Empire of the Ants

  At the front five scouts, arranged in an inverted triangle, acted as the troop's eyes. With small, measured steps, they checked the He of the land, sniffed the air and inspected the moss. If all was well, they sent an olfactory message signifying 'All clear ahead', then they moved to the rear of the procession to be replaced by 'new' individuals. This system of rotation transformed the group into a sort of long animal whose 'nose' always remained hypersensitive.

  The 'All clear ahead' rang out loud and clear twenty times. The twenty-first was interrupted by a sickening squawk. One of the scouts had just gone too near a carnivorous plant, a Venus s fly-trap. She had been attracted by its heady scent and her legs had got stuck in the glue.

  From then on she was done for. Her contact with the plant's hairs had triggered the mechanism that activated the organic hinge. The two broad, jointed leaves closed inexorably, their long fringes acting like teeth. Once crossed, they became solid bars. When its victim had been completely flattened, the predatory plant secreted powerful enzymes capable of digesting even the toughest shells.

  The ant was melting away, her whole body turning into effervescent sap. She let out a haze of distress.

  But it was too late to help her. It was one of the imponderables common to all long-distance expeditions. It only remained for them to signal 'Look out, danger', in the vicinity of the trap.

  They put the incident out of their minds and set off again along the scented path with the trail pheromones pointing the way. Once they had crossed the thickets, they carried on westwards, always at an angle of 23° to the sun's rays. They only stopped to rest when it got too cold or too hot. They had to act quickly if they were to avoid being caught up in a war on their return.

  Explorers had returned to find their city surrounded by enemy troops before and it was never easy to force the blockade.

  At last they came across the trail pheromone showing the entrance to the cave. Heat was rising from the ground. They plunged into the depths of the rocky earth.

  The deeper they went, the more clearly they could discern the trickle of water. It came from a fuming, hot-water spring, from which rose a strong smell of sulphur.

  The ants quenched their thirst.

  At one point, they came across a strange-looking animal: it looked like a ball on legs but was really a dung-beetle pushing along a sphere of dung and sand with its eggs safe inside. Like Atlas in the legend, it was carrying its 'world' on its back. When the ground sloped down, the ball rolled of its own accord and the beetle followed. When it sloped up, it wore itself out pushing and sliding and often had to go back down to the bottom to retrieve the ball.

  The Belokanians let it pass. It did not have a very nice taste and its shell made it too heavy to transport anyway.

  To their left, a dark silhouette scurried off to hide in a crevice in the rock. This time, it was something really tasty, an earwig. The oldest explorer was first off the mark. She tipped her abdomen over her head, took up the firing position balancing on her hind legs, aimed instinctively and fired a drop of 40 per cent formic acid from a distance. The corrosive liquid sliced through the air.

  A hit!

  The earwig was struck down in its tracks. It was strong stuff] Formic acid stings at forty parts per thousand, so at forty per hundred, it really shifts things! The insect collapsed and they all rushed to devour its burnt flesh. Last autumn's explorers had left behind good pheromones. There seemed to be plenty of game in the region. It would be a good hunt.

  They went down into an artesian well and terrorized all sorts of underground species they had never come across before. A bat tried to cut short their visit but it took flight when they enveloped it in a cloud of formic acid.

  As the days went by, they continued to comb the hot cave, piling up the bodies of small white animals and pieces of pale-green fungus. They laid down new trail pheromones with their anal glands so that their sisters would be able to hunt there without mishap.

  The mission had been a success. The territory had pushed an arm way beyond the western scrub. As they were about to set off on their return journey, heavily laden with food, they planted the chemical flag of the Federation. Its scent flapped in the air: 'BEL-O-KAN'.

  'Sorry, I didn't quite catch that.'

  'Wells. I'm Edmond Wells's nephew'

  The door opened on a man over six feet tall.

  'Mr Bragel? Forgive me for disturbing you but I'd like to have a word with you about my uncle. I never knew him and my grandmother told me you were his best friend.'

  'Please come in. What do you want to know about Edmond?'

  'Everything. I never knew him and wish I had.'

  'Oh, I see. Edmond was always a bit of a mystery, anyway. He was that kind of man.'

  'Did you know him well?'

  'Can we ever really know anyone well? Let's just say we often found ourselves in each other's company and neither of us minded.'

  'How did you meet?'

  'At university, in the Biology Department. I was working on plants and he was working on bacteria.' 'Two parallel worlds.'

  'Yes, except that mine's far more savage.' To underline his point, Jason Bragel indicated the mass of green plants filling the dining room. 'Look at them. They're all in competition with one another, ready to kill for a ray of light or a drop of water. As soon as one of its leaves is in the shade, a plant abandons it and the neighbouring leaves develop more. The plant kingdom is really merciless.'

  'What about Edmonds bacteria?'

  'He said himself that he was only studying his ancestors. You could say he was just tracing his family tree a little further back than most.'

  'But why bacteria? Why not monkeys or fish?'

  'He wanted to understand the cell in its most primitive form. For him, man is a mere conglomerate of cells and only a thorough understanding of the "psychology" of a single cell will allow us to understand the workings of the whole. He took literally the saying, "A big complex problem is really only a combination of small simple problems." '

  'Did he only work on bacteria?'

  'No, no. He was a kind of mystic, a real generalist. He would have liked to know everything. He got ideas into his head . . . like the time he tried to control his own heartbeat.'

  'But that's impossible.'

  'Apparently some Indian and Tibetan yogis can do it.' 'What's the point?'

  'I really couldn't say. He wanted to be able to do it so that he could commit suicide whenever he liked simply by stopping his heartbeat. He thought it would allow him to opt out whenever he chose.'

  'Why would he have wanted to do that?'

  'Perhaps he was afraid of growing old.'

  'Perhaps. What did he do once he'd finished his doctorate?

  'He went to work for a private company, Sweetmilk Corporation, which produced live bacteria for yoghurt. He did well there. He discovered a bacterium which developed aroma as well as taste. He was awarded the prize for the best invention of 1963 for it.'

  'And after that?'

  'After that, he married a Chinese girl, Ling Mi. She was sweet-natured and cheerful. He'd always been grouchy but he changed overnight. He was very much in love with her. I saw less of him after that. It's often the case.'

  'I heard he went to Africa.'

  'Yes but that was after.'

  'After what?'

  'After Ling Mi's fatal illness. It was a tragedy. She developed leukaemia and was dead within three months. Poor Edmond. He'd always been so convinced cells were everything and human beings nothing, it was a cruel lesson for him. And he'd been powerless to help her. While this disaster was taking place, he also fell out with his colleagues at Sweetmilk. He left his job and shut himself in his flat, a shattered man. Ling Mi had restored his faith in humanity and when he lost her, he became even more unsociable.'

  'Did he go to Africa to forget Ling Mi?'

  'Possibly. He wanted to heal the wound by throwing himself heart and soul into his work as a biologist. He must have found a fascinating to
pic to study. I don't know what it was exactly but I know it wasn't bacteria. He probably moved to Africa because it was easier to work on it there. He sent me a postcard simply explaining that he was with a team from the National Centre for Scientific Research and was working with a Professor Rosenfeld. I don't know him.'

  'Did you see Edmond again after that?'

  'Yes, I met him once by chance in the Champs-Elysees. We had a chat. He'd obviously recovered his zest for living but he was very evasive. He didn't answer when I asked him about his work.'

  'Apparently he was writing an encyclopedia as well.'

  'He was doing that before. It was his big idea. He wanted to put everything he knew into one book.' 'Have you seen it?'

  'No. I don't think he ever showed it to anyone. If I know Edmond, he will have hidden it in the depths of Alaska with a fire-breathing dragon to guard it. He liked to be mysterious.'

  Jonathan was preparing to leave.

  'Oh! One more question. Do you know how to make four equilateral triangles with six matches?'

  'Of course I do. That was his favourite intelligence test.' 'How do you do it, then?' Jason burst out laughing.

  'I'm not telling you. As Edmond used to say, "Everyone has to find out for himself." You'll see, you'll get far more satisfaction out of it that way'

  With all that meat on their backs, the way home seemed longer than the way out. The troop kept up a good pace in order not to be overtaken by the rigours of night.

  Ants are capable of working twenty-four hours a day from March to November without rest but a drop in temperature sends them to sleep. That is why expeditions rarely stay away for more than a day.

  The russet ant city had discussed the problem at length. It knew that it was important to extend the hunting territories and find out about distant countries, where there are different plants and animals with different customs.

  In the eight hundred and fiftieth millennium, Bi-stin-ga, a russet ant queen of the Ga dynasty (an eastern dynasty that had vanished a hundred thousand years earlier), had had the mad ambition of discovering the 'limits' of the world. She had sent hundreds of expeditions to all four points of the compass. None had ever returned.

  The present queen, Belo-kiu-kiuni, was not so greedy. She was content to discover the little golden beetles that looked like precious gems (and were found in the deep south), or to observe the carnivorous plants which were sometimes brought back to her alive with their roots and which she hoped someday to tame.

  Belo-kiu-kiuni knew that the best way to find out about new territories was to extend the Federation with more and more long-distance expeditions, more and more daughter cities, more and more advance posts, and death to anyone who tried to stop the advance.

  Admittedly, it would take a long time to conquer the edge of the world but this policy of small stubborn steps was in perfect harmony with the ants' general philosophy of 'slowly but surely'.

  Today, the Federation of Bel-o-kan comprised sixty-four daughter cities; sixty-four cities which shared the same scent; sixty-four cities linked by a network of one hundred and twenty-five kilometres of hollowed-out trails and seven hundred and eighty kilometres of scent trails; sixty-four cities which stuck together in time of war and famine.

  The concept of a federation of cities meant that some of them could specialize. Belo-kiu-kiuni even dreamt of the day when one of the cities would deal in cereals, another supply meat and a third would concern itself only with war.

  They still had a long way to go.

  In any event, it was a concept which fitted in well with another principle of the ants' overall philosophy, 'the future belongs to specialists'.

  The explorers were still a long way from the advance posts so they decided to increase their pace. When they passed near the carnivorous plant again, a warrior proposed that they dig it up by the roots and take it back to Belo-kiu-kiuni.

  They conferred by putting their antennae together and sending and receiving minute volatile scent molecules called pheromones. These were actually hormones which escaped from the ants' bodies. Each molecule could be pictured as a fishbowl, with each fish a word.

  By means of pheromones, the ants could express virtually any shade of meaning. If the agitation of their antennae was anything to go by, the debate was becoming heated.

  It's too big to carry.

  Mother isn't familiar with this kind of plant.

  We may suffer losses and there won't be as many of us to carry the booty.

  Once we've tamed carnivorous plants, they'll be weapons in their own right and we'll be able to hold a front simply by planting them in a row. We're tired and it'll soon be dark.

  They decided to abandon the idea, skirted round the plant and continued on their way. As the group was drawing near a flowery thicket, the 327th male, who was bringing up the rear, spotted a red daisy. He had never seen one like it before and immediately made up his mind to have it.

  We didn't get the Venus's fly-trap but we are taking this back.

  He let the others get ahead a little and cut the flower off by the stem. Snip! Then, holding his discovery tightly, he ran to catch up with his colleagues.

  Except that he no longer had any colleagues. The first expedition of the new year was there all right but what a state it was in! 327th's legs began to tremble from shock and stress. All his companions lay dead on the ground.

  What could possibly have happened? The attack must have been devastating. They had not even had time to take up combat formation and were all still in the 'big-headed serpent' formation.

  He inspected the bodies. Not a single jet of acid had been fired. The russet ants had not even had time to let out their alarm pheromones.

  327th decided to investigate.

  He searched one of his sisters' antennae for scent but no chemical image had been recorded. They had been walking along and then, suddenly, the record was cut off.

  He had to find out what had happened. There must be an explanation. He began by cleaning his sensory apparatus. Using the two curved claws of his foreleg, he scraped his frontal scapes to remove the acid froth caused by stress. He folded them back to his mouth and licked them, then wiped them on the little brush spur handily situated above his third elbow.

  Once his antennae were clean, he lowered them to eye level and beat them at a gentle three hundred vibrations a second. Nothing. He accelerated to five hundred, then one thousand, two thousand, five thousand, eight thousand vibrations a second until he had reached two-thirds of his maximum reception power.

  He instantly picked up the slightest scents floating in the breeze: vapours of dew, pollen and spores and a faint odour he had already smelt but could not readily identify.

  He accelerated still more, reaching maximum power, twelve thousand vibrations a second. As they twirled, his antennae set up a slight draught which sucked all the dust towards him.

  Now he could identify the faint scent. It was the smell of the culprits. Yes, it could only have been their pitiless northern neighbours, the dwarf ants of Shi-gae-pou, who had already caused them so much trouble the previous year.

  So they, too, were already awake. They must have lain in ambush and used a devastating new weapon.

  There was not a second to lose. He must alert the whole Federation.

  'They were all killed by a high-powered laser beam, Chief.' 'A laser beam?'

  'Yes, a new weapon capable of melting our biggest ships from a distance. Chief. . .'

  'Do you think it was . . .'

  'Yes, Chief, only Venusians could have done such a thing. It's got their name written all over it.'

  'In that case, our revenge will be terrible. How many combat rockets do we have left in the Belt of Orion?'

  'Four, Chief.'

  'That won't be enough. We'll have to get help from the . . .' 'Would you like some more soup?'

  'No, thank you,' said Nicolas, completely hypnotized by the images.

  'Pay attention to what you're eating for a minute or I'
ll turn the television off.'

  'Oh no, Mum, please don't.'

  'Haven't you had enough of stories about little green men and planets with names that sound like washing-powder yet?' asked Jonathan.

  'No, I think they're great. We're sure to meet extraterrestrials one day.'

  'We've been going on about them for long enough!' 'There's a probe on its way to the nearest star. It's called Marco Polo. We ought to know all about the people who live there soon.'

  'It'll draw a blank like all the other probes they've sent into space. They just end up polluting it. It's too far, I tell you.'

  'Maybe, but who's to say extraterrestrials won't come and see us instead? After all, there've been plenty of unexplained UFO sightings.'

  'I don't see what difference it'd make. We'd only end up fighting them. Don't you think Earthmen cause each other enough trouble as it is?'

  'It'd be fantastic. There might be smashing new places to go on holiday to.'

  'And exciting new things to worry about.' He ruffled Nicolas s hair.

  'You'll see what I mean when you're bigger, Nick, and probably agree with me then. The only really fascinating animals, the only ones whose intelligence is really different from our own, are . . . women.'

  Lucie protested for form's sake. They both laughed. Nicolas scowled. It must be the grown-ups' idea of a joke. He felt around under the table for the dog's soothing fur.

  There was nothing there.

  'Where's Ouarzazate gone?'

  He was not in the dining room.

  'Ouarzi, Ouarzi.'

  Nicolas put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. It usually produced immediate results, a bark followed by the sound of paws. He whistled again but nothing happened. He went and looked in every room of the flat. His parents joined him but the dog was no longer there. The door was shut and locked and he would not have been able to get out unaided.

  They automatically made their way to the kitchen and, more precisely, to the cellar door. The crack had still not been sealed and was just wide enough to let an animal Ouarzazate's size through.