Prophets of the Ghost Ants

by Clark Thomas Carlton

  One morning, the queen awoke unable to rise. She was too ill to eat the rancid chunk of slug that was her breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The overseers kicked and poked her with their swords and urged her to fulfill her urination duty. She preferred to risk further beating than stand. Pleckoo was summoned.

  “Rise, you lazy she-flea,” he said and kicked her. “Your subjects await your heavenly secretion.”

  “I cannot move. A hundred demons eat me from the inside.”

  “If you cannot work, you cannot live. Everyone contributes to the Empire.”

  “Then kill me. Let this mound succumb to the Yellow Mold.”

  “We don’t need you, Polexima. We have your daughter’s urine.”

  “Her urine is of no value until she is a woman who bleeds between the legs. Perhaps in twelve summers.”

  “We can capture another Slopeish queen.”

  “Then that is what you shall do. If you wish to kill me, I’ve no objection. I know I am already dying.”

  Before sleep or death took her, she managed a last request. “Take good care of my daughter, please.”

  CHAPTER 19

  THE CHOSEN ONE

  Anand was seated on the floor, looking out of the cage in hopes of distracting himself from the anger that churned inside him. The place was a darkly beautiful land of cool shadows and intense greens, with trees so tall their tops could not be seen. The moss-mottled boulders had steep and rugged faces like those of the Great Jag.

  From around a rock came a covey of men and women in flowing blood-red robes. Dwan was among them, leading them to the prisoners. The Cajorites recoiled in fear as guards opened the cage and entered. Dwan followed the guards in, stepped over Trellana, and approached Anand. He rose to his feet and backed against the bars, staring sideways.

  Dwan bowed, smiled to reveal his teeth, touched his heart, and extended his palm. Anand was not sure how to respond. He watched as Dwan’s other hand offered him a roll of parchment. Anand unrolled it and saw a portrait of himself standing on a two-headed arrow. At one end of the arrow was a drawing of a mound with yellow ants and brown and yellow people. At the other was a mound with red ants and multicolored people.

  “Well, well,” said Dolgeeno, looking over Anand’s shoulder. “You have been given an invitation.”

  “They’re giving me a choice,” said Anand.

  Dolgeeno pursed his lips and squinted. “Go, traitor,” he said. “And take your stink with you. We’ve learned your mother is a roach-eater. It was probably Britasyte scum who alerted these savages to our mission.”

  “I know nothing of these people or what I’ve been chosen for,” said Anand. “But I will take a chance they will let me live. Your queen wanted me torn to pieces merely because I brushed her arm.”

  “Not just a queen,” said Dolgeeno with a snort. “You have polluted a direct descendant of Goddess Ant Queen.”

  Anand stepped over Trellana at that moment. He wrinkled his nose.

  “The descendent of Ant Queen has just polluted herself,” he said and left Dolgeeno, the only one suited to touch the queen, with a most unpleasant task.

  Anand had assumed his captors would bind his ankles and wrists with strips of cuffing grass, but instead they let him walk freely as if he were joining them for a pleasant stroll. Dwan bowed a second time, and with a curl of his fingers, signaled Anand towards them. For a moment he thought about running, but he quickly realized it was pointless. He was weak from a month of paralysis.

  And just where would I run to?

  Dwan grinned as he placed a pair of red antennae over Anand’s head. He could not help but grin in return. Dwan may have been his captor, but his smile was like sudden sunlight on a cold day. How much I’d like to trust him! Anand thought.

  The party stopped as they encountered a parade of hunter ants which probed the humans with their slender antennae that danced like ribbons in the wind. As Anand watched the others get sniffed/touched, he noticed these ants were not blinded. He liked their ruddy sheen and long, graceful bodies. They were so unlike the tubby leaf-cutters, with their pockmarked chitin. Anand was even more charmed by his captors and the casual way they chatted while ambling. The entire party stopped to admire the shadow of a bee dancing inside a drooping slipper orchid before it crawled out, its head spattered with yellow powder and its hind legs bulging with pollen baskets.

  The sounds of civilization grew louder as they rounded a boulder. Anand had expected to see a human-inhabited ant mound, like Cajoria. Instead he saw an enormous bivouac with thousands of troopers and attending civilians. Their houses, like the cages, were set on wagons, and Anand was reminded of a Britasyte gathering.

  They strolled past a clearing where children were involved in some pleasant commotion that involved a ball being kicked on a grid with nets on either end. Smaller children were spread across the velvety carpet of a violet leaf. They looked like little gods as they occupied themselves with tiny replicas of ants, people, trees, and wagons.

  Dwan brought Anand to a circle of elders inside one of the wagons. Upon seeing him, they rose and also touched hands to hearts and extended their palms.

  “Illen,” said the eldest, pointing to himself. His skin was green and yellow, like the stripes of a weed-melon. Anand said his own name, pointed to himself. The others returned to seats behind tables to do the strangest thing Anand had seen yet: they dipped sharp sticks into red ink and made ugly little drawings.

  “Kwak,” said Illen, pointing to his hand.

  “Kwak,” Anand repeated. Pointing to his own, he said “hand.”

  This went on for a while—Illen pointing to an object and saying a word, and Anand giving the Slopeites’ term for it. At one point, Illen pointed to everyone in the wagon, and said “Dranverite,” smiling. Anand felt both relief and a moment of trepidation when his guess was confirmed. The hearsay about Dranverites seemed at odds with all he had seen . . . but perhaps this was just an elaborate trap. Maybe they would cage him for life and put him on display in a traveling show. Perhaps they would hobble him and make him the exotic pet of a royal.

  Sometime later, the cage suddenly lurched—the caravan was heading off. Anand looked out the bars, to the south toward the Slope. He felt an abrupt sadness soaked in fear. He longed for his parents, wished for Daveena, and wondered again what these strange people wanted.

  The Cajorites were pacing as the Dranverites wrapped the cages with bark cloth that allowed light in at the top. Moments later, the cages were rolling. “Where are they taking us, Pious?” asked a woman from the palace servant caste. “What don’t they want us to see?”

  “I believe they are returning us,” said Dolgeeno, “and don’t want us to know the way back.” Dolgeeno was seated near Trellana, nursing her paralyzed body in a corner. “Yes, Majesty,” he cooed to her. “And if we are returned, we will unite the soldiers of the Slope in war. Your children’s children will rule this place. Leaf-cutter ants will strip these trees and beautify the land with mounds and sunlight. Every last Dranverite will be sacrificed to Mantis and quench Her blood-thirst for a generation.”

  As he finished his words, Dolgeeno knew he was lying to the queen as well as himself. Slopeites stood no chance against these red armored demons. Among the first things he would do at home was ingest the Holy Mildew. Perhaps the gods would inform him how they could defeat these savages in a war that would be the Slope’s greatest triumph. And that, finally, might insure my succession as the Ultimate Holy, he thought, smiling for the first time in weeks.

  CHAPTER 20

  A SCOLDING

  Commander Tahn was returning from his greatest victory yet, the conquest of Bulkoko, Land of the Honey Reapers. Some thought Bulkoko was the legendary Bee-Jor, but far from being a paradise, it was a highly stratified nation whose degenerate rulers lived in trees near beehives, but whose masses toiled in slums on the ground. The laborers immediately took to the Prophet-Warrior’s promise of a sword, riches, and multiple wives for all who worshipped Te
rmite. Hundreds of thousands of them took the White Paint of Submission to battle their way up a labyrinth of rope bridges and relish in the slaughter of the masters. The rulers were thrown from their tree palaces to be trampled and cut to pieces, while some were drowned in their hoards of honey.

  Pleckoo set out on a speed ant with good news he knew would please his commander at Mukaz-dozh where he had stopped midway for fresh ants and rest. He arrived to find Tahn preaching to the masses on a speaking rock at the base of the mound. Near him were sleds full of unending booty and massive honeycombs that attracted fruit flies.

  “Hulkrites of Mukaz, the Termite wants his people to have honey, not just in the next world but in this one,” said the Prophet to the masses. As he spoke, warriors shot the flies out of the air which were added to a spontaneous feast. Tahn blessed his followers, then went to peruse the cages of captured maidens in their bee fuzz gowns as Pleckoo rode up and dipped his head.

  “Commander, we bring good news from the capital.”

  “Yes, Pleckoo?”

  “Not only have a few mushrooms spiked and fruited, but some of the leaf-cutter nymphs are winged. One of them, a queen, was seeded by her brother after a recent rain and is already laying eggs.”

  “Excellent. And how is our Good Queen Polexima?”

  Pleckoo hesitated.

  “Yes?”

  “For the moment she lives. Her brat lives.”

  “For the moment? Is she not well?”

  Pleckoo was silent.

  “Pleckoo, we must have these mushrooms! Not just as food, but as a means of increasing fertility in Hulkrish women. In order to do so, we must have a healthy Slopeish queen. Is she being well fed? Exposed to sunlight and air?”

  Pleckoo hesitated. “Commander, we have treated her as we treat any infidel—she refuses to . . .”

  “She is not any infidel! She is the source of a power our faith needs if it is to grow in new lands. You will coddle her, Pleckoo. See to it yourself that she thrives. We can’t risk another raid against the Slope without igniting total war, a war we are not yet prepared for.”

  Pleckoo nodded and felt heat in his face. For some strange reason, he was reminded of the welts on his buttocks when he had been whipped in Cajoria. He looked into the commander’s face, which was searching the heavens. Pleckoo was plunged from shame into envy as he watched Tahn commune with their god. Pleckoo was wondering why Hulkro had chosen this man, already so gifted and beautiful, as his conduit to men when Tahn’s eyes blinked open.

  “Hulkro will save Polexima if we treat her well,” Tahn said. “Her daughter will make a faithful Hulkrite. So say I.”

  “Then so says Hulkro,” said Pleckoo. “If the commander will forgive me, I should make a quick return.”

  “Why?”

  Pleckoo hesitated.

  “To . . . to prepare for your celebration.”

  “You are dismissed, Pleckoo.”

  Pleckoo reached for the roots of his ant’s antennae and clutched them with his scent-gloves. As the ant picked up speed, Pleckoo promised Hulkro a sacrifice of ten thousand wood chips if Polexima were alive by the time he returned.

  CHAPTER 21

  THE CITY OF PEACE

  Anand had never seen spinach that grew like this. Outside the Dranverites’ capital, spinach was flourishing in neat rows to the exclusion of any other plant. It was followed by a field whose only plants bore pointed berries with seeds dotting their skins.

  Relieved from his exchanges with the translators, Anand walked with Dwan beside the wagons. Dwan had bathed and his skin was now as red as the berries they passed. Other Dranverites had changed their skin colors as well as their clothes and from their laughter and chatting, seemed ready for a celebration. Night was falling when Anand heard the distant scurry of thousands of ants and the hubbub of uncountable humans.

  The procession reached boulders with carved caves in rows, each with a faint glow and a human family inside. Just past the boulders was a tree with dwellings hewn in its bark, each connected to the ground in a dizzying system of ladders. The inhabitants stepped out on ledges and shouted down greetings.

  Anand’s heart thumped when they veered around a boulder to a sudden revelation of the capital mound and its massive, luminous beauty at the center of a great clearing. The spectacle made him stagger. As the caravan entered the main artery, Dranverites poured out of dwellings painted in a riot of hues. Perhaps more than anything, Anand was dazzled by the clothing. Red may have been the only color of their cloth, but their garments were of an astonishing variety. They wore short tunics, long gowns, loose and tight blouses, capes, towering headdresses, tiny caps, or—in some cases—almost nothing at all.

  As the caravan rolled up the mound’s grade, the people followed it and beat hand-drums while dancing and singing. Fragments of flowers were thrown from the windows and sent up a heady perfume. Candied worm and salted berry were thrust in the mouths of soldiers while bowls of frothy acorn beer were circulated. Girls set garlands of flower clippings around the soldiers’ necks and boys smeared glow-paint on the weevils. The main artery was teeming with humans when a parade of red ants threaded through them with the bits and pieces of a slaughtered mantis.

  Anand was astonished that the streets surrounding the mound were bright with the light from lamps on poles. Inside the lamps’ crystal bowls were glowworms. Open areas had mushroom lamps of yellow and orange growing from pots of fermenting grass. Around these pots were benches where Dranverites chatted and ate and moved tiny sculptures over checkered boards.

  Anand slurped some acorn beer and was imitating the whirling steps of the dancers when he stumbled into a thick-limbed woman in what looked like Britasyte costume. He excused himself in Dranverish. She was smiling in forgiveness when he was struck by her resemblance to his mother.

  The squalid flats of Cajoria rushed into his mind and felt like a knife in his heart. He imagined Corra as the first to see the pioneers returning in humiliation. She would run and grab Yormu, happy that their son would be at the tail of the parade. Anand was wrenched with anguish as his mind’s eye saw the moment when the midden caste reached his parents. Corra would wildly pace, then run after Keel screaming, “Where is my son?”

  Dwan turned from the festivities to see Anand’s despair. Unable to express his sorrow, Anand had never felt lonelier. As soon as he could express it, he would tell his captors that he must return to the Slope.

  Eventually, they reached the astonishing dwelling where Anand was to stay. The house was a handsome multitude of cubes made of sand-bricks glued with resin and its interior was divided into spacious chambers. The walls inside the house were covered in thin sheets of a fragrant wood and the windows were slices of quartz that invited in sunlight. Dwan led him to a chamber with two sleeping cushions—one for each of them! Next to Anand’s cushion on a chest of drawers was an outfit of red cloth with tight leggings, a loose tunic, and a cape. There was also a tall hat with a sun visor and the fluffy antennae of a sugar moth as decoration. Best of all was a pair of red boots made from the egg casing of a roach.

  For only the second time in his life, Anand would have clothes instead of rags. He fell asleep with a smile on his face that would last until morning.

  Anand’s new clothes made Dwan smile, too.

  When he brought in their breakfast, the young man burst out laughing. Through gestures, Dwan showed Anand that he had put the undergarment on over the leggings. Sweating with embarrassment, Anand quickly fixed his outfit and then joined Dwan for the morning meal, which consisted of a porridge of sweetened leaf-cutter mushrooms.

  Where did they get mushrooms? Anand wondered. They certainly don’t trade with the Slope.

  Every moment in this place brought a new mystery.

  When the boys were ready to depart, they bowed before Dwan’s mother as she reviewed maps in the house’s parlor. Anand looked at her face, wondering where he had seen it. He was looking from her to a crystal case that displayed Dranverish armor and
a helmet with a banner at its top when it all fell into place: this was the woman commander who had led the Dranverite army! She nodded to the boys, smiled, and returned to her maps. Dwan’s father handed each of them a hollowed seed pail that, upon inspection, contained their lunch.

  In the daylight, Anand and Dwan hiked to the top of the mound where there was a cluster of crystal palaces, far more beautiful than those that housed the Cajorite royals. Atop the roof of one, Anand was stunned into reverence by the vast sprawl of the city which stretched to the distant mists.

  The two ambled down the mound and into the streets. Vendors pushed carts loaded with foodstuffs, clothing, shoes, and oddities. Anand saw what looked like rough-cloth for a coat, but it was torn into strips and then dunked in a sauce to be eaten. Something wet and gooey, which looked like food, was tried on as a hat. Outside a large and impressive dome of twigs, Anand saw merchants selling leaf-cutter eggs and mushrooms.

  As Anand got closer, he saw the dome was a cage and inside it was a completely enclosed leaf-cutter ant mound. Some were clinging to the underside of the dome to provoke the red ants patrolling the outside. Men and women carted in leaves that were seized upon by yellow foragers. Some human workers with mushroom lanterns on top of their helmets emerged from the mound with harvests of eggs. In a separate area, dead leaf-cutters were cut up for food and their blood was scooped into barrels. Looking out across the city, Anand saw similar domes and wondered what insects lived in them.

  Dwan nudged Anand to a market in the shade of a tall column where bees darted in and out of a cube-shaped hive at its top. In a nearby stall was a trough of honey. No attendant presided over the stall, and passing Dranverites scraped the honey into crocks. In gratitude, some bowed before a wax statue of Bee in a nearby shrine. Others took honey but ignored the deity.