Standards of Appearance
by Steven Miller
Steven Mathes lives miles from the nearest pavement with a spouse and a dog. When he isn’t writing, he tends a garden. He gardens because he likes to cook. He cooks because he is passionate about eating. He is a full member of SFWA.
This morning we took a moment of silence in memory of Dr. Aas, whose research raised us up. Then I went through the staff to perform an unnecessary dress-code check. Everyone on my staff cared about appearance. They kept their ties knotted tight, they kept their lapels free of lint, and they kept a crisp crease in their suit-pants. Inspection was unnecessary in that sense, but perhaps necessary in another. They needed to know that I, too, hoped and cared.
Ms. Samsa’s mandibles pulsed nervously. Her suit, of course, passed inspection with flying colors.
“Mr. President,” she told me, “there’s an egg case in the supply closet.”
Her voice faltered, since the rule against unregistered romance offered no exceptions. Termination came for those identified. Termination: one can just imagine a maggot without a suit, wandering the feral, ant-infested streets in a t-shirt and jeans, helpless.
The mere thought made me pause, but I had my job.
“Call in the DNA team,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
I stood by in support as she made the call.
“Why would they just leave the eggs there, sir?”
Any crime of passion defied explanation, especially one regarding sexual relations. The modifications that raised us up also gave us urges, needs, and ability to reproduce without pupating.
“Why don’t you take the rest of the day off? Go down to roll in the swill vats?” I said.
“I have to know who it was. I must bear witness, sir.”
Her courage set an example for me.
“We’d better send out an email, inform the colony,” I said.
I straightened my tie and buttoned my suit jacket. Most guilty couples surrendered of their own accord, still stinking of egg silk and fungus-slime. My imagination was a poor competitor against reality.
They certainly came in rudely.
They slouched in front of Ms. Samsa, arrogant in their determination to shock us. My poor imagination faced the cruel truth. They were mere children, acting out in adolescent defiance. The boy had a small stain on his tie, and they both smelled of sex and rotting fruit. His trousers were inappropriately baggy, her skirt was so short that her insemination pouch sometimes peeked out. Otherwise they might have passed dress code, in the usual rebellious adolescent way.
“We’re ready to get tossed,” the girl said, without even the formality of confession.
“Go ahead and do us,” the boy said.
I remained calm, faced with this anger and rudeness.
“A termination isn’t an ordinary sentence. It’s exile. We convene the entire colony. We verify the DNA. This can’t happen before tomorrow at the earliest.”
By now, Ms. Samsa had buzzed security. They came in politely, without a word, uniforms crisp and clean. They escorted the children away. Mercifully, the two rebels were silent and cooperative.
Their names turned out to be Mr. Milk and Ms. Muscina, and they had been love-children of earlier unregistered romances. I knew that orphans tended to act out.
We convened at dawn the next morning.
I wore a lush blue suit, a gray tie, both cotton. I would have favored our own silk, traditional, but silk tended to pucker when subjected to teardrops. I spent the entire pre-dawn hour grooming myself, brushing my mandibles, polishing my eyes.
There were seventeen thousand of us We all fit into the softball stadium. Except for Security and those working other mission-critical services, every colonist would assemble to bear witness.
Ms. Samsa already waited for me at the office, punctual as always. She had already projected the image of Dr. Aas onto the display over the stadium. We strove to emulate our human creator’s standards. The figure of Dr. Aas symbolized the ideal of humanity. Ms. Samsa pointed at it, through the big window that looked out over the gathering maggots.
“Sir, we really don’t look that human.”
“Not physically.”
I saw no reason to really disagree. She knew the similarities. Everyone learned the story of Dr. Ass designing human intelligence into the genetics of an insect. Some of the similarities came from the need to support a large brain, the need for language, and the need for manual dexterity. But other design elements were purely aesthetic. We had tear ducts, for example. Everyone knew how much effort went into creating an invertebrate with tear ducts. But there were huge differences, also.
“Two arms, two legs, that’s about it, sir.”
“Yes, Ms. Samsa, I know. And their legs and arms had those bones.”
“Ugh,” she said. “Honestly, sir, she looks a little creepy.”
“Now, now. We emulate her morals. She is our creator. She hoped that intelligence would live on after humans died out. Her appearance was never hers to control. Please show some decorum. Some respect.”
“Yes, sir.”
She closed her mandibles in shame, aware that she had crossed a boundary. I could have written her up, except that these were stressful times and it was as much my fault. Besides, the teachings of Dr. Aas recommended more leeway during a crisis, a time for all of us to look inward at our own faults, rather than judge others. There would be Ms. Muscina and Mr. Milk to judge soon enough. Two adolescents with bad upbringing through no fault of their own. That was my personal limit for one day.
Ms. Samsa wiped at a tear, thinking I didn’t see out of the corner of my eye. I cleared my throat:
“Yes, well, we’d better get started.”
The procedure deviated from normal all too quickly. By now the jury had assembled on the platform that had been constructed over second base, and the lawyers climbed up to their places. As soon as they were seated, the defendants came onto the ball field. Normally, a vigorous defense would offer us food for thought. Sometimes a trial would last the entire day when the defendants were not hasty adolescents. This was not to be such a day.
Ms. Samsa and I watched from my President’s box, as was the custom.
“How do you plead?” said the head judge from the platform.
“Totally guilty,” said Ms. Muscina.
“Yeah, we did it, we had sex! Over and over!” said Mr. Milk. “We squeaked for hours.”
“Do us. Kick us out,” Ms. Muscina added.
The judge signaled for silence, but failed to quell angry, youthful voices calling from the stands. The dissenters were too numerous to control individually, but Security crowded the aisles, menacing in their shiny riot gear, polished helmets, and immaculate uniforms. I controlled my fear of impending violence. It was better to stumble with dignity. We would stand for propriety.
Finally, the voices subsided. I heard my sigh of relief leak out to the stands through my microphone.
“Do you have anything to say before you’re sentenced?” the judge asked. “Any hopes for your offspring?”
“Our egg case? It goes with us,” said Mr. Milk.
“You have the right to keep it,” the judge said. “But is that best for your hatch?”
“That would be our decision, not yours to even ask about.”
“We request no answer. The question is for you.”
“The question was a question. It was illegal, just plain illegal. You boners make rules just so you can cheat.”
This filthy language made the judge flinch, but he saved his dignity by adjusting his tie. The thought of those eggs going into exile was bad enough, but the hatred and defiance of these rebels would cause disarray for months. I felt the judge’s pain. Meanwhile Mr. Milk amd Ms. Muscina flapped mandibles in mockery.
And then the catcalls began, first a single voice, silenced quickly by security: “Let ’em leave, boner!”
As the garishly-clad heckler was hauled out, others chimed in.
“Where’s their egg-case?”
“Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Do what they asked! They want out!”
The judge was poised, immobile and silent. She simply waited. Security hauled away the ones they could, but logic, more than security, prevailed. Nothing would happen until the colony cooperated.
Soon it was ordinary citizens bringing the rebellion back to order, restoring silence.
The court pronounced them guilty. The egg case was presented to the two guilty youngsters. The eggs were the size of softballs, and the case fit neatly into one of the special bags in which softballs were stored during tournaments. Dr. Aas loved softball. The bag had a strap. Ms. Muscina slipped the strap over her shoulder.
“You are hereby expelled from the colony,” the judge said. “You will be required to give up your property and all trappings of respect except the egg case. You will be provided with denims and a t-shirt, plus a day’s worth of carrion. Sentence to be executed immediately, as requested.”
Normally such a deadly sentence would be greeted with dignified silence, but there were cheers and catcalls from the rebellious younger set.
Ms. Samsa and I made our way down the elevator to the main airlock.
“Sir, most leaders must deal with something like this,” she said.
“Not all,” I said. “Not the best ones.”
Protocol demanded that the poor, doomed couple not have to face the emptiness of exile until after they were pushed from the protective platform. My presence at the execution amounted to a tacit acceptance of some responsibility. If I had done a better job of administering, rebellion would not have led to this decay. I carried a black armband in my pocket. I would wear it in shame in public for the rest of my days.
The elevator door slid open. The exiles filed in, their mandibles rigid with resolve. I felt the cameras panning over us, broadcasting this horror to the thousands bearing witness in the stadium. The elevator descended and stopped.
“Just open the air lock, boner,” said Ms. Muscina.
“I have useful information,” I said. “Furthermore, if you can’t be civil, I can just sit here and chat, keep you waiting!”
I hoped that these rebels would be obstinate, that they would buy a little time for themselves, and for me. We could sit here forever, sit here until we died of thirst and starvation. We could share each of their day’s ration of carrion, stretch it over weeks, never leave until someone threw our bodies back into the vats. Dr. Aas, in her histories, called something like this a filibuster. I would filibuster this exile, let Ms. Samsa take her place as the next leader.
“What could you tell us that would be useful?” said Mr. Milk. “You boners never even peek outside. You never hope. What does a President know that we don’t?”
“More than you can dream.”
“We dream. That’s the difference. You maggots gave up dreaming about the outside world.”
At least he called me a maggot. My hope, as poor and small as it might seem to a youngster, was nothing less than the survival of intelligent life.
“I’m charged with preserving this colony. Extinction ends all dreams.”
“So we’ve been told, but you changed the subject. What can you tell us about out there?”
“I can tell you about the ants.”
The youngsters shifted nervously, unable to meet my eye.
“We have a plan,” said Mr. Milk.
“Don’t tell me you think you can make it to the bunker? Everyone thinks they can. There have been hundreds of exiles over many hundreds of years. Two thirds of them go for the bunker.”
“The other third?”
I cursed Dr. Aas for my tear ducts, my breaking voice, for what it did to my dignity in front of these children.
“The other third are too devastated to try. They just step off the expulsion pad. They stand still until they fall down, and they let the ants feast.”
“There hasn’t been an exile in twenty years,” said Ms. Muscina.
She faced me with a defiant scowl. I fingered the black armband in my pocket, the fine silk that would soon burden my arm, as cutting a judgment as a circlet of thorns.
“How about the bunker?” she said. “What do you know about that?”
“The old bunker. Our colony is on an old human military base. I’ve seen maggots make it to the bunker, where they obviously starve.”
“So you saw them starve?” Mr. Milk said.
“Of course not. They starved in the shadows.”
“Did you ever see the floor-plan for the bunker? The way to the back door?” he said.
“You have to get in the front, first. The door is partly jammed, and only opens partway.”
“Maggots have made it through,” said Mr. Milk.
“It slows maggots and helps ants,” I said. “Time is on the side of the ants.”
“We’re boneless, we squeeze through. Afterwards, you wipe off the ants, right?”
“You don’t understand. They smell us. If you step off the pad, they cover you completely. They were engineered to keep us in, to keep us looking inward.”
Nobody could understand how efficiently the ants work without watching them dismantle a screaming maggot, pinch by pinch. I straightened out my suit-coat.
“Never double back on your path,” I warned. “They’re programmed to open a path and trap you from behind.”
“How could the humans make ants and make us, and still supposedly die out?” Mr. Milk said. “It isn’t logical.”
“Dr. Aas wrote about a biological weapon that attacked bones in all vertebrates. Before the weapon could be used, she worked to design us, always knowing the warlike humans were living on borrowed time.”
“So nobody knows why,” he said. “Or even if.”
“We know what, not why.”
“Whatever,” said Ms. Muscina. “Open up.”
They turned away from me and faced the door, like ball players about to steal base. Ms. Muscina fingered the flap of the bag carrying the eggs and their rations.
I punched the button and the door hissed. They sprinted out over the pad, then stopped suddenly. They teetered at the edge. I followed. The alien smell of the dust, the sounds of the insects: all of it drew me. A couple of metallic beetles, their rusty bodies baking in the heat, scuttled away.
I watched Ms. Muscina remove the egg case along with the rations of carrion, and pull the individual eggs free. She and Mr. Milk then pitched eggs and chunks of food underhanded, diagonally away from the direction of the bunker.
The dust erupted with ants.
I watched the death of the unborn in those eggs with horror. But the brilliance of the plan hit me at the same time.
When the eggs rolled to a stop, the ants converged and accumulated until each morsel was covered by a mound, a waist-high hill of insects. Mr. Milk and Ms. Muscina sprinted straight for the door, their path perfectly clear.
They were only halfway to the bunker when the ants — each ant not that much smaller than a finger — finished devouring the eggs and began to smell something better. The ants flowed like a liquid toward their prey in a pair of head-high waves, millions of ants skittering on top of each other. The way they did it made the speed of the wave much greater than the speed of any single ant. I could tell that the ant-waves would crash over the young couple just about when they got to the door.
I could not allow this, even if I no longer had responsibility.
Only after I adjusted my lapels did I realize that I had long ago stepped off the pad. Only as I noticed that I had stepped off did I also notice that I had been running. I kept a hand on my tie to keep it from blowing out of place.
I sprinted between the converging ant-waves and could hear the brittle chitter of scurrying, as they closed in just above and behind my ears.
Ms. Muscina slammed into the door first, and her hand pushed on the handle. Hinges groaned, and the way opened a little. As Mr. Milk slammed in behind her it opened more. By now, I was right with them. I pushed Mr. Milk, and heard the sound of Ms. Muscina popping through just as the ants showered down on me. I wiped them away from my eyes, and then I pushed harder, but mine was the strength of but one maggot. Ants tore at us, and both of us screamed. I pushed, and now hands reached out from inside the door and helped. Mr. Milk’s skin made a squeegee sound. He got through.
I turned to run back to the colony, but gripping hands had my arm.
“No!” I screamed. “No! I have to get back!”
Through the pain of my torn skin and the crawling, pinching ants, I struggled. More hands reached around and pulled at my head and legs, my other arm. I felt my face ooze into the crack between the door and its frame, and savored the feeling of ants being scraped away. I stopped fighting, mostly from lack of strength. I popped through, landed hard, saw the door swing closed.
Frantic hands wiped me, stamped at the floor. Frantic voices called, too many voices, some twisted with strange accents. I felt cloth wiping my face, felt the sting of disinfectant. I dared to open my eyes. There was light and there were many figures. They moved efficiently, patiently, removing ants and crushing them one-by-one. They cut away my jacket, my tie, my shirt, my pants. I could hear the groans of Mr. Milk nearby, the angry chatter of Ms. Muscina. I groped at the place where my tie should have knotted, felt ants.
“My suit,” I rasped. “It’s ruined…”
“Just relax, you’re safe,” someone said to me.
My mandibles clenched. I refused to register the truth. The speaking figure wore rough coveralls, thick boots, rubber gloves, tougher than the insecure trappings of exile. Many of these strangrs wore protection, and their faces were invisible. The gaps between their clothes were taped. These coarse maggots worked with such courage. The air tasted of metal and torn maggot flesh. But the thing that sapped my courage was a glimpse of one of the caressing hands. I saw.
It had bones.
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