The End of October

by Lawrence Wright

“It took some time for me to figure out how you did it,” Henry continued. “Only someone with your talent could have imagined the alteration that would take an apparently harmless—what did you call it? An incapacitant?—and

does. This is how we are different, then, you and I. For me, the termite and the human, they

are equal. They each deserve life.

He had brought a weathered leather case that held his high school clarinet. “Extra crew?” Dixon said.

What was clear was that they had not made Kongoli in this place. The lab had been abandoned for decades, probably since the Soviet Union had dissolved.

“Well, doc, what are we going to tell history?” Cooksey asked. Henry looked up. The last flock of Siberian cranes had

taken flight, headed for China. “We’re going to say that we did this to ourselves.”