Chapter 1

I was at Scitech. I'd taken to "volunteering" to take a class around twice a week. The staff loved it — it was definitely not something an administrator was supposed to do. And I really enjoyed myself. I was trying to imagine my child in a group like this. Oh, Weena — who was decidedly convex — insisted on saying "he," but I'm not that certain that a Kullila healer knew everything.

I took the kids past the entomology display — actually "Insects" -- and mentioned that I had studied ants at University. "You know, there's a dreamtime story called 'The Meat Ants and Fire'," I said.

"Can you tell it?" asked a small boy.

"It tells the tale of how Meat Ants showed a tribe how to make fire.

The tribe known as the Meat Ants kept the secret to themselves until a young man from another tribe found out the secret and wanted to share the knowledge with all tribes. The young man having ignited a fire stick ran from the Meat Ant tribe, who gave chase. The young man climbed down a vine and cut it at the bottom. When the tribe followed they all fell to their death. The children of the tribe all turned into Meat Ants and into the same colour as fire.

That's why meat ants are red."

"Wow."

"What about bedbugs?"

"They aren't red. And I don't know a dreamtime story about them." I wanted to move them on. "Now, we've been looking at insects. What do you know about them?"

"They have shells!" "They have six legs." "They're all over."

"Does everything with a shell have six legs?"

"Clams don't!" "I don't know how many legs a yabbie has." "Scorpions have eight legs."

"That's pretty good. People who sort things are called taxonomists. Animals can be sorted in lots of ways. A good way is dividing the ones with backbones — like fish and goannas and birds and dogs and cattle — from the ones without backbones — like ants and spiders and clams and lobsters and worms. Clams and worms don't have any legs. But the others have stiff legs. We call those arthropods. It means 'jointed legs'. Some have very many legs, like centipedes — we call those myriapods; some have ten legs, like crayfish, crabs, lobsters, and shrimp — we call those decapods; spiders and scorpions have eight legs; and all the insects have six legs — we call them hexapods."

"Is a spider an octopod?"

"No. Long ago, folks used 'octopod' for squids and sea animals like them, even though they don't have eight legs — or eight arms. But that's enough for now. What I'd like you to do is walk around this room, look at the specimens, and draw a picture or two of an arthropod. OK? Make sure you put your names on them so I'll know whose picture I'm looking at."

They all scattered.

"That was pretty good," came a voice from behind me. It was Carole, one of the lecturers. "You could get a job teaching science in elementary school."

"It's too tough. Making it simple without perverting reality isn't easy."

"You did really well with the vocabulary. 'Taxonomist, ' 'arthropods, ' 'myriapods.' And getting out of 'octopods, ' too."

I laughed. "I thought that little girl was going to stump me. She'd asked several questions earlier."

"Yes. There's one or two in every group who might grow up to be a scientist or a teacher."

I looked at her. "And that's why you do it."

"Right."

"Mr. Gordy?" It was the boy who'd asked for the story.

"Yes?"

"Could you 'splain a picture?"

"Which one?"

"Over here."

It was a large blow-up of a scorpion with her offspring on her back.

"Unlike other arachnids, scorpions don't lay eggs. The young, called scorplings, are born live, like most mammals, and the mothers carry them about for a while."

"Wow."

"As the scorplings grow, their shells get too small, so they shed them and grow new ones. That's called a 'moult.' Most scorplings stay with their mothers till their second moult."

"Gee. Thanks Mr. Gordy."