Under the Sea

by Mark Leidner

  Rxgr-14 took a moment to imagine it, then said breathlessly, “Who?”

  “Szafair-2.”

  Rxgr-14 thought, then shook his head. “Doesn’t ring a bell.” Then he said, “What’d you two do?”

  “Had a drink,” Lnzt-16 said. “Walked the long way around the reservoir. Showed her a few of your tunnels. She was impressed.” Lnzt-16 tapped his head with his forward feeler. “Told her I knew more about tunneling than the average executioner.” He smiled. “Due to the informal tutelage of my exceptionally talented drinking comrade. And then I told her your name.”

  Rxgr-14’s eyes clicked in awe that Lnzt-16 would mention him. Then he shook his head incredulously. “Educated. Modest. Sincere. Comfortable mixing among classes. And you even managed work in that you liked to party. Well done, mon frère.”

  Lnzt-16 offered his friend a self-assured smile, practically basking in Rxgr-14’s astute admiration. “Indeed,” was all he said. Then he seemed to remember his point, and he leaned forward while casting a cautious glance across the other imbibers in Avern-Y6. “But it’s what happened next that you’ve got to keep real, real quiet.”

  “You interlocked mandibles with a royal?”

  “Shhhh, no. Not even I’m that uncouth, mon frère. Not on the first date. No, we did something even more dangerous, even more forbidden.” He paused, then added, “Even more spectacular.”

  Rxgr-14 was rapt, and Lnzt-16 milked it.

  “Well, spit it out,” Rxgr-14 said. Then he glanced over Lnzt-16’s shoulder and said in a lower voice, “Tzara-9 will be here any minute.”

  The expression on Lnzt-16’s face changed from bemusement to concern, then he nodded curtly. It was an open secret that Tzara-9 was in love with Lnzt-16. Rxgr-14 suspected that Tzara-9 and Lnzt-16 had interlocked mandibles, but he’d never asked about it directly because he hadn’t wanted to know.

  “Before I tell you what we did,” Lnzt-16 began conspiratorially, “I need to describe for you her wings.”

  Rxgr-14 leaned in.

  “They were huge, but you wouldn’t have known it. Unlike your typical aristocrat flaunting their flappers every chance they can to keep you supremely aware of who you are and who you are not, Szafair-2 had hers tucked in behind her back. I didn’t even know she had royal blood at first. You know what I’m saying?”

  “How do you know how big they were if they were tucked in behind her back?”

  Lnzt-16 paused dramatically before he said, “Because she unfurled them for me when we flew.”

  Rxgr-14 stared at his friend for a moment. Then he said, “Yeah, right.”

  “I swear! She lifted me off the ground, and then we flew around, and I saw the world, the whole world, from a point of view that was far above it, my friend.”

  “Where?”

  Lnzt-16 just stared at him.

  Rxgr-14 thought about it, then seemed to figure it out. “The reservoir?” he asked disappointedly. “You don’t even need wings to jump that thing.”

  Lnzt-16 shook his head, then inclined it.

  Both of them gazed up at the ceiling again, but in his mind’s eye, Rxgr-14 passed through the ceiling and imagined the tunnels directly above it. He didn’t have to work very hard to visualize them, for in his mind was a map of every passageway in the colony, and he followed them all the way up as far as they went.

  “You were outside,” he said.

  “And it was beautiful,” Lnzt-16 confirmed.

  “In the sky?” Rxgr-14 asked in disbelief.

  Lnzt-16 nodded. Then he spread his feelers and closed his eyes and swayed slightly, speaking meditatively. “It was the purest feeling of freedom I’ve ever known. I’ve lived a life of great privilege, I don’t have to tell you, but nothing has ever come close to the feeling of flying.” He opened his eyes. “It made me wish I had wings, too.” His compound eyes glimmered pensively. “Why, it made me feel like I was meant to fly, you know?” He looked around. “Like we all were. I don’t know.”

  Rxgr-14 processed this.

  Lnzt-16’s deadly mandibles clenched and unclenched, then he stabbed the dirt with a feeler.

  “I’d trade anything for wings. I’d trade anything not to…” his antennae wriggled awkwardly, indicating his whole body, “be this. I know that probably sounds crazy to a worker, no offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “But being held by her feelers as we flew through the air, and feeling the wind flow over my armor in the clear bright sun like that… it felt like I, I don’t know, like I had become something that I… oh, you know what it was like… it was like…”

  Rxgr-14 leaned forward eagerly.

  “Ah,” said Lnzt-16, giving up. “I don’t know what it was like. Maybe there’s no way to describe it.”

  “You weren’t afraid?”

  “Oh, I was.” He pointed a feeler upward. “But she wasn’t.”

  The words sank in. Rxgr-14 looked down at his reflection in the liquid. “They must fly all the goddamn time.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows what royals really do, mon frère. Mere mortals, we, eh?”

  Rxgr-14 nodded.

  “I’ll tell you this though,” Lnzt-16 continued. “You don’t realize how big the outside world is until you see it from up high. It’s like the reservoir times a hundred, and whatever that is, times a hundred more, and probably again, too. There isn’t a ceiling either.”

  Rxgr-14 had been leaning forward to take a sip, and he stopped. “What do you mean?”

  “You know how if you keep digging down you hit rock?”

  Rxgr-14 nodded.

  “Well, if you keep flying… you don’t hit anything. It just goes on. I kept waiting for Szafair-2 to crash into it, but no matter how high she went, she never did. I bet she could’ve gone higher. And you know what else?”

  Rxgr-14 shook his head.

  “The higher you get, the littler things are, and there’s more of what is, not less, even though you’re further. Can you believe that?”

  Rxgr-14 tried to picture it.

  “I saw the main gate,” Lnzt-16 said. “You know how it’s five bodies wide?”

  “Actually, four-point-six body-widths is the optimal diameter for vertically presenting apertures—”

  “Yeah, yeah, but, the point is, from up high, it looked, uh…” Lnzt-16 searched for a point of comparison, then saw a speck of sand that had fallen into the puddle from which they were drinking. He pointed at it. “It looked like that.”

  Rxgr-14’s antennae curled back as he scrutinized the utterly miniscule speck.

  “I used to think that up was bigger than down, but it’s not, not really. Down and up are the same, they’re just different. It’s distance that changes a size, not depth or height. Crazy, huh?”

  Rxgr-14 thought about it.

  “That’s what I’d do,” Lnzt-16 said, looking up again. “If I had wings, I mean. I’d just go out there and go up and up and up until… until… I don’t know what. Just to see how far it goes though. Just to be able to look back down and see how small the whole world got.”

  “You’d probably hit rock eventually. There must a ceiling. Nothing goes on in any direction forever.”

  Lnzt-16 shrugged. “Maybe. But we’ll never know, will we? We’re just… you know… what we are.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Rxgr-14 said, looking at Lnzt-16 with blazing admiration. “What you did was amazing. You’re the first soldier to ever fly, probably. And she’s insane. What’s her name again?”

  “Szafair-2.”

  “Just to be able to lift you,” Rxgr-14 said, indicating his friend’s physique with a tilt of his head. “Her wings must’ve been enormous.”

  Lnzt-16 nodded seriously. Then he glanced around. Avern-Y6 had gotten busier. Lnzt-16 spoke in a lower volume. “It made me want to do more than hunt down bugs in abandoned tunnels for the rest of my life. It made me want to, I don’t know, live different. Even without wings. I mean, doesn’t this seem redundant? Life, I mean.
Doesn’t it seem like we’re just going through the motions? Carrying out these pre-programmed routines? I mean, when there’s a world out there? With a whole damn sky with no ceiling?” Rxgr-14 saw himself in the obsidian mirrors of Lnzt-16’s eyes. “What’re we doing down here?”

  Rxgr-14 shushed him with a nudge of his feeler. Across the room, another soldier with a rust-colored carapace was watching. Both of the soldier’s antennae were pointing straight up, as if trying to isolate an aberration in the signal.

  Rxgr-14 looked gravely at his friend and said, “You better keep thoughts like that to a minimum.”

  Lnzt-16 checked over his shoulder. The warrior with a rust-colored carapace had returned to slurp from his divot. His antennae had returned to the passive position.

  Rxgr-14 looked at the reflection of his friend in their own puddle and muttered, “You’re not crazy though Just don’t tell anyone. If the royal guard knew you went outside, with a princess no less. Hell, commiserating with a—”

  “You don’t have to tell me, mon frère.” Lnzt-16 pointed at himself with his feelers. “I’m the one they send in to decapitate commiserators, remember?”

  Rxgr-14 looked at him. “Even saying it is dangerous.”

  Lnzt-16 nodded.

  Rxgr-14 wriggled his right antennae and whispered, “Even thinking it.”

  They both lowered their heads and drank.

  When Rxgr-14 lifted his head back up, the rust-colored soldier had turned his back to them.

  “How’d you two even meet?”

  “Szafair-2?”

  Rxgr-14 nodded, then glanced across Avern-Y6 and added, “Just leave out the revolutionary rhetoric.”

  Lnzt-16 leaned in. “Last week, our squad got an award for killing a shit-ton of millipedes.”

  Rxgr-14 frowned. “How many?”

  “A bunch, but, they would’ve died anyway.” Lnzt-16 shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. That’s not the point. The point is, Szafair-2 was mistress of ceremonies. During the ceremony, I noticed her wings folded back. I was like, I like that. She’s not wagging them in our fucking faces like these other fucking breeders. I mean half these ceremonies supposedly held in our honor are just excuses for them to lord their fucking wings over us, you know what I’m saying?”

  “I said take it easy.”

  “Sorry.” Lnzt-16 shook his large head as if to free it of resentment. “So anyway, I ask her what her name is. She asks mine. We get separated. Then some more ceremonial stuff, speeches by the commander, songs to the queen. I completely forget about her. Then later, out of nowhere, she pulls me aside and asks me what I’m most proud of. Just like that. What are you most proud of? Like a test or something. I thought she was joking. I was like, this girl’s crazy. Who does that?”

  “Jesus. You don’t think she’s an informant, do you?”

  “Informant?”

  “For the royal guard, dumbass. You know they have spies in every Avern. That’s part of their job. To act all, you know, un-fascist. So they can root out trouble-makers. Like you.”

  “No, no, no,” Lnzt-16 said. “I thought of that. She’s not like that. She was sincere.”

  Rxtr-14 looked at Lnzt-16 skeptically for a long time, then he nodded. “So what’d you tell her you were proud of?”

  “I told her I’d have to think about it. And to be honest, at that point, all I was thinking was, do I actually have a shot with her? But she just gives me this disappointed look and walks away. Like, what, she’s not interested because I can’t answer a complicated question like that in two seconds? So I stop her from leaving and say, a little pissed-off, I’m proudest of my mother.”

  “Nice.”

  “Not the queen, the soldier who reared me.”

  “I know.”

  “She saved sixty eggs during the great flood by relocating seventeen loads of dirt all by herself from an old nursery to reinforce the wall in the main nursery, the one between it and the reservoir.”

  Rxgr-14 rolled his eyes. “I know. You’ve told me. And everyone else. A hundred times.”

  “Before my mother, soldiers were useless in disasters.” He twittered his antennae. “The signal to kill is so overwhelming. You workers don’t understand. But she fought it off and thought like you. One of you, I mean. And it saved lives. Worker lives.”

  “You were reared by a progressive heroine of the highest order. I know.”

  “You’re not impressed?”

  “It’s great. Congratulations. Transcending our programming is possible, blah blah blah. But what’s going to happen to workers like me when the queen realizes you guys are better at tunneling than we are?”

  “Tunneling?” Lnzt-16 shook his head. “All she did was move some dirt.”

  “It’s the same thing!”

  “We’ll never be better than you. You guys are artists. It’s just that, during emergencies, we could contribute a little bit more. That’s all.”

  “Are you kidding? With those mandibles? I’m telling you. This is how evolution works. All it’s going to take is one soldier with half a brain—no offense—and the connections to sell it to the breeders. And then one morning me and all the other workers are going to wake up with a new order in our heads: go dig your own graves.”

  Lnzt-16 snorted. “That’s ridiculous. The queen would never… could never… there’s too many of you. You’re irreplaceable.”

  “She could, and she would, and you know what the truth is? I wouldn’t even blame her. If I was queen, I’d do the same thing. Your mandibles. They’re bigger. There’s no way around it. We only invented the techniques we have now because we had to compensate for our smaller ones. But once that dam breaks, and you guys know what we know, there’s no reason to keep us around, to keep feeding us, to keep getting us drunk. And our numbers? That’s a liability, not an asset. You know what happened to the foragers.”

  Lnzt-16 huffed. “That’s a myth.”

  “You think it’s a myth because it scares you to think about what it means. But think about it. They used to call us tunnelers, now we’re called workers and we forage. Foragers were fast, but they ate half of everything they brought back. Now, back when we were surrounded by a shit-ton of bugs, foragers had to be fast. But now there’s no bugs. You guys killed them all off or chased them away. Without bugs to pick them off, the queen realized she could send some slow-ass tunnelers to bring back whatever she needed, and tunnelers, being slow, don’t eat near as much of it. When she figured that out, that’s when she got rid of the foragers.”

  “I’ve heard all that nonsense before. She couldn’t have killed them though. A queen wouldn’t kill her own. We’re her children. All of us are. We’re in this together.”

  “Stop thinking like a soldier. Think like a queen. She doesn’t need to kill us. She controls the means of reproduction. If she wants to get rid of a whole class, all she has to do is stop making us. One day, eggs that would’ve been foragers are fertilized by tunnelers. Then over time, as the foragers die of old age or get picked off by the remaining bugs, she changes the name of tunnelers to workers in the colony song. Now, work? That could mean anything. Next thing you know some workers are foraging, some are tunneling.” Rxgr-14 pointed at himself. “And here we are.”

  Lnzt-16 laughed. “You’re paranoid.”

  “I’m telling you,” Rxgr-14 said, “the first time one of you digs a tunnel in a pinch, then goes on to kill some shit, and the tunnel doesn’t collapse, and the queen finds out about it, it’s over. Worker culture, our values, our craftsmanship, our bodies, it’s all gonna disappear.”

  “You don’t even like other workers.”

  “That’s not the point. I’m not even sure it should be different. Like I said, if I was the queen, that’s what I’d do. I’m just saying, your version of history is totally fucking naïve.”

  Lnzt-16 frowned. “Whatever.” He shook his head. “I don’t even know what got us on politics.”

  After a sulking silence, Rxgr-14 said, “You were t
elling me about how you met, uh, Szafair-2.”

  Lnzt-16 brightened up. “Oh yeah. I almost forgot the best part, besides the flying.”

  Rxgr-14 looked at him curiously.

  “I heard the queen sing,” Lnzt-16 said. “In her real voice.”

  “When?”

  “After my step-mom spiel, Szafair-2 said she wanted to show me something. I had no idea she was gonna take me flying, so I didn’t think anything of it when we snuck down into the nursery.”

  “The nursery?”

  “From the nursery, we got into the hatchery, which as you know borders the throne room. So, I couldn’t see her, but I was close enough to hear her real voice.”

  Rgr-14 nodded. “The walls are thin down there so the larvae can hear the song and develop accordingly.”

  “Wow,” said Lnzt-16 sarcastically. “Is that a fact? I never knew that.”

  Rxgr-14 rolled his compound eyes. “Whatever.”

  You know,” Lnzt-16 resumed contemplatively after a moment. “Come to think of it, she was singing the forager song.”

  Rxgr-14 looked up. “Really?”

  Lnzt-16 nodded.

  “See? They were real!”

  Lnzt-16 shrugged. “Just because there’s a song about something doesn’t make it real.”

  Rxgr-14 threw up his feelers. “Where else would it come from?”

  Lnzt-16 ignored the question. “Look, if she phased them out like you say, why would she be singing it?”

  “Maybe she’s bringing them back! Maybe she’s sad! Maybe she loved them! Maybe she’s singing their song because what she had to do broke her heart! Can’t you imagine what it’s like to be in charge? Me and you, we’re expendable. She’s got to keep the colony going. That means killing us off if it comes to it, or bringing us back if it comes to that. If she wasn’t willing to do that, she wouldn’t be queen. It explains everything.”

  Lnzt-16 shook his head. “Doesn’t pass the smell test.”

  “What a cliché,” Rxgr-14 said. “A privileged soldier who only thinks in black and white.”

  Lnzt-16 glared.

  “I’m sorry but it’s true.”

  “That’s classist.”