by Yusuke Kishi
“If you will follow me.”
Lantern in hand, Yakomaru led us away from the factories toward the nearest of a row of dirt buildings.
“What’s this…?”I frowned in confusion.
The queen’s dwelling was extremely shabby. It was fairly large, but had only rough dirt walls and a thatched hay roof. It looked like a building for livestock.
An offensive smell greeted us as the heavy doors were opened.
I remembered that the nest had a pungent, animal smell when we last visited. But this was different. It was a more bearable stink, but there was also the tang of disinfectant in it, creating a strangely repulsive scent.
To be more specific, the old nest had a terrifyingly strong scent of life. But this building smelled like a hospital filled with compost from the Lotus Farms–an unnatural, sickly odor.
The building had a long, rectangular shape, with a passage running down the center of its length. It reminded me of a barn. Sturdy wooden enclosures were built along both sides, but it was too dark to see inside them.
But I felt the presence of a number of giant creatures. They stirred as they caught our scent, but made no other noises, not even a sigh or a groan. Over the rustling sounds, I heard the jingle of chains.
I looked toward Yakomaru in surprise, but his face was outside the circle of lamplight so I couldn’t see his expression.
“Here lives our queen,” he said, stopping in front of one of the enclosures.
“Your highness, it’s been a long time. I’m Saki, we’ve met before,” I said quietly.
There was no response.
“Please enter.” Yakomaru opened the door and walked in briskly.
We followed timidly.
He shone his lantern on the queen who crouched at the far end of the enclosure.
What looked like a giant hornworm appeared. A wrinkled, pale body with four stubby legs.
There was a quiet puffing sound, like a pair of bellows. It was the regular breathing of someone sleeping.
I felt relieved. She was asleep. Of course, it was past midnight, after all.
Gently, so as not to wake the queen, I touched her abdomen. It moved up and down in a slow, leisurely way characteristic of most giant animals.
“Sleep well.”
As we walked, I ran my hands over her head. On her forehead, I felt a strange joint. The queen did not wake.
“Careful.” Satoru sounded worried. “She might bite even if she’s sleeping.”
“It’s okay. I’ll be able to tell if she’s about to wake up.”
Just as I said that, my hand slipped and poked the queen’s eye. I jumped and jerked my hand back. Her head twitched, but there was no other response.
A feeling of horror welled up inside me. The eye I had just poked…
“Bring the light over here!” I commanded.
Yakomaru hesitated for an instant, then turned slowly.
The queen’s eyes were open. She hadn’t been asleep. But her pupils were dilated, and there was no gleam of intelligence in her eyes. No, more than that, her eyes were dry–she was probably blind. Her mouth hung open, revealing teeth even bigger than an impure cat’s, and drool soaked the hay she was lying on.
I snatched the lantern from Yakomaru and approached the queen. On the right side of her forehead was a V-shaped surgical scar. The thick sutures rose up like a ridge on her skin.
“What the hell is this?” Satoru demanded.
“We had no other choice,” Yakomaru said dejectedly.
“No other choice? What did you do to your queen?”
As our voices echoed in the barn, the sounds of rustling and clinking chains grew louder.
“I will explain. Let us go outside.”
We left the building. The wind chilled me to the bone, but blew away the stench that clung to our clothes.
“It was not our intent to treat the queen so cruelly. …she is, after all, the mother of the colony.”
“Then why?” I drew closer to him.
As I did so, queerat soldiers appeared out of nowhere and surrounded us. Yakomaru dismissed them with a slight shake of the head.
“Did you not feel it when you last saw her? The queen has not been mentally stable for a while now.”
“Yes, somewhat.”
“In any colony, the queen holds absolute power. Our queen has always been rather tyrannical, but she became more and more violent as her illness worsened. She attacked innocent servants on a whim, injuring and killing them on a regular basis. On top of that, she became increasingly paranoid and executed all the ministers who had been working tirelessly to help us recover from the Ground Spider attack. If we had allowed this to continue, it would only have been a matter of time until our colony became extinct.”
“That’s why you…” Satoru started to say, but stopped.
“We swear absolute loyalty to the colony and the queen. But we are not tools to be discarded. We are second in intelligence only to the gods of this planet, and are unlike other social animals such as ants or bees. And so, based on this belief, all who worried for the future of our colony gathered of their own volition and formed a union.”
“A union?”
“Yes. It was necessary to negotiate with the queen to preserve our most basic rights. But the queen was enraged. She regarded our actions as an act of treason. …there were a number of complications, and it was with great reluctance we chose this path.”
“This path…you joined forces and completely crippled her. Wouldn’t it have been better just to kill her?” Satoru asked.
Yakomaru shook his head. “No. We did not wish to completely destroy her mental faculties. We only performed a frontal lobe lobotomy. After the surgery, her aggressiveness declined greatly and she became submissive. She continues to bear children and contribute to the growth of the colony. I’m sure the queen herself is much happier like this compared to when she was trapped by her mental illness. …however, since it was our first time performing the procedure, there were several complications with regards to hygiene. Shortly afterward, she began suffering from encephalitis and her mental functions declined considerably.
“That’s terrible…” I whispered.
“It is natural to think that, I suppose. How regrettable.” Yakomaru looked at us accusingly. “Should not all intelligent individuals be given equal rights? That is what I read in the books of the gods. It is the core principle of democracy.”
We looked at each other, bewildered. I never thought I would hear such words spoken by these creatures.
“Even if your queen was a tyrant, what about the others? Was it really necessary to lock them up like animals in that barn?”
“All the colonies who joined us were dealing with the same problem to some degree. Only the queen can reproduce, so her existence is indispensable. Even so, she should not be able to claim the entire colony as her possession on those grounds. The queen is responsible only for childbirth, whereas intellectual pursuits such as governance and military leadership are handed to those with the greatest aptitude. That is the foundation of the Robber Fly colony.”
The two most powerful colonies at the time, the Giant Hornet and Robber Fly colonies, had very different philosophies. The Giant Hornet colony had over thirty thousand members, making them the largest colony. Although General Kiroumaru led the colony, he was a traditionalist who was deeply loyal to the queen, thus preserving the traditional social structure. All traditionalist colonies held to the idea that the queen was an absolute monarch.
On the other hand, the Robber Flies disregarded bloodline purity and joined with other colonies in a highly unorthodox, rapid bid for power. Traditionalist colonies viewed them as heretics and had started to become wary of them.
“…I see. Well, I have no intention of interfering with your business,” Satoru said, stretching. “I’m kind of tired. We’ll go rest until dawn.”
“As you wish. I will have beds prepared immediately.” Yakomaru’s eyes glowed faintly green
in the dark.
We returned to the guest house. Once Yakomaru left, Satoru stoked the fire in the hearth and sat down to warm his feet. He sighed loudly.
“I don’t like this. I really don’t like this.”
“Why?”
“The colony, Squealer…Yakomaru, it’s all really fishy. What they say and what they think seem to be completely different. I can’t trust them.”
“But we need their help if we want to find Maria and Mamoru.”
“That’s true,” he said, still looking troubled. “But you saw what he did to the queen. She’s his own mother! How could he do something so terrible?”
“Well, I mean, it shocked me too.” I shivered as I recalled the empty look in the queen’s eyes. “…but, no matter how articulate queerats are, they’re still beasts in the end. No matter how much their emotions resemble ours, they’re not the same. What Yakomaru said has a certain logic to it. They only did what they had to do to survive.”
“Look at you defending them.”
“I’m not,” I said, sitting up straight. “Don’t humans always project their own values onto animals? We say they have a gentle personality, or that mothers should sacrifice themselves for their child. But that’s not realistic. I’ve read books on animal behavior from the ancient civilization.”
Since my mother was a librarian, I probably had more chances to access restricted books than anyone else.
“And what they said was really surprising. Take hippos for example. In the picture books from Harmony School, they show hippos making a circle around one of their dead in order to grieve. But the truth is that hippos are omnivorous, and they surround dead hippos in order to eat them.”
“Yeah, I know that.”
“Kangaroos are the worst. We all think that they keep joeys in their pouches in order to take care of them.”
“And?”
“When they’re being chased by predators, the mother will throw the baby out of her pouch and escape as the predator eats the joey.”
Satoru frowned. “That’s kind of what minoshiro do. But worse, because they give up their own body parts.”
“That’s why it’s a mistake to judge queerats through the lens of human ethics.”
Satoru clasped his hands behind his neck. “Hmm. But that’s not what I meant when I said I don’t like this. It’s more like they seem too similar to humans.”
“It’s true that there are no other animals like them.”
Satoru shuffled over to the door to make sure no one was outside. “I have the strange feeling they’re trying to replace humans. There aren’t any concrete buildings in Kamisu 66. When I saw their factories, I could only think that they are trying to claim for themselves the material culture that we’ve abandoned.”
I asked the question that had been gnawing away at me. “I wonder where Yakomaru gained all that knowledge. He said he read about it.
“But he couldn’t have simply come across a book that explained everything he wanted to know.”
“Then how?”
“This is just my guess, but maybe he captured a false minoshiro. False minoshiro can hypnotize people with its lights, but they might not have any effect on queerats.”
The more I talked with Satoru, the more frightened I became. The existence of queerats has always been viewed as something ominous, but now I suddenly felt the full weight of this sentiment.
“…queerats couldn’t possibly be planning to overthrow humans, could they?”
“Isn’t that impossible? I mean, just the two of us could easily crush the entire colony.”
Indeed, no matter how much queerats developed their material culture, there was no way for them to defeat a human with cantus. Besides, cantus was what had destroyed highly developed culture in the first place. But I couldn’t shake off my feeling of unease.
“Hey, what would happen if Yakomaru did to a human what he did to the queen?”
Satoru furrowed his brows. “I suppose they’d become just as disabled. …I know what you’re thinking. If they perfect their technique, they might be able to produce humans they can control.”
I felt a chill. “Wouldn’t…if that happened, wouldn’t it be a disaster?”
“Nope, it would be fine,” Satoru grinned. “The frontal lobe controls our will and creativity. That means our cantus is also controlled by the frontal lobe. Someone who has their will and creativity taken away would never be able to use their power. So there’s no need to worry.”
We stopped there and spent the next few hours trying to get what little sleep we could. I might have gotten a lot of sleep earlier, but Satoru hadn’t.
As I drifted off on the bed the queerats had prepared, a series of nightmarish images floated through my mind. Like Satoru, I had felt something was horribly wrong ever since I came to the Robber Fly colony.
But before I could figure out what that thing was, I drifted away into darkness.
Chapter 6
The sky was just beginning to brighten when I awoke.
The guest house was made of bamboo posts covered by animal skin, more like a tent than an actual house, so once the sun came up, light started filtering in through the skin.
Satoru was already up and getting dressed.
“‘Morning,” I said.
Satoru nodded. “Can you be ready soon? It looks like they’re all prepared to go. I’ve been hearing them moving around for a while now.”
Sure enough, a large number of queerats were bustling around busily outside.
“Okay.”
I rushed around getting ready. It took less than two minutes for me to put on my winter clothes, lace up my boots, and check my backpack to make sure everything was there.
I stepped outside to clear skies and the sun just barely peeking over the horizon.
Looking down, I saw a queerat taking down what looked like dried food hanging from a nearby tree. It was white, about a meter long, too big to be a fish. I looked closer and saw that it was a dried minoshiro.
Satoru and I glanced at each other.
“I can’t believe they eat minoshiro.”
Minoshiro are considered sacred creatures in Kamisu 66, and it gave me an unspeakably ominous feeling to see them being used as food.
“…minoshiro should be hibernating now. The queerats probably dug them out intentionally to turn them into jerky.”
Satoru looked like he had swallowed something sour. I decided not to tell him that the unknown dried thing we had for dinner last night might have been minoshiro.
I saw Yakomaru coming towards us.
“Good morning, gods. We will be departing soon, but would you like to have breakfast first?”
The thought of having to eat minoshiro jerky made me lose my appetite.
“What about you guys?”
“We can eat while we travel. It’s just military rations, so it doesn’t taste too good.”
“That’s fine, we’ll do the same.”
“As you wish.”
Yakomaru was wearing a hooded fur coat and riveted leather armor. His bureaucratic air from two years ago was still present, but now he looked much more like a general. He blew a whistle that hung around his neck and two hundred queerats lined up in formation.
“Hey, is it really necessary to send out this many soldiers?” Satoru asked, frowning.
“There might be unexpected dangers on the road. We are prepared to do anything to protect the gods,” Yakomaru said reverently.
We joined him in the middle of the formation. Apparently being in the rear was just as dangerous as being at the very front. Muscular guards bearing large shields surrounded us on all sides.
Most of the snow around the colony had been cleared away and bits of frost crunched under our feet as we walked. As we made our way onto the snowy plains, Satoru and I put on our skis. The soldiers also wore shoes that resembled simple skis, and their short legs worked rapidly to propel them forward. Since we were able to move so much faster with cantus, Satoru was
starting to get annoyed at their slow pace.
“Can’t we go any faster? If you tell us where it is, we can go on ahead.”
“I’m very sorry. We cannot move as swiftly as the gods. But the Goat Moth colony is not much farther, so please bear with us. If you went ahead, I would not be able to reach you in time should anything happen.”
So we had no choice but to follow their pace. As we moved slowly over the plain, the queerats distributed their food rations. They were round, like pills or sweet dumplings, and a little bit sweet. They appeared to be made of rice flour, with honey, dried plums, and nuts rolled together. As Yakomaru said, it wasn’t anything delicious, but at least there wasn’t minoshiro in it.
As we left the plain, we started climbing a series of hills. I wondered why the area was so hilly, but it was impossible to see what was buried under the snow. All I could tell was that the hills were made of a different type of dirt. Even the plants growing on it were different from the norm.
A strange image floated through my mind.
It was the remnants of a battle between cantus users, where one side had attempted to annihilate the other in one stroke. They had fired an gigantic boulder and its impact had caused more destruction than even the nuclear weapons of the ancient civilization. It was like what had wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, a meteor over ten kilometers in diameter.
I was being ridiculous. Common sense told me something like that was impossible. Of course, in theory, cantus was an unlimited amount of energy. But in reality, there are a lot of restrictions that control how that energy could be activated. In order to affect something, you needed to have a perfect image of how that object would be changed. So with something as large and complex as a meteor strike, the mind was its own limiter. It was as impossible as trying to create a realistic image of the earth being split in half.
But… I looked over the hills overlapping each other like a mountain range. Even novice cantus users like us were able to start landslides and throw fairly large rocks. It might not be out of the question for geniuses like Shisei Kaburagi to move entire hills.
“We will arrive soon,” Yakomaru said. “Around the next bend you will see the Goat Moth colony’s stronghold built halfway up the hill.”
