Prophets of the Ghost Ants

by Clark Thomas Carlton

  I can do without for this chance.

  “Is this your first time on a flyer?” Lentop asked, as they entered a smaller launching cage where a locust had been fitted with reins. Anand was taken with the insect’s startling blue eyes and its splendidly mottled body.

  “Yes,” said Anand. “But I know how to ride two kinds of ants as well as grass roaches.”

  “That won’t help you much here. Locusts are much trickier to ride but much more fun. I do need you to sign something.”

  “Yes?” said Anand as he was handed a stiff sheet of paper and a stylus.

  “Signing this means you acknowledge the dangers of locust flight and hold no one other than yourself accountable for what may happen to you.”

  “What might happen?”

  “You could fall. You could get thrown. If you are high enough and land on the wrong surface, you could plummet to your death. If you do get thrown, it might take you days to walk home if you can’t hitch a ride in a trunk-trail. Other than surveillance, this is why locusts have little use in our military.”

  “Were you in the Defense, sir?”

  “Yes. All our pilots served in the military.”

  Anand was using the stylus to scratch his name into the bottom of the sheet when he heard the smaller of the two gates swing open.

  “Your teacher’s here,” said Lentop. “My daughter, Jidla.”

  Anand turned and his breath was stolen from him. Jidla walked slowly towards him, wrapped tight in pilot’s gear. She was terrifyingly beautiful with round, voluptuous thighs and the tiniest waist. Her lips were thick and fruit-juicy and parted into an intoxicating smile that revealed sparkling teeth. As skin paint she wore deep violet with spatters of yellow stars. Why am I afraid of her? Anand asked himself.

  “Let’s get you some gear,” she said, pointing Anand towards the back wall where she helped him select the hooked boots, paneled suit, tight cap, mouth prod, and the scented gloves he would need.

  “This is . . . where . . . where we are . . . going,” he managed to get out of his mouth as he handed her the map and its circled destination. She glanced at the map as he dressed but he was sure she was looking over it to study his naked body. When he was dressed, he turned to face her and she looked approvingly at him, smiling as she cocked her head.

  “You won’t be able to dismount until noon,” she said. “Are you ready?”

  “I am,” Anand responded, trying not to stare. Her eyelashes looked long enough to tickle his own.

  “You are just to ride today, to observe and ask questions,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Anand. He was lost in her blue eyes, which seemed like pieces of the sky they would be flying in. Her beauty was so intense it was painful, but he did not want to stop the pain. As she crawled up the leg of the locust, he looked up at the muscles of her haunches as they shifted in a way that made his heart beat even faster. He was more excited than the first time he had seen Daveena, but with this woman he had no sense of an unalterable destiny.

  Daveena! Inside him now was a pain that he did want to end. He longed for Daveena, felt hurt for her, was deeply worried for her well-being. He never imagined he could be drawn to someone else until this elegant creature walked into a cage and cast the spell of a sorceress. When Anand climbed onto the saddle, he hooked a short rope from his chest plate to Jidla’s armor.

  “Grab my waist,” she commanded. It was the one part of her that was naked and her skin was as warm as a sun-bathed rock. Anand marveled that he could ring her waist with his hands. The connection between them was a radiant magic she acknowledged by smiling coyly over her shoulder.

  Lentop opened the larger gate and the locust leapt out and up. Anand lost his breath, felt punched in the stomach, and his vision darkened as his head swelled with blood. As the locust climbed up air, his discomfort was displaced by a pounding excitement and an uncontrollable need to laugh.

  The sun poked through patchy clouds and lent a dramatic illumination to the ground. Jidla blocked Anand’s front view, and the locust’s wings blurred his view from below. What he could see confused his senses and unspooled before him like a music for the eyes or a streaming drink of a hundred thousand flavors.

  Stopping was a more difficult process than taking off. Jidla released the antennae and cupped the locust’s eyes with her hands when she sighted the thorn bush dwellings of the Aphid Milkers. Sometimes locusts suddenly plummeted and fell on their sides before righting themselves. This time the landing was a good one on a large patch of sand the Milkers had stained with orange leaf dye as the area to leave their sacred jewel. Anand looked around, fearful of an ambush, then set down the tourmaline before remounting.

  The return ride was less fluid. The locust made several stops to rest and landed on plants at an angle that was not comfortable for Anand or Jidla. She prodded the flyer by rubbing the scents of her thumbs on the stumps of the antennae. The locust responded with a combination of jumps and short glides that were jarring. As it grew dark, the locust was even less cooperative. They were nearing the capital when the locust landed on a large and deep-throated gloxinia flower. The flower was a rich red and its surface was a seductive velvet that demanded exploration.

  “I’m afraid we have to dismount and let this locust go,” Jidla said, holding Anand’s gaze too long. They removed the reins, and dropped to the flower. The locust buzzed off.

  “What was the problem?” Anand asked as he stood and found his balance on the flower bobbing in a breeze. Even as his limbs ached, he was fixated by this woman’s mouth and the way her fitted armor accentuated the winsome slope of her hips.

  “It’s night too soon because of the clouds. Locusts don’t fly in the dark. Besides, I’ve been feeling something of yours in the small of my back all day,” she said, scolding. Anand felt hot under his paint.

  “I . . . I’m sorry . . . I . . .”

  “Don’t apologize. It’s just that I’d prefer to feel it someplace else.”

  “I’m betrothed to another,” he said.

  “But you are not yet married.”

  “I have never done it,” he finally admitted.

  “Then I shall have to give you those lessons as well.”

  “But . . . my betrothed . . .”

  “Your betrothed wouldn’t want an inexperienced man, would she? Don’t you owe it to her to be the best of all lovers?” Jidla pulled off her cap and revealed a mass of thick, ginger hair. Anand felt drunk as he watched her shake it out, then pull it behind her ears as she thrust out her breasts.

  “If you are at all hesitant, Anand, then, no—we should not do this. Forcing anyone into sex is against everything we Dranverites stand for.”

  He looked at her and tried to slow his deep, rapid breaths.

  “I want to,” he said.

  “Are you sure?’

  “Right now it’s all I want.”

  “I can see that.”

  They crawled to the satiny throat of the flower. He felt a rush of heat as his hands started at her back, then slid down to grasp what had bewitched him all day. Their mouths pressed in a tongue-clash. He watched as she pulled away, removed her armor, then reached inside one of its panels for a capsule of pollen from the satchu flower.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “A contraceptive,” she said, smearing it inside her. “I’ve no wish to bear your child. Would you like to take your suit off?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. His tumescence had made it painful to wear anything about his middle.

  That day, Anand had questioned if there was anything better than flying. Inside the gloxinia, he had found his answer. With Jidla in his arms, he relaxed and told her of his coming mission, of his worries, and all about Daveena — which did not rouse anything like jealousy.

  “I’ll have to tell her about you,” he said. “That will be difficult for her.”

  “I hope not,” Jidla said. “In Dranveria, we honor the ideal of fidelity between one man and one woman. But w
e recognize this is impossible for most people. Perhaps your Daveena is involved with someone on a temporary basis. Maybe you will need to forgive her.”

  “Never! It would mean her ruin!”

  “So it’s like that, is it? Something tells me your roach tribe allows a man more than one wife, but not the other way around.”

  “Well, of course! For one thing it’s a man’s obligation to marry his brother’s widow . . . if they both desire.”

  “But a woman would not marry her dead sister’s husband, I would guess, and have two men.”

  “Two women with one man would be impossible! They would kill each other!”

  Jidla chuckled to herself. “You strike me as an extraordinary young man, but you’ve got so much to learn.”

  Anand was quiet a moment, savoring the warmth between them as they nestled. “Jidla, do you think they’ll let me fly a locust back to Cajoria?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “Why not? It would make the best impression—arriving on a bright blue locust, in a magnificent robe of deep red, with a satchel full of matchless gifts for the royals.”

  “Anand, I’m sure they have very different ideas about your return,” she said, her fingers tracing the sweaty trail of hair that started at his navel. “It will be far more spectacular than anything you have ever imagined.”

  And before Anand could start his reimagining, they entered into a second vigorous coupling.

  CHAPTER 32

  A MOST UNWELCOME SURPRISE

  Moons after the pioneers’ repulsion from Dranveria, Sahdrin’s ailments had grown worse. He had withdrawn from public life and was given the title of “King Father” so that Maleps and Trellana could rule. Trellana was swelling in two ways: with a heightened arrogance as queen of the Slope’s most powerful mound and with her first pregnancy. About the mound flew lacy banners that reminded the people of the imminent arrival. While the upper castes indulged in feasts celebrating the next generation of royals, the lower castes prepared for a winter famine.

  Trellana’s greatest discomfort came with the holding of her water before her visits to the ant queen. It had become even more difficult now that she was urinating for the three or four others inside her. Pious Frinbo accompanied her most days as Dolgeeno was often at Venaris where he waged a campaign to succeed the faltering Pious Ennochenzo as the Ultimate Holiness of the Great Slope.

  It was a rainy autumn morning when Trellana appeared before the ant queen and the drop she left behind was larger than usual. At last, her water had broken. After laboring for three days, Trellana gave birth to two boys and two girls. The girls did not survive the sting. The first boy to appear was named Sahdrin the 87th. A celebration was arranged with a spectacle at the stadium for the people. Many far-flung visitors were planning to attend.

  Some of them were not invited.

  Trellana and Maleps sat on the Mushroom Thrones with their new sons as they watched the entertainments at the stadium. Recently returned from Venaris, Dolgeeno sat next to them, fingering a garnet necklace with matching ear bobs which Trellana regarded with an envious appreciation.

  Set on the arena were towering flesh-eating plants growing in basins. As priests uttered prayers to Mantis, the sides of a great cage were pulled apart to reveal the thousand humans sent as tribute. Ants swarmed over the field to attack the Carpenter people stinking of beetles. They were simpletons, the weak, and the old, and some were likely criminals or captives from the Carpenter’s western enemy, the League of Velvet Ant Peoples.

  The weak and old were destroyed in a moment. Those who were able tried to climb up the flesh-eating plants but the ants followed after them. The first ants to reach the top slashed at the victims until they bled to death. Other sacrifices jumped and fell in the throats of the flesh-eating plants causing their spiky lids to snap shut around them. The victims screamed as the acid made their skin a sizzling pulp before they bled to death.

  As usual, Cajorite criminals who had defied caste restrictions were hauled out as the second of the blood diversions. Their crimes were being described when a distant buzzing grew in volume and drowned out the voices. The buzzing grew louder and panic spread when the people looked up and saw a spiral of flying insects.

  The spiral lowered over the stadium like a great wheel. A sudden rain of something pelted the Cajorites, and they realized it was wrapped aphid-taffy in all the colors of the rainbow. The people were stunned to see that the insects were mottled blue locusts and seated at the back of their heads were human riders with rippling capes. As the locusts continued to spiral downward, their pilots released powders of brilliant hues. A few Cajorites dared to ooh and ahh but the priests shook with fright. Was it gods or demons descending? Should they run or fall to their knees?

  Unable to take their eyes from the locusts, the Cajorites did not realize a procession had entered the open side of the stadium in the north. Weevils hauled festive coach-sleds covered in petals of chrysanthemums, the last flowers before winter.

  Soldiers grouped for an attack when the riders of the weevils unrolled white banners with paintings of a downward palm, a signal of peaceful approach. Leaf-cutters ran to the weevils and human invaders to antennate them. The ants crawled onto the foreign coaches, and strangely, identified all the invaders as kin. Instead of attacking the invaders, the ants escorted them in.

  Those who had been pioneers in Dranveria were in sudden fear at the sight of the weevils and the humans on top of them, for the latter were suited in red armor. Very prominent in the invaders’ hands were Dranverish blowguns held at the ready.

  “Dranverites!” went up the cry as the masses broke castes and scattered to escape. The weevils and coaches continued a slow, majestic approach as chaos reigned in the stadium. Cajorite arrows flew at the invaders and skidded off or broke on their impenetrable red armor.

  “You are not under attack!” shouted a boy-man through a grand amplifying-cone as he raised his visor. “We are friends come to offer this humble gift.” He was seated on a great and golden throne atop the largest coach. His voice was nearly lost in the panic, but the hatch of his coach opened to reveal a giant, pink face. An enormous idol rolled out with a smiling visage familiar to all Cajorites: Grasshopper, God of Prosperity, in the crouching position. The statue was studded with more gold pyrite than had ever been amassed in Cajoria with a face rendered in pink quartz. The crowd was silenced and knelt to the idol loved by all. Those who were running returned to worship.

  The man-boy walked to the middle of the arena on stilts, trailing a garment with twenty trains in different shades of red. General Batra raised the back of his hand to the military as a signal to relax their bows.

  Anand turned on his stilts in the direction of Queen Trellana and King Maleps and bowed to them. “Greetings, Your Majesties,” he shouted, “from the Dranverite Collective Nations and United Peoples. We beg your forgiveness for this intrusion and request an audience.”

  After some time, Trellana and Maleps descended from their thrones and conferred with Dolgeeno and Batra. Nothing like this had happened in centuries—members of an alien nation had intruded and deflected an ant attack!

  Anand waited on the sand, shifting on his stilts, determined to calm his nerves. He reminded himself that if the Cajorites renewed their attack, he was backed up by thousands who were well-stocked with darts and other weapons. In deference to the Slopeites, he wore a bright yellow miter of grasshopper chitin, and around his neck was a spectacular amulet of the purest turquoise. Batra broke from the others to approach.

  “What do you want?” the general asked, looking up at Anand, his fingers near his sword as he jutted his cube-shaped chin.

  “Peace,” said Anand with a slight bow, “and some contact between our governments. We extend our sincerest apologies for the incident of a year ago. This is what we describe as a diplomatic mission. All of the most advanced nations on our borders have engaged in such missions for generations.”

  Batra snorted
. “Are you suggesting we are anything less than the most advanced nation? This is Cajoria, grandest mound of the Great and Holy Slope.”

  “General, respectfully, I submit that it is time your advanced nation and ours create some channel in order to avoid further incidents.”

  Anand attempted to use terms and phrasings of the upper castes and was imitating the accent of Dranverites, since his low-caste inflections would render him as Batra’s inferior.

  “Are you a defector from the Slope?” Batra asked.

  “I am not,” said Anand. I am a member of the Britasyte Roach Tribe, he thought. “We would be most honored if you and your Royal Majesties would join us for a repast of Dranverish delicacies,” Anand said. “We should also like to present them with some gifts.”

  “From which caste are you descended? We do not wish to expose ourselves to the polluted.”

  “In Dranveria, we have no castes,” said Anand who tried not to smile when Batra flinched. The general left again and conferred with the priests and royals.

  The crowd was noisy with rumors and speculations as Batra returned. “It would be unseemly for our royalty to visit your camp,” he said. “If you wish an audience, you will be welcome to dine with us in the royal chambers. We will retrieve you at the appropriate time.”

  “We are most grateful,” said Anand, nodding his head low enough to conceal his grin. “My religion does not permit me to enjoy the fabled dishes of Cajoria. You will forgive me if I bring my own food and plates?”

  Anand guessed from Batra’s silence that he had foiled his plot to poison him.

  “Perhaps we should forgo dining. If you will remove your party from the arena, we need to continue with our festivities today.”

  “Pardon our intrusion,” Anand said, glad to part. He had no desire to watch the execution of the caste-defilers. Part of him had hoped that the Cajorites would rebuff him. Then he could leave after making a blunt warning about further intrusions into the Buffer Zone.