Anthill Read online

  ANTHILL

  ALSO BY EDWARD O. WILSON

  The Theory of Island Biogeography, with Robert H. MacArthur (1967)

  A Primer of Population Biology, with William H. Bossert (1971)

  The Insect Societies (1971)

  Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975)

  On Human Nature (1978)

  Caste and Ecology in the Social Insects, with George F. Oster (1978)

  Genes, Mind, and Culture, with Charles J. Lumsden (1981)

  Promethean Fire, with Charles J. Lumsden (1983)

  Biophilia (1984)

  The Ants, with Bert Holldobler (1990)

  Success and Dominance in Ecosystems: The Case of the Social Insects (1990)

  The Diversity of Life (1992)

  Journey to the Ants, with Bert Holldobler (1994)

  Naturalist (1994)

  In Search of Nature (1996)

  Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998)

  Biological Diversity: The Oldest Human Heritage (1999)

  The Future of Life (2002)

  Pheidole in the New World (2003)

  From So Simple a Beginning: The Four Great Books of Charles Darwin (2005)

  Nature Revealed: Selected Writings, 1949-2006 (2006)

  The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth (2006)

  The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies, with Bert Holldobler (2009)

  The Leafcutter Ants: Civilization by Instinct, with Bert Holldobler (2010)

  ANTHILL

  A Novel

  E. O. WILSON

  W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

  New York * London

  Copyright (c) 2010 by Edward O. Wilson

  All rights reserved

  "Nokobee County, Alabama" map by David Cain

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Wilson, Edward O.

  Anthill: a novel / E.O. Wilson.--1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-0-393-06320-2

  Teenage boys--Fiction. 2. Naturalists--Fiction.

  3. Nature conservation--Fiction. 4. Ants--Fiction.

  5. Alabama--Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3623.I5788A57 2010

  813'.6--dc22

  2009052140

  W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

  500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

  www.wwnorton.com

  W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.

  Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT

  For M. C. Davis and Sam Shine,

  benefactors of America's natural heritage,

  from tall tree to humble ant.

  Anthill [ME ante hil, fr. ante + hil hill] 1: a hill thrown up by ants or by termites in digging their nests 2: a community congested with busy people unceasingly on the move

  --Webster's Third New International Dictionary

  ANTHILL

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  I: FROGMAN

  Chapter 1

  II: THE CITIZEN OF NOKOBEE

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  III: THE LAUNCH

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  IV: The Anthill Chronicles

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  V: THE ARMENTARIUM

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  VI: THE NOKOBEE WARS

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  THIS IS A STORY about three parallel worlds, which nevertheless exist in the same space and time. They rise together, they fall, they rise again, but in cycles so different in magnitude that each is virtually invisible to the others.

  The smallest are the ants, who build civilizations in the dirt. Their histories are epics that unfold on picnic grounds. Their colonies, like those of humans, are in perpetual conflict. War is a genetic imperative of most. The colonies grow and struggle and sometimes they triumph over their neighbors. Then they die, always.

  Human societies are the second world. There are of course vast differences between ants and men. But in fundamental ways their cycles are similar. There is something genetic about this convergence. Because of it, ants are a metaphor for us, and we for them. Homer might have written equally of ants and men, Zeus has given us the fate of winding down our lives in painful wars, from youth until we perish, each of us.

  Thousands of times greater in space and time is the third of our worlds, the biosphere, the totality of all life, plastered like a membrane over all of earth. The biosphere has its own epic cycles. Humanity, one of the countless species forming the biosphere, can perturb it, but we cannot leave it or destroy it without perishing ourselves. The cycles of the other species can be destroyed, and the biosphere corrupted. But for each careless step we take, our species will ultimately pay an unwelcome price--always.

  I

  FROGMAN

  1

  TWO WEEKS BEFORE Labor Day, Raphael Semmes Cody sat with his cousin Junior in Roxie's Ice Cream Palace. Both were scooping out almond crunch ice cream covered with butterscotch syrup and sprinkled with chopped walnuts. Outside, heavy air grown humid from passage over the Gulf of Mexico and torrid from radiant heat off the Florida Panhandle had come to rest upon the little town of Clayville. The Alabama sky, mercilessly clear, offered no promise of an afternoon shower. Customers entering the Palace plucked at shirts and blouses stuck with sweat to their bodies.

  "My Lord, it is hot out there," said a linen-clad businessman with a sigh as he pushed through the door.

  A farmer sitting on a stool laughed. "Yeah, hotter'n a bucket of red ants."

  Junior didn't care. He said to Raphael, "I got a great idea. Let's go see if we can find the Chicobee Serpent." He meant Alabama's equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster. Over the past century, hundreds of local people claimed to have seen something very big, snakelike, and definitely mysterious lurking in the deeper water of the nearby Chicobee River.

  "Naw, that's crazy," Raff--as he was usually called--replied. "That's just a story people made up. There isn't any such thing as a Chicobee Serpent."

  Junior had anticipated that response. "Yeah, there is. Lots of people have seen it. You just gotta drift down the river real quiet-like, don't use no outboard motor or anythin'. Make your boat look like a floatin' log, or somethin' like that, you know."

  "Oh, yeah, if a lot of people have seen it," Raff said, "why haven't they taken any pictures?"

  "Maybe they didn't have any cameras with them. They were just out fishin'. I tell you what, we'll take a camera. I got o
ne. If we take a picture, you bet we'll be famous."

  "What's it supposed to look like?" Raff asked.

  "It's a lot like a real big snake. It curls around a lot. Nobody's seen the head, just parts of the body."

  Raff shook his head. "I don't think so. My parents--"

  "Oh, come on, don't be chicken." Junior flapped his arms and made clucking noises. "What we got to lose? It'd be a lot of fun. We'll stop along the way and visit Frogman. Maybe he'll show us Old Ben. Wouldn't you like to see the biggest alligator in the world?"

  Raff shook his head again, this time harder. "Now I know you're crazy. Frogman'll kill us if we go on his property. They say he murdered some people up in Lownes County and got away with it. I hear if you get too close to his landing, even when you're just fishing around there, he'll come out and yell and tell you he's going to kill you."

  "Aw, come on," Junior replied. "Old Frogman makes a lot of noise, but he wouldn't hurt a fly. It'd be real interestin' if we could visit him. Somethin' to tell people about. Maybe he'll let us take a picture of Old Ben. It would really be somethin' to show that around."

  "Oh, yeah? I hear people disappear on the Chicobee and their bodies are never found."

  "You think Frogman did that? No way. If they suspected him even just a smidgen, he'd be down at the Clayville Police Station and they'd be diggin' up his property to look for dead bodies."

  "All right, then who did do it?"

  "How should I know? Maybe the Chicobee Serpent. Maybe they just fell overboard and drowned. Their bodies got carried on down to the Gulf. Or maybe they wasn't really any people at all they couldn't account for. Maybe all that's just a story."

  "I heard Frogman's a pervert," Raff came back. "He does things to little boys, you know."

  "Like doing what?"

  "You know, does weird things to them."

  "Jesus, Raff, you really stink." Sixteen-year-old Junior, Raff's senior by a full year, decided to take a more mature approach to his cousin. He put on an indignant expression and shook his head slowly, as though surprised at such ignorance. "Maybe you heard somethin' like that somewhere, but if that was true, don't you think he'd be sittin' up there in Monroeville Prison right now?"

  Raff kept silent, and Junior went on. "Don't be a yellow-belly. We'll take off first thing in the morning, get to the river through the Johnson Farm. I know where we can borrow a boat on the floodbank down there. Then we'll float on downstream a few miles, and pull over at the Potomo Landing. Be home by supper, no sweat."

  "My parents would kill me if they found out. They already think you're going to get me into trouble. They don't like me to go out with you anywhere."

  "Tell 'em that you and I goin' to spend a day at Lake Nokobee. Say we're goin' to go fish for bream. They won't give it a second thought."

  TWO DAYS LATER Junior picked Raff up at eight in the morning. The two boys, after giving earnest assurances and promises to Raff's mother, rode their bikes northeast out of Clayville on Alabama 128 and onto a small county spur. There was almost no traffic; only two vehicles passed them going the other way, both loaded with croaker sacks of green tomatoes. The boys arrived at a forest-lined stream on the edge of the Johnson Farm, then hid their bicycles behind a dense clump of shrubs and weeds just off the road overpass. They climbed down to the edge of the stream, took off their shoes, rolled their pants up to their knees, and waded into the clear, smooth-running water. They enjoyed the feel of the sand between their toes and the scattered smooth pebbles of the bottom against the soles of their feet.

  As they headed downstream, in the direction of the Chicobee, they saw small fish dart for protection into clumps of eelgrass and the hollows of the overhanging bank. A mud turtle, green-streaked with algae, remained still on the bottom as they walked past. A ribbon snake dropped into the water from an overhanging branch and swam swiftly out of sight. A red-shouldered hawk took off from overhead, screeching loudly. They looked up and spotted its nest, almost hidden from sight in the canopy.

  "It's past the nesting season," Raff said.

  Farther down, the water quieted and deepened into a pool to above their knees. The boys climbed up onto the bank, put their shoes back on, and walked along the overgrown trace of a trail. Whenever the trail petered out, they pushed their way through the thick understory along the watercourse as best they could.

  After a mile or so the stream broadened and grew shallow again. It was partly diverted to one side by a thicket of cattails surrounding a small pond. The woods changed into widely spaced water oak, cypress, and trees of other kinds that dominate the coastal floodplain forest. The boys walked on carefully, heading diagonally away from the increasingly muddy bottom of the stream.

  "Watch out for quicksand," Junior warned.

  Raff fell in behind him, thinking that if they stumbled into something of the sort, Junior would be the first to sink. They proceeded in tandem like that, pressing on toward the river, hopping over little pools and easing their way around slick muckbeds.

  Finally the Chicobee itself came into sight. The river's surface shimmered a silvery blue-green in the midmorning sunlight. As far as they could see up and down, it was walled in by the tops of floodplain tree canopies that rolled down like green waves to touch its surface.

  Its current was smooth and slow. Its speed, which could be judged by the downstream travel of fragments of dead tree limbs, was like that of someone walking at a leisurely pace.

  At this point the riverbank rose slightly to one side of the creek outflow. They could see from the thicker and different woods that the bluff was just high enough to escape all but the most intense floodwaters following heavy rain upstream. On the side facing the riverfront it dropped steeply, its face free of foliage and colored pale yellow by its sandy clay. On each side the bluff sloped more gradually, giving way to a mud bank that gently led to the water's edge.

  A half dozen rowboats, unpainted and about ten feet in length, rested on the bank. Lashed to small sweet-bay trunks growing higher on the rise, their arrangement was clear: when the river flooded, which was often on coastal rivers like the Chicobee, the little boats would float up and move about, but were unlikely to break free and be carried downstream by any but the most powerful floodwaters.

  Junior strode to one of the boats and began to untie the rope holding it. Raff followed closely. Looking inside the boat, he saw a cross-plank seat and, leaning against it, two oars.

  "Who does this belong to?" Raff asked.

  "I got no idea." Junior was beginning to work loose the knot on the mooring rope.

  Raff laid a hand on Junior's arm. "Hey, wait a minute! We're not just going to steal a boat. We could get into big trouble."

  "Relax, will ya?" Junior replied. "Who said we're stealin' it? We're just goin' to borrow it. We'll take it all the way down to the Potomo Landing and leave it there. Who owns it'll just pick it up there. Ever'body knows if you borrow a boat from here you leave it at the Potomo Landing."

  Raff didn't believe Junior for one second. He knew his cousin well enough to figure Junior was just plain stealing. He also wondered how anybody could row upstream in a river as strong as the Chicobee, but then he saw that in addition to the oarlocks there was a mount on the stern of the boat that could hold an outboard motor. But they didn't have an outboard motor. How would he and Junior return the boat?

  But in the end it didn't matter. Raff was swept up in the excitement of the moment. The shining river flowed deep a few feet away, and the Chicobee Serpent might be close by. Raff figured if they were caught with the boat, he could say Junior told him it was okay. He was obviously younger than Junior and so could avoid the blame and let Junior do the explaining. Junior finished untying the line, and the boat came free. The two boys pushed and pulled it off the mud bank and into shallow water. Then they climbed over one side and began their journey. Picking up the oars and pointing the boat downstream, they worked it to stay close to the wooded river edge. They saw no one else on the river and heard no
powerboats coming toward them, either up or down.

  "On an average day you might see two or three fishermen," Junior said. "My dad brought me'n my sister along here once, and he said that's how it's always been."

  "That's really strange," Raff replied. "It's so beautiful along here, and I bet the fishin's good."

  "Yeah," Junior concurred. "But it's real hard to get onto this part of the river through all that mud, and it's really terrible when the water's up. People like to go into the river farther down. Most just skip the Chicobee, like to drive farther south to the Escambia. Lot more landings down there too."

  Raff studied the riverine forest as far as he could see into it, and it looked like wilderness. They passed a fisherman's shack. Its single tiny room rested over the water on poles, and it looked deserted. Farther down, they came upon a rope dangling from the overhanging branch of an enormous swamp tupelo.

  "Kids use that to swing out an' drop in the water," Junior said.

  "But how do they get here? I don't see any trail or road."

  "Must be a road come close by. Either that or they come down here by boat."

  Cooter and slider turtles the size of a man's two hands sunned themselves on logs and low-hanging tree branches. They all slid into the murky water of the river when the boat got within fifty feet or so.

  "They ain't any good for eatin'," Junior said. "Anyway, you'd never catch one if you tried."

  The boys passed a water snake swimming toward shore. A great blue heron stood rigidly in shallow water at the edge of a sandbar, waiting for a passing fish. Two ducks passed overhead, going down the river arrow-straight in tight formation, driven by pounding wings. A turkey vulture and broad-winged hawk spiraled upward on a draft of warmer air, at such a distance and height they were little more than silhouettes.