Chapter 12 #2
Be aware, the voice repeated. A prisoner has escaped from our custody, a cuckoo who claims to have achieved the forbidden instar and ascended into queendom.
She lies. She will lead your mind astray, denying you the ability to properly serve your hive.
Her corruption, if it taints you, will make ascension impossible: your own chances to achieve collective will be unmade if you assist her.
She is disorganized and untidy of thought.
She does not know the proper addresses offered by a person of manners.
She does not know how to speak without disrupting.
You will know her by her uncivility of thought, and by her strange dress.
She does not know our systems. If she is able to acquire a proper uniform, it will be incorrect for the position she is trying to embody: you will easily uncover her for the pretender she is.
Do not attempt to apprehend. Do not make direct contact.
She will be apprehended, she will be tried for her crimes, and she will be destroyed.
As quickly as it had come, the presence receded. I sat up straighter, reaching for my salad with shaking, unsteady hands. Annalist looked like he was on the verge of passing out completely.
“Well,” I said, with forced lightness. “I guess physical descriptions don’t make a lot of sense when you’re talking about a world where everyone looks basically the same.
Does the collective realize they’ve just declared open season on their own people?
Once you say ‘Oh she might be wearing the appropriate uniform, but she won’t be who you think she is,’ everyone becomes a potential target. ”
“The collective is aware that we find ways of maintaining our individuality in the face of their authority,” said Annalist. “They were us once, before their apotheosis. They were happy as us, but they resented them. Now that they are them, they will make any effort they can to keep us from becoming them.”
I blinked. “I’m sorry. I didn’t … What?”
“To become the collective, you must reach the queen’s instar. To reach the queen’s instar, you must— Wait, I’m sorry. You are a cuckoo. Do you know the path to queendom?”
“I know how it was explained to me, but it was explained to me by another cuckoo,” I said. “Can you explain it as you understand it, and I’ll tell you if my understanding matches your own?”
I finally picked up the odd wooden fork, stirring it through the salad bowl before taking a bite.
This wasn’t the first time I’d eaten food from another dimension, and as with before, I found I didn’t have any way to describe the flavors filling my mouth.
How do you describe an apple to someone who’s never tasted one?
The greens were spicy and sweet at the same time, the chunked-up vegetables rich and savory, and the meat more like the fleshy parts of a lobster’s claw than anything else.
It was like I was being given food for the first time after a lifetime of being asked to eat those hard little pellets that pet owners feed to their captive animals, and in addition to being delicious, it made me so angry I could barely focus my eyes.
This wasn’t my world, but it should have been.
Whatever my ancestors did or didn’t do, I’d had no part in it, and no opportunity to decide where I ended up.
Earth was my home now, always would be: it was where I kept my stuff, where I knew what types of tomato I liked best, and where I had my family.
But my choices should have been different, and this salad, which spoke to my hunger as nothing else had ever done, should have been commonplace.
Annalist was watching me, waiting for me to swallow and come back to the conversation. I finished chewing, unwilling to rush even for the sake of what he had to offer me, and turned my attention back to him.
“You like it?” he asked, almost slyly.
“I need you to tell me how someone can become a queen.”
“Very well.” He inclined his head. “The first instar, the universal zero, comes for us all. We are born to it, innocent nymphs, and from there will proceed to one of two paths. Most will mature, crack the egg of their buried memories, and become productive members of society. In some, that egg will be absent or malformed, refusing to hatch. They will continue on as nymphs until something triggers them to enter their second instar, and then they will mature stronger than they might have been otherwise. Zero is all, first is most, second is those who are challenged to it. Those are the easy changes, the worker stages. Most can survive them.”
I made a noncommittal noise and took another bite of salad, watching him carefully.
“The third instar must be triggered from the outside, when another mature Johrlac puts pressure upon the mind of the one who seeks maturity. It leaves the individual stronger and more able to access their natural gifts. Some will begin to show flickers of potential at three that indicate what type of queen they would be. In the earliest days, only the queens were allowed to populate the hive.”
That might have worked when we’d been more like wasps, but as modern Johrlac were bipeds built for live birth, rather than egg-laying, I couldn’t imagine being responsible for the population of an entire hive would be a lot of fun. The very idea made my hips hurt.
“Once a third-instar individual has settled and stabilized, they can be pushed over the edge into the fourth instar. Queens are creatures of community: like the third instar, their transformation must begin from the outside. The exact mechanism is not communicated, because it must be restricted for the health of the hive. Queens will vary in power and potential, depending on the strength of the push which cracked their shells. The greater the danger, the stronger the queen.”
“And that’s why you’re assuming I can stand up against a collective of five, since I was in a lot of danger when I changed,” I said. “Why is it ‘queen,’ and not ‘regent’ or something else gender-neutral?”
Annalist looked baffled. “Why would we choose an untrue title for our rulers?”
“Because men can reach the fourth instar?”
“But they can’t. It would take too long, and even if they survived, they would be dangerous. There are no male queens.”
“I’m already dangerous,” I protested. “I can bend space, and no one’s around to teach me how to do it safely, which means I could seriously hurt people, or even collapse chunks of space and time if I’m not careful.
And my telepathy is too strong—I erased the mind of the man I loved, and I didn’t even realize I was doing it.
I have no idea how strong I really am or am not, based on the scales you’re using, but all queens are dangerous. ”
“Yes, which returns us to where we began: the collective will do whatever is necessary to prevent unauthorized queens from rising out of the population.”
“Uh-huh.” Given that the more advanced instars were all externally triggered, it would actually be possible for the collective to prevent other queens from rising. I just wasn’t sure why they’d bother. “And why is that?”
“Each mind added to the collective dilutes its purity of purpose,” said Annalist. “When a single mind controls the collective, there is no dissent or disagreement.”
“And there’s also no collective. One person isn’t a collective; it’s an individual.”
“Be that as it may, there have been collectives controlled by one or two minds, and those were harmonious times.”
Meaning a single queen would rise and seize control of the minds of the entire population? The thought was horrifying. I swallowed, staring at Annalist. “The current collective is five people.”
“Yes.”
“You said that was a small number.”
“We try to maintain a collective of eight or more, for the sake of flexibility.”
“How did they rise?”
“The first two were chosen by the previous collective to ascend and take their positions. The third was injured at a game with her brothers, and their efforts to call her back from her injuries were invasive enough to trigger her third instar. From there, she was able to convince her parents to press against her mind, and the pressure brought on her fourth instar. It was a shock to everyone when she broadcast her wishes over the city, and the existing queens took her into their number rather than executing her because they saw the potential in her range and strength. The fourth survived the collapse of a collective on the other side of the continent, and the fifth is the first to have been chosen by the new queens. Her name was Collate before her recategorization. She lived in this house with the others, once.”
“Are Fetch and Carry helping me because they’re angry at their friend for becoming a queen without them?”
“Nothing so simple as that. None of them wanted to join the collective. Fetch and her friends are what we call ‘individualists,’ people who believe individuals have the right to live their own lives, guided by their preferences and personalities, not at risk of revision because they displease a queen, not assigned to a profession from birth. We are eusocial insects at our core, but a hive may function without forcing forms of behavior upon its members. Collate was the strongest in her belief that self-determination was a right worth exercising. Her apotheosis was a punishment. She was revised, then triggered into ascension, and now she controls the city with the rest of the collective, and what little remains of their friend is worn away day upon day. They would burn this city to the ground if I allowed it—or if their own minds did. None of us can directly harm a queen. They fought back when Collate was taken, and now, even the thought of bringing harm to a queen harms them. They could never start the fire.”
“If you allowed it … ignoring their conditioning, how do you have the authority to stop them?”