Micro - Michael Crichton [65]
“I didn’t say that, Danny—”
Danny cut him off. “Excuse me, Peter. I am not a slack-lipped hominid with a beetling brow, clutching a chunk of stone in my hairy-knuckled fist and cheerfully bashing in skulls of leopards. In fact, I am an educated person used to an urban environment. It is not Harvard Square out there. It is a green hell crawling with ants the size of pit bulls. I will stay in this bunker and wait for help.” He rapped on the wall. “It’s ant-proof.”
“Nobody’s going to help you,” Karen said to Danny.
“We’ll see about that.” He went off and sat by himself.
Amar spoke to the others. “Peter is right.” He turned to Peter. “I’m on the team.” He leaned back and closed his eyes, as if he was thinking about something.
Karen said, “I’m on the team, too.”
Erika Moll finally agreed. “Peter is right.”
“I think we need a leader,” Jenny Linn said. “I think Peter should lead us.”
“Peter is the one person here who gets along with everybody in the group,” Rick said, and turned to Peter. “You’re the only person who can lead us.”
It was confirmed quickly by a vote; Danny refused to take part.
Now it was a question of getting the team’s act together.
“First we need to eat. I’m freaking starved,” Rick said.
Indeed, they all felt ravenously hungry. They had been up all night, without food. And there had been that mad dash from the ants.
“We must have burned a lot of calories,” Peter said.
“I have never been so hungry in my life,” Erika Moll said.
“Our bodies are tiny. We probably burn calories a lot faster. Like a hummingbird, you know?” Karen said.
They took out the instant food packets, tore them open, and devoured them, sitting at the table and sprawled around the room. There wasn’t much food, and it vanished in moments. They found a giant block of chocolate, and Karen hacked it up seven ways with her knife. The chocolate disappeared quickly.
Searching the bunker for anything that might be useful on their journey to the parking lot, they found a number of plastic lab bottles with screw lids, and piled them on the table. The bottles could be used as canteens for water, and to store any chemical compounds they might be able to gather. “We’re going to need chemical weapons, just like insects and plants have them,” Jenny Linn said.
“Yeah, and I’ll need a jar to hold my curare,” Rick added.
“Curare,” Karen said. “Right.”
“It’s wicked stuff,” Rick said.
“If you know how to make it.”
“I do!” Rick said huffily.
“Who taught you, Rick? A hunter?”
“I’ve read papers—”
“Papers on curare.” Karen turned to something else, while Rick fumed.
In one chest she had found three steel machetes. Each machete had a belt and holster with a diamond knife-sharpener tucked into a pocket of the belt. Peter Jansen drew a blade and touched it with his thumb. “Wow, that is sharp.” As an experiment, he tapped the blade on the edge of a wooden table, and saw the blade sink into the wood as if it were soft cheese. The machete was far sharper than a scalpel.
“It’s as sharp as a microtome,” he said. “We used one in our lab—remember—for slicing tissue.”
Peter ran the diamond sharpener over the machete, whisking it along the edge. The sharpener was obviously to keep the edge in top condition. “The edge is very fine, so it probably gets dull quickly. But we can sharpen the machete as needed.” The machetes would be useful in cutting a path through vegetation.
Karen King swung a machete around her head. “Nice balance,” she said. “Decent weapon.”
Rick Hutter had stepped backward with alarm as Karen whirled the machete. “You could cut somebody’s head off,” he said to her.
She smirked at him. “I know what I’m doing. You stick to berries and blow-darts.”
“Quit pushing me!” Rick burst out. “What’s your problem?”
Peter Jansen stepped in. Despite their promises to work as a team, it was easier said than done. “Please—Rick—Karen—we’d all appreciate it if you didn’t argue. It’s dangerous for everybody.”
Jenny Linn slapped Rick on the shoulder and said to him, “Karen’s just