Homer’s eyes tightened harder. Click: “There were three of those cockroaches!” His eyes came open with his sharpened recollection. He turned to Tarbell and Dorset. Click: “Remember how one of them didn’t follow the others into the trap . . .”

Wanda Lindstrom slapped the table. “One roach turned around and raced off,” she anticipated.

The three men were startled by how she had guessed the fact.

She said strongly, “That third roach had a different job to do, you see! He went back to tell his friends that the scouts had found more food!”

Reed Brockshaw cut in, “Roaches do that? I know about bees flying back to the hive to show the way to flowers, but I never heard it about cockroaches!”

Peter Hubbard said somberly, “These roaches are full of surprises. Unpleasant ones.”

Elizabeth asked him slowly, “You think we’re dealing with a definite mutation, then?”

The scientist’s answer was again upsetting. He eyed the room frankly. “Dr. Lindstrom and I have been speculating about that possibility. You see, one of the classic cases of social organization among insects happens to be the termite colony, and—” he paused again for effect—“it happens that termites and cockroaches are related.”

Amos Tarbell’s surprise echoed the others’. “Termites and roaches?”

“We don’t want to sound like a textbook, but you need to have this background if you’re to understand what may be happening and how to protect against it.” Hubbard knocked his pipe out and turned to his associate. “This is Dr. Lindstrom’s specialty,” he said. “Wanda, why don’t you explain . . . ?”

Elizabeth admired the way the two tossed the biological ball back and forth, with total respect for each other’s competence and no touch of self-­importance. Marriage should be like that, she mused. She found herself half-­wondering why they had not married in the six years of their obvious mutual esteem.

3

THREE

Obligingly, the blond scientist picked up where Peter Hubbard had left off. She understood exactly what he wanted her to explain: “It may be relevant,” she began, “that termites and cockroaches evolved from a common ancestor. They are two branches of a root that is off by itself in the basic classification of the ‘phyla.’ Interestingly, one biologist has called termites the ‘social cockroaches.’ So it might not be too surprising if cockroaches displayed what might be called a ‘phylogenetic drive’ toward a social colonization that we find in termites.”

Stephen Scott asked straightforwardly, “What’s that ‘phylogenetic,’ please?” The man was blinking the way he had done as a student when he was trying hard to understand. It occurred to him that he had never tried harder in his life, or about anything more crucial.

Elizabeth answered, wanting to show again that she wasn’t a scientific illiterate. “It means the development of the different species, the steps in the evolutionary process.”