it was time to seek shelter for the night. A little further down the cliffs he spotted several deserted wasp burrows, marked by the litter at their bases, and a half hour later he was firmly encased in a burrow fifteen feet up the wall, the entrance barred with a boulder.
He had gathered a supply of the moss that served as fuel, and over the single glowing coal of the fire a grasshopper nymph that had fallen to his ax was roasting. Eating slowly and enjoying the meal, he washed the last shreds of meat down with honeydew, put out the fire, and went down to the river to wash.
Returning, he easily leapt the fifteen feet from the bench to the cave and rolled the five-ton plug back into place. The burrow, designed to accommodate the carcass of one of the larger hoppers, would hold enough oxygen to last the night, and in the safety of the plug he could remove his armor for the first time in many days. Laying the chitin aside, he filled the helmet with water and washed himself, stretching gratefully to his full six foot ten.
Taking a tightly folded silk blanket from his pack, Tall spread it on the sand floor, stretching to flex knotted bands of muscles that could lift ten tons of dead weight. Laying down, he rolled the cover around him and let the soft sand, still warm from the fire, lull him to sleep in the most comfortable bed he had known for weeks. As a result, he slept more soundly than usual, and stirred, but did not awaken at the movement of the large body over the face of the cliff, followed by a dragging rasp against the plug.
A beam of sunlight past the plug roused him, and he rose and dressed quickly then placed one leg against the boulder and with his back to a niche in the wall kicked it out of the mouth. To his consternation, however, the stone, which should have sailed nearly into the water, hung a bare ten feet in front of him, meshed in the folds of a dew-spangled sheet of silk. A morning glory spider had spread her trap over his lair in the darkness.
Standing at the entrance he considered his position. While he was in no immediate danger, since, like most of the spinners, the spider would not attack him if he stayed free of her web, a quick glance showed him that the strands reached the beach in a manner that would effectively bar his exit. This particular species did not gum its silk, but the tangle formed an effective barrier by itself, and he could not work free in time to avoid the spider's rush.
The funnel was evidently located in one of the burrows higher on the wall, and considering the size of the web and the retreat, there was little hope that it was a small spider. At that moment the matter settled itself, as the eighteen-foot-long mistress came down to inspect the damage done to her home by the stone. While Tall was slightly the stronger of the two, he could not fight that monster in her own environment. He would have to find some way to kill or cripple the arachnid before hunger and thirst drove him out.
It was an hour before his chance came, in the form of a ten-foot bluebottle that lumbered into the web and became trapped almost opposite the mouth of his retreat. Its buzz reflecting first annoyance and then panic, the dipteron struggled in the maze, snapping treacherous strands at the expense of legs and wings. The spider, alerted by the row, left her funnel and charged down the platform to secure her meal, compounding the damage the fly had already done to the structure. As she settled down to feed, her bloated abdomen rested for a moment cleanly exposed through a rent in the silk, and without hesitation Tall struck.
A half hour later he stood free of the web and on the beach, while above him hung the corpse of the spider beside her last victim, the blood still flowing sluggishly from four gashes inflicted by the razor edges of Tall's spear, and limbs frozen in the paralysis of the venom. It had been hot and tiring work to pick his way out of the maze, and he went down to the river and drank deeply, pouring a helmetful of water over his head.
He made good time along the sandy beach, and as the day passed, he fought, ran, or hid as the situation demanded. The cliffs had slowly receded on either hand, and returned the jungle almost to the water's edge. Bluebottles, their transparent wings flashing rainbows in the afternoon sun, swarmed overhead, and now and again a preoccupied bee passed overhead with a characteristic booming roar. He passed a hunting wasp with its prey, and dodged the attach of a brightly striped, male hunting beetle, then stopped to enjoy the antics of a herbivorous tumbler. If this world held death and danger in ample measure, it also held beauty and pleasure.
With a scant half hour of daylight left, he saw a low palisade of stone and wood, half set into the face of a hillock before him, and darkness found him barricaded behind the wood and silk doorway of the structure, one of the outpost hunting camps of the island. A whole mosquito wriggler was spitted over the fire, and another flask of honeydew supplemented the water from the cistern behind him. From this point on, the number of predators would drop off sharply, although over a hundred tombstones in the cemetery beside the camp—the toll of generations—showed that it was still far from safe to travel these woods.
Somewhere in the jungle behind the building, a cricket took up a basso serenade, to be followed by the other night singers. Through the grillwork of the door he could see the river, and as dark deepened into darkness, the stars appeared and the first of a squadron of fireflies appeared to wheel their mating dance over the reflecting ware. As Tall settled back to sleep a meteorite tore across the sky, a chunk of stone or iron no larger than himself, but as bright as the stars.
Chapter Two
The trail dipped for a moment into a steep gully, then rose to level at the top of a gentle slope that led, in a cleared plain, to the river. From the top, Tall could see the island, rising out of its protective moat. He was home.
This was the area swept by the daily hunting parties, and a half mile down the slope a large grasshopper was struggling in a net while a half dozen figures in brightly colored armor surged around it. As he watched, Tall saw one of the figures raise something to his shoulder and a moment later the orthopteran shuddered and fell. At the same time one of the pack caught sight of him, and a moment later all five of the hunters were charging up the slope, waving and yelling.
"Tall! Tall, you old cockroach! Where in the hell have you been?" The leading figure was Clever, his best friend and roommate, and a moment later, the two embraced. ...
allforjesus2001