The Bees: A Novel (3 page)

Five

A
T THE SIGHT OF
S
ISTER
S
AGE, ALL THE
C
ATEGORY
Two nurses and nannies curtsied, though they looked warily at Flora walking with her. The priestess was not angry that her Flow had stopped, and seemed only to want to talk.

“I would have said the experiment was a success,” she said to Flora. “And I am sure Sister Teasel impressed on you the privilege of such sacred service.”

“Yes, Sister. I am very grateful.”

“But you are very curious about Category Two—a rather prosaic place, to my mind. Why is that?”

The more she breathed of Sister Sage’s strong scent, the more Flora grew calm, and felt an overpowering desire to tell the truth.

“In Category One everything is always the same.”

Sister Sage laughed. “The very point of Identical Care. Yet it bored you.”

“Yes, Sister. Forgive me.” Flora lowered her head, but Sister Sage raised it and held her long antennae over Flora’s.

“We will forget the folly of the curtsies and your boldness in hoping to see Holy Mother, for I hear you are also very devout and hardworking.”

“I hope so, Sister.”

“And you love the Queen?”

“With my body and my soul.” Flora’s antennae trembled as she felt Sister Sage reaching deep into her mind.

Would you serve her any way you can?

“With my whole life.”

“Good.” Sister Sage walked on. “In this time of scarce forage, you have been surprisingly useful in the Nursery. Sometimes it is good to spare the deviants, and experiment a little.” She smiled. “Is this place as you imagined?”

“Better, Sister! It is so lively, so full of wonderful things—”

“Then look your fill. I wish you to know it.”

F
LORA COULD NOT TAKE
in Category Two all at once, with its cheerful decorations and beautifully tiled play areas. Pretty nurses and nannies sat with their vigorous little charges, singing and playing games or feeding them from shining platters. Healthy, beautiful child-grubs were everywhere, their cheerful snubby little faces speckled with golden pollen dust. Gone were the heavy scent of Flow and the mumble of prayer, and in their place the bright aroma of fresh bread and the sounds of nursery rhymes and laughter.

Sister Sage watched her. “What do you know of feeding patterns?”

“Nothing, Sister.” Flora admired two fat child-grubs who chuckled as their nurses tickled them. “Sister Teasel asked me that. All I know is that timing is very important, and there are a lot of bells.” Her own arms tingled to hold a baby, and she turned away lest the sin of Desire take hold. “And we must always stop at the right moment and never give a drop more.”

“Because . . . ?”

“I’m not sure, Sister.”

Sister Sage touched one of Flora’s antennae with her own, and Flora felt a piercing resonance in her mind. The sensation grew almost unbearable, then abruptly stopped as Sister Sage released her.

“Good. You are truthful.” Her long antennae flexed. “Tell me, though, about my sisters Teasel: do they hold any meetings or gatherings in the Nursery?”

“I don’t think so.” Flora felt a strong urge to please the priestess with the right answer. “But I know only the one, my supervising sister.”

“Ah yes. To you they are all the same. And so they very nearly are, though they must still use speech to know each other’s thoughts. It is most quaint. But you will tell me if they hold private meetings, do you understand?”

“Yes, Sister.”

They had come to the end of the Category Two ward, where large carved panels marked another set of doors. Flora could not decipher the markings but knew instinctively not to touch them. Sister Sage answered her unspoken question.

“They speak of Holy Time, when we have all slept in prayer.” Her voice was soft and her face shone as if she experienced some great inner joy. “Each Devotion, we recall something of that state.” She remained rapt in contemplation.

Flora felt it correct to stand in silence beside her. A movement caught her eye. It was another of the wretched dark sanitation workers, moving along the ward gutter with her pan and brush and looking directly at Flora and the priestess. Flora pressed her knees together and drew herself up as thin and tall as she could, trying to emphasize the difference between them. Steadily sweeping, the worker passed on. Though nothing more than a look had been exchanged, Flora felt angry and agitated.

“Do not blame yourself; no one may choose their kin—or all would be Sage.” No longer in her enraptured state, the priestess smiled. “Because your kin lacks botanical heritage, it forms the base of our society. Or rather, you draw your heritage from impure and promiscuous flowers, shunned by this hive.”

“Sister Sage! Sister Sage!”

Sister Teasel’s strained voice reached down the long, wide corridor of Category Two. They smelled her streaming panic before they saw her running toward them with antennae waving and wild fear on her face.

“Please—you must—both of you, I beg you—” Sister Teasel could hardly speak. “Everyone must report at once, the fertility police are here now on our ward!”

A
S
F
LORA FOLLOWED
Sister Sage back through the Category Two ward, every nurse and nanny clutched her little charge tightly to her and stared at them in silence. Up ahead through the big double doors, the Category One ward was no longer dim and hushed but starkly illuminated and pulsing with a harsh, bitter scent. Flora stumbled as her brain struggled to recall it. Sister Sage took her by the arm to quicken her pace and strengthened her own scent around both of them.

“You have nothing to fear.”

They went into the ward. At first Flora thought the nurses had left, because all the cribs were unattended and some of the babies were already starting to cry, but then she saw them all standing in lines near the ward sisters’ station. Some openly wept in fear, their antennae waving uncontrollably, while others held theirs high and rigid. Stationed around the edges of the ward were the fertility police. Their kin-scents were hidden under their masking scent, their eyes were blank, and their fur was slicked dark against their bands—but Flora recognized them from the Arrivals Hall. Sister Sage curled a filament of her own scent around Flora’s antennae and she felt her mouth clamp shut. The priestess joined her to the end of the first row, then stepped forward and bowed to the police.

“Sister Inspector, Sister Officers. Welcome.”

The Inspector saluted her, then turned to address the nurses.

“Another wing deformity has been found.” The masking scent distorted her voice to a harsh buzz. Despite their fear, the nurses murmured in revulsion.

“Praise to the vigilant Thistle guard on the landing board.” Her scent fired in jagged bursts as she surveyed the nurses.

Sister Teasel began to weep. “Not
here,
Madam Inspector, never in Category One; it is not possible—Holy Mother is here every day, her scent so beautiful and strong—there can be no—”

“Silence!” the Inspector spat at her. “Do you think I mean the defect could come from
Her Majesty
? You fly close to treason yourself, Sister—”

“Holy Mother strike me dead before my next breath if so—” Sister Teasel fell to her knees, but Sister Inspector yanked her back on her feet.

“Measure her.” She shoved Sister Teasel at two of her officers and they lashed their black calipers around her thick waist. Sister Teasel voided herself in fear and the smell mingled with the scent of the nurses’ terror, rising from their breathing spiracles. Behind them all the babies began to cry. Sister Sage looked on calmly.

“Not her, at any rate.” The Inspector released Sister Teasel, then turned to the nurses. “Deformities mean evil roams our hive. Somewhere hides a desecrating heretic who dares steal sacred Motherhood from the Queen. That is why sickness comes, that is why deformities rise. From her foul issue!
”
Her antennae twitched compulsively and Flora felt her longing for violence.

“Only the Queen may breed,” responded Sister Sage, looking at the nurses.

“Only the Queen may breed,”
some of them managed to respond, but others stared at Sister Teasel, her antennae bent in shame as she desperately cleaned herself. The Inspector held up a long, sharp claw to the ward.

“We will search every crib, we will measure every nurse’s belly until we find the culprit. And then we will tear her filthy body apart and cleanse our hive of sin.”

“Do what you must, Sister Inspector.” Sister Sage bowed again.

Sister Inspector signaled and some of her officers began moving systematically through the rows of cribs, while others used the black calipers on their arms to measure the bellies of the terrified nurses.

When it was her turn, Flora looked in distress at Sister Sage, convinced her greedy appetite would mark her as doomed, but the priestess ignored her. The calipers went around her belly, but the police moved on, measuring each bee until all the nurses were cleared and none found guilty.

Those who dared turned to look at the cribs where the larva-babies wailed as officers swept each one up. With the powerful scanners of their antennae, they sent sharp vibrations through the small, tender bodies. The babies cried in fear and regurgitated their Flow, and the smell of it mixed with their infant defecation.

“Our Mother, who art in labor—”
Sister Teasel’s voice was hoarse and small, but her nurses joined their own in support.

“Hallowed be Thy womb,”
they sang to control their fear.

“Thy Marriage done, Thy Queendom come—”

Flora wanted to join in, but the scent from Sister Sage had bound her rigid.

“From Death comes Life Eter—”
The beautiful voices stopped at the sharp squealing from one of the cribs.

Every nurse stared in horror as one of the officers bent over it. The squeal became an anguished shriek as the officer held up a larva-baby struggling to roll itself up. Another officer uncurled it with a sound of tearing skin.

Standing by Flora, Sister Inspector slid a claw from her gauntlet. “Bring it.”

Muffling the baby’s screams, she scanned it with slow-burning antennae until its pearly skin withered. “It is possible,” she announced. “It has a foul, strange scent.”

“That is fear!” cried Sister Teasel.

Ignoring her, Sister Inspector held up the baby and pierced it with her hook. It shrieked and twisted in agony as she held it out to her officers.

“Destroy it.”

“Wait.” Sister Sage pointed to Flora. “Let her.”

With a jolt Flora felt herself released to move. Sister Inspector pulled her claw from the larva-baby to drop it on the ground, but Flora caught it and clutched it to her, the first child she had ever held. Its warm blood soaked into her fur and she pressed the agonized little thing close to her, trying to stanch the bleeding.

Eat it alive.
The voice spoke inside Flora’s own mind. She held the baby tighter and a searing sound went through her antennae.

Do it NOW. Tear it apart.

Flora bowed her own head over the baby and shielded it with her arms. The voice roared louder in her mind.

DESTROY IT—

Her antennae felt like they burst with the blow that struck her. She staggered and fell, the baby still clutched to her. Blows fell against her body, and her antennae became two pulsing rods of agony. The screaming baby was pulled from her grasp. She felt its warm blood splash her face and heard its tearing flesh and the grunts of the fertility police as they devoured it. As Flora screamed, her tongue twisted hard in her mouth and she choked on the sound.

“I asked too much.” Sister Sage’s voice was close and gentle. “The experiment is over.”

Six

F
LORA REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS LYING ON DIRTY BLANK
tiles. A low moaning came from nearby, but when she tried to locate the source a searing flash forked through her head and she cried out.

“Don’t move . . .” A weak voice spoke. “The pain is less—”

Through the snarling odors of the small chamber Flora became aware of the faint scent of the kin of Clover.

“Was it you?” The voice was young and ragged. “For I swear it was not me.”

Flora tried to answer, but to move her tongue was agony.

“Silence.” Sister Sage entered, followed by a group of her identical doubles. All wore the ceremonial pollen marks of the Melissae priestesses, and a strong astringent scent flowed from them. Flora shrank in terror, but they paid her no attention. Instead, the first Sister Sage knelt down by the Clover and stroked her face.

“Your crime is behind you now, and you harm only yourself by maintaining your lie.” She waited, but the Clover lay panting and did not speak. Sister Sage leaned closer. “How many eggs did you lay? Did you wish to be Queen?”

“Never!” The Clover struggled to rise on her broken limbs. Her wings were shriveled and curled. “I beg you to believe me; I have not profaned our holy law.
Only the Queen may breed—
”

One of the other priestesses stepped forward as if to strike the Clover, but Sister Sage held her back and soothed the Clover again.

“Why did you hide from the police? Was it to keep spreading your deformity through our hive with foul eggs? We have found the young sisters with your defect, your
issue
.” Sister Sage hissed the word and the Clover began to weep.

“I swear again I have never laid—”

“Your wings show your true evil. And deformity creeps through our hive.”

The Clover gave up trying to stand.

“Then maybe Holy Mother lays bad eggs.”

The priestesses hissed and rasped their wings like knives. Sister Sage raised the Clover off the ground with one hand. “You blaspheme, at the moment of your death?”

The Clover raised her antennae to high shivering points. “
From Death comes Life Eternal.
Holy Mother, take me back.”

The priestesses surrounded her and flexed their abdomens high. Flora saw the tips of their bodies draw in to a hard point, and as they sung the Holy Chord together, their delicate, barbed daggers slid out. The chamber filled with the scent of venom, the Holy Chord rose louder until the air reverberated—then the priestesses stung the Clover from all sides. She cried out once—and then the sweet scent of her kin burst bright upon the foul air and was gone.

The priestesses turned to Flora. She felt their probing attention work its way down her sore antennae, deep into her head. She curled herself up as small as she could, to brace for the searing chemical pain they would drive into her brain—but it did not come. Abruptly, the intimate invasion withdrew. The priestesses talked together in low voices, and, despite her fear, Flora listened.

“Cornflower yield is low. Even the buttercups are short—”

“The foragers speak of more green deserts—”

“When they fly at all, in this rain.”

“We cannot fight the season.” By the particular rich timbre of the voice, Flora could tell the speaker was the same Sister Sage she knew. “We cannot fight the rain, we can only provision ourselves as best we may. So unless she be heretic or deformed, in such a troubling season, every single worker is an asset—and I am loath to lose another.”

“Hardly an asset,” said another voice. “She defied you over the baby. I vote to give her the Kindness—I would not waste my venom on her.”

Flora lay very still.

“I will kill her myself when her use is over,” said Sister Sage. “But the first fault was mine. I acted independently.”

The air in the chamber contracted as the priestesses twined and flexed their scents together in consultation. Then one fragrance formed, no longer dominated by the harsh astringent top note, but smooth, warm, and powerfully calming.

“Only the Queen is perfect. Amen.”

Even in her pain, Flora heard the choral beauty of their voices when they spoke together, and she breathed more deeply. When a foot nudged her she did not resist.

“It is true. Such size and strength make her useful,” one of them said.

“Provided she is docile,” said another. “To have a rebel in that kin—and one who could have learned of feeding—”

“That will never happen.” Sister Sage knelt down beside Flora and looked up at her fellow priestesses. “More than one of us should do this, to be sure.”

“Of course,” said another. “Dirt and fear will be her only guides.”

Three more priestesses knelt by Flora’s head, so there were two at each antenna.

Then they all touched their own antennae to hers.

The sensation was very strange. As the chemicals jolted into her brain her body shook, but she did not feel pain, only waves of numbness, stronger and stronger until her consciousness shrank to calm and blackness.

“G
ET UP, 717.”
The voice came from a great distance.

The massive limbs beneath Flora lurched into life and she stood. Dimly she felt the energy of other beings around her, then the comforting, dull rhythm thudding through the comb beneath her feet. It went up into her body and her brain. Without conscious thought, Flora lifted the body of the dead Clover into her mouth. As she did so the rhythm in the ground grew stronger, pulsing with each forward step she took to lead her onto the coded tiles. Pulled by the frequency, Flora carried the dead Clover out of the detention chamber, into the huge traffic of bees.

To shield her antennae from the many bruising signals in the air, she walked with her head low. Air currents and electrical pulses from thousands of bees rippled against her, but Flora ignored them all. The pulsing track alone held her focus, clear and simple across the perilously busy lobby, where she had to slow down because of the tempest of data underfoot.

A rush of workers came through in a tumult of scent and Flora lifted her head—then the rhythm of the foot-current drew her on. She trudged past the doorway of a great hall from which came the cheering of many voices, and some vast, foreign scent blew through the air, but the stimulation was too much and she shrank low to the ground to keep going.

She found herself walking in a group of bees who were also carrying pungent loads, and realized one was speaking to her, trying to stop her. Flora looked dully into the dark face of a sanitation worker urgently trying to guide her through a doorway. Flora stepped through and found a clear space on the floor. The simple scent tiles prompted her to lay down the dead Clover’s body, and immediately another worker took it away. Hands pushed her back out into the corridor, where she joined another stream of sanitation workers. They marched in silence with their dark heads lowered, their aspect no longer dirty and vile, their scent a comfort.

There were no chiming bells to mark time in Sanitation, only the differences in the smell of the dirt they cleaned, and the very basic food they ate. There was no chatter or gossip because none of the cleaners could speak, so they derived companionship from laboring together and pressing close to share their scent.

Like the rest of her kin-sisters, Flora worked in a dull haze, interspersed with pauses for Devotion. When the fragrance of the Queen’s Love rose through the vibrating comb, the sanitation workers stopped wherever they were and cried out in slurred reverence, and Flora felt a moment of blissful relief from the constant pain in her head. Then they all went back to work, and her consciousness shrank back down to whatever task was at hand.

S
ISTERS OF ALL KIN
were born and died by the hundreds every day, so collecting the dead was a common occupation for sanitation workers. As she carried body after body, Flora grew familiar with the routes down from the top and midlevel of the hive to the morgue and waste depot on the third and lowest level. Certain routes were blocked by kin-sensitive scent-gates, which stopped the floras from unauthorized visits to holy areas of the hive, like the Nursery on the midlevel or the Fanning Hall and Treasury on the top level. After being buffeted back by the powerful scents once or twice, even the slowest sanitation worker like Flora learned not to try that way again. But sometimes on the midlevel of the hive, drifting scents of the Nursery tugged at her brain. The longer she stood there, the more they distressed her, until she blundered away groaning.

Despite their status as lowest of the low, even in the kin of Sanitation there was a hierarchy of ability. Certain floras could leave the dull thudding foot-tracks and collect waste from difficult areas, and these sisters were also used to make short waste-disposal flights with corpses or particularly foul-smelling loads, dropping them a hygienic distance from the hive. The second group, to which Flora belonged, experienced such agony in their antennae if they diverged but one step from their ordained track that the outer limit of their roaming was down to the morgue or the freight holding area, both on the lowest level of the hive and near the landing board. Sometimes Flora would pause there, where the vast, foreign scent of air swirled so strong about her body that her wing joints trembled with a strange sensation—but to dwell on it was to invite pain, and to return to her duties, relief.

Each sanitation detail had a supervisor from a higher kin, for they were not to be trusted on their own. Today, Flora’s supervisor was a Sister Bindweed, a long, narrow bee with sparse fur and a brusque, absent manner. She had them working in a vacant area of the Drones’ Arrival Hall, cleaning out recently used incubation chambers in preparation for repair with consecrated wax.

Each bee had her own set of chambers to work on. Though none of them could speak, they grunted and scraped away with the same rhythm, apparently enjoying their work. Some scrutinized their neighbors’ labor, mutely pointing out the smallest particle of remaining dirt, while others checked that the soiled wax was efficiently compacted for removal. There were no guiding foot-tracks between the drone chambers, so to block painful confusion Flora clenched down with her scarred antennae to focus on the smallest possible area. It made her obsessive, but her work was immaculate, and Sister Bindweed had to shout and throw a piece of wax at her when it was time for Devotion.

From their place in the Drones’ Arrival Hall, all the sanitation workers could hear the massed choirs of the hive singing through the carved walls. As the vocal vibrations sent the fragrance of the Queen’s Love shimmering through the membrane of the honeycomb and deep into their bodies, some of the floras made incoherent sounds of happiness, while others made rhythmic movements as if trying to dance. Flora was one of the many who stood transfixed by the blissful sense of being loved—until the divine surge began to ebb away.

A strange sensation rose inside her, strong as hunger but not for food or water. It was as if her abdomen dragged heavy behind her, and her rigid, twisted tongue swelled in her mouth. As her detail returned to work, the sensations grew more insistent. Trying to rid herself of them, Flora shook herself from side to side.

“Stop that, you stupid creature!” Sister Bindweed waved the thin rod of propolis resin that she used to poke the sanitation workers without incurring dirty contact. “Get into that cell and clean it, unless you want me to send you for the Kindness.”

Obediently, Flora climbed into the next vacated drone cell. The air was fetid, the walls and floor crusted with fecal waste. Even through Flora’s deadened senses, her brain thundered with the chemical onslaught from the waste of this drone. As the foul smell destroyed the last fragrant vestige of the Queen’s Love, a sudden rage rose up inside Flora. She attacked the wall with her jaws, furious at the sexual smell of the filth. The tightness in her mouth ignited in two points of pain on either side of her face, but she worked on in a frenzy, tearing out soiled chunks of wax and hurling them into the corridor. Then all sound and vision cut out and she was left in a chaos of odors.

Terror-stricken, Flora threw herself out of the drone’s chamber and onto the ground. Somewhere nearby the thinnest filament of the Queen’s Love lingered on the ground where it had come through the comb, and she threw her body down against it, breathing it in to counter the flashing black pain in her head.

“717! You are behaving like a demented bluebottle—stop that!”

Sister Bindweed tried to kick Flora back to her feet, but with her massive strength Flora clung to the wax until she drew the last molecules of the Queen’s Love into her body. Sister Bindweed’s puny kicks did not hurt, because something far more powerful was taking place in her mind and body.

Her tongue, so long hard and twisted, was warming and softening, and the disgusting taste of the drone waste was fading. Strength was coursing through her body, and her antennae throbbed as their inner channels opened up, restoring her vision and hearing. Most amazing of all was her sense of smell. She could discern all the different waxes used to make the floor tiles on which she lay, and the propolis inlay of the drone cells, and the warm, dirty smell of the sanitation workers’ bodies toiling around her—

“Enough!” Too angry to use her propolis rod, Sister Bindweed grabbed Flora by the edge of a wing and started pulling her toward the doors. To resist would be to tear the membrane, and Flora was forced to hurry with her.

“If you cannot perform the simplest task”—Sister Bindweed pushed Flora out into the busy corridor—“then good for nothing is what you are, and no more use to this hive!” Sister Bindweed shouted so vehemently that Flora smelled the half-digested pollen bread on her breath and the slow taint of old age moving in her belly.

“You stand there until the police patrol comes by—they’ll know what to do with you, make no mistake.” Sister Bindweed shuddered at the smell of her own hands where she had grabbed Flora and went back inside.

T
HE
D
RONES’
A
RRIVAL
H
ALL
opened onto a main lobby filled with thousands of bees moving in all directions, never colliding. For a few moments Flora stood motionless, absorbing the tides of scent information that surged in the air and the vibrations in the coded tiles.