Empire of the Ants (39 page)

At last, the Chlipoukanian army caught sight of the central city. How big it was!

The flying match began its downward curve.

Mother decided to speak to them without delay. She must also tell them she could increase the amount of honeydew on offer without any difficulty. The yield promised to be excellent this year.

The match fell on the twigs of the dome.

The Chlipoukanian army was close enough. It prepared to charge.

Jean dived behind the big pine tree where Philippe was already sheltering.

The match fell on part of the dome that had escaped the drenching in meths and weed-killer and went out.

The boys stood up again. 'Bloody hell!'

'I know what we'll do. We'll light a piece of paper and put that on it. It'll make a big flame that's sure to come in contact with the alcohol.'

'Got any paper on you?'

'Er . . . only a tube ticket.'

'Give it here.'

One of the sentries on the dome noticed that something odd was happening: not only had several districts just begun to smell of alcohol but a piece of yellow wood had also just appeared on the summit. She immediately contacted a work group to wash the alcohol off the twigs and remove the yellow beam.

Another sentry came running up to door five.

To arms! To arms! An army of russet ants is attacking us!

The cardboard had caught light. The boys went and hid behind the pine tree again.

A third sentry saw a big flame rise from the end of the piece of yellow wood.

The Chlipoukanians charged at the gallop as they had seen the slave-makers do before them.

The whole dome went up in flames at the first explosion. Sparks crackled and flew.

Jean and Philippe tried to keep their eyes open in spite of the heat. They were not disappointed by what they saw. The dry wood burned quickly. When the flames reached the pools of weed-killer, there was an explosion. Detonations and columns of green, yellow, red and mauve flames shot up from the 'city of the lost ant'.

The Chlipoukanian army came to a halt. The solarium went up in flames first, along with all the eggs and cattle, then the fire spread to the rest of the dome.

The stump of the Forbidden City had been damaged in the first few seconds of the catastrophe. The doorkeepers had exploded. Some warriors dashed to try and free the single egg-layer but they were too late, she had been suffocated by the toxic fumes.

The various phases of the alert followed one another thick and fast. In the first phase, the arousal pheromones were released. In the second, there was a sinister drumming in all the corridors. In the third phase, 'crazed' ants ran along the galleries, spreading panic, and in the fourth phase, all the valuables (eggs, males and females, cattle and food) disappeared down to the deepest floors while soldiers came back up in the other direction to take a stand.

The ants in the dome were trying to save the city Artillery legions managed to quench the fire in some areas by spraying it with dilute formic acid. When they saw how effective it was, the acting firemen sprayed the Forbidden City, too. They might be able to save the stump by dampening it.

But the fire spread and trapped citizens were suffocated by the toxic fumes. Incandescent wooden arches fell on the dazed crowds and their shells melted and twisted like plastic in a saucepan.

Nothing could withstand the extreme heat.

episode
: I was wrong.
We
are not equals or competitors. Human beings are only a brief episode in their undivided rule over the Earth. They are infinitely more numerous than we. They possess more cities and occupy far more ecological niches. They live in dry, freezing, hot or wet regions, where no man could survive. Wherever we look, there are ants.

They were here a hundred million years before us and, judging by the fact that they were one of the few organisms to survive the atomic bomb, will surely still be here a hundred million years after us.
We
are just a three-million-year-long accident in their history. Moreover, if extraterrestrials ever landed on our planet, they would be in no doubt about it. They would try to talk to them. Them: the true masters of the Earth.

Edmond Wells,
Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge

The next morning, the dome had completely disappeared. All that remained of the city was the naked, black stump.

Five million citizens had died, all the ants who were in the dome and its immediate vicinity.

Those who had had the presence of mind to go down were unharmed.

The human beings living under the city had not noticed anything. The enormous granite slab had prevented them from doing so. And it had all taken place during one of their artificial nights.

Belo-kiu-kiuni's death remained the greatest threat for the future. Deprived of its egg-layer, the Tribe was under threat.

However, the Chlipoukanian army had helped to fight the fire. As soon as the warriors learned of the death of Belo-kiu-kiuni, they despatched messengers to their city. A few hours later, Chli-pou-ni arrived on the back of a rhinoceros beetle to see the damage for herself.

When she reached the Forbidden City, fireman ants were still spraying the ashes. There was nothing left to fight. She asked what had happened and was told about the incomprehensible disaster.

As there were no more fertile queens, she naturally became the new Belo-kiu-kiuni and invested the royal chamber in the central city.

Jonathan woke first and was surprised to hear the clatter of the computer printer.

There was one word on the screen.

Why?

They must have emitted it during their night. They wanted to talk. He tapped out the sentence that ritually preceded each conversation.

human being
: Greetings, I'm Jonathan.
ant:
I'm the new Belo-kiu-kiuni. Why?

human being
: The new Belo-kiu-kiuni? Where's the old one?
ant:
You've killed her. I'm the new Belo-kiu-kiuni. Why?
human being
: What happened?
ant:
Why?

Then they were cut off.

Now she knew everything.

It was they, the human beings, who had done it.

Mother knew them.

She had always known them.

She had kept it a secret.

She had ordered the execution of all who could have given the slightest clue.

She had even supported them against her own cells.

The new Belo-kiu-kiuni contemplated her inert mother. When the guards came to get the body to throw it on the rubbish heap, she gave a start.

No, the body must not be thrown away.

She examined the old Belo-kiu-kiuni, who was already beginning to smell of death.

She suggested they stick the smashed limbs back on with resin and empty the body of its soft parts to replace them with sand.

She wanted to keep her in her own chamber.

Chli-pou-ni, the new Belo-kiu-kiuni, gathered together a few warriors. She suggested they rebuild the central city along more modern lines. In her opinion, the dome and stump were too vulnerable. And they would need to apply themselves to finding underground streams and even digging canals linking all the cities of the Federation. For her, the future lay in the mastery of water. They would be able to protect themselves from fire better and also travel quickly and safely.

What about the human beings?

Her reply was evasive:

They're of little interest.

The warrior persisted:

What if they attack us again with their fire?

The stronger the enemy, the more we must surpass ourselves.

What about the ones who live under the big rock?

Belo-kiu-kiuni did not answer. She asked to be left alone, then turned towards the old Belo-kiu-kiuni's body.

The new queen inclined her head delicately and rested her antennae on her mother's forehead. She remained there for some time without moving, as though sunk in an eternal AC.

GLOSSARY

Absolute communication
(AC): a total exchange of thoughts by

antenna contact.
Age of asexual ants:
2.
russet worker or soldier generally lives

three years.

Age of queen: z
russet queen lives fifteen years on average.

Air conditioning:
the temperature of the big cities is regulated by

the solarium, excrement and fresh-air inlets in the dome.
Alcohol:
ants know how to ferment greenfly honey dew and

cereal juice.

Ant weapons:
sabre mandibles,
poisonous stings, glue sprays,
formic-acid-throwing bladders and claws.
Bat:
a flying monster which lives in caves. Dangerous.

Battle of Poppy Hill:
took place in the year 100,000,666 and was
the first federal war in which bacteriological weapons were

pitted against tanks.

Bel-o-kan:
the central city of the russet Federation.

Belo-kiu-kiuni:
the Queen of Bel-o-kan.

Birds:
flying monsters. Dangerous.

Black:
city dwellers like to live in the dark.
Bread:
small balls of chopped, kneaded cereals.
Carnivorous plants:
butterwort, Venus s fly-trap and sundew.

Dangerous.

Caste:
there are generally three castes: males and females, soldiers, and workers, which are in turn divided into sub-castes: agricultural workers, artillery soldiers, etc.

Chitin:
the substance of which the ants' armour is made.

Chli-pou-ni:
the daughter of Belo-kiu-kiuni.

Chli-pou-kan:
an ultra-modern city built by Chli-pou-ni.

Cockroach:
the ancestor of the termite. The first land insect.

Cold:
a universal sedative in the insect world.

Colorado beetle:
a beetle with orange outer-wings with five longitudinal black stripes. Colorado beetles generally feed on potatoes. Colorado beetle juice is a deadly poison.

Corpse:
an empty cuticle.

Degree: a.
unit of temperature time and chronological time. The

hotter it is, the more the degrees-time shrink and the colder

it is, the more they expand.

Density:
in Europe, there are 80,000 ants per square metre on

average (including all species).

Dogma of the Queens:
a valuable body of information handed

down from mother queen to daughter queen by antenna.

Doorkeepers: a
sub-caste with round, flat heads responsible for

blocking strategic corridors.

Dufour gland:
a gland containing the trail pheromones.

Dung-beetle:
pushes along balls of dung. Edible.

Duodecimal:
the numerical sys
tem used by ants. They count in
twelves because they have twelve claws (two per leg).

Dwarves:
the chief enemies of the russet ants.
Dynasty:
a succession of daughter queens of the same territory.

Earth:
a cubic planet.

Egg:
a very young ant.

Excrement:
the excrement of ants is 1,000 times lighter than their bodies.

Eyes:
a set of facets on
the eyeball. Each facet has two
crystalline lenses, a large external lens and a small internal one. Each cell is directly connected to the brain. Ants can only perceive objects that are close to them but can nevertheless spot the slightest movement from a great distance.

Fast:
an ant can live for six months without eating in a state of hibernation.

Federation:
a grouping of cities of the same species. A federation of russet ants usually comprises ninety nests in six hectares with seven and a half kilometres of beaten tracks and forty kilometres of scent trails.

Festival of Rebirth:
the nuptial flight of males and females, which generally takes place on one of the first warm days of the year.

Fire:
a taboo weapon.

Flying messengers:
a dwarf technique for sending messages by gnat. Edible.