Empire of the Ants (13 page)

Not that it really mattered. The great russet-ant federations had been content to reinforce their armies with a large number of legions of foreign ants, all united under the one Belokanian scent banner.

103,683rd approached the dwarf mercenaries and asked them if they had heard of the development of a secret weapon at Shi-gae-pou, a weapon capable of annihilating an entire expedition of twenty-eight russet ants in a flash. They replied that they had never seen or heard of anything so effective.

103,683rd questioned other mercenaries. A yellow ant claimed to have witnessed such a wonder. It was not a dwarf attack, however, only a rotten pear which had unexpectedly fallen from a tr
ee. Everyone let out bubbly littl
e pheromones of laughter. It was yellow-ant humour.

103,683rd went back up to a room in which some of her close colleagues were training. She knew them all individually. They listened to her carefully and believed her and there were soon over thirty determined warriors in the 'group searching for the dwarves' secret weapon'. If only 327th could have seen it!

Be careful. An organized band is trying to get rid of anyone who wants to know. They must be russet-ant mercenaries working for the dwarves. You can identify them by their smell of rock.

For the sake of security, they decided to hold their first meeting in the very depths of the city in one of the rooms on the fiftieth floor. No-one ever went down there. They should be able to organize their offensive without being disturbed.

But 103,683rd's body indicated a sudden acceleration in time. It was 23°. She took her leave and hurried off to her meeting with 327th and 56th.

aesthetics
: What could be more beautiful than an ant? Its lines are curved and pure and it is perfectly aerodynamic. Its whole body is designed so that each limb fits perfectly into its intended notch and each joint is a mechanical marvel. The plates fit together as if by computer-assisted design and there is never any creaking or friction. The triangular head slices through the air and the long,
flexed legs give the body a low-slung, comfortable suspension. It is like an Italian sports car.

The claws allow it to walk on the ceiling and the eyes have 180° panoramic vision. The antennae pick up thousands of items of information which are invisible to us and their extremities can be used as hammers. The abdomen is full of pockets, sacs and compartments, in which the insect can stock chemicals, while the mandibles cut, nip and seize. A formidable network of internal pipes allows it to lay down scent messages.

Edmond Wells,
Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge

Nicolas did not want to go to sleep. He was still watching television. The news had just ended with the announcement of the return of the
Marco Polo
probe. The conclusion: there was not the slightest trace of life in the neighbouring solar systems. All the planets visited by the probe had offered only images of rocky deserts or liquid ammonia surfaces. There was no sign of moss, amoeba or bacteria.

'Supposing Dads right?' Nicolas said to himself. 'Supposing we're the only intelligent life-form in the whole universe?' It was obviously disappointing but might well be true.

After the news, there was a major report in the
World Cultures
series, this time devoted to the caste problem in India.

'The Hindus belong for life to the caste in which they were born. Each caste operates according to its own set of rules, a rigid code which no-one can transgress without being banished from their own caste as well as all the others. To understand such behaviour, we have to remember that—'

'It's one o'clock in the morning,' butted in Lucie.

Nicolas had had a bellyful of images. Since the trouble with the cellar, he had put in a good four hours of television a day. It was his way of stopping thinking and being himself. His mother's voice brought him back to painful reality.

'Aren't you tired?'

'Where's Dad?'

'He's still in the cellar. You must go to sleep now.' 'I can't sleep.'

'Would you like me to tell you a story?' 'Oh, yes. A story. A lovely story'

Lucie accompanied him into his room and sat on the edge of the bed loosening her long, red hair. She chose an old Hebrew tale.

'Once upon a time, there was a stone-cutter who had had enough of wearing himself out digging away at the mountain under the burning rays of the sun. "I'm fed up with living like this. It's exhausting to be always cutting, cutting the stone and then there's the sun, always the sun. Oh. How I'd love to be in its place. I'd be up there all-powerful and hot, flooding the world with my rays," said the stone-cutter to himself. His call was miraculously heard and the stone-cutter was immediately turned into the sun. He was happy to see his wish granted. But, as he was having fun sending his rays everywhere, he noticed they were being stopped by the clouds. "What's the point in being the sun if mere clouds can stop my rays," he exclaimed. "If clouds are stronger than the sun, I'd rather be a cloud." So he became a cloud. He flew over the world, raced along and scattered rain but suddenly the wind rose and dispersed the cloud. "Ah, the wind can disperse clouds so it must be stronger. I want to be the wind," he decided.'

'And so he became the wind?'

'Yes, and he blew all over the world. He made storms, gales and typhoons. But suddenly he noticed a wall in his way. A very high, hard wall. A mountain. "What's the point in being the wind if a mere mountain can stop me? It must be stronger," he said to himself.'

'And so he became the mountain.'

'That's right. And just at that moment, he felt something hitting him. Something stronger than he was, digging away at him from the inside. It was a little stone-cutter.'

'Aaaah.'

'Did you like the story?' 'Oh yes, Mum!'

'Are you sure you haven't seen better ones on television?' 'Oh no, Mum.' She laughed and hugged him. 'Do you think Dad's digging, too, Mum?' 'Maybe, who knows? He seems to think he's going to turn into something different if he goes down there, anyway'

'Doesn't he like it here?'

'No, Nick, he's ashamed of being out of work. He thinks it's better to be the sun. An underground sun.' 'Dad thinks he's the king of the ants.' Lucie smiled.

'He'l
l get over it. He's like a littl
e boy still. And little boys are always interested in anthills. Haven't you ever played with ants?' 'Yes, I have.'

Lucie plumped up his pillow and kissed him. 'Time to go to sleep now. Goodnight, darling.' 'Goodnight, Mum.'

Lucie caught sight of the matches on the bedside table. He must have been having another go at making the four triangles. She went back into the living room and picked up the book on architecture which told the history of the house.

Many scientists had lived in it, most of them Protestants. Michael Servetus, for example, had lived here for a few years.

One passage in particular caught her attention. It said a tunnel had been dug during the Wars of Religion to allow the Protestants to flee from the city; an unusually long, deep tunnel.

The three insects made a triangle to take part in absolute communication. That way, they would not need to recount their adventures. They would know everything that had happened to them instantaneously, as if they were a single body that had divided into three in order to investigate better.

They linked antennae. Thoughts began to circulate and merge. It worked. Each brain acted as a transistor, conducting and enriching the electrical message it received. Three ant minds united in this way transcended the simple sum of their talents.

Suddenly the spell was broken. 103,683rd had picked up a parasitic smell. The walls had antennae. To be precise, two antennae, which were sticking out of the opening to 56th's chamber. Someone was listening to them.

Midnight. It was two days since Jonathan had gone back into the cellar and Lucie was walking up and down nervously in the living room. She went to check on Nicolas, who was sound asleep, and the matches suddenly caught her eye. At that moment, she had a sense that the beginning of an answer to the riddle of the cellar might lie in the riddle of the matches. How did you make four equilateral triangles out of six little sticks?

'You have to think about it differently. If you think about it in the usual way, you won't get anywhere,' Jonathan had said. Picking up the matches, she went back into the living room, where she played about with them for a long time. At last, exhausted with worry, she went to bed.

That night, she had a strange dream. First, she saw Uncle Edmond, or at least someone resembling her husband's description of him. He was standing in a kind of long cinema queue in the middle of a desert Uttered with loose stones. The queue was surrounded by Mexican soldiers, who were 'keeping order'. In the distance stood a dozen gallows, on which people were being hanged. When they were quite dead, they were taken down and others were strung up. And the queue moved forward.

Behind Edmond stood Jonathan, Lucie herself and a fat man wearing very small glasses. All the condemned people were chatting placidly, as if there were nothing the matter.

When the noose was finally placed round their necks and the four of them were hanged side by side, they just waited and allowed it to happen. Uncle Edmond was the first to speak. His voice was husky and with good reason:

'What are we doing here?'

'I don't know. We live. We were born, so we live for as long as possible. But I think it's nearly over now,' replied Jonathan.

'Dear Jonathan, what a pessimist you are. Admittedly, we've been hanged and there are Mexican soldiers all around us but this isn't the end, it's just one of the hazards of life. There has to be a way out of this situation, too. Are your hands tied very tight?'

They struggled with their bonds.

'Mine aren't,' said the fat man. 'I can undo my ropes.'

And he did.

'Right, now set us free.'

'How?'

'Swing until you reach my hands.'

He twisted about until he turned himself into a living pendulum. When he had undone Edmonds ropes, they could all gradually be freed using the same technique.

Then Uncle Edmond said: 'Do as I do!' and bounced from rope to rope, with little jerks of his neck, to the end of the gallows. The others copied him.

'We can't go any further. There's nothing beyond this beam. They'll spot us.'

'Look, there's a little hole in the beam. Let's go inside.'

Then Edmond threw himself against the beam, shrank to a minute size and disappeared inside. So did Jonathan and the fat man. Lucie told herself she would never manage it but flung herself against the piece of wood and made her way into the hole.

There was a spiral staircase inside and they took the stairs four at a time. They could already hear the shouts of the soldiers who had noticed their flight.
Los gringos, los gringos, cuidado!
There was a sound of boots and gunshots as the Mexicans gave chase.

The staircase opened on to a modern hotel room with a view of the sea. It was room eight. They went in and closed the door but it slammed and the vertical eight turned into a horizontal eight, the symbol of infinity. The room was luxurious and they felt safe from the roughneck soldiers there.

Just as everyone was breathing a sigh of relief, Lucie suddenly flew at her husband's throat, shouting: 'Where's Nicolas? What about Nicolas?' She knocked him out with an old vase with a painting of Hercules as a child strangling the Serpent. Jonathan fell to the floor and turned into a shelled shrimp that squirmed about, looking quite ridiculous.

Uncle Edmond came forward.

'You're sorry, aren't you?'

'I don't understand.'

'You will,' he said, smiling. 'Follow me.'

He showed her to the balcony overlooking the sea, and clicked his fingers. Six lighted matches immediately came down from the sky and hung in a line above his hand.

'Listen carefully,' he said. 'We always think and perceive the world in the same old way. It s as if we only ever took photographs with a wide-angle lens. Its one view of reality but its not the only one. YOU . . . HAVE . . . TO . . . THINK . . . DIFFERENTLY. Look.'

The matches twirled in the air for an instant, then fell to the ground. They crawled together as if they were alive and made . . .

The next day, Lucie was quite feverish. She went out to buy a blowlamp and finally managed to burn off the lock. Just as she was about to cross the threshold of the cellar, Nicolas appeared in the kitchen, still half asleep.

'Where are you going, Mum?'

'I'm going to find your dad. He thinks he's a cloud and can cross mountains. I want to make sure he doesn't overdo things. I'll tell you all about it when I get back.'

'Oh no, Mum, please don't go. I'll be all by myself.'

'Don't worry, Nicolas, I'll be back. I won't be long. Wait for me here.'

She shone a light into the mouth of the cellar. It was very dark inside.

Who's there?

The two antennae came further in, revealing a head, a thorax and then an abdomen. It was the small rock-scented ant with the limp.