Free Forever Dead by Suzanne F. Kingsmill

“but some of the best insects are up there, miles from nowhere, in the deepest darkest corners of the Canadian wilderness where bears and wolves and bobcats and dead bodies lurk around every corner and you take your life in your hands just venturing into the woods.”
    â€œOooh, you see? I told you. Too effing dangerous. Sheer stupidity.”
    Martha took everything at face value, believed everything. Watching her as I told her my story, I could relive it through Martha’s facial features. They rose and fell and plummeted and bucked with the rapids, grew round and menacing with the sweeper, grew blank and then widened in fear with the falling of the boulder (I omitted the possibility that someone had hurled it at us and longed to know what facial expression would have gone with that), and finally grew exhausted as she mentally hauled herself out alongside me and Ryan at the end of the rapids.
    It was exhausting to watch, but at the end she collected her features, remoulded them into a business-like form, added a frown, and said, “Just what do you suppose we’re going to do about course material, with all your insects at the bottom of the river or wherever they go when they dump in a rapids. Classes start in less than two months and I have no specimens to set up your labs.”
    â€œWe’ll have to phone around, find out if some colleagues have some extra unsorted material, and I’ll have to scramble and do some more collecting. I’m sure someone would happily lend us some material, especially if we tell them we’ll sort the insects from the leaf litter and identify them. ”
    Martha grimaced. Sorting was not pleasant work.
    â€œWorst case scenario we can use some of Jefferson’s collection, but they’re not in very good shape.” I sighed. “I just don’t have time to go on another field trip, with all my experiments needing to be written up. The Dean is on my case pressing me for papers. Publish or perish, as they say.” I was eager to get at my research.
Animal Behaviour
wanted more analysis before they’d accept my paper on what male praying mantids might gain from their lopsided encounters with their cannibalistic mates.
    â€œWe’ll have to get the lab material somehow,” I said.
    â€œYou don’t sound convinced.”
    â€œWell, I don’t want to have to admit I have nothing new and use the old collections, do I? Not unless I want to get the ass end of the lab next year too, and miss out on a chance at tenure by showing them that I can’t breathe new life into a hemorrhaging course.”
    Seeing Martha’s face, I realized I’d said too much. It was one thing to believe your career is stagnating. It was quite another to advertise that fact to your staff. Dreadful idea — too demoralizing, even if I believed everything Isaid, and Martha knew it. I added hastily, “Oh, it’s not that. I’m just disappointed. There were a couple of spiders that I collected that were really rather exciting.”
    Martha curled her upper lip and hooded her eyes in a look of sheer disgust.
    â€œThey’re not that ugly Martha, really,” I laughed, but it was true that I had never seen anything like those spiders before. Now I wouldn’t get the chance to find out if anybody else had seen them either.
    â€œI’d best be phoning around then,” Martha said. In a flurry of activity, totally at odds with her considerable bulk, she corralled some vials and jars from my desk and started to leave. I watched in amusement as her face began a one-act play. The features moulded and changed into dawning realization of something, and the something became quite horrendous until her features once again puckered in a kind of silent scream of revolt. She stopped suddenly and looked back at me, her face spewing disgust.
    â€œThose larvae in the lab, they’re not from …” I raised my hands in self-defence.