Sentience, page 31
part #1 of Farm Land Series
“What?” I asked.
“Then it will do things that really are dangerous,” she said with a grimace. “But I’ve been doing this many years. I only had to run once, and that was when I was young and stupid, like you.”
“Thank you, Mother Hathor,” I said in a heavily sardonic voice. “You remind me of my failings so often so I can always see them to correct them.”
Hathor snorted a laugh and pulled the bag close. As she went to leave, she turned to Seraphina and stroked her head. Seraphina started purring.
“You keep the spider away from the ant,” she said to me. “No matter what happens, you hear? If she goes charging down that hill, every ant within the plantation will be here in a shot and they will tear her apart.” She looked at the spider. “And we shouldn’t allow something so remarkable and unique to vanish from the world.”
I wondered for a moment if she was really talking of the spider, or her daughter for whom the spider was named. It was astonishing that she had so easily accepted the spider after being so afraid of her to start with, but the name had certainly helped. Perhaps this was another thing I had to be grateful for, from the voices of Hathor’s mind.
I shook myself. The voices are not real people, I tried to remind myself. They were the shattered parts of Hathor herself. I grimaced; travelling with someone who believed in the existence of things I knew were not real seemed to have succeed in rubbing off on me. I was starting to think of Hathor’s voices as real people, to be negotiated with and talked to. Perhaps I, too, was heading into a realm where what was real and what was not had become blurred. But then, Hathor had accepted all that was odd about me without question. Perhaps that was just what we should do, as friends. Perhaps the only reality in this world was accepting the unreality of it.
Hathor stalked off into the bushes. Watching her go, a little moaning hiss came from Seraphina. I put a hand to her head. “You miss her already?” I asked. “Do you like her so much because her favour was harder to win than mine? Or are you like me, and can’t seem to resist a grumpy grandmother?”
I sat down and pushed my thoughts into her head. I had to tell her not to charge in to protect Hathor. It wasn’t an easy thing to explain. Seraphina’s only driving instinct at this time was to make sure we were both safe, so when I showed her images of Hathor in trouble before a Farmer, she fought my insistence to stay put. When I showed her Hathor coming back to us, she seemed to understand. I was sure, however, that these images would not do a thing if Hathor really got into trouble. If that happened, I would have to take control of Seraphina.
In the distance, I could see Hathor creeping out of the forest. I edged forwards to see better. Hathor reached a long, flat rock which stood within the shadow of the great cliff at the edge of the plantation of soya beans. She looked about from the cover of the forest, then pulled the sack of tatoes from her shoulder, and, holding them out before her, she walked slowly and deliberately to the platform.
As she reached it, she let out a high pitched shout that sounded three times. She paused and then called three times again. It was like a cross between a cry and a song; eerie and unsettling, it seemed to vibrate inside my flesh. Beside me, I felt Seraphina stiffen and turn in the direction of Hathor’s call. At the bottom of the hill, the Farmer stopped and whirled around to face Hathor. It started to walk towards her.
Seraphina let out a little hiss of discomfort. I reached out and patted her leg, preparing to take control of her if I had to.
Hathor stared straight ahead, sounding her curious cry and waiting for the Farmer to approach. As its huge legs clicked towards her, she paused and waited. Its long antenna flickered around her, testing the air and smelling her, and then it stood still, and clacked its immense jaws at her.
Calmly, Hathor took hold of her bundle and opened it, pouring out dry, tumbling earth and little round seed tatoes which bounced lightly across the flat surface. Hathor spread them out and bowed to the Farmer, her back bending until her hands trailed on the ground. She lowered her knees to the floor. As she lay almost prostrate, the Farmer walked forwards and ran its antenna over the tatoes, then over Hathor. It clicked its jaws three times and she stood up.
Hathor went to the flat stone, gathered the seed tatoes into a bag and pushed it towards the Farmer. Then, she took a gourd and placed it open just under her chin. The Farmer clacked its jaws once more and Hathor lowered her head. It was standing right over her, its jaws just a whisker from her face.
Seraphina let out another little hiss, not pleased with what she saw.
Abruptly, from somewhere under the Farmer’s body, came a spurting stream of liquid. It went straight into Hathor’s face. The flow was violent, causing Hathor to stumble backwards. Seraphina lunged and I had to push myself rapidly into her head to stop her. I forced myself over her mind and compelled her to stop. Beneath the power of my control I could feel her pushing back. I wasn’t sure how long I could hold her.
Hathor stood still, bending into the oncoming rush of liquid, her face wrinkled up and grimacing. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the flow stopped. Hathor stood, dripping, gasping for breath, clasping the gourd. Under the power of my mind, I could feel Seraphina relax a little, although she was clearly not happy I was keeping her there against her will.
Hathor bowed once more to the Farmer, and passed her bundle up, into its jaws. The Farmer clamped its mouth-parts around the bundle, turned, and walked off into the plantation, disappearing into dense foliage.
I kept hold of Seraphina until a slightly damp Hathor returned. As I left Seraphina, she walked to Hathor and nudged her with a huge leg. It was as close as a spider could ever get to a hug.
Hathor smiled. “You had to hold her, didn’t you?” she asked and I nodded. “It’s nice to know I’m wanted around here.”
I smiled. “That was… interesting,” I said. “What was it the Farmer sprayed at you?”
Hathor held out her gourd. “Acceptance,” she said. “It’s their scent; how they identify all the members of their colony and those allowed into their territory. I did the ritual right, and my gift was accepted, so I’m allowed in. You wear the scent too and they shouldn’t attack us.”
“Not so sure about the shouldn’t,” I said dabbing it on myself. Each of us took large puddles of the sticky liquid in our hands and rubbed it on Seraphina. She made a squeaking hiss as we plastered it on her.
“She doesn’t like it,” said Hathor. “Having to smell like an ant not a good thing for a spider? Well, it will help you in here, Seraphina. Better alive and smelling like an ant than dead and still stinking like a spider.”
“Ready, then?” I asked as we poured the last of the Farmer’s scent onto Seraphina. Hathor nodded and I grinned. “By tomorrow night we will be feasting with my people,” I said.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Stories of the Earth
Through the bean plantations Seraphina walked, swiftly but with care. Despite the Acceptance on our skin and hair, Hathor was still concerned that should we meet Farmers, they might attack our spider companion.
“They might be able to sense past the scent, you see,” she said, her voice close to my ear and her arms about my waist. “If we meet soldiers they certainly will.”
“You say things like soldiers and scouts,” I said. “There are different types of Farmers?”
“You would’ve met the workers, if there was only one size,” she said. “Soldiers are bigger, made to protect the colony, but all ants are capable of fighting. Soldiers are just better equipped, that’s all. Scouts are a little bigger than workers but they go to the limits of their territory, to find other sources of food.”
“What is the Queen, then? A soldier?”
Hathor shrugged. “No one’s seen one for eons,” she said. “But my people had stories that once all creatures were smaller than they are now. Once, there were few things that could swallow a human whole, now there are plenty. Once upon a time, humans could pick up creatures like the Farmers in their hands.”
“Once upon a time?” I asked.
“It means, before we can remember,” she said. “Before we lost the ability to count the times that passed before us.”
“And then… everything was smaller?” I asked.
“Bugs were, or so they said.”
“What made them grow larger? Or did we get smaller?”
“We’re the same size we’ve always been. The world changed, that’s all. Long ago, before this time, once upon a time, if you like, this world was covered in land. Man was given guardianship of the earth, but as the numbers of people grew, they started to use everything, exhausting the world, ignoring warnings screamed by the earth, and although they knew they were destroying other creatures and their own future, it didn’t stop them…”
Hathor told me her people’s tale of the fall of the old world. Although I had heard the story before, I didn’t stop her. She had taken on her role as my mother, and teacher, with all seriousness, and providing knowledge brought her pleasure, I could see that. But there was anther reason I listened. There is something in the power of stories that compels, as keenly as I could control minds. Hathor’s voice held me in her power.
“When man ceased to interfere with other life, that life became more successful,” she said, reaching a part of the tale I had not heard before. “In these forests and oceans, the life that was left, ignored by man as useless, grew bigger. The seas sent out more air, and beings that were limited before were no more. From the ravages left behind, the bugs grew to be creatures of gigantic proportions, and they, not us, are the true masters of this new world.”
Hathor breathed in. “We are the last, shuddering gasp of our kind; the death rattle in the throat of humanity. Our time is done. We who are left are just the last survivors of a lost race, a lost time.” She paused. “That’s what the flesh-eaters haven’t realised yet. They still think they are the masters of the world. If we were ever that, we are no more. The time of the insects has come.”
There was a barrenness in her tone, stark and unyielding. “Why not just lie down and die, then?” I asked.
Hathor laughed. “Why indeed? Why do the trees grow and spiders hunt, when one day they will all wither and die? Because we have life, and that is a gift. Because it is not in our natures to surrender, even when everything seems hopeless. And because we are stubborn, girl. We strive, as all things do, as all things must, to survive. It’s one of our worst and best characteristics.”
“How can it be both?”
“All things are both… light and dark, creation and destruction, life and death… it’s all about balance. We upset the balance, so the world is putting it right, without us. We had our chance, and we messed up. Those of us who are left must accept that, and learn to live in this new world as best as we can. The flesh-eaters don’t see that what they are doing is more of the same; working towards the ultimate destruction of humanity. If a few of us live different, try to live in another way, at least there might be a little hope that some of us might survive. That was what my people were trying to do, before the flesh-eaters took them.”
“What did people eat before they ate people, then?”
“I never saw any of the creatures my people talked of with my own eyes,” said Hathor. “I was born long past the fall of the old world. People talked of strange beasts covered in warm hair, animals that were once the companions of man. The oceans, they said, were full of creatures that swam and leapt and some of them could communicate with people too. But when I was a child it was as it is now. My people, and yours perhaps, were amongst those who escaped the first gathering harvested for food. It was a choice, you see. Somewhere, someone sat down and decided who would become food, and who would be free. Whoever it was who made that choice condemned most of us to be hunted and enslaved, and some few of us to be free to live in gluttony and insatiability. Some people, even those who had eaten the flesh of other creatures before that time, could not bring themselves to become the horrors the flesh-eaters are now. Some escaped, making our villages, and some were captured, sent to the Factory, or to market, as punishment for disobeying their masters.”
Hathor sighed. “But the flesh-eaters never gave up the things they had destroyed the world to have, and they never will. Those who ravage their own race to slake their hunger will only continue to destroy until there is nothing left. They do not feel pity or remorse; they feel only the thirst and hunger of greed.”
I shuddered. It was not cold, in fact it was sticky and hot even under the leaves, yet I felt as though I was covered in freezing water. “We are, not all of us, like that,” I said softly.
“Those that are not are fewer than those who are,” Hathor said. “I would imagine all those in the Factory would understand the costs of satisfying greed more than those who are consumed by it, but they are captives. They have no freedom, so they have no voice.”
“They would have, if someone gave them their freedom.”
Hathor laughed grimly. “With the best will in the world, girl,” she said. “It’s never going to happen. The flesh-eaters are too many. They have weapons that we do not have access to. They know how to make metal as we struggle on with stone. If there had been a chance to save my people, I would have fought for them, but what was I? One, against a town of people? And your village could not win either. No, those of us with freedom can do little better than make sure we are hidden, for then we might live out our lives in peace, without the flesh-eaters ever knowing we are here.”
“I wish the world was not like this.”
“I am not so sure it was all that much better before this time,” said Hathor.
“I think it must have been. This isn’t the way things are supposed to be.”
Seraphina stopped. She crouched as though about to pounce and started to make a low hissing noise.
“What is it, girl?” asked Hathor, craning her neck.
Seraphina’s hiss whined. It was an oddly unsettling noise from such a huge creature; she was afraid.
“Farmers,” I said, looking about, although I could see nothing. “It must be. She can feel them.”
“I can’t see anything,” said Hathor, her voice high and alarmed, looking quickly from one side to the other.
And then, to our right, I saw it. Slowly emerging through the bright green stems and leaves, was a Farmer, but one twice the size I was used to. I gasped and flinched backwards.
It was about the size of Seraphina, although longer in body. Its jaws clacked and its antenna whirled about, testing scents in the air. As it stood, examining us, I could feel Seraphina’s discomfort. Hissing seemed to erupt from every part of her body. She tensed, ready to fight or to flee, ready for conflict.
“Wait here,” I said and slid off Seraphina’s back. As I walked calmly and carefully to the Farmer, Seraphina let out a low, whining hiss of unhappiness. Hathor tapped her on the head. “Enough of that,” she whispered. “Let the girl talk to the ant or we won’t be getting far today.”
I stopped before the Farmer and put a hand up to it. In response, its antenna came down. As I felt it touch me, my mind flowed from my body and into the Farmer.
Drifting into the darkness of its mind, I felt a curious shifting within it, a feeling of awareness, a sense of community… I could feel the many, many minds linked to each other, all flowing through one another, all leading back to the centre of their collective intelligence. From within the mind of one, I could feel the minds of all, and the mind of the one who linked each and every one of the awesome colony together.
In the darkness, I heard a voice. Welcome home, Holt.
Hello, Mother, I said.
Chapter Fifty-Four
An Ill Wind
You seem to have found new friends since last I saw you, said Mother. I cannot hide my surprise that a friend to our people, such as you, would bring a spider into our territories.
There are other spiders which live within your lands, Mother, I said. And I promise you, this one will harm none of your people. I will offer my own life in return if anything like that occurred.
I almost heard a laugh. It is true there are smaller predators we allow to venture close to our lands, she said, but there are spiders… and then there are spiders. This one is as large as one of my soldiers. I have not seen one this size for an age or more. My people ensured such vast predators knew they were not welcome near our kind.
I promise you, I said. She will do no harm. We have an understanding.
A strange spider… to have brought out such devotion in something that would usually be her prey, said Mother. Why do you care so for a creature that could destroy you with such ease?
Could you not do the same, Mother? I asked. Any one of your children could kill mine with ease, yet you choose not to.
