Flora did not move. Now she felt the presence of all the wasps hovering close by in the air behind her, their scent masked by the thick smell of sugar she had raised by her frantic chewing, and their sound by the machines on the ground. In the time it took Flora to realize, the sugar under her feet hardened like propolis and held her fast.

The wasp watched her. Flora did not turn. Instead, she bowed her antennae.

“Thank you for this feast, cousin,” she said, as calmly as she could. “You are so beautiful, with your tiny waist and sharp, smooth stripes. Will you spin so I can admire you?”

The young wasp could not resist. She pirouetted on the air.

“Please,” Flora said humbly, and curtsied low, “that was so rare a sight, I have only seen it done faster once before.”

“Faster?” the wasp retorted. “That was nothing; watch this.” And she spun again. Deep in her curtsy, Flora saw the massed horde of wasps hanging in the dim air of the cavern behind her. Quickly she bit her feet free of the sugar.

“Are we not superior?” called the wasp within her spinning. “Admit it!”

“You are!” Flora cried, pulling her feet free. “Faster!” Then, roaring her thoracic engine like a rampant drone, she shot backward as hard as she could into the ambush of wasps, scattering them in the air.

“Apissss!” they screamed, rearing up from their shock. “Apisss, die!”

They came at her from all sides, shrieking their fury and filling the air with the scent of their wet-drawn daggers. Flora plunged and swerved while inside the nest the larvae whined a thin, sick note of hatred through the paper walls, and their captives screamed for mercy in all the languages of the air.

At the obscene, intimate brush of wasp wings against her own Flora lost her axis and fell. She tumbled in a sickening mist of sugar and formic acid and righted herself just before she hit the ground.

The mouth of the cavern was bright and Flora threw herself toward it just as one of the great lumbering vehicles drew across it and blocked the entrance. In a desperate swerve she dived through the tiny aperture into the driver’s cab and the torrent of wasps poured in after her.

The driver yelled in fright and thrashed his hairy forearm around his head, knocking Flora to the ground and maddening the wasps. As they stung him from all sides, Flora crawled into a groove of dirt and hid. The driver screamed and pressed on the horn so that the vehicle itself bellowed like a wounded bull, then he wrenched open the door and staggered out. At the touch of air on her wings Flora dragged herself over the metal step and fell to the concrete floor. While the wasps descended on the writhing man she crawled toward the light and air. The weeds pulsed their scent to help her, and she used it to pull herself forward until she felt the sky above.

THE CLOUDS WERE VIOLET-GRAY and the cold air trembled in bursts and stops. Fighting off the numbing fog of the formic acid, Flora struggled for altitude, her wing-joints burning. Below her she could still hear the enraged buzz of the wasps and the shouts of the men running to drive them from their screaming victim.

Flora climbed higher, trying to pick up the azimuth of the sun with her sugar-jangled antennae. She thought she had filled her crop with sugar, but it was light and empty.

Ashamed at her failure to forage and sick from the taste of the sugar, all that Flora now wanted was the scent of home. She turned again and again, but nothing registered. All she felt was the racing pulse of sugar.

Flora cursed her pride—she of all kin should have listened to the weeds. If she lived to see another sunrise she would kiss every one of their mouths. She flew in a circle, then in a figure eight, trying to pick up the scent of the orchard, of the great road, of Congregation, of anything familiar, but great waves of wind collided and she had to flatten her antennae and tighten her wings lest they be ripped from her body. A colossal cold swell threw her sideways and a warm front flung her back. With a tearing flash of light, the storm broke.

A water bomb hit Flora on her right side, and she felt her wing-latch breaking between the front and rear membranes. Clenching her thoracic muscles to hold her wing panels together, she aimed herself into the racing air current streaming toward the tree line. Pelting raindrops knocked her lower and lower, and with a great lurch of strength she flung herself into the nearest canopy of leaves. She tumbled down the dripping green slides trying to grab hold of anything, but her claws slipped and she fell to the earth.

Directly ahead under the drumming leaves was a place of shelter. To reach it she must crawl across a shining track left by some unknown creature, but if she did not move, the water bombs would take away all choice and she would lie drowning with broken wings. Nothing was in sight so Flora stepped quickly across it. She was almost at the dry sanctuary of twigs when a sound made her look around.

It did not look at her, for it had no eyes, but a great brown slug pulled its way back toward her along the silvery mucus trail, its orange frill rippling as it moved. It was nothing but a rhythmically convulsing sack of muscle, then it raised its gaping, drooling mouth, and made a sound between a grunt and a moan. Two flaccid horns engorged and lifted, and then its tiny eyes bulged out from their tips. It moaned again as its slime spread behind it.

A forager’s suicide in the rain was better than cowering on the ground waiting to be engulfed by the slug. Soaked and battered, Flora fought her way higher until a snarl of air caught her up and sucked her tiny body into the roaring mouth of the storm.

Twenty-Three

FLORA’S BODY HIT SOMETHING SOLID. SHE COULD MOVE neither wing nor limb of her waterlogged body but tumbled down through the leaves and bounced against hard branches until some spongy lichen slowed her fall. Her claw caught and she hung there in the rain. Gradually, she managed to dig more hooks in, and found that none of her limbs was broken. She hauled herself the right way up and pushed her cuticle bands apart. Water drained out. Very carefully, she crept toward the great bole of the tree and pressed herself into a dry crevice.

It was an old tree and true, after the vile pretense of the metal one. She could feel its strength drawing deep into the earth as it stretched its countless arms wide, welcoming the storm passing through. It was a beech; she recognized the leaf pattern from one of the trees at Congregation, and for a wild moment she hoped that when the rain stopped she would see drones of her home livery emerging from their hiding places, and they would all shake themselves out and fly home together.

The rain slowed, then stopped. The tiny, bright eyes of cars moved slowly across the dark plain of the fields, and far beyond that shone the lights of the town. Flora tried to lift her antennae to read even one scent, but storm-wracked and sugar-rushed, they told her she was still in flight. She checked her numb wings. On both sides the latches were smashed and the membranes showed tears in many places.

Flora began to shiver uncontrollably. Not for her the dramatic oblivion in the storm, with the Queen’s Prayer coursing through her body so that death would find her in a state of grace, nor even a forager’s Kindness, meted with respect and a strong, merciful bite. This death would take time. How bitterly now did Flora crave the sweet dark warmth of home and the comfort of her family around her, like those noble sisters who went to their final rest in their own berths with peace in their hearts. Praise end your days, Sister . . .

Flora wept in shame. She had been reckless and proud in trying to forage in the town without following any bee’s dance—then tricked by the wasp who had promised her safety and sugar. It hurt too much to try to open the inner channels of her antennae, but she already knew that Lily 500’s knowledge was destroyed. She clutched herself as if to feel a sister’s touch, searching her body for any last remnant of the Queen’s Love. There was not one molecule left, only the racking physical need for her lost home and family. At the thought of her second child, her little drone son who would now starve to death, Flora howled out her heartbreak, knowing she had done this to herself.