Empire of the Ants

by Bernard Werber

  103,683rd did not let her off that easily and asked her if the meeting had not afterwards turned into a fight. The other ant answered no, the terrible ants were already full up and had too many slaves as it was. Besides, they were afraid of the red ants' deadly stings.

  The black ants that had hatched from the swapped eggs had taken on the passport scents of their hosts and served them as if they were their parents. How were they to know that their genetic inheritance made them predators and not slaves? They knew nothing of the world beyond what the red ants were willing to tell them.

  Aren't you afraid they'll rebel?

  They agreed there had already been hiccoughs but the red ants generally forestalled incidents by eliminating any isolated recalcitrants. As long as the black ants were unaware that they had been stolen from a nest and belonged to another species, they lacked any real motivation.

  Night and cold fell on the hazelnut tree and the two explorers were allocated a corner in which to spend the nocturnal mini-hibernation.

  Chli-pou-kan was gradually growing. They had begun by laying out the Forbidden City. It was built, not in a stump, but in a peculiar object they had found buried there: a rusty tin that had once contained three kilos of stewed fruit and was rubbish from a nearby orphanage.

  In this new palace, Chli-pou-ni frantically laid her eggs while they stuffed her with sugar, fat and vitamins.

  Just below the Forbidden City, her first daughters had built a nursery heated with rotting humus; the most practical method until work on the dome of twigs and the solarium could be completed.

  Chli-pou-ni wanted her city to benefit from all the latest technology: mushroom beds, tanker ants, greenfly herds, supporting ivies, honeydew fermentation rooms, flour manufacturing rooms, mercenaries' quarters, a spy room, an organic chemistry room, etc.

  Ants were running about in all directions. The young queen had managed to transmit her hopes and enthusiasm. She did not want Chli-pou-kan to be just another federal city. Her ambition was to make it a centre of the avant-garde, the high point of Myrmician civilization, and she was full of suggestions.

  For example, they had discovered an underground stream in the region of the twelfth floor of the basement. She felt that water was an element that had been insufficiently studied and that they must be able to find a way of walking on it.

  In the first phase, a team was given the job of studying freshwater insects: water-beetles, cyclops and daphnia. Were they edible? Could they one day be raised in controlled ponds?

  She made her first known speech on the subject of greenflies:

  We're moving towards a period of warfare. Weapons are becoming more and more sophisticated and we won't always be able to keep up. One day it may become risky to hunt outside. We have to plan for the worst. Our city must extend as far as possible in depth and we must favour the raising of greenflies above any other source of supply of vital sugars. These cattle will be kept in sheds on the lowest floors.

  Thirty of her daughters made a sortie and brought back two greenflies who were about to give birth. A few hours later, they had a hundred or so baby greenflies, whose wings they cut off. They kept this embryonic herd on the twenty-third floor of the basement, where it was quite safe from ladybirds, and they gave it a plentiful supply of fresh leaves and sap-filled stems.

  Chli-pou-ni sent explorers in all directions. Some brought back agaric spores, which were then planted in the mushroom beds. The queen was so hungry for discoveries she even decided to realize her mother's dream by planting a row of carnivorous flower seeds on the eastern frontier. She hoped in this way to slow down any attack by the termites and their secret weapon.

  For she had not forgotten the mystery of the secret weapon, the assassination of the 327th prince and the food reserves hidden under the granite.

  She dispatched a group of ambassadresses to Bel-o-kan. Officially, they were responsible for announcing to the queen mother the building of the sixty-fifth city and its rallying to the Federation. Unofficially, they were to try to carry on with the investigation on the fiftieth floor of the basement of Bel-o-kan.

  The doorbell rang while Augusta was pinning her precious sepia photographs up on the grey wall. She checked that the safety chain was on and opened the door a crack.

  A middle-aged man was standing there. He was very neatly dressed and did not even have any dandruff on the lapels of his jacket.

  'Good morning, Mrs Wells. I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Professor Leduc, a colleague of your son Edmond. I won't beat about the bush. I know you've already lost your grandson and great-grandson in the cellar and that eight firemen, six policemen and two detectives have also disappeared. However, I'd like to go down there just the same, Mrs Wells.'

  Augusta was not sure she had heard right. She turned her hearing-aid up to maximum volume.

  'Are you Professor Rosenfeld?'

  'No. Leduc. Professor Leduc. I see you've heard of Rosenfeld. Rosenfeld, Edmond and I are all entomologists. We share the same speciality, the study of ants, though it would be fair to say that Edmond had a considerable lead on us. It would be a pity if mankind did not get the benefit of it. I'd like to go down into your cellar.'

  When you are hard of hearing, you study people more closely. She examined Leduc and decided she did not much like the look of him.

  'And what are you hoping to find in the cellar?'

  'A book, an encyclopedia in which he systematically made a note of all his work. Edmond was secretive. He must have buried everything down there and set traps to kill or scare away the ignorant. But I'm forewarned and a man forewarned . . .'

  '. . .can just as easily get killed,' finished Augusta.

  'Let me try.'

  'Listen, Mr . . .?'

  'Leduc, Professor Laurent Leduc, of the National Centre for Scientific Research, Laboratory 352.'

  She showed him to the cellar. There was a warning painted in big, red letters on the wall built by the police:

  NEVER EVER GO DOWN INTO THIS DAMN CELLAR AGAIN!!!

  She nodded her head towards it.

  'Do you know what the people in this building are saying, Mr Leduc? They're saying it's carnivorous and that it eats anyone who irritates its throat. Some of them would even like to fill it up with concrete.'

  She looked him up and down.

  'Aren't you afraid of dying, Mr Leduc?'

  'Yes, I am,' he said, smiling sardonically. 'I'm afraid of dying in ignorance, without knowing what's at the bottom of the cellar.'

  It was days since 103,683rd and 4,000th had left the red weaver ants' nest. Two warriors with pointed stings had accompanied them. They had walked a long way together along trails barely scented with trail pheromones and had already covered thousands of heads since leaving the woven nest in the branches of the hazelnut tree. They had met all sorts of exotic animals whose names they did not even know, and carefully avoided all of them.

  When night came, they dug as deep a hole as possible and burrowed inside it, seeking the warmth and safety of their mother planet.

  Earlier that day, the two red ants had guided them to the top of a hill.

  Is it still far to the end of the world? It's over there.

  From their ridge, the russet ants discovered a world of dark scrubland stretching eastward as far as the eye could see. The red ants informed them that their mission was nearing its end and that they would not be following them any further. There were places where their scents were not welcome.

  The Belokanians needed to carry straight on as far as the fields of the harvester ants. These lived permanently in the vicinity of the 'edge of the world' and would certainly be able to give them directions.

  Before leaving their guides, the russet ants handed over the precious identification pheromones of the Federation, the price they had agreed for the journey. Then they hurried down the slope to the fields cultivated by the famous harvesters.

  skeleton: Is it better to have the skeleton on the inside or the outside of the body?
>
  When the skeleton is on the outside, it forms a protective shell. The flesh is safe from external dangers but it becomes flabby, almost liquid, and when something sharp manages to pierce the shell, irreparable damage is done.

  When the skeleton forms only a fine, rigid rod inside the body, the quivering flesh is exposed to attack from all sides. The injuries are many and permanent but it is precisely this apparent weakness which forces the muscle to grow hard and the fibre to resist. The flesh evolves.

  I have seen human beings who had forged intellectual armour to shield themselves from adversity. They seemed stronger than most. They said, ‘Icouldn’t care less,’ and laughed at everything, but when adversity managed to pierce their armour, it caused terrible damage.

  I have seen human beings suffer from the slightest adversity, the slightest annoyance, but still remain open-minded and sensitive to everything, learning something from each attack.

  Edmond Wells, Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge

  The slave-makers are attacking!

  There was panic in Chli-pou-kan. Exhausted scouts were spreading the news throughout the young city.

  The slave-makers! The slave-makers!

  Their terrible reputation had gone before them. Just as some ants had favoured a particular line of development, greenfly rearing, storage, mushroom-growing or chemistry, the slave-makers had specialized in warfare alone.

  It was the only thing they could do but they had turned it into an art form. Their whole bodies were adapted to it. Every single one of their joints ended in a curved spine and their chitin was twice as thick as that of the russet ants. Their narrow, triangular heads were proof against claws and their mandibles, resembling upside-down elephants' tusks, were two curved sabres which they handled with formidable skill.

  Their slave-making habits followed naturally from their extreme specialization. The species had come very close to extinction through its own lust for power. They had spent so much time waging war that they no longer knew how to build nests, bring up their young or even feed themselves. Their sabre-mandibles, so effective in combat, were totally impractical when it came to normal feeding. Yet however bellicose they were, the slave-makers were not stupid. Since they could no longer perform everyday domestic tasks, others would do them in their place.

  The slave-makers mostly attacked small and medium-sized nests of black, white and yellow ants, none of which possessed stings or acid glands. First, they surrounded the chosen village. As soon as the beleaguered ants noticed that all the workers outside had been killed, they blocked up the entrances. That was the moment the slave-makers chose to launch their first attack. They easily overran the defences, opened breaches in the city and spread panic in the corridors.

  The terrified workers then tried to make a sortie to get the eggs to safety. It was exactly what the slave-makers had been hoping for. They screened all the exits and forced the workers to abandon their precious loads, killing only those who refused to obey. Ants never killed for the sake of it.

  Once the fighting was over, the slave-makers invaded the nest and told the surviving workers to put the eggs back in place and look after them as before. When the nymphs hatched, they were brought up to serve the invaders and, being ignorant of the past, thought that obeying the big ants was the right and proper thing to do.

  During the raids, the long-term slaves hid in the grass in the rear until their mistresses had finished mopping up. Once the battle was over, they moved in like good little housewives, put the old eggs in with the new and set to work to train the prisoners and their children. The kidnapped generations were thus superposed on one another wherever their captors went.

  It generally took three slaves to serve each of these grabbers: one to feed her (she could only eat regurgitated food and had to be fed a mouthful at a time), one to wash her (her salivary glands had atrophied) and one to remove the excrement that would otherwise have accumulated round her armour and eaten into her.

  The worst thing that could happen to these professional soldiers was to be abandoned by their servants. If this happened, they quickly left the stolen nest and went to look for another city to conquer. If they did not find one before nightfall, they might die of hunger and cold, a ridiculous fate for such magnificent warriors.

  Chli-pou-ni had heard many legends about the slave-makers. It was said that there had already been slave rebellions and that the slaves, who knew their mistresses well, did not necessarily come off worst. It was also said that certain slave-makers collected ants' eggs, the idea being to have one of every size and species.

  She imagined a room full of eggs of every size and colour and, inside each of them, a particular ant culture ready to wake up and serve the simple-minded brutes.

  She dragged her mind away from such unpleasant thoughts and back to more pressing concerns. How was she to meet the threat of the slave-makers? Their horde had been reported to be coming from the east. The Chlipoukanian scouts and spies maintained that there were between four and five hundred thousand soldiers. They had crossed the river by means of the tunnel at the port of Satei and were apparently quite 'annoyed', because they had had to abandon their travelling nest to get through. They had nowhere to stay and, if they did not take Chli-pou-kan, would have to spend the night outside.

  The young queen tried to think as calmly as possible. If they were so happy with their portable woven nest, why did they feel obliged to cross the river? She already knew the answer, though.

  The slave-makers had an instinctive, if incomprehensible, hatred of cities, which they saw as both a threat and a challenge. It was the age-old rivalry between plains people and city people. They knew that there were hundreds of ant cities on the other side of the river, each wealthier and more refined than the last.

  Unfortunately, Chli-pou-kan was not ready to withstand such an assault. Yes, the city had been packed with a good million inhabitants for the past few days and yes, they had built a wall of carnivorous plants along the eastern frontier, but it would never be enough. Chli-pou-ni knew that her city was too young and untried. Besides, she still had no news of the ambassadresses she had sent to Bel-o-kan to make known their membership of the Federation and therefore could not count on the solidarity of the neighbouring cities. Even Guayei-Tyolot was several thousand heads away and it was impossible to warn the .people of the summer nest.

  What would Mother have done in such a situation? Chli-pou-ni decided to call together some of her best huntresses (they had not yet had a chance to prove themselves as warriors) for an absolute communication. They urgendy needed to work out a strategy.

  They were still gathered in the Forbidden City when the watches posted in the shrub overhanging Chli-pou-kan announced they had picked up the scents of an approaching army.

  Everyone got ready. They had not been able to decide on a strategy and would have to improvise. Action stations was sounded and the legions assembled as best they could (they still did not know anything about military formations, experience of which was bought dearly fighting the dwarf ants). Most of the soldiers were pinning their hopes on the wall of carnivorous plants.

  the dogons: The Dogons of Mali believe that when the original marriage of Heaven and Earth took place, the Earth's sex organ was an anthill.

  When the world born of this coupling was complete, the vulva became a mouth. Out of this came speech and its material support, the technique of weaving, which ants transmitted to mankind. Fertility rites are still linked to ants nowadays. Sterile women go and sit on an anthill to ask thegodAmma to make them fertile. But that is not all that ants did for men. They also showed them how to build their houses and pointed out the springs, for the Dogons understood that they had to dig under anthills to find water.

  Edmond Wells, Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge

  Grasshoppers began to jump about all over the place. It was a sign. The ants with the best eyes could already make out a column of dust just beyond them.

  It was
one thing to hear about the slave-makers and quite another to see them charge. They did not have a cavalry, they were the cavalry. Their whole bodies were supple and strong, their legs thick and muscular, and their fine, pointed heads ended in two mobile horns, which were actually their mandibles.

  They were so aerodynamic that their heads made no whistling sound as they clove through the air, swept along by their racing legs.

  The grass was flattened as they passed by, the earth trembled and the sand rippled. Their forward-pointing antennae gave off such pungent pheromones that they seemed to be shouting at the tops of their voices.

  Should the Chlipoukanians shut themselves in and resist the siege or go out and fight? Chli-pou-ni hesitated, too afraid even to make a suggestion, so the russet soldiers naturally made the mistake of splitting up. Half went out to meet the enemy in the open while the other half stayed holed up in the city to act as reserves and resist in case of a siege.

  Chli-pou-ni tried to think back to the Battle of Poppy Hill, the only one she knew, and it seemed to her that it was the artillery that had caused most damage to the enemy troops. She immediately ordered three rows of gunners to be put in the front line.

  The slave-maker legions now charged the wall of carnivorous plants. The predators bent down as they went by, attracted by the smell of warm meat, but they were far too slow, and all the enemy warriors had passed by before a single Venus s fly-trap had even managed to nip them.

  Mother had been wrong.

  Just as they were about to receive the charge, the Chlipoukanian front line let off a loose salvo that took out barely twenty assailants. The second line did not even have time to take up position. The gunners were all seized by the throat and decapitated without having been able to fire a single drop of acid.

  The slave-makers' speciality was to attack the head and they were very good at it. The young Chlipoukanians' heads flew but their headless bodies sometimes went on fighting blindly or bolted, frightening the survivors.