Empire of the Ants (27 page)

And she decided to name her city 'city of the mystery-born queen', which, in the scent language of ants, smells like this:

CHLI-POU-KAN.

Two
hours later, he got another call. 'How's it going, Bilsheim?'

'We're in front of a door, an ordinary door. There's a big inscription on it in ancient script.' 'What does it say?' 'Shall I read it to you this time?' 'Yes, please.'

The inspector shone his torch on the inscription and started to read in a slow, solemn voice because he was deciphering the text as he went along:

At the moment of death, the soul’
s impressions are similar to those of initiates in the ways
of
the Great Mysteries.

First they rush along blindly, twisting and turning, on an endless, anxious journey through the shadows.

Then, just before the end, their fear reaches its height. Bathed in cold sweat, they shiver and tremble, utterly terrified.

This phase is almost immediately followed by a return to the light, a sudden illumination.

Th
ey are surrounded by a marvellous glow and move through pure places and meadows ringing with voices and dancing.

Sacred words inspire religious respect. The perfect initiate is free to celebrate the Mysteries.

A policeman shivered.

'And what's behind the door?' asked the walkie-talkie. 'Hold on, I'll open it. You men follow me.' There was a long pause.

'Hello, Bilsheim. Hello, Bilsheim. Answer me, damn you! What can you see?'

She heard a shot, then once more silence.

'Say something, Bilsheim!'

'Bilsheim speaking.'

'Go ahead, tell us what's happening.'

'There are rats. Thousands of them. They attacked us but we managed to drive them away' 'Was that the shot I heard?' 'Yes. They're lying low now.' 'Tell me what you can see.'

'There's red everywhere you look, traces of ferrous rocks on the walls and blood on the ground. We're going on.'

'Maintain radio contact. Why are you switching off?'

'I'd rather do things my way than have you tell me what to do from a distance, if you don't mind.'

'But Bilsheim . .
.'

Click.
He had switched off.

Satei was not exactly a port and it was not an advanced post either but it was certainly the Belokanian expeditions' favourite place for crossing the river.

In ancient times, when the first ants of the Ni dynasty came to this stretch of water, they realized it would not be easy to cross. But an ant never gives up. If necessary, it will bang its head against an obstacle fifteen thousand times in fifteen thousand different ways until it either dies or the obstacle gives way.

This might not seem a very logical way of proceeding and it has certainly cost the Myrmician civilization a good deal of time and lives but it has paid off. In the end, at the cost of enormous effort, ants have always succeeded in overcoming their difficulties.

At Satei, the explorers had initially attempted to get across on foot. The skin on the water was strong enough to support their weight but they could not get a grip on it with their claws. They skated about on the edge of the water as if it were an ice-rink and could only take two steps forward and three steps sideways before being eaten by frogs.

After a hundred fruitless attempts and the loss of several thousand explorers, the ants decided to try something else. Workers formed a chain holding each other by the legs and antennae until they reached the other side. That experiment might have worked if the river had not been so rough and wide. It left two hundred and forty thousand dead but the ants did not give up. At the instigation of their then queen, Biu-pa-ni, they tried to build a bridge of leaves, then a bridge of twigs, then a bridge of cockchafers, then a bridge of pebbles. Those four experiments cost the lives of nearly six hundred and seventy thousand workers. Biu-pa-ni had already killed more of her subjects to build the bridge of her dreams than all the territorial battles fought during her reign had.

She did not give up for all that. They had to cross over into the eastern territories. After the bridges, she had the idea of bypassing the river by following it north to its source. None of those expeditions ever came back and they left eight thousand dead. Then she said to herself that the ants should learn how to swim. Fifteen thousand dead. Then she told herself the ants should try to tame the frogs. Sixty-eight thousand dead. Or glide across on leaves from the big tree. Fifty-two dead. Or walk under the water by weighting their legs with hardened honey. Twenty-seven dead. Legend had it that, when told that there were only a dozen unscathed workers left in the city and that they had to abandon the project for the time being, she had declared:

Pity, I still had plenty of ideas left.

The Federation ants came up with a satisfactory solution in the end, though. Three hundred thousand years later, Queen Lifoug-ryuni suggested to her daughters that they dig a tunnel under the river. It was so simple no-one had ever thought of it before.

And that is why they could move about with ease under the river at Satei.

103,683rd and 4,000th had been making their way along the famous tunnel for several degrees. It was damp inside but not actually running with water. The termite city was built on the other bank and the termites used the same underground passage for their incursions into federal territory. Until now, there had been a tacit agreement. There was no fighting in the passage and everyone, termite or ant, passed freely. But it was clear that if one of the two parties ever attempted to get the upper hand, the other would immediately try to block up or flood the passage.

As they walked endlessly down the long gallery, their only problem was the cold. The mass of liquid above them was freezing and it was even colder underground. It was making them sluggish, and every step was more difficult than the last. They knew that if they fell asleep down there, they would hibernate for ever. They crawled towards the exit, drawing their last reserves of protein and sugar from their social crops. With their muscles about to seize up, they at last caught sight of the exit. When they came out into the open, 103,683rd and 4,000th were so cold they fell asleep in the middle of the path.

Moving forward in single file like that along the narrow passageway made his mind go blank. There was nothing to think about here, you just had to keep on going until you got to the end. Always supposing there was an end.

The six policemen had fallen silent behind him. Bilsheim could hear their harsh breathing and told himself he was the victim of an injustice.

By now, he should have been a chief inspector on a decent salary. He was good at his job, put in long hours and had already solved a dozen or more cases. Only that Doumeng woman always blocked his promotion.

Suddenly he could not stand it any longer.

'Shit!'

They all stopped.

'Are you all right, Inspector?'

'Yes, I'm fine. Keep moving.'

Worst of all, he had even started
talking to himself. He bit his li
p and tried to pull himself together but he was brooding again not five minutes later.

He had nothing against women but he had something against incompetence. 'The old bitch can barely read and write, she's never conducted an investigation and she gets promoted to the top of the entire department of a hundred and eighty policemen. And she earns four times as much as me! Join the police, they said! She was appointed by her predecessor, probably screwed her way up. She never gives us any peace, either. She's a busy-body and a trouble-maker and she sabotages her own department by trying to be indispensable.'

As he was turning these thoughts over in his mind, Bilsheim remembered a documentary he had seen about toads. They get so excited during the mating season that they jump on anything that moves: females, males and even stones. They squeeze the eggs they want to fertilize out of their partners' bellies. Those which squeeze females get rewarded for their pains. Those which squeeze males get nothing and change partners. Those which squeeze stones get sore arms and give up.

But there are some which squeeze lumps of earth. The lump of earth is as soft as a female toad's belly so they do not stop squeezing. Their behaviour is sterile but they can carry on with it for days on end, thinking they are doing the right thing.

The inspector smiled. Perhaps he should try explaining to old Solange that there were far more effective ways of going about things than being obstructive and causing stress. He did not really think it would do any good, though. After all, he told himself, he was probably the one who was out of place in the lousy department.

The others behind him were also thinking dark thoughts. The silent descent was getting on all their nerves. They had been walking for five hours now without a break. Most of them were working out how much extra pay they would ask for when they got back. Others were thinking about their wives and children, their cars or a pack of beer.

nothing
: What greater pleasure is there than to stop thinking?
To
halt at last the flow of more or less useful or more or less important ideas.
To
stop thinking.
To
be as though dead yet still be able to come to life again.
To
be emptiness itself.
To
return to one
^y
s very origins.
To
stop even being someone thinking about nothing.
To
be nothing. That is a worthwhile ambition.

Edmond Wells,
Encyclopedia
of
Relative and Absolute Knowledge

After lying inert on the muddy bank all night, the bodies of the two soldiers were revived by the first rays of the sun.

One by one, the facets of 103,683rd s eyes were reactivated, illuminating her brain with the new scene in front of her. It consisted entirely of an enormous eye suspended above her, staring attentively.

The young asexual ant let out a pheromone cry of horror that burnt her antennae. The eye also took fright and withdrew hastily along with the long horn bearing it. Both hid beneath a kind of round pebble. A snail!

There were others nearby, five in all, concealed beneath their shells. The two ants went up to one and walked round it. They tried hard to bite it but could not get a grip. It was an impenetrable fortress.

One of Mothers sayings came back to her:
Security is my worst enemy. It dulls my reflexes and robs me
of
my initiative.

103,683rd told herself that these creatures, safe inside their shells, had always had an easy life grazing on grass that stayed put. They had never had to fight, lure, hunt or flee. They had never had to face up to life and had therefore never evolved.

She suddenly took it into her head to force them to leave their shells and prove to them that they were not invulnerable. Just then, two of the five snails decided that the danger was past and eased their bodies out of their shelters to relieve their nervous tension.

They met and fastened together, belly to belly, slime to slime, soldered in a sticky embrace running the length of their bodies. Their sex organs touched.

Something was happening between them, very slowly.

The snail on the right had plunged its calcareous-tipped penis into the egg-filled vagina of the left-hand snail, which had in turn thrust an erect penis into its partner.

Both knew the pleasure of penetrating and being penetrated at the same time. Having both a vagina and a penis, they could experience the sensations of both sexes simultaneously.

The right-hand snail was the first to experience a male orgasm. Its writhing altered and its body went tense, shot through with electricity. The hermaphrodites' four eye-horns joined together. The slime turned into foam and then bubbles. They were dancing close together, the sensuality of their movements heightened by the slow rhythm of the dance.

The left-hand snail pricked up its horns as it in turn experienced a male orgasm. But it had hardly finished ejaculating when a second wave of pleasure, this time vaginal, swept over its body. The right-hand snail, too, experienced a female climax.

Their horns then fell back down, their penises were retracted and their vaginas closed up. Once they had completed the act, the lovers repelled one another like magnets with the same polarity. It was the age-old story. The two machines for giving and receiving pleasure moved slowly apart, their eggs fertilized by their partner's sperms.

While 103,683rd was still dazed by the beauty of the sight, 4,000th leapt to attack the larger of the snails, hoping to take advantage of its post-coital fatigue to disembowel it. But it was too late, they were safe inside their shells again.

The old explorer did not give up, knowing they would come out again in the end, and patiendy laid siege to them. Finally, a timid eye, followed by a whole horn, inched its way out of the shell. The snail wanted to see what was going on in the world outside.