Empire of the Ants (40 page)

Food:
the usual russet diet consists of 43 per cent greenfly honeydew, 41 per cent insect meat, 7 per cent tree sap, 5 per cent mushrooms and 4 per cent crushed seeds.

Forbidden City:
the fortress protecting the nuptial chamber. Forbidden Cities can be made of wood, cement or even hollow rock.

Formic acid:
a throwing weapon. 40 per cent formic acid is the most corrosive.

Glow-worm: &
beetle that produces phosphorescent light. Edible.

Greenflies:
cattle. Edible.

Guayei-Tyolot: a.
small spring nest.

Harvesters:
farming ants of the east.

Head:
the ant unit of measurement. Equivalent to three millimetres.

Heart: a
succession of pear-shaped pockets fitting one inside another. The heart lies in the back.

Height:
the higher the nest, the greater the area of sunlight the city is seeking. In hot regions, anthills are entirely buried.

Hibernation:
the long sleep from November to March.

Human beings:
the giant monsters of some modern legends. Best known are their tame, pink animals: the fingers. Dangerous.

Ichneumon wasp:
lays its voracious eggs in your body. Dangerous.

Illnesses:
the most common russet ant illnesses are
conidium
(a parasitic fungus),
aegeritella
(a kind of rotting of the chitin), cerebral worm (a parasitic worm that lodges in the sub-oesophageal ganglions), hypertrophy of the labial glands (a kind of abnormal swelling of the thorax that manifests itself in the larval stage) and
alternaria
(deadly spores).

Indoleacetic acid:
weed-killer.

Infrared simple eyes:
three small eyes set in a triangle on the foreheads of males and females that allow them to see in total darkness.

Keep:
a secondary tower built on the dome. Keeps are more

commonly found on termite hills than anthills.

La-chola-kan:
the westernmost city of the Federation.

Ladybird:
greenfly predator. Edible.

Lion-ant larva:
carnivorous sinking sand. Dangerous.

Legion:
a mass of soldiers capable of manoeuvring

simultaneously.

Lizard:
the dragon of Myrmician civilization. Dangerous.
Lomechusa:
a beetle that supplies a deadly drug. Dangerous.

Males:
ants that develop from unfertilized eggs.
Mandible wrestling:
an ant sport.

Masked ant: a
species with a gift for organic chemistry.

Mayfly: &
kind of small dragonfly with a forked tail. The larva

lives for three years and hatches into an adult that lives from

three to forty-eight hours. Edible.
Mercenaries:
solitary ants who fight for nests that are not their

native nests in exchange for food and a city identity.
Metamorphosis:
a passage to a second form of life common

among insects.

Myrmician civilization:
ant civilization.
Mithridatism:
the capacity
of social species to become so
accustomed to deadly pois
ons that they lay eggs that are
genetically immune to them.

Mosquito:
the males suck the sap of plants. It is not known what
the females feed on. Edible.
Music:
sound or ultrasound produced by crickets and cicadas by
rubbing their outer wings to
gether. Fungus-growing ants can
also make music with their abdominal joints. M: the dynasty of the Belokanian queens.

Nuptial chamber,
the place where the queen lays her eggs.

Oleic acid:
fumes given off by dead ants.
Orientation of the city:
russet ants build their cities with the
longest side facing sou
th-east in order to receive the
maximum amount of sunlight at the start of the day.
Passport:
scent of one's native or, in the case of mercenaries,

adopted nest.
Pheromone:
liquid word or sentence.

Poison gland:
a bladder in which formic acid is stored. Special

muscles can shoot it at very high pressure.
Poisonous plants:
autumn crocus, wisteria, oleander and ivy.

Dangerous.

Preying mantis:
an insect with an excessive appetite for love-making and eating. Dangerous.
Rain:
deadly weather.

Rearing:
the method dev
ised by some species for taming
greenflies and ladybirds and collecting their anal secretions. A greenfly can produce thirty drops of honey dew an hour in the summer.

Red weavers:
migrant ants of the east who use their own larvae

as weaving shutdes.

Rhinoceros: a
beetle with a big horn on its forehead.

Rubbish heap:
the mound at the entrance to an anthill on which

the ants dump their refuse and dead bodies.

Salamander,
dangerous.

Sanitation: a
basin which acts as a receptacle for the citizens' excrement.

Seed:
russet ants like the elaioplasts of seeds, i.e. the parts richest in oil. An average nest harvests 70,000 seeds a season.

Shi-gae-pou:
the city of the dwarf ants of the north-east.

Sight:
ants see as if through a grid. Males and females have colour vision but all the colours are shifted towards the ultraviolet.

Size:
russet ants are two heads long on average.
Slave-makers: a
warrior species
incapable of surviving without
the help of servants.

Smell:
asexual ants have 6,500 sensory cells per antenna, males
and females 300,000.

Snail:
a protein mine. Edible.

Snake:
dangerous.

Social crop:
the organ of generosity.

Spider,
a monster that eats insects a little at a time and puts

them to sleep between amputations. Dangerous.

Strawberry Plant War.
in the year 99,999,886, the russet ants
fought the Strawberry Plant War against the yellow ants.

Strength:
a russet ant can pull sixty times its own weight. It

therefore develops 3.2
X
10"
⁶
H.P.

Tank:
a combat techniq
ue in which one large-mandibled
worker is carried by six small, mobile workers.

Tanker:
a dew reservoir.

Temperature:
russet ants can only move at temperatures equal to or higher than 8°. Males and females sometimes wake a little earlier, at about 6°.

Temperature of the nest:
the temperature of a russet city is regulated to between 20° and 30° according to the floor.

Termites:
the ants' rival species.

Transport:
to transport someone,
an ant holds him or her by the
mandibles. The ant being carried
curls up to create as little
friction as possible.

Trophallaxis:
the gift of food between two ants.

Venus's fly-trap: a.
predatory
plant common in the vicinity of
Bel-o-kan. Dangerous.

Walking speed:
at 10°, a russet ant moves at 18m.p.h. (metres per
hour). At 15°, it goes at 54m.p.h. At 20°, it can do up to
125m.p.h.

Wasps:
primitive, venomous cousins of the ants. Dangerous.

Water-beetle:
a beetle living on and under the water. Edible.

Waves:
the smallest common d
enominator emitted, in one form
or another, by all living creatures and moving objects.

Weaving:
an operation performed with a larva.
Weed-killers:
myrmicacin, indoleacetic acid.

Weight:
ants vary in weight
between one and one hundred and
fifty milligrams.

Wind:
picks you up off the ground and puts you down

goodness knows where.

Zoubi-zoubi-kan:
a city in the ea
st famous for its large herd of
greenflies.

56th:
Chli-pou-ni's maiden name.

327th:
a young Belokanian male.

4,000th:
a russet huntress living in Guayei-Tyolot.

103
,
683rd: a
Belokanian soldier.

801st:
a daughter of Chli-pou-ni used as a spy.

The real names of the 'actresses' (in alphabetical order)