Empire of the Ants (23 page)

Small crustaceans, cyclops and daphnia, were fleeing before the monster. It dived, then came up again near the queen, who clung to her leaf, terrified.

The trout propelled itself forward with all the power in its fins and broke the surface. As a great wave buffeted the ant, the trout seemed to hang suspended in the air. It opened a mouth armed with fine teeth and swallowed a gnat hovering nearby. Then it twisted its tail round and fell back into its crystalline world, causing a tidal wave which submerged the ant.

Some frogs hastily dived in to fight over the queen and her caviar. She managed to surface again but was sucked back down into the inhospitable depths by an eddy. The frogs pursued her until she became rigid with cold and lost consciousness.

Nicolas was watching television in the dining room with his two new friends, Jean and Philippe. Around them, other pink-faced orphans were allowing themselves to be lulled by the unbroken succession of images.

Throug
h their eyes and ears, the film’
s story was entering the memories in their brains at a speed of 500 kilometres an hour. A human brain can stock up to sixty billion items of information, but when its memory cells are saturated, they are automatically cleared and the information considered least interesting is forgotten. Only traumatic memories and nostalgia for past happiness remain.

Immediately after the serial that day, there was a discussion about insects. Most of the young human beings dispersed. They were not interested in scientific waffle.

'Professor Leduc, you and Professor Rosenfeld are considered the greatest European specialists on ants. What led you to study them?'

'When I opened my kitchen cupboard one day, I came face to face with a colony of them. I watched them working for hours. It was a lesson in life and humility. I wanted to find out more about them. It's as simple as that.'

(He laughed.)

'How do your views differ from those of that other eminent scientist, Professor Rosenfeld?'

'Oh, Professor Rosenfeld. Hasn't he retired yet?' He laughed again. 'No, seriously, we don't belong to the same school. There are several ways of "understanding" ants, you know. We used to think all the social species (termites, bees and ants) were royalists. It was simple but wrong. Then we noticed that the only power the ant queens had was that of giving birth. Ant governments can actually take many forms: monarchy, oligarchy, a triumvirate of warriors, democracy, anarchy, etc. When the citizens are not satisfied with their governments, they may even revolt and then there are "civil wars" right inside the cities.'

'How fantastic'

'For me, and for the so-called "German" school to which I belong, the organization of the ant world is primarily based on a hierarchy of castes and on the domination of alpha individuals who are more gifted than the rest and who direct groups of workers. For Rosenfeld, who belongs to the so-called "Italian" school, ants are all anarchists to the core and there are no alphas, no individuals more gifted than the rest. Ant leaders sometimes emerge spontaneously in order to solve practical problems. But they are only temporary'

'I don't quite understand.'

'We could say that the Italian school thinks any ant can be in charge as long as she has an original idea which is of interest to the rest, whereas the German school thinks it is always ants with "leadership qualities" who take charge of missions.'

'Are the two schools so very different?'

'Since you ask, they've already ended up fighting at big international congresses.'

'Is it still the same old rivalry between the Saxon and Latin turns of mind?'

'No. It's more like the batt
le between the partisans of the
"innate" and the "acquired". Are people born idiots or do they become idiots? It's one of the questions we're trying to answer by studying ant societies.'

'But why not do these experiments on rabbits or mice?'

'Ants offer us a fantastic opportunity to see a society in action, one made up of several million individuals. It's like observing a world. To my knowledge, no towns of several million rabbits or mice exist.'

Someone nudged him.

'Hear that, Nicolas?'

But Nicolas was not listening. He had seen that face, those yellow eyes, before, but where and when? He searched his memory. Yes, he remembered now. It was the man who had come about the bookbinding. He had said his name was Gougne but he was one and the same person as this Leduc who was showing off on the telly.

Nicolas's discovery plunged him deep in thought. If the professor had lied, it was to try and get possession of the encyclopedia. Its contents must be vital for the study of ants. It must be down in the cellar. And that was what they had all been after, Dad, Mum and this Leduc. If
he went and got that damn encyc
lopedia, it would all become clear.

He got up.

'Where are you going?'

He made no answer.

'I thought you were interested in ants?'

He walked as far as the door, then ran back to his room. He would not need many of his things, just his beloved leather jacket, his penknife and his thick, crepe-soled shoes.

The supervisors took no notice of him when he crossed the big hall.

He ran away from the orphanage.

From a distance, all that could be seen of Guayei-Tyolot was a sort of rounded crater like a molehill. The 'advanced post' was a mini-anthill occupied by about a hundred individuals. It was only operative from April to October and remained empty throughout the autumn and winter.

Its citizens, like primitive ants, had no queen, no workers and no soldiers. They performed all the different roles at once and they made no bones about criticizing the feverishness of the giant cities. They made fun of the jams, the collapsing corridors, the secret tunnels that turned towns into rotten apples, the highly specialized workers who could no longer hunt and the blind doorkeepers who were walled up for life. 103,683rd inspected the post. Guayei-Tyolot consisted of a granary and a vast main hall. Two rays of sunlight shining through an opening in the ceiling revealed dozens of hunting trophies, empty cuticles hanging from the walls with draughts whistling through them.

103,683rd went to take a closer look at the multicoloured bodies. A native of the region came and caressed her antennae. She pointed out magnificent specimens killed by every kind of ant ruse. The animals were covered in formic acid, which could also be used as a preservative.

Lined up carefully were all sorts of butterflies and large insects of every shape and colour. Yet one well-known animal, the termite queen, was missing from the collection.

103,683rd asked whether their termite neighbours ever gave them any trouble. The local ant raised her antennae in surprise. She stopped mumbling between her mandibles and there was a heavy scent silence.

Termites?

Her antennae fell. She had nothing more to communicate. In any case, she had work to do. She was in the middle of cutting something up and had wasted enough time already. She said goodbye and turned round, ready to make off. 103,683rd repeated her question.

The other ant now seemed to panic and her antennae began to tremble. The word termite visibly conjured up something terrible for her. It seemed quite beyond her strength to engage in conversation on the subject. She rushed off to join a group of workers in the middle of a drinking session.

They had filled their social crops with flower-honey alcohol and were drinking from each other's abdomens in a long, closed chain.

Five huntresses assigned to the advanced post then made rather a noisy entrance, pushing a caterpillar in front of them.

Look what we've found. The amazing thing is, it produces honey!

The one who gave out this news tapped the captive with the tips of her antennae. Then she put a leaf down in front of it and, as soon as the caterpillar started to eat, jumped on its back. The caterpillar reared up in vain. The ant stuck her claws into its flanks and got a good grip, then turned round and licked its last segment until a nectar ran from it.

Everyone congratulated h
er and the hitherto unknown hon
eydew was passed from mandible to mandible. It had a different flavour from greenfly honeydew and was smoother, with a more pronounced after-taste of sap. As 103,683rd was tasting this exotic liquid, an antenna brushed her head.

It seems you've been asking about the termites.

The ant who had just sent out this pheromone seemed very, very old. Her whole shell was covered in scars from mandible bites. 103,683rd laid back her antennae in acquiescence.

Follow me!

She was known as the 4,000th warrior. Her head was as flat as a leaf and her eyes were tiny. The quavering scents she emitted were very low in alcohol. That was possibly why she had wanted to talk in a tiny, almost enclosed cavity.

Don't worry, we can talk here. This hole is my chamber.

103,683rd asked her what she knew about the termite hill of the east. The other spread her antennae.

Why are you interested in it? You only came here for the lizard hunt, didn't you?

103,683rd decided to come clean with the old asexual ant. She told her that a baffling secret weapon had been used against the soldiers of La-chola-kan. At first, they had thought it was a dwarf trick but it wasn't them. Their suspicions had naturally then fallen on the termites of the east, their other great enemies.

The old lady folded back her antennae in surprise. She had never heard of the affair. She examined 103,683rd and asked:

Was it the secret weapon that took off your fifth leg?

The young soldier answered no, she had lost it in the Battle of Poppy Hill, during the liberation of La-chola-kan. 4,000th immediately became enthusiastic. She had been there.

Which legion
were you in?

The 15th. How about you?

The 3rd.

During the first charge, one had fought on the left flank and the other on the right. They exchanged recollections. There were always plenty of lessons to be learnt from a battlefield. For example, 4,000th had noticed right at the start of the fighting that mercenary messenger-gnats were being used. According to her, they were far superior to the traditional 'runners' as a means of long-distance communication.

The Belokanian soldier, who had not noticed them, willingly agreed, then hastily returned to the subject.

Why won't anyone talk to me about the termites?

The old warrior came closer until their heads brushed.

Some very strange things have been happening here, too.

The scents she was giving off were redolent of mystery.
Very strange, very strange.
The phrase bounced off the walls in a scent echo.

Then 4,000th explained that for some time now not a single termite from the eastern city had been seen even though they had previously used the Satei river-crossing to send spies to the west. The ants of Satei had known about it and monitored them after a fashion. Now, there were no longer even spies. There was nothing.

An enemy who attacks is worrying but an enemy who disappears is even more worrying. As there were no longer any skirmishes with the termite scouts, the ants of the post of Guayei-Tyolot decided to spy in their turn.

A first band of explorers had set out but nothing more was heard of them. A second group followed and disappeared likewise. They thought it might be the lizard or a greedy hedgehog, but when a predator attacked there was always at least one survivor, even if she were wounded. In this case, the soldiers had vanished as if by magic.

That reminds me of something
. . ., began 103,683rd.

But the old lady was not to be distracted from her tale. She went on:

After the failure of the first two expeditions, the warriors of Guayei-Tyolot decided to risk their all and dispatched a minilegion of five hundred heavily armed soldiers. This time, there was one survivor. She dragged herself along for thousands of heads and died in agony just as she reached the nest.

They examined her body but found no trace of a wound. There was no apparent reason for her death.

Now do you understand why no-one wants to talk to you about the termite hill of the east?

103,683rd understood. What was more, she was satisfied she was on the right track. If there was a solution to the mystery of the secret weapon, it was to be found in the termite hill of the east.

hologram
: The human brain and the anthill have something in common, which can be symbolized by a hologram. What is a hologram? It is a set of printed lines which, when superimposed and lit from a particular angle, produce a three-dimensional image.

The image exists everywhere and nowhere. The combination of printed lines engenders a third dimension and therefore a three-dimensional illusion.

Each neurone in our brains and each individual in the anthill holds all the information but only their collective activity gives rise to consciousness or 'three-dimensional thought'.

Edmond Wells,
Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge