The Bees: A Novel

by Laline Paull

  Watching her forager comrades dancing their spring day’s adventures pushed the strange incident to the back of her mind. Despite the peculiar cordon of Thistle guards outside the hive and the sight of her sanitation kin-sisters with their little bundles, a strange calm settled in Flora’s brain, not at all unpleasant, but quite alien to the vivid alertness of the foraging state.

  She looked around her. Her fellow foragers also seemed unusually calm, with none of their characteristic acerbity of expression. The smell of Sage was strong and constant, as if markers had been laid around the chamber, but even as Flora noticed it, she felt too tired to think of such trivia.

  When it was her turn to dance, she added her steps to the vast choreography laid down in the floor, of alder catkins and daffodils, crocuses and aconites. Dancing sharpened her mind, and she focused on conveying very precise information—the exact azimuth of the sun to catch a warm air current, the roundabout to avoid where all the flowers were now smog-tainted, and last, the route to the great blazing forsythia bush. At this, the bees finally roused themselves to applause.

  “Bravo,” called some male voices from the back.

  The sisters spun round and gasped in excitement, for a party of newly emerged drones had come to watch. Their smell was pungent and thrilling, and even those older foragers who had seen males before were unprepared for the virile magnificence of these new specimens. Every sister in the Dance Hall gazed at the males, each with his massive, powerful thorax, bobbing plume, and dazzling armor—then in a great rush of excitement they ran to greet them.

  Flora stood alone, her dance now forgotten.

  “Honor to Your Malenesses. Oh, Your glorious Malenesses,” came the infatuated cries of the young sisters, and the drones laughed and let them stroke and polish them. One of them swaggered over to Flora.

  “I’ll take a bit of that stuff you’re giving out,” he said, and held out his hand. He was a brightly striped fellow, broad of thorax and blunt of face, with a high, proud plume. Pastry crumbs were in his fur and Flora knew his kin was Poplar.

  “Don’t take all day,” he drawled. “We’ve the honor of the hive to perform; we need all the sustenance we can get.”

  “It is late. You will not be flying today.”

  He stared at her in amazement, then turned to his fellows. “Why, this old crone keeps our schedule of love, brothers!” He stuck his hand into one of Flora’s panniers and groped for pollen. “And tidbits for herself!” Flora gripped his arm and removed it from her pannier. The young drone shook her off.

  “Insolence! Send her for the Kindness!” He looked for support.

  “Oh, leave the old husk alone.”

  The drone that spoke was small, his fur twisted with propolis wax into outlandish dandified patterns. Flora smiled.

  “Linden. I looked for you—”

  Sir Linden straightened his ruff.

  “That is my kin, but I have never seen you before.”

  “How can you say that?”

  Sir Linden turned to the young Sir Poplar. “I warned you we should not come here—it is full of addled females.” He gestured at Flora. “And by the state of that one, she’s not long for this world—so we shall pardon her.”

  The young drone glared at Flora. “She shall kneel and beg forgiveness, or I will strike her down myself.”

  Linden shoved him so hard he fell over, then stood above him.

  “Ha! Brother, you must work on your balance to seize a princess.” He gave the fallen drone his hand and hauled him up. “A goblet of nectar will fix it, and I know where the best is to be had.” Avoiding Flora’s eyes, Sir Linden led the younger drone away. She watched them go, then felt all her sisters’ eyes on her.

  “Who else has heard of sickness in the Nursery?” The words came from Flora’s mouth without warning, but as she spoke them she felt her anger rising. News of the smallest incident traveled rapidly in the hive, so it was unthinkable that the bees had not heard of the plagued brood. “Is that why my kin-sisters have been sacrificed yet again? There is sickness, but we may not speak of it? We must let it spread unchecked, until there is not one sanitation worker left to carry out the bodies?”

  She looked to the foragers for support, but none of them would meet her eyes. Instead, all the sisters began hurrying out of the Dance Hall.

  “Sisters!” Flora cried. “Why do you go? Hear me!”

  Alone in the great chamber, Flora felt their abandonment as keenly as a physical wound. To fly alone was one thing—but to be isolated within the hive, to be shunned and denied—

  The terrible taunts of the Minerva spider ran through Flora’s mind. Madness. Sister against sister. Disaster. Her antennae throbbed as if they would burst and to comfort them she pressed her head into the old wax floor to breathe the smell of home. As she drew in the thousand strands of its bouquet, a new scent fled between them. Any other kin would have missed it, but Flora was a forager from Sanitation. Fast as thought she read its molecules—and knew it for what it was.

  A fatal sickness lurked in the hive, sheltered in the body of a single sister.

  Thirty-Five

  OUTSIDE THE DANCE HALL HUNDREDS OF BEES BUSTLED across the coded mosaic of the lobby. Motionless, all her senses trained on locating the odor of sickness again, Flora stood in their midst searching for it—but it had vanished into the scent tapestry of the hive. Using all her skills from foraging, she summoned back a trace of its elusive molecular structure.

  It aped a flower, with a top note sweet like petals, but its disguise lacked definition. Foragers would not pursue it for it had no smell of food—and sanitation workers would ignore it, for its superficial sweetness held it apart from the smells of hive waste.

  The sound of incoming foragers’ engines broke Flora’s concentration, then a group of young receivers ran past toward the landing board, kin-scents streaming in excitement. By the time their wake had cleared so had every last atom of the scent, as if it had its own intelligence and was evading capture.

  Frustrated, Flora ran up to the midlevel of the hive. At this time of day the worker dormitories would be unused, and there, in relative stillness, she could try to revive the data before its essential nature faded. To her surprise, as soon as she entered the main lobby, the scent revealed itself again. Its thin, twisting core was the same, but under its superficial floral disguise, it was changing. It was beginning to copy the scent of the comb itself—and when it succeeded, it would become undetectable.

  Not caring about the risk to herself, Flora sucked the odor into her spiracles as hard as she could. Every instinct told her this was the foulest kind of impurity, gathering strength every second as it adapted itself to the bouquet of the hive. Soon its faint, twisting core of corruption would diffuse so completely that every sister would naturally breathe it—and each body become host to its foul purpose.

  Flora concentrated all her strength on the hidden core structure. It was the merest thread of corruption, as if she flew high above some long-dead creature—but it grew stronger as she approached the dormitory. Ready to encounter some wretched sister festering in a corner, Flora burst through the doors and ran between the rows of berths searching for her—but all were empty and clean.

  The trail of scent had vanished again—except for a few molecules clinging to the blank wax of a dormitory wall. Flora raised her antennae and felt all over for hidden panels and entry tiles—but the walls were plain and true, laced only with the kin-scent of honest sisters’ bodies.

  Flora ran back out into the lobby. She stood between Pollen and Patisserie, the Chapel of Wax, and the entrance to the Drones’ Arrival Hall, now completely repaired and smelling strongly of the new propolis carvings. Inside was the usual fuss as a new drone was helped from his emergence chamber, and she sealed her spiracles against the cloudy pheromones before they could distract her. Ahead were the big double doors of the Category Two Nursery, and a faint, peculiar odor hung about them, but it was stale and not the live and wily scent she hu
nted.

  Like the humblest sanitation worker searching for the next load to clear, Flora knelt and touched her antennae to the gutter. The voices of her sisters and the pulsing in the floor-codes fell away. One faint scent remained—the sickness. If she tried to grab it with her conscious brain it slipped away, but if she breathed it in softly, she could advance on it. As if turning for home at the end of a distant forage, Flora switched all instinct to her inner compass, and began to walk.

  She did not know where she went, nor did she rouse herself from the semitrance she moved in. She was only dimly aware of her sisters’ exclamations as they swerved away, or that her antennae twitched in pain as she burst through every scent-gate in her path. She walked on, closing on the foul scent that ate its way through one more beautiful.

  Something struck against Flora’s chest and stopped her. Six identical Sage priestesses blocked her way, each dressed in high ceremonial robes. A dark group of police stood behind them.

  “What is your business?” the priestesses asked in their choral voice.

  “I—am from Sanitation. I search for the source of sickness.”

  They gazed at Flora, fast tremors running up their antennae as their minds conferred.

  “So it is true.” The single voice of a priestess was full of sadness. “And we can wait no longer.”

  Her words struck at Flora’s heart, for now she recognized where she was, a place she had not seen since her eviction by Lady Burnet’s jealous will. She stood at the beautiful carved doors to the Queen’s Chambers again—and pressing against them from within, like a demonic cloud, was the odor she tracked.

  “No!” she screamed. “Not Holy Mother!”

  The priestesses pulled her back. The police raised a harsh veil of their own scent before them and smashed open the Queen’s doors.

  Every bee stopped on the threshold. The fertility police buzzed their alarms but did not move. The priestesses uttered one cry. Flora’s antennae stood rigid as the full horror drove into her brain.

  Spilled goblets and broken cakes lay scattered on the comb and Her Majesty the Queen sat amid them, her lace mantle of wings spread all around covering her body. Her face was as beautiful as ever, but her scent had changed. Coiling through the divine fragrance of her Love, air worms of the malign odor grew stronger with every pulse of her heart.

  Disheveled and wide-eyed with fear, the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting reached out to the fertility police. Their wings curled shriveled on their backs like dead half-eaten things, and when they tried to speak no sound came out, for their tongues had turned to slime.

  “Who comes to us so rudely?” The Queen lifted her head and scanned the chamber. “Who would disturb us in our labors?” As she rearranged her mantle they all saw the dead baby cradled in her arms.

  “No, Mother—” Flora wanted to run to her but the fertility police held her firm.

  The Queen turned her sightless eyes in Flora’s direction. “Let our daughter come.”

  “Forgive us, Your Majesty, but it is you who must now come to your daughters.” The priestesses knelt.

  “But we are nursing our child.”

  Through the foul odor, a trace of pure Devotion rose from the Queen’s body, and carried the beauty of her voice. Every bee in the chamber yearned toward it.

  “Forgive me, Mother,” Flora sobbed.

  The Queen turned her blind head.

  “Darling child,” she said, “hush your tears.” She beckoned to where her ladies lay, and one of them crawled toward her, her kin-scent devoured by her sickness. “Take our new son,” said the Queen. “Take him back to the Nursery.” As she passed the dead baby it fell apart, and the lady-in-waiting moaned in horror.

  “Come, Majesty,” said the Sage priestesses. “We must go at once.” They threw out a cordon of their powerful astringent scent, and the Queen rose and walked through it toward the big carved doors. Her ladies began to crawl after her, but the fertility police blocked them.

  “Forgive us.” They twisted each one’s head from her thorax. Then they turned to Flora. “Come.”

  Every task was halted as the Hive Mind summoned all sisters. The passageways were filled with silent bees hurrying to the Dance Hall, crystals of propolis, flakes of fresh wax, or half-chewed pollen dough clinging to their fur. Marching within her escort of fertility police, Flora saw some of her own kin throw her agonized looks of fear.

  As they went into the Dance Hall the bees coughed at the great wall of masking scent in the center of the floor, then fell silent at the sight of the Queen behind it. Her mantle glowed bright through the strange energy waves coiling around her, and pure threads of her divine fragrance still rose above it all. She smiled at them, and even through their fear, each bee felt her Mother’s Love embrace her. Then the Hive Mind spoke.

  Behold the sacred Rule of Law.

  A whole fresh leaf was carried in by more of the fertility police, and on it was a thick gold layer of forsythia pollen. By the sheen of each grain, it was clear that it had been prepared the day before, and the foragers sought each other’s eyes in silent question, for none had been part of this.

  Flora alone knew it. The Golden Leaf. The fifth story in the Queen’s Library. The flickering fear in her belly hardened into a tight knot as from the back of the chamber, the Sage priestesses walked forward.

  At their approach the Queen lifted her wings and the bees murmured in relief and awe, for at first they shone bright—but then ragged spots of darkness appeared in them as the sickness crawled upon her. As the Queen’s wings began to disappear, the Sage priestesses made a crescent around her, and the bees began to weep.

  The Queen raised her blind head.

  “By what power am I called hither?” Her beautiful voice was unchanged. “I would know by what authority, I mean lawful.”

  Then the Hive Mind spoke.

  THE QUEEN SICKENS.

  All the priestesses knelt, and all the bees in the chamber and those listening motionless throughout the hive did the same. The Queen alone stood firm.

  “But our Love still shines—”

  “Holy Mother, sovereign of our hive, forgive us,” intoned one priestess, her voice transmitting through every cell of the comb, “for it is our most grave and somber duty to announce your reign has ended.”

  “Ended?” The Queen laughed, and held her belly. “How can that be, when I hold the future of our hive? Within me are eggs for countless generations.”

  “And each one tainted by the sickness you bear, which spreads affliction through our home. We have found it out; it is confirmed. Let the witness be called.”

  Police officers pushed Flora forward. The Queen drew in her scent.

  “My reading daughter. . . . Are we in my Library?”

  “Forgive me, Mother,” Flora sobbed. “I have betrayed you—”

  “Ah . . .” The Queen turned her antennae toward the pollen-coated leaf. “Now I remember . . . we come to the fifth story. And I to death, for I know how it ends.” Then her face shone and light glowed back into her magnificent wings. “Let all my children come to me—”

  “No. It is time.” The Sage spoke together.

  “But I wish to bless my daughters—I am Immortal Holy Mother—”

  “You were.” The Sage signaled and the fertility police seized the Queen and forced her to her knees. “Your reign has ended.”

  Every sister felt a terrible tearing pain inside her, yet could not look away as the police dragged the Queen’s mantle from her body. She did not protest, even at the long, high ripping sound of the beautiful membranes tearing. Sister Inspector stepped forward, her huge claw ready.

  “Not you.” The Queen’s voice carried on the still air. “Let it be a noble Thistle.”

  All eyes in the chamber went to the priestesses. They were utterly still. Then Sister Sage beckoned back Sister Inspector. She pointed to a large Thistle at the front.

  “You.”

  Stricken, the Thistle shook her head. “I—I cannot.
I cannot!”

  The Queen nodded. “Bravely now, daughter,” she said. “If ever you have loved me.”

  The Thistle stepped forward, and every sister’s body clenched in terror at her task. The Queen stretched out her ragged wings and bent her head.

  “I forgive you. Quick, belov—”

  With one blow, the Thistle struck the Queen’s head from her body. It rolled on the comb and lay still. Its beautiful blind eyes gazed up at the vaulted ceiling, and blood seeped from her severed thorax. The Thistle stepped back, unable to believe what she had done. Flora’s belly drew so tight she could not breathe.

  The silence in the Dance Hall tightened around the bees until they choked, and the scent of the Queen’s blood rose up around them. Then as one they shrieked and wailed their agony and rent their wings.

  What have we done! sobbed the Hive Mind. We have murdered Mother! What have we done!

  They rushed to the Queen’s body and beat their antennae on the comb in their anguish, and many tore their own fur out in clumps. Alarm glands flooded across the thundering comb, the air throbbed with the Queen’s Love and the scent of her blood, and every priestess was surrounded by a wall of convulsing bees.

  Flora too ran through the crowd screaming her agony, for each bee had watched the act without resistance, and each felt guilty. Only the Thistle executioner stood rigid in shock—and the fertility police, standing behind the patient priestesses.

  Gradually the comb stopped drumming, and the Hive Mind sank dazed and exhausted back into the bodies of the bees. Flora raised her antennae. The odor of sickness was gone. Other bees began to know it too, standing to scent the changed air. It was clean, and it filled with kin-scent of the Sage. A priestess stepped forward.

  “Our hive is freed from sickness. And as the Queen’s body failed, the holy power of fertility passed to the Melissae, her priestesses. All assembled hear now in public that we exercise our Divine Right to raise a princess from pure Sage stock—for we are the kin of queens. In three days’ time, a new Queen shall rise and usher in a new golden age of summer and of plenty.”