The Bees: A Novel (13 page)

Twenty-Two

A
S THEY DESCENDED OVER THE TREETOPS
F
LORA
strained for any trace of scent of drones in case Congregation was near, but all she could pick up was a fragmented smell of an alien nectar. They flew low over the great gray road, its bitter stench soaking up into the air, and then across a small field of rye. That brash, familiar scent pushed into Flora’s brain and her senses began to revive. Vast gray-green fields swayed into the distance, but no fragrance of nectar or pollen drifted from ahead, only the dreary, useless odor of fibrous crops and strange tang of the earth beneath them.

The wasp hovered on lissome wings and watched Flora.

“So, that way lies your orchard, cousin—and as you see, it is a route to give you empty baskets.” She sighed. “To think of all you poor cousins, your flowers rotted in the rain and no clue what to do.”

“There will be more flowers.”

“Not in our lifetime—do you not see the berries swell? All religions can read that sign. Many times we say at home, how we would willingly share our bounty with our cousins, for we have so
much
—how sad the Chosen People are too proud. Yet we Vespa long to forget the ancient feud.”

“You have pollen and honey?”

The wasp burst out laughing.

“Cousin, you work too hard! We have
sugar,
like hard dewdrops of nectar, but soft as larvae inside. Sweeter than honey, stronger than that scabbing tree blood you gather.” She spat in disgust.

“Propolis. It has many uses.” Flora tried not to be angry at her, for much might be gained from this friendship. She imagined herself on the landing board, unloading exotic treasure for her hive, insisting on the truth of its provenance.

“Whatever you like to call it, cousin. But you might feed your whole hive with just a few mouthfuls of what we have. Never mind—here I must leave you. Good foraging, cousin.”

“Wait—” Flora flew after her. “You
truly
would share with us?”

The wasp dipped her wings demurely, and smiled.

F
LORA EXPECTED THEY WOULD HEAD
for the maelstrom of scents coming from the town, but instead the wasp led her to a cluster of gray warehouses on its edge. Brown-belching vehicles labored to and fro, and Flora noted them to add to her homecoming choreography. There would be so much to dance about, and such a fervor of excitement. To think that the ancient feud with the Vespa might be ended—that would be expiation indeed.

The wasp checked over her wings that Flora was still behind her, and then began her descent toward the warehouse buildings. Flora logged as much information as she could, though her antennae were still slow and sore. She had never seen a place with so few plants, their stunted flower heads barely strong enough to open. Sensing the presence of a honeybee, they mustered their energy and breathed a poor wisp of scent to her.

“Leave them,” said the wasp. “They’re pathetic.”

But where one plant stretched and pushed out its scent, so did all its neighbors, and supplications and pleas came from every flower in every crack of concrete or cinder-block wall for Flora to come to them. They called and begged her; they wanted to speak with her and feel her feet on their petals.

“Very quickly.” Flora dropped down onto the soot-stained head of a buddleia trembling for her touch. It sighed in gratitude as Flora secured her hold, then pushed her tongue deep into a floret. A dirty film of oil coated its petals and she released it in disgust, rearing into the air. The buddleia drooped in shame.

“Told you!” sang the wasp. “Come now, if you wish to feed your family. Or go home empty.” She flew into the dark, cavernous mouth of a warehouse.

Flora hovered outside. She was glad there was no one from her hive to have seen her try the weeds—for despite their nectar and warm welcome, surely that was what they were: low, coarse, desperate weeds. There had to be a good reason their forage was shunned—but she could not think of one. The words of the Catechism came back to her.
“Nor may a flora ever forage, for she has no taste.”

The weeds had made a fool of her, and Flora was angry at herself for succumbing to their pleas. She whirred her wings louder to muffle their voices. The bees certainly did not know everything—if they did, they would not have lain dead at the foot of the murmuring tree in such numbers while the wasp went free. Ignoring the cries of the weeds, Flora flew into the warehouse.

The cavern was dim and vast, with a sharp, peculiar scent that hit Flora’s antennae as soon as she flew in, making them twitch in excitement and revulsion at the same time.

“Here,” called the wasp, her voice deeper in the gloom. “This way, cousin.”

Flora flew toward her under the crackling bars of fluorescent light that hung at intervals down the dark, curved ceiling. The walls were made of stacked containers, and below her on the concrete ground, slow, ungainly vehicles labored to move them to and fro. They reminded Flora of sanitation workers rolling balls of drone wax, and she noted this little detail to further enhance her homecoming choreography.

“Come.” The wasp had returned to find her. Under the flickering lights Flora saw how young she was, her pointed black-and-yellow face completely smooth. A smile shone from her glossed black eyes, flatter than a bee’s and with elegantly glittered edges. She pivoted in the air and a wisp of formic acid drifted from her. She whirred it away with a sudden thrum of her wings.

“Forgive my excitement,” she whispered to Flora. “Come and taste the sugar.” She flew to the wall and alighted on an irregularly shaped ledge, a glowing mosaic of rock in colors more lurid and vulgar than any petal could attempt. Flora’s antennae lashed in repulsion at the blaring scent, but her tongue stretched out to taste it.

“Fill your crop, cousin,” said the wasp. “Feel your hunger.”

T
HE SUGAR WAS SOLID
like propolis, soft like wax, then it melted like nectar. It was the most extraordinary substance, and the more Flora ate the more she wanted and the faster she chewed. As the taste raced through her brain, Flora abandoned decorum and gnawed at it as if she were breaking out of her emergence chamber. Each of the colors tasted slightly different, underlaid with a tang that almost made her want to retch, yet sharpened her appetite for more. She wanted to ask about it and where she might find this substance for herself, but she could not stop eating.

Far below on the ground, the vehicles whined and groaned and their engines hummed like sisters on the wing.

“You like it, cousin?” The wasp chewed sugar nearby and watched Flora eating. She was generous, Flora thought, and she wanted to say so, but something in the colored nectar-rock kept her gnawing faster and faster.

“Eat more,” the wasp said, a strange smile on her face. “Eat your fill.”

Suddenly self-conscious of her greed, Flora slowed down as she prized the last blue crystal out. There was a strange vibration at her feet as it came free, and Flora looked down and noticed what she stood on.

Extending on either side of the gaily colored ledge of sugar beneath her was a chewed gray mix of paper and clay. It curved out in an irregular shape and finished some distance underneath, tight against the wall. It was a great wasps’ nest, and the roof was made of sugar. The vibration she had heard did not come from the vehicles on the ground, but from inside the nest. It was the high-pitched whining of thousands and thousands of wasp larvae under her feet.

Flora did not move. Now she felt the presence of all the wasps hovering close by in the air behind her, their scent masked by the thick smell of sugar she had raised by her frantic chewing, and their sound by the machines on the ground. In the time it took Flora to realize, the sugar under her feet hardened like propolis and held her fast.

The wasp watched her. Flora did not turn. Instead, she bowed her antennae.

“Thank you for this feast, cousin,” she said, as calmly as she could. “You are so beautiful, with your tiny waist and sharp, smooth stripes. Will you spin so I can admire you?”

The young wasp could not resist. She pirouetted on the air.

“Please,” Flora said humbly, and curtsied low, “that was so rare a sight, I have only seen it done faster once before.”

“Faster?” the wasp retorted. “That was nothing; watch this.” And she spun again. Deep in her curtsy, Flora saw the massed horde of wasps hanging in the dim air of the cavern behind her. Quickly she bit her feet free of the sugar.

“Are we not superior?” called the wasp within her spinning. “Admit it!”

“You are!” Flora cried, pulling her feet free. “Faster!” Then, roaring her thoracic engine like a rampant drone, she shot backward as hard as she could into the ambush of wasps, scattering them in the air.

“Apissss!”
they screamed, rearing up from their shock.
“Apisss, die!”

They came at her from all sides, shrieking their fury and filling the air with the scent of their wet-drawn daggers. Flora plunged and swerved while inside the nest the larvae whined a thin, sick note of hatred through the paper walls, and their captives screamed for mercy in all the languages of the air.

At the obscene, intimate brush of wasp wings against her own Flora lost her axis and fell. She tumbled in a sickening mist of sugar and formic acid and righted herself just before she hit the ground.

The mouth of the cavern was bright and Flora threw herself toward it just as one of the great lumbering vehicles drew across it and blocked the entrance. In a desperate swerve she dived through the tiny aperture into the driver’s cab and the torrent of wasps poured in after her.

The driver yelled in fright and thrashed his hairy forearm around his head, knocking Flora to the ground and maddening the wasps. As they stung him from all sides, Flora crawled into a groove of dirt and hid. The driver screamed and pressed on the horn so that the vehicle itself bellowed like a wounded bull, then he wrenched open the door and staggered out. At the touch of air on her wings Flora dragged herself over the metal step and fell to the concrete floor. While the wasps descended on the writhing man she crawled toward the light and air. The weeds pulsed their scent to help her, and she used it to pull herself forward until she felt the sky above.

T
HE CLOUDS WERE VIOLET-GRAY
and the cold air trembled in bursts and stops. Fighting off the numbing fog of the formic acid, Flora struggled for altitude, her wing-joints burning. Below her she could still hear the enraged buzz of the wasps and the shouts of the men running to drive them from their screaming victim.

Flora climbed higher, trying to pick up the azimuth of the sun with her sugar-jangled antennae. She thought she had filled her crop with sugar, but it was light and empty.

Ashamed at her failure to forage and sick from the taste of the sugar, all that Flora now wanted was the scent of home. She turned again and again, but nothing registered. All she felt was the racing pulse of sugar.

Flora cursed her pride—she of all kin should have listened to the weeds. If she lived to see another sunrise she would kiss every one of their mouths. She flew in a circle, then in a figure eight, trying to pick up the scent of the orchard, of the great road, of Congregation, of anything familiar, but great waves of wind collided and she had to flatten her antennae and tighten her wings lest they be ripped from her body. A colossal cold swell threw her sideways and a warm front flung her back. With a tearing flash of light, the storm broke.

A water bomb hit Flora on her right side, and she felt her wing-latch breaking between the front and rear membranes. Clenching her thoracic muscles to hold her wing panels together, she aimed herself into the racing air current streaming toward the tree line. Pelting raindrops knocked her lower and lower, and with a great lurch of strength she flung herself into the nearest canopy of leaves. She tumbled down the dripping green slides trying to grab hold of anything, but her claws slipped and she fell to the earth.

Directly ahead under the drumming leaves was a place of shelter. To reach it she must crawl across a shining track left by some unknown creature, but if she did not move, the water bombs would take away all choice and she would lie drowning with broken wings. Nothing was in sight so Flora stepped quickly across it. She was almost at the dry sanctuary of twigs when a sound made her look around.

It did not look at her, for it had no eyes, but a great brown slug pulled its way back toward her along the silvery mucus trail, its orange frill rippling as it moved. It was nothing but a rhythmically convulsing sack of muscle, then it raised its gaping, drooling mouth, and made a sound between a grunt and a moan. Two flaccid horns engorged and lifted, and then its tiny eyes bulged out from their tips. It moaned again as its slime spread behind it.

A forager’s suicide in the rain was better than cowering on the ground waiting to be engulfed by the slug. Soaked and battered, Flora fought her way higher until a snarl of air caught her up and sucked her tiny body into the roaring mouth of the storm.

Twenty-Three

F
LORA’S BODY HIT SOMETHING SOLID
. S
HE COULD MOVE
neither wing nor limb of her waterlogged body but tumbled down through the leaves and bounced against hard branches until some spongy lichen slowed her fall. Her claw caught and she hung there in the rain. Gradually, she managed to dig more hooks in, and found that none of her limbs was broken. She hauled herself the right way up and pushed her cuticle bands apart. Water drained out. Very carefully, she crept toward the great bole of the tree and pressed herself into a dry crevice.

It was an old tree and true, after the vile pretense of the metal one. She could feel its strength drawing deep into the earth as it stretched its countless arms wide, welcoming the storm passing through. It was a beech; she recognized the leaf pattern from one of the trees at Congregation, and for a wild moment she hoped that when the rain stopped she would see drones of her home livery emerging from their hiding places, and they would all shake themselves out and fly home together.

The rain slowed, then stopped. The tiny, bright eyes of cars moved slowly across the dark plain of the fields, and far beyond that shone the lights of the town. Flora tried to lift her antennae to read even one scent, but storm-wracked and sugar-rushed, they told her she was still in flight. She checked her numb wings. On both sides the latches were smashed and the membranes showed tears in many places.

Flora began to shiver uncontrollably. Not for her the dramatic oblivion in the storm, with the Queen’s Prayer coursing through her body so that death would find her in a state of grace, nor even a forager’s Kindness, meted with respect and a strong, merciful bite. This death would take time. How bitterly now did Flora crave the sweet dark warmth of home and the comfort of her family around her, like those noble sisters who went to their final rest in their own berths with peace in their hearts.
Praise end your days, Sister . . .

Flora wept in shame. She had been reckless and proud in trying to forage in the town without following any bee’s dance—then tricked by the wasp who had promised her safety and sugar. It hurt too much to try to open the inner channels of her antennae, but she already knew that Lily 500’s knowledge was destroyed. She clutched herself as if to feel a sister’s touch, searching her body for any last remnant of the Queen’s Love. There was not one molecule left, only the racking physical need for her lost home and family. At the thought of her second child, her little drone son who would now starve to death, Flora howled out her heartbreak, knowing she had done this to herself.

A rabble of crows cawed across the darkening sky. By primal reaction her alarm glands fired and she instinctively scented for any answering flare of support—but there were no sisters, and nothing changed but the sun, sinking at that precise moment behind a bank of cloud.
The azimuth!
If she had felt it shift, all was not lost. As the birds grew louder Flora blocked her fear, searching deep inside her body for that magnetic sensor that could show her the way home—but the flickering awareness had vanished.

Acrid waves of air came blowing toward her, then the raucous mob of birds came clattering and shoving down through the leaves. They snapped their blue-black beaks and swore at each other as they grabbed for better perches; they clacked and clambered about the branches stabbing at crawling insects, and their fire-rimmed eyes roved the branches for more. Flora kept very still.

More crows came down from the air and filled the branches, then with a heavy flapping they all shook themselves dry. A great black feather came spinning down past Flora, then jarred against the trunk, its bone-white point stuck in the bark. Behind it stretched a long, deep shadow, leading into the trunk itself.

Flora waited until the crows were once again swearing and arguing before daring to move. She drank fresh rain from the bark to wash away the sickly taste of the wasps’ sugar, then crawled and slid down the slippery trunk toward the feather. Her war gland automatically blasted alarm at its flesh-feeding smell, but she forced herself to go closer.

Its point was wedged in an old split in the bark. Behind it was a hole. Flora stood on the edge behind the feather and forced her throbbing antennae up. She could not sense any movement inside, nor smell anything but the living beech. She edged deeper into the cavity and scanned the space: hollow, dry, and empty. Near the entrance was a pocket in the bark almost the same size as a rest hole in the hive, but to fit it she would have to close her wing-latches. As she brought the torn panels together she could not help buzzing loudly in pain.

With a rustle of feathers, a jagged black shadow jumped down from a high branch. Flora held herself completely still as the crow clambered down to search for the interesting sound. Its red gaze zigzagged over the trunk toward her hiding place, and when it could not see her, it pecked hard at the bark to try to flush her out. When she still did not move, it made some low croaks deep in its throat, shook out its feathers, and settled down to watch.

Its smell was strong and bitter from the old sweat between its feathers and the red mites that ran across them. Only when the crow lowered its head into its chest did Flora clamp her wing-latches shut and press herself into the tight gap in the bark. The sense of enclosure was some comfort, and with the crow sleeping a few branches above her, Flora settled herself to watch the darkening sky and wait for death.

The beech leaves surged and shimmered in the wind. Far below, a vixen paused to stare up, then melted away. Stars burned tiny holes in the twilight and then a pale moon traced a slow silver arc through the sky. Its beauty made Flora’s heart burst with love for her lost egg, and only the shadow of the crow above stopped her sobs. To die without holding it again, or breathing its sweet and tender scent—and then when it hatched—

Her cheeks pulsed and her mouth moistened with royal jelly. It was sweet and she swallowed it down, for there was no more sin to commit, nor sister to rebuke her. Alone in the dark, cut off from the Queen’s Love, Flora swallowed another mouthful of the precious liquid, wasting it on herself and willing death forward.

She gazed out into the darkness, waiting. Somewhere across the scented night was her lost orchard home. She imagined it under a bright blue sky, the sweet bouquet spreading in welcome as she drew near, sun on her wings and her body loaded with nectar and pollen. She imagined her ten thousand sisters dancing for joy, Holy Mother wrapping her in Love—and somewhere, hidden deep inside all that she loved, the secret that could be no crime, for its memory filled her with bliss.

In her mind’s eye Flora saw her rough white crib under the shadow of those three tall cocoons, and in it, her precious egg, pulsing strong with the golden glow of life. She imagined its fragrance, and something inside her broke.

My child, my sisters, my Mother, my home.

Love filled her heart and Flora wept with joy, for she found she could pray again.

M
ORNING LIGHT LEAKED OVER
the ridge. The leaves turned from cool silver to glowing green and a warm, woody fragrance rose through the bark of the trees. Flora woke at the smell. She scanned around her in shock. No sister could survive a night outside the hive—yet here she was, alive and lying in a crevice in the bark. A warm slant of light fell through the hole across her body. She was sore, but her legs were unbroken and her wing-latches had knitted back together. She straightened her antennae and winced at the pain—but data pulsed through again.

The flight, the storm, the wasps—

Flora crawled to the edge of the hole into the sunshine. The crows had gone, and this great sheltering beech was one of many, high on a hill and overlooking the fields and the distant town. Bright specks of insects wove across the air, and on the moist earth below two blackbirds stretched a worm to a wet brown thread.

Flora groomed herself and made a detailed inventory of her injuries. Under the bruising and windburn, her antennae slowly restored their function. There . . . was the place of the murmuring tree . . . and the wasps’ warehouse.

And there—Flora shouted for joy—there was the faintest scent of the hive. To reach it, she would pass through that scent of foreign flowers she had tried to find before. The sweet thread came stronger as some petals opened in the still dawn air.

Flora touched her antennae in gratitude to the beech that had sheltered her. She would not go home empty; she would complete her mission and redeem herself. She would find forage for her sisters, she would dance,
and then she would go to her egg
.

T
HE LITTLE GARDENS
were already crowded when she arrived. Bees from hives unknown moved purposefully from bloom to bloom, along with ants tending their aphid flocks on the roses and flies that stank of putrefaction. Honeybee sisters, no matter from what hive, united in barging every fly out of their way, whether they wanted a flower or not. For their part, the flies took pleasure in advancing so close to a sister that she was forced to either touch the unclean creature or leave her flower to its filthy embrace.

Flora watched from above, trying to decide which bloom to visit first. Some were dewy and plump from the rain, thrusting their faces at any who wished to touch them, while others dipped shy heads and could only be approached with skill from below. Flora chose a newly opened dog rose with pure, sheeny petals and thick golden clusters of pollen. She drank the nectar for the instant energy transfusion, then worked her way over the rambling bush until her panniers were almost packed full. Then she went to investigate other gardens.

Many were neat paved deserts dotted with garish tubs of flowers neither scented nor nourishing, but in one small overgrown plot, a buzzing crowd of insects could not restrain their excitement at the thrilling foreign smell.

Towering spiked echium plants, tall as sapling trees, made an ultraviolet forest of treasure. Silver hairs along their slender green trunks and tapering branches illuminated their silhouettes and the multitudes of insects whirring for joy at the bounteous harvest. Each of the countless purple florets showed an ultraviolet line pointing to the nectar, and bees, hoverflies, hornets, flies of every kind, white butterflies, meadow browns, red admirals, and fritillaries greeted each other and gorged together. The big furry bottoms of Bombini bees bounced white, yellow, and red as they rummaged, and Flora waited for a gap between them before diving into the sweet abundance. She filled her crop and panniers to maximum capacity and then set off for home.

With each wingbeat her excitement at seeing her sisters grew stronger until, despite her heavy bounty, she was racing at full speed. Her antennae found the scent vector to lead her in, but as she neared the orchard she smelled the change.

The bouquet of the hive was drenched in the smell of its own honey and coiling with smoke. Thousands of her sisters swirled above the hive and in the trees, choking in the dazing smoke.

“The Visitation!” some screamed. “The end of the world!”

“Thief!” shrieked others, alarm glands flaring uselessly.
“Thief!”

Dagger at the ready and determined to defend her home, Flora tried to keep to her homecoming path, but the rising smoke forced her back up into the orbit of her raging helpless sisters, foragers and house bees alike.

The smell of honey rose stronger, and the cause was obscene.