Читать книгу The Bees - Laline Paull - Страница 12

Flora 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 odours 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 shrivelled and curled. ‘I beg you 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 lifted 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 sang 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 poor. 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 rich particular timbre of her voice, the speaker was the same Sister Sage Flora 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 one more.’

‘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 voice when they spoke together, and breathed more deeply. When a foot nudged her she did not resist.

‘It is true. Such size and strength makes 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 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.

‘717.’ The voice came from a great distance. ‘Get up.’

The massive limbs beneath her lurched into life and Flora stood. Dimly she felt energy of other beings around her, then the comforting dull rhythm thudding through the comb under 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, she 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 also carrying pungent loads, and realised one was speaking to her. Flora looked into the dark face of a sanitation worker, urgently trying to guide her through a doorway. Flora stepped in, 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 into another stream of sanitation workers. They marched in silence with their dark heads lowered, their aspect no longer dirty and vile, and 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 labouring 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 returned to work, and her consciousness shrank back down to whatever task was in hand.

* * *

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

Despite their status as lowest of the low, even in the department 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 to the landing board. Sometimes Flora would pause here, 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, a 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’ Arrivals 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 scrutinised their neighbour’s labour, mutely pointing out the tiniest particle of remaining dirt, while others checked 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 on 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’ Arrivals 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 they were 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 took out her thin rod of propolis resin that she used to poke the sanitation workers without incurring dirty contact and waved it at Flora. ‘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 pungent and fetid, the walls and floor crusted with faecal 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 odour 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 great soiled chunks of wax and hurling them into the corridor. Then all her sound and vision cut out and she was left in a chaos of odours.

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; she could smell the warm dirty odour 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 towards the doors. To resist was 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.

* * *

The Drones’ Arrivals Hall 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 through the air and the vibrations in the coded tiles.

Rose Teasel Malus Clover came the rapid knowledge as different sisters passed her by, Clover Plantain Burdock SAGE—

At that last and fast-approaching kin-scent, a jolt of fear propelled Flora into the great moving mass of bees in the lobby. Instinctively she wanted to hide, and though a thousand floor codes pulsed their messages at her, one overrode them all, and it came from her heart: Beware the Sage.