Empire of the Ants (32 page)

Inside Chli-pou-kan, they waited.

They waited for the slave-makers with grim resignation. In the last resort, brute force was still more effective than technology.

But the slave-makers did not attack. Like Hannibal at the gates of Rome, they hesitated. It all seemed too easy. It must be a trap. If their reputation as killers went before them, the russet ants also enjoyed a certain renown. In the slave-maker camp, they were said to be skilled at inventing subtle traps and were supposed to form alliances with mercenaries who turned up when you were least expecting them. They were also said to be able to tame wild animals and manufacture secret weapons that inflicted unbearable pain. Besides, slave-makers hated being surrounded by walls as much as they enjoyed being out in the open.

At all events, they did not break down the barricades put up in the entrances. They waited. They could afford to take their time. After all, there were still about fifteen hours left before nightfall.

There was surprise in the anthill. Why weren't they attacking? Chli-pou-ni did not like it. She was worried that the enemy was 'acting in a way that defied their understanding', when it had no need, being the stronger party. Some of her daughters timidly suggested that the slave-makers might be trying to starve them out. Such an eventuality could only be of comfort to the russet ants: thanks to their greenfly sheds in the basement, their mushroom beds, their granaries full of flour and the reservoir ants brimful of honeydew, they could hold out for a good two months.

But Chli-pou-ni did not think there would be a siege. What the others up there wanted was a nest for the night. She remembered Mother's famous saying:
If the enemy is stronger, do something that defies his understanding.
Yes, the way to beat the brutes was to use the latest technology.

The five hundred thousand Chlipoukanians took part in ACs and an interesting debate finally emerged. It was a little worker who emitted:

The mistake we made was to try to copy the weapons and strategies used by our elders in Bel-o-kan. We must not copy we must find our own solutions to our own problems.

As soon as the pheromone was out, they came up with fresh ideas and a decision was quickly taken. Then everyone set to work.

janissary
: In the fourteenth century, Sultan Murad I founded a rather special army corps called Janissaries (from the Turkish
yeni cheri,
meaning new militia). The Janissary army had a special characteristic: it was formed only of orphans. When Turkish soldiers pillaged an Armenian or Slav village, they took the very young children and shut them up in a special military school, where they could learn nothing of the outside world. Educated solely in the art of combat, these children turned out to be the best fighters in the entire Ottoman empire and shamelessly ravaged the villages inhabited by their real families. It never occurred to the Janissaries to fight their kidnappers on the side of their parents. On the other hand, their power grew ceaselessly and ended up worrying Sultan Mahmut II, who massacred them and set fire to their school in 1826.

Edmond Wells,
Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge

Professor Leduc had brought along two large trunks. He took an unusual petrol-driven pneumatic drill out of one of them and immediately started to drill a circular hole big enough to get through the wall built by the police.

When the racket had stopped, Grandmother Augusta came and offered him some herb tea but Leduc refused, calmly explaining that it might make him want to go to the loo. He turned to the other trunk and pulled out a complete potholing outfit.

'Do you really think its that deep?'

'To be frank, Mrs Wells, before coming to see you I did some research on this building. During the Renaissance, it was inhabited by Protestant scholars, who built a secret passage. I'm almost certain the passage comes out in the Forest of Fontainebleau. That's how the Protestants escaped from their persecutors.'

'But if the people who went down there came out in the forest, I don't understand why they haven't turned up again. There was my grandson, my great-grandson and my grand-daughter-in-law, plus a good dozen firemen and policemen. None of them has any reason to hide. They've got families and friends. They're not Protestants and the Wars of Religion have been over for a long time.'

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'Are you quite certain of that, Mrs Wells?'

He gave her a strange look.

'The religions have taken on new names. They call themselves philosophies or sciences but they're every bit as dogmatic'

He went into the next room to put on his potholing clothes. When he reappeared in a suit that was straining at the seams, his head encased in a bright red helmet sporting a lamp at the front, Augusta almost burst out laughing.

He carried on regardless.

'After the Protestants, the flat was occupied by sects of all kinds. Some took part in old pagan rites, others worshipped onions or black radishes or goodness knows what.'

'Onions and black radishes are very good for you. I can quite see why someone might worship them. Health is everything. Look at me, I'm deaf, I'm getting senile and I die a little more each day'

He tried to reassure her.

'Now, now, don't be pessimistic. You look very well to me.' 'Let's see, now, how old do you you think I am?' 'I don't know . . . sixty, seventy.'

'A hundred. I turned a hundred last week, there's something seriously wrong with every part of my body and it gets harder to go on living every day, especially now I've lost everyone I loved.'

'I sympathize, Mrs Wells. It can't be easy being old.'

'You're telling me!'

'I really didn't. . .'

'Do get a move on. If you don't come back up tomorrow, I'll call the police and they'll probably build me a wall so strong no-one will ever try to break it down again.'

With the ichneumon wasp larvae constantly gnawing away at her, 4,000th could not get to sleep during even the coldest nights.

She waited calmly for death while at the same time engaging in exciting, dangerous activities she would never ordinarily have had the courage to undertake, such as discovering the edge of the world.

They were still on their way to the harvesters' fields and 103,683rd took advantage of the journey to call to mind some of the things her nurses had taught her. They had explained to her that the Earth was a cube bearing life only on its upper surface.

What would she see if she finally reached the end of the world? Its side? Water? Empty space? She and her companion would then know more about it than all the explorers and russet ants who had ever lived.

To 4,000th s surprise, 103,683rd suddenly lengthened her stride.

In the middle of the afternoon, when the slave-makers made up their minds to force their way in, they were surprised not to meet any resistance. They were well aware that they had not destroyed the entire russet army, even taking into account the city's small size, and were therefore on their guard.

They advanced all the more cautiously because they were used to living in the open air and had excellent eyesight in broad daylight but were completely blind underground. The asexual russet ants could not see there either but at least they were used to finding their way about in the shadowy passageways.

When the slave-makers reached the Forbidden City, it was completely deserted, though there were piles of food lying untouched on the ground and the granaries below were full. People had definitely been there shortly before.

On the fifth floor of the basement, they found recent pheromones. They tried to decode the conversations that had taken place, but the russet ants had left behind a sprig of thyme which interfered with all the other scents.

The sixth floor of the basement. They did not like being shut up underground. It was pitch-black. How could ants bear to spend all their time in such a deathly dark, confined space?

On the eighth floor of the basement, they detected even fresher pheromones and increased their pace. The russet ants could not be far away now.

On the tenth floor of the basement, they surprised a group of workers brandishing eggs, who ran away when they saw them coming. So that was it! They understood at last. The whole city had gone down to the lowest floors in the hope of saving its precious offspring.

As everything fell into place, the slave-makers threw caution to the wind and ran along the corridors letting out their famous pheromone war cry They were already down to the thirteenth floor and the Chlipoukanian workers could not shake them off.

Suddenly, the egg bearers disappeared for no apparent reason and the corridor they were following opened into a vast room. Pools of honeydew were all over the floor and the slave-makers instinctively rushed to lick up the precious nectar before it soaked into the earth.

Other warriors pressed them from the rear but the room was absolutely enormous and there was enough room and pools of honeydew for everyone. It was deliciously sweet. This was surely one of the reservoir ant rooms a slave-maker had heard about:
It's a so-called modern technique which consists of obliging a poor worker to spend her whole life upside down with her abdomen stretched to the limit.

While they were indulging in honeydew and making fun of the city dwellers again, one of the slave-makers suddenly noticed something peculiar. The room was surprisingly big to have only one entrance.

She did not have time to think further. The russet ants had finished digging and a torrent of water burst through the ceiling. The slave-makers tried to get away down the corridor but it had been blocked by a big rock and the level of water was rising. Those who had not been stunned by the downpour were struggling with all their might.

The russet worker who had pointed out that they must not copy their elders had come up with the idea. She had asked the question:
What's special about our city? A
single pheromone had been the reply:
The underground stream on the twelfth floor of the basement!

They had then diverted a rivulet from the stream along a channel waterproofed with thick leaves. The rest was loosely based on tanker technique. They had built a big reservoir of water in a chamber and then bored a hole in the middle of it with a branch. The most difficult part of the operation had obviously been to keep the drilling branch suspended above the water. Ants hanging from the ceiling of the tanker chamber had accomplished this feat.

Down below, the slave-makers were thrashing about and waving their legs in the air. Most of them had already drowned, but when all the water had decanted into the lower room, the level of flotation was high enough for some warriors to be able to get out through the hole in the ceiling. The russet ants easily felled them with acid.

An hour later, the slave-maker soup had stopped moving. Queen Chli-pou-ni had won. She then came out with her first historic saying:
The greater the obstacle, the more we must surpass ourselves.

A
dull, regular knocking drew Augusta to the kitchen just as Professor Leduc struggled out of the hole in the wall. Fancy that, after twenty-four hours! The one man she disliked so much she did not care if she never saw him again and he'd had to come back!

His potholing suit was ripped to pieces but he was otherwise unharmed. He had also failed completely, it was as plain as the nose on your face.

'Well?'

'Well what?'

'Did you find them?'

'No.'

Augusta was all agitated. It was the first time anyone had come back up out of the hole alive and sane. It was possible to survive the adventure!

'What's down there, then? Does it come out in the Forest of Fontainebleau, as you thought?' He took off his helmet.

'Could I have a drink first, please? I've finished all my rations and I haven't drunk anything since lunch-time yesterday'

She brought him some herb tea she'd been keeping hot in a thermos flask.

'Do you want me to tell you what's down there? There's a spiral staircase that goes straight down for several hundred metres. There's a door and a length of bloodstained corridor crawling with rats, then at the far end there's a wall that must have been built by your grandson, Jonathan. It's a very strong wall. I tried to drill a hole in it but it was impossible. It must actually turn or swing open because there's a set of coded alphabetical keys on it.'

'Coded alphabetical keys?'

'Yes, you probably have to type in the answer to a question.' 'What question?'

'How do you make four equilateral triangles out of six matches?'

Augusta could not help bursting out laughing, which the scientist found extremely irritating.

'You already know the answer!'

Between two hiccoughs, she managed to reply:

'No, no. I don't know the answer. But I'm very familiar with the question.'