Natural Selection (A Free Spider Shepherd short story) Read Free Page B

psychological one, getting people to eat things that their bodies need, but their minds might reject: plants and fish, but also insects. Pound for pound insects will give you more protein than beef.
    ‘The first time I did the course, I made a serious mistake. I gave them some insects to eat: termites, ants eggs and rhino beetle grubs. The beetle grubs look especially revolting. They’re grey and bloated, about seven inches long, and have four sets of legs on the middle. They look even more hideous when they’ve been boiled, but they’re very nutritious. I managed to persuade one pilot to volunteer to taste one but as he tried to put it in his mouth, it flopped over onto his chin. It wasn’t alive, it had been boiled after all, but the pilots all took one look and then point blank refused to touch them.’
    ‘You can’t blame them,’ said Liam. ‘I don’t think I could something like that.’
    ‘Depends how hungry you were,’ said Jimbo.
    ‘If I was that hungry, I’d take a bite out of you,’ said Liam. ‘But a grub?’ He shook his head. ‘No bloody way. I’d rather go hungry.’
    Pilgrim smiled.  ‘Anyway I left them to it while I went back to my base camp, roasted the insects, chopped them up and made a curry with them. I served it up that night when they were all starving hungry and they wolfed it down. They all thought it was delicious until I told them what was in it. So that was a lesson learned: the first time you feed insects to anyone, camouflage the fact.’
    Shepherd’s expression had been changing throughout the latter part of Pilgrim’s story. He put down his fork, looked around and saw that the others had also stopped eating. He thought about it for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed. ‘Bastard,’ he said. ‘Rhino beetle grubs?’
    Pilgrim nodded. ‘And termites and ants eggs.’
    Liam put his hand up to his mouth. ‘Are you serious?’
    ‘It’s protein,’ said Pilgrim. ‘And now you’ve eaten it, and enjoyed it, next time…’
    Liam nodded. ‘Point taken,’ he said.
    They made another brew and then Pilgrim began educating them on regimental policy as he saw it. Still unbadged and with nothing having been said directly, Shepherd took the way that they were now being taken into Pilgrim’s confidence as sign enough that he now no longer regarded them as candidates on Selection but as members of the Regiment. ‘A lot of the guys serving in the Regiment are happy to coast along taking promotion and career moves,’ Pilgrim said, ‘but they’re not prepared to put in the hard work and the hard yards to be a proper professional SAS soldier. With a couple of honourable exceptions, most of the trainers on the Selection course are also guys who couldn’t make it in the fighting Sabre Squadrons. They’re happy to lord it over the new recruits but will find any reason to avoid going back to a squadron.’
    Shepherd nodded enthusiastically. That was exactly what he’d been thinking, even before they had arrived in Belize.
    ‘However, there is an inner core of like-minded guys within the Regiment who want to be the best of the best,’ Pilgrim continued. ‘You’ll never hear them bragging and big-timing about the stuff they’ve done. They don’t need to. They know and their comrades know, and that’s all that counts, but if you study them and learn from them, you might one day join their ranks.  I’ve seen enough in you four to think you all have the potential to do so, but only you can decide whether you’re willing to make the necessary commitment. Green Army training and even SAS training will just give you the basics. After that, you must then put in the follow-up time if you want to become experts in what you do. It isn’t a part-time job, it’s a full time, unrelenting commitment and to become one of the inner elite you must expect to make sacrifices at the expense of family, friends and your career. Think about it, decide what you want to do and then