Prophets of the Ghost Ants

by Clark Thomas Carlton

  Before the Dranverites backed away, Anand looked up into the far expanses of the stadium, searching for his father and Terraclon. How soon before he could contact his family?

  Late in the afternoon, a Cajorite soldier arrived at the Dranverites’ camp to inquire of the number attending the impromptu reception that evening. Anand and forty men and women he called his “retainers” would attend, but they were gottallamos, the most skilled troopers in Dranveria. If needed, they could use their hidden weapons to subdue thousands. The gottallamos’ clothing was imperceptible as armor, but it was lined with layers of the thickest wasp-chitin and spider-web cladding. Each gottallamo possessed astonishing reflexes and they were as adept with their feet as they were with their hands.

  Cajorite soldiers brought a train of forty-one undecorated ants to Anand, which he mounted with the gottallamos. The ant train proceeded up what was the occupied side of the mound, the side that was sunny during the day. The Cajorites wanted the barbarians to see all their inhabitants, regardless of the masses’ poverty. Anand was diverted past the shameful midden, but he could see the vague shadows of its refuse peaks in the moonlight. “Mother, Father, I will see you soon,” he thought as the ants crawled toward the peak.

  The journey through so many squalid dwellings was astonishingly ugly and distressed Anand as it never had before. He knew that inside each flimsy shelter was an enormous family starving for food, aching with fatigue, itching with mites and deprived of light. As he looked up the dark mound, he saw the first faint torches in the merchants’ windows and realized how little the Slopeites knew about illuminating the night, even for their richer subjects. The lights were only somewhat brighter as they passed the homes of the soldiers and priests.

  As he neared the top of the mound, Anand remembered being a boy in Cajoria who ached with curiosity to see how the royals lived. At long last, he would enter one of their palaces and see for himself if their splendors fulfilled the fables. His depression lifted when he realized he would engage in deception against the people he hated most. He was still deciding on what to give as his name.

  The ant train pulled into a side tunnel and proceeded in weak light to a chamber that Anand knew was not the Hall of Royal Reception. He was being taken to the lesser Chamber of Mercantilism.

  Before they entered, several of the gottallamos helped Anand moisten his outer cape with a clear solution that ignited the phosphorous dyes of its embroidery. The gottallamos then pulled themselves through the portal to the chamber, tugging sacks in after them. They lined up in two columns and placed hands over their hearts as Anand pulled himself in and stood. He proceeded toward the thrones, wrapped in his robes of glowing tapestries. The luminous threads of silk outlined skillful depictions of the Hall of Peace, Rainbow Lichens, and other marvels of Dranveria.

  At the end of the voluminous room were Trellana and Maleps, seated atop a platform with a hundred and twenty-seven steps, one for each of the mound’s different castes. Anand could see that his robes had shocked the king and queen, disturbed Batra, and sickened Dolgeeno with envy. The Cajorite guards who stood on the steps with readied swords stared in disbelief. Anand knew his miraculous garb reminded all in the chamber that the visitors were from a place of far more powerful magic.

  “King Maleps and Queen Trellana, we offer these humble gifts,” said Anand, who bowed his head, not his body.

  “Do you not kneel before royalty?” scolded Dolgeeno.

  “It is not our custom,” said Anand. He bowed his head again.

  “You know our names, but we do not know yours,” said Trellana.

  “My name is Gwinthuli Hebeth-uk,” Anand said with a smile. In Dranverish, “gwinthuli hebeth-uk” meant “lick my testicles.” In the corner of his eye, Anand saw the gottallamos shifting uneasily, stifling their responses. When Anand ordered them, each emptied his or her sack, each of which contained one magnificent opal, the most desired of all gemstones. The Cajorite royals leaned from their chairs in open awe.

  “If we had more illumination, you would see that each opal was selected for the brilliance of its star,” said Anand.

  “Are you saying we do not have enough light?” asked Maleps.

  Anand was used to the Dranverites’ plentiful indoor lighting. He had not realized the Cajorites had gone to extremes to impress him.

  “Certainly not. We are grateful to find such a wealth of torches. I am saying that one needs the glory of the sun to truly appreciate an opal.”

  “Yes,” said Trellana. “Sun. Do your people worship Lord Sun?” she asked.

  “They are free to worship any god of their choosing.”

  “Do they know of Goddess Ant Queen and Goddess Mantis and Lord Grasshopper?” asked Dolgeeno.

  “We are aware of your entire pantheon. I should like to tell you one thing about my people and our ways. We do not consider it respectful to inquire too deeply of an individual’s religious beliefs . . . or lack thereof.”

  “Religious beliefs?” snarled Dolgeeno. “It is not a matter of beliefs. It is a matter of whether a man fulfills his duty to the One Holy Truth.”

  “Priest, on that point we shall have to disagree. We are a collective of many diverse nations and even more diverse peoples. Though all Dranverites are bound to the same civil code, each is allowed his own religion.”

  “Ridiculous,” muttered Maleps.

  “Sacrilege,” hissed Trellana.

  “You are bound for an afterlife of unimaginable punishments,” said Dolgeeno.

  “Most certainly not,” said Anand. “Some of my countrymen believe their souls never leave the Sand but are invested again in a new being, an unending cycle of rebirth. Others believe that this is their one and only life.”

  “That’s absurd,” said Dolgeeno. “We would take such blasphemers, bathe and throw them to the ants.”

  “You would not be allowed to do so in Dranveria, Pious.”

  “We are allowed to do as we like with our subjects,” said Maleps.

  “No one is subject to anyone else in my home,” said Anand. Each time he responded, he nodded his head in a humble manner. He could not help but grin, for he was having a very good time.

  “How did you enter our queendom without inciting our ants?” asked Batra.

  Anand had hoped he would be asked this question.

  “General, you are not the only nation which has parasitized the leaf-cutter ant.”

  “What?” gasped Trellana. “Parasitized?”

  “Yes, Majesty. We have many colonies of leaf-cutter mounds scattered through our thousand nations.”

  “You could not possibly live among leaf-cutters,” shouted Dolgeeno. “Not without ordained priests and a sorceress descended from Ant Queen.”

  “I assure you we do.”

  “You Dranverites are rather spectacular liars.”

  “The Dranverites are dedicated to the truth, as elusive as that is. And truthfully, Pious, it is Slopeish priests who immerse their people in lies.”

  Anand dropped all courtly pretenses as the rage of years gushed from him. “You know as well as I do that you have no godly magic, Pious, and neither does your queen.”

  Trellana rose.

  “Kill this alien bastard!” she screamed at her guard. Before she could finish her sentence, the gottallamos had aimed their blowguns. Before the royal guards could raise their weapons, the darts had found their marks. Each guardsman slumped to the ground. The gottallamos turned the blowguns on the royals, pulling the next cartridge of the magazine to the barrel. Trellana shrieked and slithered out of her chair.

  “Kill me and you will bring down the wrath of the Collective Dranverish Nations,” shouted Anand. “Hundreds of thousands of my nation’s troops are poised on your borders. They have enough darts to paralyze this entire mound and the rest of the Great Slope.” Anand said this with such conviction that no one but the Dranverites would know he was exaggerating. “If you insist on aggression,” he continued, “we can change our dart’s paralyzin
g sting to something more deadly.”

  Trellana reseated herself. She could not suppress her sniveling.

  “I am a descendent of Ant Queen,” she squeaked. “It is my sacred essence which protects this mound. Without it . . .”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Anand shouted. “Without your piss, the very walls of your tunnels would crumble. What is it that you eat, oh Queen, which gives your urine this quality?”

  Trellana looked to Dolgeeno, who averted his eyes.

  “Do you know? Do you suspect? There are one hundred thousand women in Dranveria whose urine can keep back the Yellow Mold, as long as they eat something that combines to make an anti-fungal. What would it be, Queen?”

  “He’s lying, Trellana,” Dolgeeno said.

  “Search your tongue, Sorceress,” shouted Anand. “The bitter residues of roach eggs reside there still. You are not special, Queen of Cajoria. Hundreds of women in your own queendom have this ability. Your royal brothers and fathers are allowed to rape the lower castes. The daughters of the raped could be as ‘holy’ as you. That is why you teach your subjects to hate and fear the Britasytes and their insects. Your priests don’t want anyone to learn that eating roach eggs is what makes you a holy sorceress.”

  “What do you want?” shouted Maleps, who was on his feet.

  “Let me tell you what we demand. We are aware of the wars you waged on your neighbors. It has resulted in the displacement of the Stink Ant people seeking refuge in our country. You will cease to war on your neighbors, quit your expansion, and will end this gruesome demand for human tribute.”

  “And if we don’t comply?”

  “Then prepare yourselves for confrontation. We recommend that you domesticate a different ant than the leaf-cutter and find something else to feed your people besides mushrooms. Some of you are aware that the fertility of your women is a result of a constant diet of the leaf-cutters’ fungus. That’s why your mounds are burdened with starving masses that you force to settle in other peoples’ lands. Your leaf-cutter ants must stay out of Dranveria and away from the inhabited trees of its Buffer Zone.”

  Trellana looked at Dolgeeno who did not meet her eyes.

  Anand looked around the room and gave a mild snort of derision.

  “My deepest thanks for your hospitality,” he said. “Perhaps someday you will welcome us at the Royal Hall of Reception. We will be returning to Dranveria tomorrow, but before we go, we should like to provide some gifts to the people you call your ‘subjects’ as a token of our good will.”

  “Gifts?” said Maleps.

  “Honey and handcrafts. Harmless items. Enjoy your opals. Good night.”

  Anand turned to part and his capes swirled around him in a gorgeous eddy of lights. As Anand reached the portal, he turned and saw that Dolgeeno was fixed on him, still staring with envy at his cape.

  Trellana sputtered in rage. “We’ll send messengers to the other mounds,” she screamed once Anand had left. “Gather all our armies to crush that flea-spawn and his men!”

  “We can’t do that,” Maleps said. “They’re Dranverites!”

  “So what! We are Slopeites!”

  “You heard what he said. They have an army ten times the size of our own at the border, just waiting for an excuse to attack.”

  “He’s lying.”

  “Let’s not risk that he isn’t. Just look at them,” Maleps said, pointing to the fallen guards spread over the stairs. “Do you want to go through that again?”

  “I didn’t know I was married to a coward.”

  “I’ve known for quite some time that I am married to a half-wit.”

  “If Their Majesties would permit me to advise,” said Batra, interrupting. “I am in command of the army here.”

  “Please,” said Trellana as she glared at Maleps.

  “King Maleps is correct, madame. If we are attacked, then, yes, we should defend ourselves and summon the entire Slope. But we should not wage war on the Dranverites . . . not at this time.”

  “Or any other time,” said Maleps.

  Trellana turned to Dolgeeno who was very still before he turned his eyes to her.

  “We will have our day against the Dranverites,” said the priest. “But it will not be tomorrow.”

  “But you heard that demon!” Trellana screeched. “He’ll be barging in here and luring the people with his gifts in order to fill their ears with trash! We can’t allow this!”

  “We will allow it,” Maleps said. “If we kill him, we’ve invited a retaliation.”

  After some silence, Dolgeeno spoke again. “The preservation of our mound comes first. Let us send out messengers at sunrise and warn the people that the alien bearing gifts is attempting to destroy our peace. We’ll tell them they can accept his offerings but they should reject the poison of his words.”

  The ant train was not waiting in the tunnel for Anand and his guards—they would have to walk back. Anand laughed to himself on the hike down, but was sobered when he passed the midden. Tomorrow he would finally see his family. Were they well? How was Terraclon?

  And tomorrow, if the Cajorites did not gather forces from the nearby mounds for an attack, Anand would attempt to bring the message of The Loose Doctrine to the worker castes of Cajoria.

  But will any of them listen?

  CHAPTER 33

  REUNION

  Trellana looked out the clear quartz viewing window of her bedchamber and thought her prayers had been answered. Lord Grasshopper Himself was crawling up the mound’s main artery in the pink light of dawn. She was sure when He reached the top He would rise up and announce in a thundering voice that He had destroyed the Dranverites for their sacrilege and that order had been restored.

  As His glittering face reached the platform of the uppermost dew station, Grasshopper did not rise up but instead was turned to face downward. As it grew lighter, Trellana realized she’d been looking at the jewel-faced idol the Dranverites had brought to the stadium. The idol was a wagon, like the sort she was carried in during her paralysis and it had been hauled to the top of Cajoria. Perched on a platform near its head was the Dranverish meddler with the unpronounceable name. This morning he was surrounded by a hundred of his faceless guards.

  She fell back on her bed, screaming, sending her servants running in.

  “What’s wrong, Majesty?” one asked. “What can we do?”

  But Trellana could only scream, and as her servants waited nearby, they covered their ears until she was hoarse and exhausted.

  The increased number of gottallamos surrounding Anand wore soothing, priestly robes that cloaked their weapons and six of them encircled him on top of the wagon’s platform. Anand could see mounted Cajorite sentries maintaining a watch on Lick-My-Testicles, but it was from an uneasy distance. Their ants seemed as nervous as they looked.

  Caste restrictions prevented the laborers from entering each other’s quarters by more than three degrees. As a result, Anand would have to make his presentation over thirty times at the descending dew stations. Special paints were on his face that day: a stripe of yellow on the left side, red in the center, and brown on the right.

  The Dranverites made their first appeal to the stream of servants making their way to work. At first some fell to their knees to worship Grasshopper, and listened to Anand, thinking he was a demigod. More reluctant Cajorites approached because they saw the bolts of bright cloth and the wax-jars of honey. Some liked the jewelry of red-ant chitin.

  “I have come to trade,” said Anand through an amplifying cone. “I offer you these items in return for your ears. Cajorites, you have heard of Bee-Jor, a land of flowing honey where no one has to labor.” He saw hope in their faces at the mention of the mythical paradise.

  “Bee-Jor may not exist, but I come from a land of flowing honey, a place known as the Dranverite Collective Nations,” Anand said as he opened his cape to display images of the City of Peace. “Cajoria and all other mounds of the Slope could be places where honey is free and plentiful, too.�
�� On this cue, the gottallamos tossed jars of honey to the crowd. They were listening now, hushing those in the back.

  “Men and women everywhere must work, but they should be rewarded for their labors with ample food, warm clothing, comfortable shelters, and potions from healers when they are sick. This must be the birthright of all humans. No one’s labors should rob one of eyesight or limbs or leave them so fatigued they are sickly. All should have rest from their labors and time to spend in pleasures. And all should have the right to seek their own destinies, to be rewarded for their own efforts.”

  Anand looked out at the Slopeish sentries who were huddling among their ants to whisper. They still seemed more abashed then threatening.

  “I come from a place where there are no castes, where men and women choose their work based on their abilities and desires. We have no nobles who live off the labor of others. We choose our leaders, and if they fail us, we are free to choose again. For all your lives, your priests have lied to you and said that you will spend an eternity being tortured in the Netherworld if you do not carry out the duties of your caste.”

  The crowd stared at him, terrorized and intrigued. The question was clear on their faces: Priests who lie?

  “Yes—lies. You have also been lied to about the roles the gods play in your lives, made to believe the royals are something more than humans like yourselves. The royals sustain their privilege by keeping you in fear of their gods. The thing is, these gods are nothing more than the wood or stone they are carved from. One day you must challenge the nobles and reclaim what is yours. The brown-skinned people were here first. It was the yellow-skinned people who stole this land and enslaved your ancestors.”

  Anand was in a state of ecstatic concentration as he shouted his next words. “You have been told that, just as the ants have castes, so must humans. Listen to me now . . . these are the designs of the Slopeish priests, not the gods. Know this about the land of Dranveria: anyone of any color has the same privileges. The leader of my great and rich nation is a woman and her face is as brown as damp earth.”