Empire of the Ants

by Bernard Werber

  When the noose was finally placed round their necks and the four of them were hanged side by side, they just waited and allowed it to happen. Uncle Edmond was the first to speak. His voice was husky and with good reason:

  'What are we doing here?'

  'I don't know. We live. We were born, so we live for as long as possible. But I think it's nearly over now,' replied Jonathan.

  'Dear Jonathan, what a pessimist you are. Admittedly, we've been hanged and there are Mexican soldiers all around us but this isn't the end, it's just one of the hazards of life. There has to be a way out of this situation, too. Are your hands tied very tight?'

  They struggled with their bonds.

  'Mine aren't,' said the fat man. 'I can undo my ropes.'

  And he did.

  'Right, now set us free.'

  'How?'

  'Swing until you reach my hands.'

  He twisted about until he turned himself into a living pendulum. When he had undone Edmonds ropes, they could all gradually be freed using the same technique.

  Then Uncle Edmond said: 'Do as I do!' and bounced from rope to rope, with little jerks of his neck, to the end of the gallows. The others copied him.

  'We can't go any further. There's nothing beyond this beam. They'll spot us.'

  'Look, there's a little hole in the beam. Let's go inside.'

  Then Edmond threw himself against the beam, shrank to a minute size and disappeared inside. So did Jonathan and the fat man. Lucie told herself she would never manage it but flung herself against the piece of wood and made her way into the hole.

  There was a spiral staircase inside and they took the stairs four at a time. They could already hear the shouts of the soldiers who had noticed their flight. Los gringos, los gringos, cuidado! There was a sound of boots and gunshots as the Mexicans gave chase.

  The staircase opened on to a modern hotel room with a view of the sea. It was room eight. They went in and closed the door but it slammed and the vertical eight turned into a horizontal eight, the symbol of infinity. The room was luxurious and they felt safe from the roughneck soldiers there.

  Just as everyone was breathing a sigh of relief, Lucie suddenly flew at her husband's throat, shouting: 'Where's Nicolas? What about Nicolas?' She knocked him out with an old vase with a painting of Hercules as a child strangling the Serpent. Jonathan fell to the floor and turned into a shelled shrimp that squirmed about, looking quite ridiculous.

  Uncle Edmond came forward.

  'You're sorry, aren't you?'

  'I don't understand.'

  'You will,' he said, smiling. 'Follow me.'

  He showed her to the balcony overlooking the sea, and clicked his fingers. Six lighted matches immediately came down from the sky and hung in a line above his hand.

  'Listen carefully,' he said. 'We always think and perceive the world in the same old way. It s as if we only ever took photographs with a wide-angle lens. Its one view of reality but its not the only one. YOU . . . HAVE . . . TO . . . THINK . . . DIFFERENTLY. Look.'

  The matches twirled in the air for an instant, then fell to the ground. They crawled together as if they were alive and made . . .

  The next day, Lucie was quite feverish. She went out to buy a blowlamp and finally managed to burn off the lock. Just as she was about to cross the threshold of the cellar, Nicolas appeared in the kitchen, still half asleep.

  'Where are you going, Mum?'

  'I'm going to find your dad. He thinks he's a cloud and can cross mountains. I want to make sure he doesn't overdo things. I'll tell you all about it when I get back.'

  'Oh no, Mum, please don't go. I'll be all by myself.'

  'Don't worry, Nicolas, I'll be back. I won't be long. Wait for me here.'

  She shone a light into the mouth of the cellar. It was very dark inside.

  Who's there?

  The two antennae came further in, revealing a head, a thorax and then an abdomen. It was the small rock-scented ant with the limp.

  They were inclined to jump on her but looming behind her were the mandibles of a hundred or so heavily armed soldiers, all smelling of rock.

  Let's get away down the secret passage! urged the 56th female.

  She moved the bit of gravel aside, revealing her underground passage. Then, beating her wings, she rose to the ceiling and shot acid on the first intruders. Her two associates fled as a brutal suggestion went up from the troop of warriors.

  Kill them!

  56th in turn dived into the hole, just avoiding the jets of acid. Quick! After them! Hundreds of legs raced after her. There were so many of them! Once inside the neck of the tunnel, they made noisy efforts to catch up with the trio.

  With flattened antennae, the male, female and soldier went hell for leather down the passage, which was now anything but secret. They left the region of the females' quarters and made their way down to the lower floors. The narrow corridor soon forked. From then on, there were a good many crossroads but 327th managed to find his way and dragged his companions of misfortune with him.

  Suddenly, coming round a bend in the tunnel, they stumbled on a troop of soldiers racing towards them. It was incredible, the lame ant had already met up with them again. The Machiavellian insect certainly knew all the short cuts.

  The three runaways beat a retreat and made off. When they could at last stop to rest for a while, 103,683rd suggested it would be better not to fight on the others' ground as they could find their way around the tangle of corridors a little too easily.

  When your enemy seems stronger than you, do something that defies his understanding. It was an old saying of the first Mother's which fitted their situation perfectly. 56th came up with the idea of camouflaging themselves inside a wall.

  Before the rock-scented warriors could flush them out, they dug like mad at a side wall, attacking the earth and scooping it up with their mandibles. Their eyes and antennae became covered in it. Sometimes they swallowed it by the mouthful to go faster. When the cavity was deep enough, they curled up inside, rebuilt the wall and waited. Their pursuers arrived and went by at the double but they were back again before long, moving much more slowly this time and nosing about just on the other side of the thin wall.

  They did not notice anything. It was impossible to stay there, though. The others were sure to detect some of their molecules in the end, so they dug. 103,683rd had the biggest mandibles and dug at the front. The male and female cleared away the sand by filling in behind them.

  The killers had detected the manoeuvre. They sounded the walls, picked up their trail and started to dig furiously. The three ants turned downwards. It was difficult enough to follow anyone in that black mire anyway. Three corridors were begun and two blocked every second. It would have been impossible to draw a reliable map of the city in the circumstances. The only fixed landmarks were the dome and the stump.

  The three ants penetrated slowly deeper into the body of the city. Sometimes they stumbled on a long creeper, one of the ivies planted by the farmer ants to stop the city collapsing when it rained. Sometimes the earth grew harder and they banged their mandibles on stone. Then they had to make a detour.

  When neither of the sexual ants could any longer detect the vibrations of their pursuers, the trio decided to stop. They had chanced on a stray air pocket in the heart of Bel-o-kan; a waterproof, odourless capsule no-one knew about, a hollow desert island. No-one would run them to earth there. They felt as safe as in the dark oval of their mother's abdomen.

  56th drummed on her partners head with the ends of her antennae in an appeal for trophallaxis. 327th folded back his antennae in acceptance, then put his mouth to hers. He regurgitated a little of the greenfly honeydew the first guard had given him and 56th immediately perked up. Then 103,683rd in turn drummed on her head. They cupped their labia together and 56th brought up some of the food she had only just stored away. Then the three of them caressed and massaged one another. Giving was so pleasant for an ant.

  They had recovered their str
ength but knew they could not stay there indefinitely. They would run out of oxygen. No ant could survive for ever without food, water, air and heat. Without these vital elements, they would eventually fall into a deathly sleep.

  They put their antennae together.

  What shall we do now?

  The cohort of thirty warriors won over to our cause is waiting for us in a room on the fiftieth floor of the basement. Let's go.

  They started to dig again, finding their way by means of their Johnstonian organs, which were sensitive to the Earth's magnetic fields. Logically speaking, they must be somewhere between the granaries of the eighteenth floor of the basement and the mushroom beds of the twentieth floor. However, the lower they went, the colder it got. Night was falling and frost was penetrating deep into the earth. Their movements were slowing down. They finally stopped moving in a digging position and fell asleep while waiting for the temperature to rise.

  'Jonathan, Jonathan, it's me, Lucie.'

  As she went deeper and deeper into a world of shadows, she felt fear creep up on her. The interminable descent down the spiral staircase had finally sent her into a trance and she felt as if she were sinking deeper and deeper inside herself. Her throat had suddenly dried up, she felt a knot in the pit of her stomach, followed by heartburn, and now she had stomach-ache.

  Her knees and feet were still moving automatically Would they soon stop working properly and start hurting too? Would that be the end of her descent?

  Images of her childhood came back to her: her authoritarian mother who favoured her darling brothers and always made her feel guilty . . . And her father, a broken man who was afraid of his wife and agreed with her whenever possible, giving in to her every whim. He had certainly been no hero.

  These painful recollections gave way to a feeling of injustice towards Jonathan. She had reproached him about everything that reminded her of her father, and it was her constant reproaches that had inhibited him, broken him and little by little made him like her father. The cycle had thus begun all over again. Without even realizing it, she had re-created the thing she hated most, the relationship between her father and mother.

  She must break the cycle. She was annoyed with herself for all the abuse she had heaped on her husband. She must make amends.

  She went on turning and descending. Recognizing her own guilt had freed her from the oppressive pain and fear. She was still turning and descending when she almost bumped into a door. It was an ordinary door but it was partly covered with inscriptions she did not stop to read. She turned the handle and the door opened without a sound.

  The staircase continued on the other side. The only notable difference lay in the little veins of ferrous rock which appeared in the stone. The iron took on the hues of red ochre where it mixed with water from an underground stream which had infiltrated the walls.

  She nevertheless felt that she had embarked on a new stage and her torch suddenly lit up bloodstains at her feet. It must have been Ouarzazate’s. The plucky little poodle had got this far, then. There were splashes of blood everywhere but it was difficult to distinguish the traces of blood from the rusted iron on the walls.

  Suddenly she heard a noise, a patter of feet, as if there were creatures walking towards her. The footsteps were nervous, as if the creatures were timid and dared not come too close. She stopped to search the darkness with her torch. When she saw what was making the noise, she let out an inhuman scream. But there, where she stood, no-one was able to hear her.

  Morning came for all Earth s creatures and they began their descent again. When they reached the thirty-sixth floor, 103,683rd thought it would be safe to go out. She knew the area well. The rock-scented warriors could not have followed them that far.

  They emerged into low galleries that were completely deserted. Here and there on either side were holes, old granaries abandoned at least ten hibernations earlier. The ground was sticky. That was why the area had been thought insalubrious and had turned into one of the most ill-famed districts of Bel-o-kan.

  It stank.

  The male and the female did not feel very safe. They could detect hostile presences, antennae spying on them. The area must be full of parasitic insects and squatters.

  They made their way through gloomy rooms and tunnels, their mandibles wide open. A shrill, chirping sound suddenly made them jump. Creak, creak, creak . . . The sounds did not vary in tone but formed a hypnotic dirge reverberating through the mud caverns.

  According to the soldier, it was crickets singing love songs. The male and female were not totally reassured. Things had reached a pretty pass if crickets could flout federal troops in the very heart of the city.

  103,683rd, for her part, was not surprised. Had not the last Mother said, It's better to consolidate your strong points than to try to control everything? This was the result.

  There were other noises, as if someone were digging very fast. Had the rock-scented warriors found them? No. Two paws shot out in front of them, their edges forming a kind of rake. They scooped up the earth and drew it back, propelling along an enormous black body.

  They only hoped it was not a mole.

  All three froze, their mandibles gaping.

  It was a mole, a ball of black fur and white claws in a maelstrom of sand.

  It seemed to be swimming between the layers of sediment like a frog in a lake. They were slapped and tossed and stuck to cakes of clay but they escaped unharmed. The digging machine moved on. It had only been looking for worms. What it liked best was to bite their ganglions, paralyse them and store them live in its burrow.

  The three ants scraped themselves down and went on their way, after again washing themselves methodically.

  When they entered a high, narrow passage, the soldier-guide let out a warning scent and pointed to the ceiling. It was covered in red bugs with black spots. Rove beetles!

  The insects were three heads (nine millimetres) long and looked as if they had angry faces drawn on their backs. They usually fed on the clammy flesh of dead insects and occasionally on that of live ones.

  One of them immediately dropped on the trio but before it could reach the ground, 103,683rd tipped her abdomen under her thorax and shot it with a jet of formic acid. By the time it landed, it had turned into hot jam.

  They hastily ate it, then crossed the room before another of the monsters could fall on them.

  intelligence: I started on the experiments proper in January, 1958. My first topic was intelligence. Are ants intelligent? To find out, I confronted an average-sized, asexual russet ant (Formica rufa) with the following problem. I put a lump of hardened honey at the bottom of a hole and blocked the hole up with a twig. It was not a very heavy twig but it was very long and it was stuck infirmly. The ant would normally have enlarged the hole to get by but it was made in rigid plastic which it could not pierce. Day one: the ant jerked the twig, raised it a little, let it go, then raised it again.

  Day two: as before. The ant also tried to slash the base of the twig but without success.

  Day three: as before. It seemed to have gone off along the wrong line of reasoning and to have persevered in it because it was incapable of imagining any other. This proved its lack of intelligence. Day four: as before. Day five: as before.

  Day six: on waking this morning, I found that the twig had been removed from the hole. It must have happened during the night.

  Edmond Wells, Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge

  The galleries they came to next were partially blocked. The cold, dry earth hung in clumps from the roof, retained by white roots. Occasionally, it broke off and came crashing down. This was known as 'indoor hail'. The only way to protect yourself from it was to be extra vigilant and jump aside at the least scent of a rockfall.

  The three ants moved forward, their abdomens close to the ground, their antennae laid back and their legs wide apart. 103,683rd seemed to know precisely where she was taking them. The ground grew damp again and there was a sickening smell in t
he air. It was the smell of something alive, the smell of an animal.

  327th stopped. He could not be sure but one of the walls seemed to have moved surreptitiously. He went up to the suspicious part of the wall and it trembled again, as if the outline of a mouth were appearing on it. He moved back. This time, it was too small to be a mole. The mouth changed into a spiral and a protuberance formed at its centre, then shot out and threw itself on him.

  The male let out an olfactory scream.

  An earthworm! He severed it with a bite of his mandibles but the walls around them began to ooze with the wriggling creatures. Soon there were so many of them it was like being inside a bird's intestines.

  One of the earthworms decided to wrap itself round the female’s thorax. With a quick snap of the mandibles, she cut it into several sections which snaked off in different directions. Other worms joined in and curled themselves round their legs and heads. They really could not stand it when they touched their antennae. The three of them took aim together and fired acid at the harmless creatures. In the end, the ground was littered with bits of ochre flesh hopping about defiantly.

  They galloped away.

  When they had recovered their wits, 103,683rd showed them a new series of corridors to go down. The further they went, the worse the smell got and the more used to it they became. You can grow accustomed to anything. The soldier pointed to a wall and explained that that was where they had to dig.

  These are the old compost lavatories. The meeting place is just next door. We like to meet here because it's nice and quiet.

  They passed through the wall and came out into a big room smelling of excrement on the other side.

  The thirty soldiers who had rallied to their cause were indeed waiting for them there but you would have had to be good at jigsaw puzzles to talk to them. They were in pieces and their heads were often quite a long way from their thoraxes.