BooksBarbecue
Back The Nest Save as PDF
Chapters (82)
  1. Cover
  2. Copyright page
  3. Introduction by Will Errickson
  4. Acknowledgements
  5. TREMORS
  6. 1
  7. 2
  8. 3
  9. 4
  10. 5
  11. 6
  12. SUSPICIONS
  13. 1
  14. 2
  15. 3
  16. 4
  17. 5
  18. DREAD
  19. 1
  20. 2
  21. 3
  22. 4
  23. 5
  24. 6
  25. WITNESS
  26. 1
  27. 2
  28. 3
  29. ALERT
  30. 1
  31. 2
  32. 3
  33. 4
  34. 5
  35. ENCOUNTER
  36. 1
  37. 2
  38. 3
  39. 4
  40. 5
  41. 6
  42. HAVOC
  43. 1
  44. 2
  45. 3
  46. 4
  47. 5
  48. 6
  49. SEARCH
  50. 1
  51. 2
  52. 3
  53. 4
  54. 5
  55. CLASH
  56. 1
  57. 2
  58. 3
  59. 4
  60. 5
  61. 6
  62. 7
  63. COUNTERATTACK
  64. 1
  65. 2
  66. 3
  67. 4
  68. 5
  69. 6
  70. 7
  71. VICTORY
  72. 1
  73. 2
  74. 3
  75. 4
  76. 5
  77. 6
  78. 7
  79. 8
  80. 9
  81. EPILOGUE
  82. About the Author

Hubbard said, “Probably not, though it might have helped. We just don’t know enough yet about what we’re dealing with. Wanda and I are going to work on the hypothesis—just our guess, as we’ve said—that these cockroaches have ­taken a phylogenetic turn. We think they may be more like the Hymenoptera—that’s the class of insects with strong social insects, like the ants, the bees, the wasps, the termites. There could be many causes. Maybe some radioactive material got into your dump over the years. Or some ship waste . . . I can tell you that just lately at the Oak Ridge Laboratory there has been a study of a chemical called ethylnitrosourea, or ‘ENU’ for convenience. It’s been shown to be five times more potent than radiation in causing mutations, in both plants and animals. Conceivably, we may be in a parallel situation.”

Elias Johnson was leaning forward, his sea-­weathered elbows bare and rough on the cedar table. The windows were beginning to rattle with a modestly rising wind, but no one in the kitchen was giving any attention to the darkening of the clouds becoming noticeable over the swelling waves outside. All eyes and ears were for Peter Hubbard and Wanda Lindstrom.

The woman now said, with force, “If these roaches have developed a social colony, then we would expect there to be a nest, a home base from which ‘commands’ are given. We should find a separation of activities much like termites and ants—such as worker roaches, and scout roaches, and foraging bands, all interconnected and communicating with each other constantly.”

“How would they do that?” Amos Tarbell asked with a curiosity as acute as his growing dismay. He was thinking that the roach chase he and the other two men had barely escaped was devilish proof that the damn bugs were acting in concert and knew what they were doing!

His answer came from the woman biologist with an undertone of her sympathy for the group. She knew that these people were being sledgehammered by a horror they could not come to terms with. “Cockroaches” sounded so minor an annoyance, it was hard to accept that they might destroy an island like Yarkie.

5

FIVE

“Before I go on,” Wanda Lindstrom said, “please understand that when I use a word like ‘commands,’ I don’t mean it in a human sense. I dislike anthropomorphism—which assigns human-­like emotions, purposes, values, and thinking to non-­humans. Creatures like these roaches are sentient, of course, in that they receive and respond to stimuli. But they don’t have ‘emotions.’ For example, people in cockroach research may say they are ‘nasty’ little beasts, ‘aggressive,’ ‘hostile,’ ‘ugly,’ ‘foul.’