The Once and Future King

Chapter VII

He felt that it was strange to be visiting the animals again at his age. Perhaps, he thought to himself with shame, I am dreaming in my second childhood, perhaps I am given over to my dotage.

But it made him remember his first childhood vividly, the happy times swimming in moats or flying with Archimedes, and he realized that he had lost something since those days. It was something which he thought of now as the faculty of wonder. Then, his delights had been indiscriminate. His attention, or his sense of beauty, or whatever it was to be called, had attached itself fortuitously to oddments. Perhaps, while Archimedes had been lecturing him about the flight of birds, he himself would have been lost in admiration at the way in which the fur went on the mouse in the owl’s claws. Or the great Mr M. might have been making him a speech about Dictatorship, while he, all the time, would have seen only the bony teeth, poring on them in an ecstasy of experience.

This, his faculty of wonder, was gone from inside him, however much Merlyn might have furbished up his brain. It was exchanged – for the faculty of discrimination, he supposed. Now he would have listened to Archimedes or to Mr M. He would never have seen the grey fur or the yellow teeth. He did not feel proud of the change.

The old man yawned – for ants do yawn, and they stretch themselves too, just like human beings, when they have had a sleep – after which he gathered his wits for the business in hand. He did not feel pleased to be an ant, as he would have been transported to be one in the old days, but only thought to himself: well, it is a piece of work which I must do. How to begin?

The nests were made by spreading earth in a thin layer, less than half an inch deep, on small tables like footstools. Then, on top of the layer of earth, a sheet of glass was placed, with a piece of cloth over it to give darkness for the nurseries. By removing the cloth, you could see into the underground shelters as if you had a cross section. You could see the circular chamber where the pupae were being tended, as if it were a conservatory with a glass roof.

The actual nests were only at the end of the footstools, the glass reaching less than half the way along. In front were plain aprons of earth, open to the sky, and, at the further end of each footstool, there were the watch-glasses in which the syrup was left for food. There was no communication between the two nests. The footstools were separate, side by side but not touching, with their legs in the saucers.

Of course it did not seem like this at the time. The place where he was seemed like a great field of earthen boulders, with a flattened fortress at one end of it. The fortress was entered by tunnels, and, over the entrance to each tunnel, there was a notice which said:

                              EVERYTHING NOT FORBIDDEN

                              IS COMPULSORY

                              BY NEW ORDER

He read the notice with a feeling of dislike, though he did not appreciate its meaning, and he thought to himself: I will take a turn round, before going in. For some reason the notice gave him a reluctance to go, making the rough tunnel look sinister.

He waved his antennae carefully, considering the notice, assuring himself of his new senses, planting his feet squarely in the new world as if to brace himself in it. He cleaned his antennae with his forefeet, frisking and smoothing them so that he looked like a Victorian villain twirling his moustachios. Then he became conscious of something which had been waiting for consciousness all the time: that there was a noise in his head which was articulate. It was either a noise or a complicated smell, and the easiest way for us to explain it is to say that it was like a wireless broadcast. It came to him through his 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/WD 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!’

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 smell 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 the things he wanted to say. There were no words for happiness, for freedom, or for liking, nor were there any words for their opposites. He felt like a dumb man trying to shout, ‘Fire!’ The nearest he could get to Right and Wrong, even, was Done or Not-Done.

The ant finished fiddling with its corpses and turned back down the pathway, leaving them in the queer haphazard order. It found that Arthur was in its way, so it stopped, waving its wireless aerials at him as if it were a tank. With its mute, menacing helmet of a face, and its hairiness, and the things like spurs at each leg-joint, perhaps it was more like a knight-in-armour on an armoured horse: or like a combination of the two, a hairy centaur-in-armour.

It said, ‘Heil, Sanguinea’ once again.

‘Hail’

‘What are you doing?’

The king answered truthfully but not wisely: ‘I am not doing anything.’

It was baffled by this for several seconds, as you would be if Einstein were to tell you his latest ideas about space. Then it extended the twelve joints of its aerial and spoke past him into the blue.

It said: ‘I05978/UDC reporting from square five. There is an insane ant on square five. Over to you.’

The word it used for insane was Not-Done. Later on, he was to discover that there were only two qualifications in the language – Done and Not-Done – which applied to all questions of value. If the syrup which Merlyn left for them was sweet, it was a Done syrup: if he had left them some corrosive sublimate, it would have been a Not-Done syrup, and that was that. Even the moons, mammies, doves, etc. in the broadcasts were completely described when they were stated to be Done ones.

The broadcast stopped for a moment, and the fruity voice said: ‘GHQ replying to 105978/U D C. What is its number? Over.’

The ant asked: ‘What is your number?’

‘I do not know.’

When this news had been exchanged with headquarters, a message came back to ask whether he could give an account of himself. The ant asked him whether he could, using the same words as the broadcaster had used, and in the same flat voice. It made him feel uncomfortable and angry, two emotions which he disliked.

‘Yes,’ he said sarcastically, for it was obvious that the creature could not detect sarcasm, ‘I have fallen on my head and cannot remember anything about it.’

‘I05978/U D C reporting. Not-Done ant is suffering from concussion through falling off the nest. Over.’

‘GHQ replying to 105978/U D C. Not-Done ant is number 42436/W D, who fell off the nest this morning while working with syrup squad. If it is competent to continue its duties–’ Competent-to-continue-its-duties was easier in the ant speech, for it was simply Done, like everything else that was not Not-Done: but enough of this language question, ‘if it is competent to continue its duties, instruct 42436/W D to rejoin syrup squad, relieving 210021/W D, who was sent to replace it. Over.’

‘Do you understand?’ asked the ant.

It seemed that he could not have made a better explanation of himself than this about falling on his head, even if he had meant to; for the ants did occasionally tumble off their footstools, and Merlyn, if he happened to notice them, would lift them back with the end of his pencil.

‘Yes.’

The sexton paid no further attention to him, but crawled off down the path for another body or for anything else that needed to be scavenged.

Arthur took himself away in the opposite direction, to join the syrup squad, memorizing his own number and the number of the unit who had to be relieved.