The Petrified Ants - By Kurt Vonnegut Page 0,3

probably,” said Josef. “We were hoping you’d found fossil ants deeper than that.” He held up his hands. “Don’t get us wrong. We’re delighted that you found these ants, it’s only that middle Mesozoic ants aren’t as interesting as something earlier would be.”

“Nobody’s ever seen a fossil ant from an earlier period,” said Peter, trying halfheartedly to get back into things. Borgorov ignored him.

“Mesozoic ants are just about indistinguishable from modern ants,” said Josef, surreptitiously signaling for Peter to keep his mouth shut. “They lived in big colonies, were specialized as soldiers and workers and all that. My myrmecologist would give his right arm to know how ants lived before they formed colonies—how they got to be the way they are now. That would be something.”

“Another first for Russia,” said Peter. Again no response. He stared moodily at a pair of live ants who pulled tirelessly and in opposite directions at the legs of an expiring dung beetle.

“Have you seen the ants we found?” said Borgorov defensively. He waved a small tin box under Josef’s nose. He popped off the lid with his thumbnail. “Is this old stuff, eh?”

“Good heavens,” murmured Josef. He took the box tenderly, held it at arm’s length so that Peter could see the ant embedded in the chip of limestone.

The thrill of discovery shattered Peter’s depression. “An inch long! Look at that noble head, Josef! I never thought I would see the day when I would say an ant was handsome. Maybe it’s the big mandibles that make ants homely.” He pointed to where the pincers ordinarily were. “This one has almost none, Josef. It is a pre-Mesozoic ant!”

Borgorov assumed a heroic stance, his feet apart, his thick arms folded. He beamed. This wonder had come out of his hole.

“Look, look,” said Peter excitedly. “What is that splinter next to him?” He took a magnifying glass from his breast pocket and squinted through the lens. He swallowed. “Josef,” he said hoarsely, “you look and tell me what you see.”

Josef shrugged. “Some interesting little parasite maybe, or a plant, perhaps.” He moved the chip up under the magnifying glass. “Maybe a crystal or—” He turned pale. Trembling, he passed the glass and fossil to Borgorov. “Comrade, you tell us what you see.”

“I see,” said Borgorov, screwing up his face in florid, panting concentration. He cleared his throat and began afresh. “I see what looks like a fat stick.”

“Look closer,” said Peter and Josef together.

“Well, come to think of it,” said Borgorov, “it does look something like a—for goodness sake—like a—” He left the sentence unfinished, and looked up at Josef perplexedly.

“Like a bass fiddle, Comrade?” said Josef.

“Like a bass fiddle,” said Borgorov, awed …

II

A drunken, bad-tempered card game was in progress at the far end of the miners’ barracks where Peter and Josef were quartered. A thunderstorm boomed and slashed outside. The brother myrmecologists sat facing each other on their bunks, passing their amazing fossil back and forth and speculating as to what Borgorov would bring from the storage shed in the morning.

Peter probed his mattress with his hand—straw, a thin layer of straw stuffed into a dirty white bag and laid on planks. Peter breathed through his mouth to avoid drawing the room’s dense stench through his long, sensitive nose. “Could it be a child’s toy bass fiddle that got washed into that layer with the ant somehow?” he said. “You know this place was once a toy factory.”

“Did you ever hear of a toy bass fiddle, let alone one that size? It’d take the greatest jeweler in the world to turn out a job like that. And Borgorov swears there wasn’t any way for it to get down that deep—not in the past million years, anyway.”

“Which leaves us one conclusion,” said Peter.

“One.” Josef sponged his forehead with a huge red handkerchief.

“Something could be worse than this pigpen?” said Peter. Josef kicked him savagely as a few heads raised up from the card games across the room. “Pigpen,” laughed a small man as he threw his cards down and walked to his cot. He dug beneath his mattress and produced a bottle of cognac. “Drink, Comrade?”

“Peter!” said Josef firmly. “We left some of our things in the village. We’d better get them right away.”

Gloomily, Peter followed his brother out into the thunderstorm. The moment they were outside, Josef seized him by the arm and steered him into the slim shelter of the eaves. “Peter, my boy, Peter—when are you going to grow up?” He sighed