Mara and Dann (mad-1) by Doris Lessing(Little Dorrit)

Author:Doris Lessing(Little Dorrit) [Lessing, Doris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf_social
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers

9

In the running chair, Mara held her sack, Dann his, and each clutched two coins. Their knives lay beside them on the seat.

They reached the depot as the sun did. Felice was standing in a pose that surprised them, because she was rigid, staring at something on the ground, as if she had seen a snake and was afraid a movement might provoke it to strike. Mara was thinking, When I first saw Felice she seemed to me a wonder in her blue working suit, with her clean face and nice hair. But now compared with the Mahondi women she seems shabby and tired. Then she saw what Felice was staring at but could not at first understand.

Under the skimmer and around it were a dozen or so yellow balls, the size of sour fruits, or Mara's fist, and they glistened and were fresh and without dust, because they were inside a webbing or net of thick slime, like saliva. They were vital and alive, these balls: they seemed to pulse, and as the three watched, one cracked open and out crawled a pincer beetle, and it sat in the mess of its egg and slime resting from the effort of getting out. These were eggs, the eggs of a pincer beetle. And then they saw the beetle itself, half concealed by a wheel of the skimmer, its yellow body, the colour of its eggs, vibrating as out of its back end emerged slowly, one by one, more of its eggs. The great black pincers, the size of its body, stretched in front of it, and its black eyes stared at the three. The newly hatched beetle was crawling up a wheel; other eggs were cracking open, and a swarm of baby beetles were struggling free of the slime. Another reached a wheel.

"Quick," said Felice and, straddling the mess of eggs and new beetles, pulled herself up into the machine, and then hauled first Mara and then Dann in by the other door. Felice started the engine and the machine rolled away from the beetle and her progeny. The creature was still laying eggs and, unable to attack this machine, was clacking her pincers like knives, in warning.

Half a dozen soldiers came in sight, and when they saw the machine, began to run towards it.

"They don't want to let you go," said Felice, shouting over her shoulder at them. The machine rose out of reach of the soldiers, who went to the beetle, to attack it with clubs and knives. One slipped in the slime, and vomited, with disgust. Meanwhile the beetle, with incredible speed, had scuttled off and disappeared behind houses. And then the machine had risen too high for the three to see more than that there were soldiers standing gazing up after them. Felice slid back a shutter in the floor of the machine and peered down at the wheels: where were the beetles that had climbed up? Two were there, obstinately clinging to a wheel with their six clawlike legs.

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