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

or like a dinner-party on the stage. In a way it was like a nightmare, under which you might continue to consume huge masses of putty without being able to stop. There was a coming and going round the watch-glass. Those ants who had filled their crops to the brim were walking back to the fortress, to be replaced by a procession of empty ants who were coming from the same direction. There were never any new ants in the procession, but only this same dozen going backwards and forwards, as they would do during all their lives.
    He realized suddenly that what he was eating was not going into his stomach. Only a tiny proportion of it had penetrated to his private self at the beginning, and now the main mass was being stored in a kind of upper stomach or crop, from which it could be removed. It dawned on him at the same time that when he joined the westward stream he would have to disgorge this store, into a larder or something of that sort.
    The sugar squad conversed with each other while they worked. He thought this was a good sign at first, and listened, to pick up what he could.
    "Oh hark!" one of them would say. "Here comes that Mammy—mammy—mammy— mammy song again. I do think that Mammy—
    mammy—mammy—mammy song is loverly (Done). It is so high-class (Done)."
    Another would remark: "I do think our beloved Leader is wonderful, do not you? They say she was stung three hundred times in the last war, and was awarded the Ant Cross for Valour."
    "How lucky we are to be born of the Sanguinea blood, don't you think, and would it not be awful to be one of those filthy Formicaefuscae!"
    "Was it not awful about 3I0099/WD, who refused to disgorge his syrup when he was asked. Of course he was executed at once, by special order of our beloved Leader."
    "Oh hark! Here comes that Mammy— mammy—mammy—mammy song again. I do think..."
    He walked off to the nest with a full gorge, leaving them to do the round again. For they had no news, no scandal, nothing to talk about. Novelties did not happen to them. Even the remarks about the executions were in a formula, and only varied as to the registration number of the criminal. When they had finished with the Mammy—mammy—mammy—mammy, they had to go on to the beloved Leader and then to the filthy fuscae and to the latest execution. It went round in a circle. Even the beloveds, wonderfuls, luckies and so on were all Dones, and the awfuls were Not-Dones.
    He found himself in the vast hall of the fortress, where hundreds and hundreds of ants were licking or feeding in the nurseries, carrying grubs to various aisles in order to get an even temperature, and opening or closing the ventilation passages. In the middle, the giant Leader sat complacently, laying eggs, attending to the broadcasts, issuing directions or commanding executions, surrounded by a sea of adulation. (He learned later from Merlyn that the method of succession among these Leaders was variable according to the different species of ant. In Bothriomyrmex, for instance, the ambitious founder of a New Order would invade a nest of Tapinoma and jump upon the back of the older tyrant: there, dissimulated by the smell of her host, she would slowly saw off her head, until she herself had achieved the right of leadership.)
    There was no larder for his store of syrup after all. He found that he must walk about like a living dumb-waiter at the convenience of the indoor workers. When they wanted a meal, they stopped him, he opened his mouth, and they fed from it. They did not treat him as a person, and, indeed, they were impersonal themselves. He was a dumbwaiter from which dumb-diners fed. Even his stomach was not his own.
    But do not let us go on about these ants in too much detail: they are not a pleasant topic. He lived among them patiently, conforming to their habits, watching them in order to understand as much as possible, but unable to ask them questions. It was not only that their language was destitute of the words in