Free Once & Future King 05 - The Book of Merlyn by T. H. White

antennae, like music.
    The music had a monotonous rhythm like a pulse, and the words which went with it were about June—moon—noon—spoon or Mammy— mammy—mammy—mammy or Ever—never or Blue—true—you. He liked them at first, especially the ones about Love—dove—above, until he found that they were not variable. As soon as they had been finished once, they were begun again. After an hour or two of them, he was to feel that they would make him scream.
    There was a voice in his head also, during the pauses of the music, which seemed to be giving directions. "All two-day-olds to be moved to the West Aisle," it would say, or "Number 210397/wo to report to the syrup squad, in replacement of 333105/WD who has fallen off the nest." It was a charming, fruity voice, but seemed to be somehow impersonal: as if the charm were an accomplishment that had been perfected like a circus trick. It was dead.
    The king, or perhaps we ought to say the ant, walked away from the fortress as soon as he was prepared to walk about. He began prospecting the desert of boulders uneasily, reluctant to visit the place from which the orders were coming, yet bored with the narrow view. He found small pathways among the boulders, wandering tracks both aimless and purposeful, which led toward the syrup store and also in various other directions which he could not understand. One of these latter paths ended at a clod with a natural hollow underneath it. In the hollow, again with the queer appearance of aimless purpose, he found two dead ants. They were laid there tidily but yet untidily, as if a very tidy person had taken them to the place but forgotten the reason when he got there. They were curled up, and they did not seem to be either glad or sorry to be dead. They were there, like a couple of chairs.
    While he was looking at the two corpses, a live ant came down the pathway carrying a third.
    It said: "Heil, Sanguinea!"
    68 The king said Hail, politely.
    In one respect, of which he knew nothing, he was fortunate. Merlyn had remembered to give him the proper smell for this particular nest; for, if he had smelled of any other nest, they would have killed him at once. If Miss Edith Cavell had been an ant, they would have had to write on her pedestal: SMELL is NOT ENOUGH.
    The new ant put down its cadaver vaguely and began dragging the other two in various directions. It did not seem to know where to put them; or rather, it knew that a certain arrangement had to be made, but it could not figure out how to make it. It was like a man with a tea-cup in one hand and a sandwich in the other, who wants to light a cigarette with a match. But, where the man would invent the idea of putting down the cup and sandwich, before picking up the cigarette and match, this ant would have put down the sandwich and picked up the match, then it would have been down with the match and up with the cigarette, then down with the cigarette and up with the sandwich, then down with the cup and up with the cigarette, until finally it had put down the sandwich and picked up the match. It was inclined to rely upon a series of accidents in order to achieve its objects. It was patient, and did not think. When it had pulled the three dead ants into several positions they would doubtless fall into line under the clod eventually, and that was its whole duty.
    The king watched the arrangements with a surprise which turned into vexation and then into dislike. He felt like asking why it did not think things out in advance—that annoyed feeling which one has on seeing a job being badly done. Later he began to wish that he could put several other questions, such as "Do you like being a sexton?" or "Are you a slave?" or even "Are you happy?"
    But the extraordinary thing was that he could not ask such questions. In order to ask-them, he would have had to put them into the ant language through his antennae: and he now discovered, with a helpless feeling, that there were no words for half