Admiringly the grey-haired child looked at its handiwork through
thick-lensed glasses. "It's been an interesting game," Lee thought, "it
might turn out to be a valuable new experiment. I'll sit down now and
observe what happens...."
He went over to the desk again and settled down. He opened his files and
laid out his charts on the desk and there were colored pencils to be
sharpened for the entries. He was glad of that; his conscious mind
rejoiced now over every little pursuit of routine, of normalcy, of the
established scientific order of things; it concentrated on these. Pencil
in hand, reclined in comfort, his heartbeat even, he kept expectant eyes
upon the staggered rows of fluorescent screens, ready to note any
significant developments.
He didn't have to wait long; their strange sixth sense, the telepathy of
their collective brains, the spirit of the hive with the immortality of
their race for its supreme law, had already told them of a promised land
and of new worlds to conquer.
On the fluorescent screens Lee watched their preparations for the big
drive: The nasicorn-soldiers clotting together at the exit tunnels like
assault troops at the bow of invasion barges when the bottom scrapes the
landing beach; the fierce, virginal workers struggling up from the deep
shelters of the nurseries, carrying in their mandibles the squirming
larvae, the living future of the race. The walls of the queen's prison
broken down in the innermost redoubt and the guards closing in on the
idol of the race, moving the big white body like a juggernaut.
In a matter of minutes the "activity" and "emotionality" curves on the
fluorescent screens surged to heights which Lee had never seen.
It started with the crossbreeds of "_termes-bellicosus_," with army-ants
and devil-ants, and spread quickly all along the line of non-belligerent
varieties. Famine had given them the impetus to change their mode of
life; famine, the inexorable tyrant, whipped them onward into their
exodus.
On the foremost fluorescent screens Lee saw it start: Small groups of
warriors reconnoitering into no-man's-land and quickly darting back
again.... And then the dark columns of the first assault wave descending
from their city-gates, lock-stepped like Prussian guards of old,
marching as if to the beat of drums. On the visi-screens which magnified
them a hundred times they looked an awesome sight with the rostrums of
their horns, bigger than all the rest of their bodies, swinging like
turrets of battleships being trained upon the enemy. From the
loudspeakers which magnified all noise a hundred times, the excited
tremors of their bodies, the locked steps of a million feet swelled into
a vast roar sounding almost like thunder.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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