The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [6]
“By ‘citadel’ I assume you mean this little mound of earth.”
“Yes. But, again, if you give an ant the stature of a man, how impressive does his mound become?”
“Modestly so if size is the only quality you note. Even so, it would be only a very large, uneven, unlovely mound of earth. Nothing to be compared to, say, the Louvre or the Sistine Chapel.”
“The ants do not build to impress you, my friend. Given our relative proportions, which would have more space for living and working? This mound, with its tight-packed tunnels, or the Sistine Chapel, with its vaulted ceilings—space mostly wasted in vain grandeur? The ant's eye is all toward efficiency.”
“Ah. They are perhaps German, then, or English. There are no French ants, I suppose?”
“Butterflies I suppose to be French,” Franklin replied good-naturedly. “Fireflies and lacewings.”
“Would that you were right.” The philosopher sighed. “But it was no horde of butterflies that laid waste Europe, no lacewing that left that hole where once London was.”
“No, I suppose not,” Franklin said absently. He bent to watch two ants meet. They seemed to exchange information of some sort, then scurried off purposefully.
“No empty greetings or pleasantries, I'll wager,” Franklin murmured, “no small comments. It's all business with them. The food is there, danger is here, the south tunnel needs repair.”
“You admire them, then?”
Franklin looked up at last, his brow furrowed slightly. “They interest me. Each time we stop, I try to find one of their cities, and indeed they are everywhere. It is not so much to say, I think, that below our feet, scarcely noticed, is an empire we are all but unaware of. Seen from the right prospect, the world could be said to be ruled by ants.”
“Yes? And yet now that you have brought them to my notice, I could destroy their great city there. I could bring this outpost of empire to naught.”
Franklin dusted his hands on his breeches and stood. “Four days ago we passed over ground still smoking. Everything green was burned, and all four-footed things had either fled or succumbed. I found ant cities there scorched black by what must have been terrific heat—and yet they were there. Knock down a mound, and it will be refurbished in the space of a day or two. And then there are the million cities elsewhere, scattered over all the world. For all our greater size and knowledge, I can think of no way we could destroy the race of ants, not utterly.”
“Now I see your studies have a more than theoretical bent,” Voltaire said. “Who do you liken to the ants—mankind or the malakim?”
The very word still sent a tremor through Franklin. He wished his old mentor, Sir Isaac, had named them differently— from the Latin or Greek rather than from the Hebrew. The latter held too much of the fear and fire of the Old Testament.
But then, the malakim were fear and fire.
“We are their ants, I think,” Franklin replied, “living beneath their heels, usually unnoticed. Occasionally we notice them—and worship them as gods, angels, or devils. And occasionally they notice us in turn and grind us beneath their heels.”
“But never all of us, no more than we could grind out all the ants. Is that what you're saying?”
“They've failed until now. But we haven't learned the trick of setting the ants against each other, to pit one city against another and send warriors to the deepest chambers of their catacombs. But the malakim seem to have perfected the science of turning man against man. There are men happily inventing more ways for those aetheric devils to kill us every day.”
Voltaire nodded. “The malakim seem quite determined to exterminate us. More determined than I should be to destroy the kingdom of ants.”
“Perhaps if you had been stung enough, you would have a different opinion. I've heard that