Empire of the Ants

by Bernard Werber

  As luck would have it, Zoubi-zoubi-kan was on the edge of the Federation, just halfway between the termite city and Bel-o-kan. 103,683rd had therefore agreed to leave with this expedition so that her departure would go unnoticed.

  Around her, the other explorers made careful preparations. They filled their social crops to the brim with sweet energy reserves and their pockets with formic acid. Then they smeared themselves with snails' slime to protect themselves from the cold and also (they now knew) from alternaria spores.

  They talked about the lizard hunt. Some of them compared the lizard to salamanders or frogs but the majority of the thirty-two explorers agreed it was more difficult to hunt.

  One old ant maintained that lizards' tails grew again when they were cut off but the others made fun of her. Another claimed to have seen one of the monsters stay as still as a stone for 10°. Others recalled tales of the first Belokanians confronting the monsters with their bare mandibles - formic acid had not been so widely used at the time.

  103,683rd could not restrain a shudder. Until now, she had never seen a lizard and the prospect of attacking one with her bare mandibles or even a jet of acid was not reassuring. She told herself she would get away at the first opportunity. After all, her investigation into the 'termites' secret weapon' was more vital to the survival of the city than some sporting hunt.

  The explorers were ready. They made their way up through the corridors of the outer belt before emerging into the light through exit seven, known as the 'eastern exit'.

  First they had to leave the suburbs of the city, which was no easy matter. The whole area around Bel-o-kan was congested with a crowd of workers and soldiers, all of them in a hurry.

  The crowd was flowing in several directions. Some ants were loaded with leaves, fruit, seeds, flowers or mushrooms. Others were carrying twigs or stones which would be used as building materials. Yet others were carting game. There was a babble of smells.

  The huntresses forced their way through the jams. Then the traffic began to move more freely. The avenue narrowed down into a road only three heads (nine millimetres) wide, then two, then one. They could no longer pick up the city's collective messages and must be a long way from it already. The group had cut its olfactory umbilical cord and formed an autonomous unit. They adopted the 'strolling' formation, with the ants lined up two by two.

  Soon they met another group of explorers, who looked as if they had had a tough time. Their meagre troop no longer amounted to a single unscathed ant. They had all been mutilated. Some only had one leg left and were dragging themselves miserably along. Those who had no antennae or abdomen left were no better off.

  103,683rd had never seen soldiers so badly smashed up since the Poppy War. They must have come up against something terrifying. The secret weapon, perhaps?

  103,683rd tried talking to a big warrior with long, broken mandibles. Where had they been? What had happened? Was it the termites?

  The other ant slowed down and turned to face her without answering. She was appalled to see empty sockets and a head split from mouth to neck-joint.

  She watched her move away. A little further on, she fell and did not get up again. She just managed to find the strength to crawl off the trail so that her body would not be in the way.

  The 56th female tried going into a steep dive to get away from the swallow but the bird was ten times faster. A big beak was already casting its shadow over the tips of her antennae. It covered her abdomen, her thorax and her head, then overtook her. The touch of the palate was unbearable. Then the beak closed again and it was all over.

  sacrifice: When you observe ants, they appear to be motivated only by ambitions external to their own existence. A severed head will still try to make itself useful by biting enemy legs or cutting off a seed. A thorax will drag itself along to block up an entrance and stop enemies entering.

  Is this self-abnegation, fanaticism about the city or the stupefaction of collectivism?

  No, ants can live alone as well. They do not need the Tribe and can even revolt.

  Why, then, do they sacrifice themselves?

  At the present stage in my work, I should say: out of modesty. It seems that, for them, their own deaths are not sufficiently important events to distract them from the tasks they were performing immediately beforehand.

  Edmond Wells, Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge

  Skirting round trees, mounds of earth and thorny bushes, the explorers continued to thread their way eastward into danger.

  The road had narrowed but they still passed highway-maintenance teams along the way. The access roads leading from one city to another were never neglected. Roadmenders pulled up the moss, moved aside twigs blocking the way and laid down scent signals with their Dufour glands.

  There were now few workers going in the opposite direction. Sometimes they found signpost pheromones on the ground: 'At junction twenty-nine, make a detour through the hawthorns,' which might be the last trace of an ambush by enemy insects.

  As she walked along, 103,683rd had one surprise after another. She had never visited this region before. There were devil's boletuses eighty heads high here, yet the species was characteristic of the western regions.

  She also recognized pearly puffballs and stinkhorns, which attracted flies with their fetid smell. She scaled a chanterelle and happily trampled the soft flesh.

  She discovered all kinds of strange plants: wild hemp, with its dew-retaining flowers, gorgeous, troubling lady's slippers and long-stemmed cat's foot.

  She went up to a busy Lizzie with bee-like flowers and incautiously touched it. The ripe fruits immediately burst in her face, covering her with sticky, yellow seeds. It was a good thing it was not alternaria.

  Undeterred, she climbed up a lesser celandine to take a look at the sky. High above, she could see bees describing figures of eight to show their sisters where there were flowers containing pollen.

  The countryside was getting wilder and wilder. There were mysterious smells in the air. Hundreds of unidentifiable little creatures were fleeing in all directions. You could only tell they were there from the rustle of dry leaves.

  103,683rd rejoined the troop, her head still tingling all over. In this way, they reached the outskirts of the federal city of Zoubi-zoubi-kan at a gentle pace. From a distance, it appeared to be a grove like any other. If it had not been for the smell and the path traced out, no-one would have thought of looking for a city there. Zoubi-zoubi-kan was in fact a classic russet city, with a stump, a dome of twigs and rubbish heaps, but it was all hidden under the bushes.

  The entrances to the city were high up, almost level with the top of the dome. You reached them via a cluster of ferns and wild roses, through which the explorers made their way.

  Inside, it was teeming with life. You could hardly make out the greenflies, which were the same colour as the leaves. However, the informed antenna and eye could easily detect the thousands of small green warts slowly growing as they 'grazed' on the sap.

  Long ago, the ants and greenflies had reached an agreement. The greenflies would feed the ants, who would in turn protect them. What actually happened was that some cities cut the greenflies' wings off and gave them their own passport scents. It made it easier to look after the herds.

  Zoubi-zoubi-kan was one of the cities to have adopted this dubious practice. To make up for it, or perhaps just out of modernity, it had built imposing greenfly sheds fitted with every creature comfort to ensure the greenflies' well-being. Ant nurses tended the eggs of their aphids as carefully as if they were ant eggs. This had no doubt led to the unusual size and healthy appearance of the local livestock.

  103,683rd and her companions went up to a herd busy sucking sap from a rose branch. They asked two or three questions but the greenflies kept their trunks buried in the plant's flesh and paid them no attention whatsoever. Possibly they did not know the ants' scent language anyway. The explorers searched for the shepherdess with their antennae but could not find
her.

  Then something terrifying happened. Three ladybirds dropped into the middle of the herd, spreading panic among the poor greenflies, who could not escape because of their clipped wings.

  Fortunately, the wolves brought out the shepherdesses. Two Zoubizoubikanian ants leapt out from behind a leaf. They had been lying in wait to take the black-spotted red predators by surprise. They took aim and struck them down with a precise shot of acid.

  Then they went to calm the herds of frightened greenflies. They milked them, drummed on their abdomens and caressed their antennae. The greenflies then produced big bubbles of transparent sugar, the precious honeydew. As they were drinking their fill of this nectar, the Zoubizoubikanian shepherdesses caught sight of the Belokanian explorers.

  They greeted them and made antenna contact.

  We've come to hunt the lizard, emitted one of them.

  In that case, you have to continue east. One of the monsters has been spotted over in the direction of the post of Guayei-Tyolot.

  Instead of offering them trophallaxis as was customary, the shepherdesses suggested they feed directly from the beasts. The explorers did not wait to be asked twice. Each of them chose a greenfly and started to stimulate its abdomen to milk the delicious honeydew.

  Inside the bird's gullet, it was dark and stank of oil. The 56th female slid down her predator's throat, covered in saliva. He had not chewed her since he had no teeth and she was still intact. It was out of the question for her to resign herself to her fate as a whole city would disappear with her.

  She made a supreme effort and sank her mandibles into the smooth flesh of the oesophagus. This reflex saved her. The swallow retched and coughed out the food irritating his throat. Blinded, the 56th female tried to fly but her sticky wings were far too heavy. She fell into the middle of a river.

  Dying males were falling all around her. High above, she detected the arrhythmical flight of twenty or so of her sisters who had survived the swallows' passage. They were exhausted and losing altitude.

  One of them landed on a water-lily, where two salamanders immediately gave chase, caught her and tore her to pieces. The other queens had lost their lives to a succession of pigeons, toads, moles, snakes, bats, hedgehogs, chickens and chicks. In the end, out of the one thousand five hundred females who had taken off, only six had survived.

  The 56th was one of them. Saved by a miracle, she had to live. She had to establish her own city and solve the mystery of the secret weapon. She knew she would need help and that she would be able to count on the friendly crowd already populating her stomach. All she had to do was bring them forth.

  But first of all, she had to get out of there.

  By calculating the angle of the sun's rays, she found that she had fallen into the eastern river. It was not the ideal place to be since ants cannot swim and we still do not know how they have managed to reach every island in the world.

  A leaf passed within reach and she clung on to it with her mandibles. She thrashed about with her hind legs but scarcely moved forward. She had been trailing along on the surface of the water like that for some time when she saw an enormous shadow. Was it a tadpole? No, it was a thousand times larger than a tadpole. The 56th female could make out a streamlined shape and smooth, striped skin. It was something new to her, a trout.

  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.

  Through 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 battle 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 encyclopedia,
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.