Prophets of the Ghost Ants

by Clark Thomas Carlton

  Anand shook his head. “Unless the priests decree it, no one will listen.”

  “We want them to stop listening to priests.”

  Dwan got up and looked at Anand before he covered the torches for the night. “We gain much from contact with other civilizations, but we do not sustain relations with any nation that abuses its people. If you choose not to return to Cajoria, we will send another emissary once we have mastered your language. Good night, Anand.”

  As exhausted as he was, Anand could not sleep that night as fantasies raced in his mind. He saw himself on a finely appointed riding ant, surrounded by a dazzling entourage. His brown skin would be concealed by a fine gold-powder and his perfume would waft through the royal chambers. Trellana, Sahdrin, and Queen Polexima would extend the most glorious of welcomes . . . to the son of a roach woman and a shit-scraper!

  CHAPTER 31

  MASTERING THE LOCUST

  When Anand looked in a mirror, he was in mild disbelief that the strong and confident man looking back at him was none other than himself. He had always been the best-fed boy in the midden and in the last months, he had eaten nutritious foods that further aided his growth. His voice had deepened, his beard grew thick, and he never again assumed the stoop of the low castes but stood with a fierceness that accentuated the width of his back and the narrow contours of his waist. In the fashion of the Dranverish military, he wore tight clothing that accentuated his musculature. An unexpected consequence of wearing body paint for months was that his skin had become lighter. No one in Cajoria would ever recognize this tall and imposing figure as one of their own.

  Anand was grateful to the Dranverites for showing him a thousand other worlds as well as a world of possibilities—and for that he was committed to the scholars in their passion to document his knowledge. But he knew, like others who chose soldiering as a career, that he had a lust for battle that went beyond reading about it in books. He yearned for the chance to fulfill the vision he had seen in a dream: to fight atop an ant for glory. He spent more and more time with troopers and imitated their ways but when he inquired as to how to become one of them, he was always politely discouraged.

  “Am I not a Dranverish citizen?” he asked one night at the evening meal.

  “You are,” said Belja as Anand unrolled pages from a scroll.

  “And is it not the right of every Dranverish citizen of sound mind and body to serve in its military?” asked Anand while reading exactly that from a page. Dwan grinned and pinched him under the table.

  Belja was quiet. “How old are you?” she asked.

  “I have seen eighteen summers,” Anand lied.

  Belja was lost in thought as she sucked lymph out of a spider leg. “I shall speak with the Learned Elders,” she said.

  The following day Anand struck a deal that promised all his evenings to the inquiries of the scholars in return for permission to train as a trooper in the Dranverish National Defense during the day. With Belja’s reluctance, he was sent to a training camp atop the towering rock-formation known as Rainbow Lichens.

  Anand eased into military life. He found its rigors exciting and its austerities comforting. He was quick to learn the crossbow and the blowgun and was adept at operating the Dranverites’ war devices. Though he was good with a sword and shield, he was frustrated by challengers in the mock battles who had the privilege of training with them since childhood. He gorged on books of history, ethics, and comparative religions in addition to the required text, The Dissection of Magic and Other Superstitions. But military science was his favorite subject. He marveled at the Dranverites’ creative responses to each new enemy, their absorption of superior techniques and their dedication to minimizing casualties on both sides.

  A few moons later, Belja was reviewing the new graduates. “I’m not surprised to see you here—well ahead of schedule,” she said to Anand.

  “I didn’t have to undergo the Living Death again,” he said. She smiled, then informed the fledgling troops of a recent conflict in the east. She was reluctant to send Anand into battle, but it was not the Dranverish way to renege on agreements. The following day Anand went off to his first armed conflict in a new suit of armor with sharpened weapons.

  A fortnight later, Anand felt his hands shaking as he steered his ant into formation. Fear gave way to excitement as the troopers reached the troubled area. The campaign was against a clan of raiding Aphid Milkers who wandered down from their thorn shrubs. The Milkers had been stealing goods and food and abducting women from Dranverish pond settlements while their men were in floating vessels, hunting the strange, water-breathing creatures known as fish.

  A locust-scout alerted the troopers to an imminent attack by the Aphid Milkers at a settlement farther north where fishermen had returned to shore with a catch of the limbless, oily creatures. Anand’s division was called forward and they rode their ants under pickerel weeds towards the pond’s edge. Anand’s captain signaled them to wait in the shade where they remained hidden but able to view the fishermen. They were gutting the fish and scraping the hard, translucent plates from their skins which sent up a strong smell in the air, a lure for the Aphid Milkers.

  Anand’s heart was thumping when he saw the Milkers emerge by the hundreds from out of the rushes. The raiders had no mounts, but they wielded bows and arrows as well as maces and slings, and all of them made a trilling howl that pierced the ear. They were abruptly silenced when the “fishermen” raised up blowguns from around their chests and targeted them with darts. Half of the raiders fell to the ground while those in the back shot arrows which lodged in the fishermen’s hidden armor. The raiders attempted to turn and retreat when they encountered mounted Dranverish troopers weaving through the rushes. The raiders ran south towards Anand and his division who rushed to attack. Anand urged his ant forward and used his shield to collect the first of an enemy’s flying arrows. He smiled to himself. At last, a battle!

  As he had always suspected, war was what he was created for. His joy rose to higher heights each time the darts of his blowgun found their targets. He no longer considered his enemies’ torment as they fell to the Living Death, but lusted to bring down more. The standing Milkers were weaving through the pickerel weeds and back to their thorn bushes. Anand’s division pursued the last of them when they reached a thorn shrub and crawled up the ladders on its stems. His captain raised her helmet and twisted it as a signal to make a vertical pursuit. Anand hooked himself to the horn of his ant’s saddle as she went vertical to chase the climbing raiders.

  Anand targeted the man furiously climbing above him who dropped from the ladder and fell to the ground. When the last of the raiders had been subdued, Anand went to retrieve his target and saw he had downed what must be the tribal elder. He wore a spectacular jewel on his forehead, a purple amethyst with an inner cloud of white quartz. Anand looked both ways, pulled off the jewel and stuffed it in his backsack. One day, he would present it to Daveena. As duty bound him, he examined the man to make sure he was positioned to breathe freely and not folded upon his limbs.

  The man was not breathing at all. When Anand lifted him, his head fell too far back. Upon further examination, it was clear that his neck had crashed on the edge of a sharp pebble that snapped it in a fatal break.

  Anand was ashamed of his previous joys. Here was the real face of war, the corpse of a man who was a chieftain. He was a raider but he was also someone’s son or brother, father or husband, and those who survived him would live without him all their days.

  On the return from the campaign, Anand joined Dwan and the scholars in their wagon. Though they exonerated him of any misconduct, they seemed strangely unsympathetic to his misgivings about the dead chieftain. Later, they were short in their answers to his questions and initiated no conversation. Unused to their silence, Anand concentrated on his books or stared out of the wagon at the scrubby landscape.

  As the Dranverites finished their defensive measure, so did the Slopeites complete their wars on their neigh
bors. Caught by surprise, the Seed Eaters’ Emperor ordered the abandonment of the mound of Xixict. Its inhabitants fled into the country of the Stink Ant people, displacing its inhabitants who took refuge in Dranveria’s Buffer Zone, drawing the Dranverites into the conflict.

  In the West, the Carpenter People in their border colony of Eth were even more vulnerable to a sudden attack. The Slopeites did not want their land, which had few leafy trees and was seen as unfit. What they brought back were thousands of men for a blood sacrifice to Mantis. They sent a demand to Emperor Sinsora in his tree stump capital of Gemurfa that a thousand of his subjects should be sent as human tribute each new moon to be sacrificed to the Slopeish gods. Sinsora agreed, but consulted his priests of the Beetle God to divine the time of retaliation. One priest tore out his eyeball, and as he staggered in pain screamed, “We must wait for an enemy to bring us victory.”

  Two moons after their return to the City of Peace, Dwan woke Anand and said they were to bathe and dress in proper attire for a meeting with the People’s Agent, the elected official who presided over all Dranverites. They would also meet the Council of Rulers, the five men and women who governed the united city-states. Anand was painted in yellow-and-black bee stripes and Dwan was shimmering in an iridescent blue-and-white cloud pattern. Both were wearing new cloaks and boots and the uniforms of government service.

  Anand was nervous to meet the Council and the People’s Agent at the Great Hall of Peace, a building erected from shattered pieces of what had been the Holy Rock. Flecks of pink quartz were used as currency in all nations, but this was a building made from blocks of it. Its vaulted ceiling was as high as a berry bush and its interior was flooded with an unreal and rosy light.

  Anand had expected to meet with six men and women that day, but when he walked into the Chamber of the Peoples, thousands rose to their feet to applaud, and it poured into his ears like a pleasant rain shower.

  “They’re clapping for me!” Anand said to Dwan, who coyly smiled as they headed for the dais. He watched as Anand waved.

  “Actually, Anand, they’re applauding me,” Dwan shouted in Anand’s ear.

  “Oh.” Anand felt himself blush under his paint. “Why are they applauding you?”

  “Because I’m the one who picked you.”

  “Who are all these people?”

  “The elected representatives of every population center of Dranveria.”

  Anand and Dwan sat behind cones to amplify their voices. Across from them on a raised platform were the Council and the People’s Agent. Bound to her chin with a strap was a ceremonial beard of the five colors of the collective nations. Just below the platform were scribes at desks who recorded every word.

  “Welcome, Dwan, beloved citizen and trooper of Dranveria,” shouted the People’s Agent. “Welcome, Anand, son of two tribes and new citizen and trooper.”

  “Thank you,” Anand said.

  The People’s Agent left her chair and hobbled on a cane to Anand. She bowed her head to him, then spoke into an amplifying cone.

  “We thank you, Anand. We have learned much from you about the Slopeish peoples. We are greatly indebted, for after life itself, we hold knowledge to be the most precious of things.”

  “I have learned far more from the Dranverites. I have been given new eyes and seen a world of possibilities.”

  The Agent nodded approvingly. “Anand . . . we understand that the Cajorites treated you poorly. Do you wish ill on them? On all the Slopeites?”

  Anand grimaced. “I wish knowledge upon them, a complete reformation. Among the Slopeites are my father, who I love . . . and one friend.”

  “Your other tribe is the Britasytes, of whom we know much already. Is it not true that the Britasytes are allowed to steal from those they believe are not descended from their own god, Madricanth? That Britasytes who steal from Slopeites and other tribes are celebrated for their crimes?”

  Anand was silent for a moment. “That is true,” he said, “but if you knew the Slopeites, their cruelty, their thirst for blood . . .”

  “Would Britasytes be allowed to steal from us? We have only one account of Britasyte life. We wish to verify our knowledge.”

  Anand nodded his head. “We . . . we . . .”

  He stopped to clear his throat, aware of a heavy silence.

  “We Britasytes believe our god permits us to take from his lesser creations.”

  “Lesser creations. Indeed.”

  Everyone laughed but it was more of a murmuring snigger. The Agent held up her hand to quiet them. A page appeared with a plain box and presented it to Anand. He opened it to see the tourmaline he had taken from the Aphid Milkers’ chieftain.

  “Do you recognize this?” asked the Agent, getting closer to Anand. He looked into her eyes, cloudy with age, and realized she had little sight. Anand looked at Dwan. He did not avert Anand’s gaze, but stared steadfast.

  “Yes.”

  “You stole this?” asked the Agent.

  “I . . . I didn’t take it for myself.”

  “You stole it for another?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you did steal it.”

  “Yes.”

  The Agent hobbled back to her chair, which took some time. Whispers rolled through the chamber.

  “Stealing is never allowed in the Dranverite nations,” she shouted through the cone. “How can we expect moral behavior from our neighbors if we engage in transgressions against them? Until further notice, you are suspended from all duties in the National Defense. Do you wish to make amends?”

  Anand gulped. He felt the eyes around him like a soaked blanket on a cold evening. “I do,” he choked out.

  “How will you do so?”

  “I will return what I stole.”

  “That’s a good start. We have initiated something like a treaty with the inhabitants of the Thorn Shrub People, also known as Aphid Milkers, who are expecting the tourmaline’s return. They remain quite hostile to others outside their tribe and at this time are uninterested in an exchange of ideas. We have invited one of them to stay with us, as we invited you, in hopes of learning more about his people and their language.”

  The Agent looked hard at Anand, coming closer to look into his face. She lifted a stemmed panel of quartz to her eyes and stared as if she might see inside him.

  “We have invested a great deal of time and effort in you, Anand, to be our emissary to the Slope. Not all of us are convinced you are ready for this mission—or might ever be.”

  “I have made a mistake,” Anand said. “I have violated the code of the Defense as well as the laws of Dranveria. I have tried to excuse my poor behavior as a result of my tribal indoctrination.”

  “Fine words,” said the People’s Agent. “We want to put our trust in you, Anand. The peace and safety of nations are at stake in this mission, as well as the potential uplift of millions. Are you the one we can trust to fulfill this objective?”

  “I am,” said Anand. “It is my only mission. It would be the greatest fulfillment of my life.”

  Anand had not known how true that was until he had said it.

  “Our message may ignite turmoil among the Slopeish masses. It may do little or nothing to relieve them from the tyranny you have described. Is this still a message you want to deliver?”

  “Yes,” Anand said. “A thousand times, yes.”

  She paused and fingered her beard.

  “It will not be a mission without danger. You could lose your life.”

  “I would gladly risk my life to liberate the Slope from suffering and darkness.”

  She was quiet a moment before speaking. She turned to the Council who were nodding.

  “Before you return, we recommend that you learn all you can about the ranching of leaf-cutter ants. From what you have told us of the Slopeites, their priests and royals wrap this discipline in a veil of superstitions to preserve their own powers.”

  “Gladly, yes,” said Anand. “I will learn all I can. I have on
e request to make before returning the tourmaline.”

  “Yes?”

  “I wish to become a locust pilot.”

  Everyone laughed. Dwan tried not to.

  “My dear sir, you have been suspended from military duty. You will not learn to ride a locust.”

  “Not at government expense,” said Anand. “But there are private pilots, yes?”

  “There are.”

  “I do have some wage credits from my time in the Defense. I’d like to spend them learning to fly. And for my first lesson, I wish to take the tourmaline back to the Thorn Shrub people. I could do this . . . tomorrow.”

  The Agent looked to the Council, who nodded their agreement.

  “Very well, Anand,” said the agent with the slightest chortle in her voice. “Rise, citizens. This is Anand, bearer of The Loose Doctrine of Dranveria to the people of the Slope.”

  Thousands of representatives in red costumes of every settlement in Dranveria rose to their feet to applaud. Anand looked at Dwan, who was smiling again for the first time since the stealing of the tourmaline.

  “This time they’re applauding me,” Anand said.

  “And so do I,” said Dwan and clapped.

  The following morning Anand hitched a ride on a red hunter ant who brought him close to a private airfield on the edge of the City of Peace. He checked his backsack to make sure that the stiff paper certificates that amounted to eight hundred wage credits were still inside it with the tourmaline. Surrounding a paved clearing were rows of roomy cages filled with molting nymphs. Next to these were crowded cages where adult insects transformed from green grasshoppers to blue locusts with shorter antennae and a greater capacity for flight and steering.

  “That will be four hundred,” said Lentop, the airfield’s operator, a man of about fifty summers with a handsome but weathered face. His complex wrinkles reminded Anand of the map he had brought with him and its coordinates. As Anand surrendered four of the certificates, he pondered all the good food and drink he might have bought with them. He had known feasting . . . but he had never known flight.