Empire of the Ants (33 page)

She couldn't stop laughing. Professor Leduc muttered: 'I spent hours trying to find the answer. You can obviously do it with triangles that aren't equilateral.' He put away his equipment.

'If you don't mind, I'll go and ask a friend of mine who's a
mathematician and come back again.' 'No.'

'What do you mean, no?'

'You've had your chance. If you didn't make the most of it, it's just too bad. Kindly take those trunks out of my flat. Goodbye, Professor Leduc'

She did not even call him a taxi. Her aversion had got the better of her. She couldn't stand the smell of him.

She sat down in the kitchen opposite the smashed wall. The situation had changed now. She made up her mind to telephone Jason Bragel and that Mr Rosenfeld. She had decided to have a little fun before she died.

human pheromone
: Just as insects communicate by means of smell, man has an olfactory language by means of which he communicates discreetly with others of his kind. As we do not have antennae with which to emit pheromones, we release them into the air from our armpits, breasts, scalps and genital organs.

Such messages are perceived subconsciously but are none the less effective for all that. Human beings have fifty million olfactory nerve endings, fifty million cells capable of identifying thousands of smells, whereas our tongues can only recognize four different tastes. What use do we make of this means of communication? Firstly, sexual attraction. A male human being can perfectly well be attracted by a female human being simply because he likes her natural scents (which are all too often concealed under artificial scents). He may equally well be repulsed by another whose pheromones do not 'appeal' to him.

It is a subtle process. The two people concerned will not even suspect that they have taken part in an olfactory dialogue. Those around them will simply
say that ‘J
ove is blind
’
. The influence of human pheromones may also be manifested in cases of aggression. As with dogs, a man who breathes in the smell of fear emanating from his enemy will naturally want to attack him.

Lastly, one of the most spectacular consequences of the action of human pheromones is no doubt the synchronization of menstrual cycles. It has been observed that when several women live together, they emit odours which adjust their cycles so that their periods all start at the same time.

Edmond Wells,
Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge

They caught sight of their first harvester ants working in the yellow fields. It would actually be more correct to speak of woodcutters since their cereals grew very tall and they had to slice through the base of the stems to bring down the nourishing grains.

Apart from harvesting, their main occupation was eradicating all the other plants growing round their crops, using a weed-killer of their own making, indoleacetic acid, which they sprayed from their abdominal glands.

When 103,683rd and 4,000th arrived, the harvesters took hardly any notice of them. They had never seen russet ants before and they thought the two insects were at best runaway slaves or ants looking for lomechusa secretion. In short, tramps or drug addicts.

One of the harvesters eventually detected a red ant scent molecule, however. She left her work and came up to them, followed by a friend.

Have you met any red ants? Where are they?

In the course of the conversation, the Belokanians learnt that the red ants had attacked the harvesters' nest several weeks previously. They had killed over a hundred workers, both male and female, with their poisonous stings and then stolen all the flour reserves. On its return from a campaign in the south in search of fresh seeds, the harvester army could only inspect the damage.

The russet ants acknowledged that they had come across red ants. They showed them which way to go to find them and, in reply to the harvesters' questions, told them about their own journey.

Are you looking for the end of the world?

They agreed that they were. The others then let out sparkling pheromones of laughter. Why had they burst out laughing? Did the end of the world not exist?

Yes, it exists and you're there. Apart from harvesting, our main occupation is trying to cross the end of the world.

The harvesters offered to guide the two 'tourists' to this mystical place the very next morning. The evening was spent in discussion in the shelter of the little nest the harvesters had dug in the bark of a beech tree.

What about the guardians of the end of the world?
asked 103,683rd.

Don't worry, you'll see them soon enough.

Is it true they've got a weapon capable of crushing a whole army at a blow?

The harvesters were surprised the strangers were so well-informed.
It's true.

So 103,683rd would at last solve the mystery of the secret weapon.

That night, she had a dream. She saw the Earth stopping at right angles, a vertical wall of water filling the sky and, coming out of this wall of water, blue ants holding highly destructive acacia branches. The ends of these magic branches only had to touch something for it to be completely pulverized.

JOURNEY'S END

Augusta spent the whole day playing around with six matches. She had understood that the wall was more psychological than real. There was that famous you have to think differently' of Edmonds. Her son had discovered something for sure and he had used his intelligence to hide it.

She recalled his childhood 'dens'. Perhaps it was because they had destroyed them all that he had tried to make one that was inaccessible, a place where no-one would ever disturb him, a kind of inner place, which would project its peace and invisibility outwards.

Augusta tried to shake off her torpor. A memory from her own youth surfaced. It was a winter's night, she was very small and she had just understood that numbers below nought could exist. 3,
2,
1,
0 and then -1, -2, -3. Inside-out numbers, as if the glove of numbers were being turned inside out. So nought was not the beginning and end of everything. Another infinite world lay on the other side. It was as if the wall 'nought' had been swept away.

She must have been seven or eight years old, but she had been so overwhelmed by her discovery that she had not slept all night.

Inside-out figures. It opened up a whole new dimension, the third dimension. What a relief.

Good heavens!

Her hands were trembling with emotion and she was crying but she found the strength to pick up the matches. She made three of them into a triangle, then stood a match at each corner so that they met in a point at the top.

They formed a pyramid. A pyramid of four equilateral triangles, one as its base and three as its sides.

★
★š
★

The eastern limit of the Earth was a staggering place. There was nothing natural or Earth-like about it. It was not as 103,683rd had imagined. The edge of the world was hard, smooth and warm and it smelt of mineral oil. And it was black, the blackest thing she had ever seen.

Instead of a vertical ocean, there were incredibly violent air currents.

They spent a long time trying to understand what was happening. From time to time, they felt a vibration. Its intensity increased exponentially, then the ground suddenly trembled, a strong wind lifted their antennae and an infernal din split the eardrums in their tibiae. It was like a violent storm but it had no sooner happened than it was over, leaving only a few whorls of dust to setde behind it.

Many harvester explorers had tried to cross the frontier but the Guardians kept watch. They had caused the noise, wind and vibration as they struck down all who tried to cross the black earth.

Had they already seen the Guardians? Before the russet ants could receive a reply, there was another roar, which gradually died away. One of the six harvesters with them asserted that no-one had ever managed to walk on the 'accursed land' and come back alive. The Guardians crushed everything.

It must have been they who had attacked La-chola-kan and the expedition of the 327th male. But why had they left the end of the world to move west? Did they want to invade the world?

The harvesters knew no more than the russet ants. Could they at least describe them? All they knew was that anyone who had gone near them had been crushed to death. They did not even know which category of living creatures to place them in. Were they giant insects, birds or plants? All the harvesters knew was that they were very fast and very powerful. It was a force quite beyond them, unlike anything they knew.

At that moment, 4,000th took a sudden, unexpected initiative. She left the group and ventured into the forbidden territory alone, cool as you please. If she were going to die anyway, she might as well try to cross the end of the world first. The others watched, aghast.

She moved slowly forward, alert for the slightest vibration, the slightest scent announcing death in the sensitive ends of her legs. There
...
she had gone fifty heads, a hundred heads, two hundred heads, four hundred, six hundred, eight hundred. Nothing had happened. She was safe and sound.

The ants standing opposite applauded her. From where she was, she could see intermittent white stretches running to the left and right. Everything on the black earth was dead. There were no plants or insects. And the ground was so black it could not be real earth.

She detected plants far ahead. Could there possibly be a world after the edge of the world? She threw a few pheromones to her colleagues waiting on the bank to tell them all about it but it was difficult to communicate properly at that distance.

She turned round and the colossal noise and trembling began again. The Guardians were returning! She raced back to her companions at top speed.

They watched petrified for the brief fraction of time it took a stupendous bulk to thunder across their sky. The Guardians had passed by, giving off the smell of mineral oil, and 4,000th had disappeared.

The ants went a little closer to the edge and saw what had happened. 4,000th had been squashed so flat her body was now no more than a tenth of a head thick and seemed to be incrusted in the black ground.

Nothing was left of the old Belokanian explorer and her suffering was likewise at an end. One of the ichneumon wasp larvae had just pierced her back and was nothing but a white dot in the middle of the flattened russet body.

So that was how the Guardians of the end of the world struck. You heard a din, felt a rush of wind and everything was instantly destroyed, crushed, pulverized. 103,683rd was still analyzing what had happened when she heard another roar. Death struck even when no-one crossed its threshold, leaving the dust to settle.

103,683rd still wanted to try and get across. She thought again of Satei. It was a similar problem. If you could not get over it, you had to go under it. You had to think of the black earth as a river and the best way to cross rivers was to tunnel beneath them.

She discussed it with the six harvesters, who were immediately enthusiastic about the idea. It was so obvious they could not understand why they had not thought of it earlier. Then everyone started to dig with both mandibles.

Jason Bragel and Professor Rosenfeld had never been mad about herb tea but it was growing on them. Augusta told them everything in detail. She explained to them that her son had designated them to inherit the flat after her death and that they would probably both be tempted to explore the basement one day, just as she was. She therefore thought it better to combine their efforts for maximum efficiency.

Once Augusta had supplied them with this vital preliminary information, the three of them barely spoke. They had no need of words to understand one another. A look and a smile were enough. None of the three had ever experienced such immediate intellectual osmosis. It went beyond mere intellect, as if they had been born to complete one another and their genetic programmes fitted together and merged. It was magical. Augusta was very old, yet the others both found her extraordinarily beautiful.

They spoke of Edmond and were surprised at the warmth of their affection for him, in which there was no hint of reservation. Jason Bragel did not talk about his family, Daniel Rosenfeld did not talk about his work and Augusta did not talk about her illness. They decided to go down that very evening. They knew it was the only possible thing to do.

it was long thought
: It was long thought that computers in general and artificial intelligence programmes in particular would mingle human concepts and present them from a new angle. In short, electronics was expected to deliver a new philosophy. But even when it is presented differently, the raw material remains the same: ideas produced by human imaginations. It is a dead end. The best way to renew thought is to go outside the human imagination.

Edmond Wells,
Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge

Chli-pou-kan was growing in size and intelligence and was now an 'adolescent' city. Continuing down the road of aquatic technology, the Chlipoukanians had built a whole network of canals under the twelfth floor of the basement. These waterways allowed food to be transported quickly from one end of the city to the other.