reality and companionship. I was like a Rip Van Winkle
who awakes from a dream to find his old friends dead
and his new ones meaningless. I could have wept for my
solitary state.
My endorser, Nuni told me, had got up directly after
I had killed the Monster, and left to fulfill a new assignment to a Queen’s Guard. I was to go home with Nuru, for Atta would now be busy with his prescribed duties.
I no longer needed anyone to introduce me to Fusa.
This was all the information the Memorizer of the
Records seemed willing to give me, and I accepted it
without argument. Indeed, as I remember it now, a great
lassitude enveloped me while the august leaders were
welcoming me into their fold. An hour before, they had
condemned me to what they must have thought was certain death. Now they made much of me, and there was about their attitude a dreadful insincerity that dragged
all feeling in my heart. I was no longer a curious Stranger
in a new civilization: I was an exhausted gladiator accepting the plaudits of the crowd and aware that the price of survival was to kill others.
The resultant weariness was almost stupefying as I
received the official appointment to serve Fusa and at
length went with the cold and gentle Nuru to his many-
roomed apartment in the inner city. There servants
placed mushrooms and nectar before me, and to my surprise I found that I was hungry. “Eat all you like,” Nuru encouraged me. “There is always plenty in Fusa.” So I
drank and ate to satisfy my new-found hunger, and in an
outside stable Trotta munched contentedly at her fodder.
Inwardly, however, in my heart, I was already disillusioned about Fusa, and I think the fact should be emphasized here. For it is undeniable that in the beginning I myself accepted citizenship. I fought for Fusa and directed her soldiers. But I did not do so because I had found anything admirable. Rather, I realized that I was
facing a grim reality that I could not change; and, like
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many a man before and since, I tried first to adjust
myself to my surroundings and finally to surmount them.
What these surroundings were, Nuru made abundantly
plain. Indeed, for some days I could scarcely swallow a
■ mouthful of food that was not accompanied by a
disquisition by my host on some aspect of the supreme
importance of loyalty to the community in which I had
fallen—a doctrine that he and all Fusans held so strongly
that everything else had to be subordinated to it.
This inordinate admiration for Fusa, indeed, appeared
to be a prime requisite for citizenship—a fact that slightly
amazed me. For although as I trod the dim avenues of
Fusa I had remarked the absence of individual life
among the inhabitants—along with a lack of evidence of
any appreciation of the arts—I had excused it because
of what I considered the limitations of an unintelligent,
almost mechanical race. But now, as I listened to Nuru
day after day, it began to be borne in on me that I was
actually in the presence of a planned society, an ordered
community which its inhabitants considered perfect; one
wherein further change was not to be thought of and
new Ideas were looked on with either contempt or anger.
To a visitor like myself this was a fact of considerable
importance. For it suggested that in Fusa any free-and-
easy relationship with Atta, such as we had previously
enjoyed, could not possibly obtain. Worse, it brought up
the possibility that there might be greater and more serious limitations on an individual’s actions and ideas than I had so far imagined. For all I knew, these limitations
might be so far-reaching that not only might my relationship with Atta be restricted, but any idea, action, or desire of mine that differed from those of the ordinary
Fusan might be banned.
My possession of Trotta, for instance, and the original
quality of the idea that had led me to train and ride her—
would such an initiative have been allowed had I conceived the plan in Fusa and not in the wilderness? Now that the results of that plan had been exhibited in the
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arena, should I be allowed to keep Trotta? What would
happen if I boldly brought up the subject and suggested
that Fusa itself might do well to adopt the idea and train
This question seemed so apt to me in the circumstances
that before many days had passed I resolved to put it to
the test. For my appointment to serve Fusa carried with
it a military commission as advisor to the High Command, and I was not so stupid as to forget that I had secured it because of my abilities on the field of battle.
In pursuit of this idea, therefore, I soon extracted from
Nuru the information that the High Command spent
most of the winter planning the military campaigns on
which the Fusan Army embarked in the spring. This
seemed to me an immediate opportunity to demonstrate
my interest in Fusa’s welfare, and I suggested the possibility of raising perhaps a thousand Trottas in the spring and using them to create a cavalry regiment with
greater speed and maneuverability than the Rubicundian
carriers possessed.
I made this proposal one day at a small gathering of
the High Command in Halket’s quarters, at which Oban,
Draca, and Nuru were all present. To my surprise the
proposal produced a most peculiar and prolonged silence, broken finally by Oban himself. “We have no rider caste in Fusa,” the chief leader said coldly, “so it
is useless to discuss it.”
“But the Rubibundians have what amounts to one, with
their slaves and mounted infantry,” I pointed out.
“Fusa is not Rubicundia,” Oban replied heavily;
“We could train riders,” I persisted.
“W e. have no provision for such a caste,” retorted
Oban.
And with this ridiculous objection the suggestion was
dropped. Nothing was done about training cavalry horses,
and the subject was not referred to in my presence again.
Instead I was inducted into the army in a number of
ceremonials. Halket took me into his immediate military
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group, and I was his guest on a series of visits to all the
gateways of Fusa. I became thoroughly conversant with
the headquarters guard, the main force stationed at the
Oval, and the daily exercises there and on the parade
grounds beyond the gates. On all these occasions I rode
Trotta, carried my weapons, and received only the most
deferential treatment, and I must confess that a sense
of security descended on me. Indeed, Halket gradually
so deferred to my ideas, as I made routine suggestions,
that I thought I was gradually assuming a position in
Fusa comparable to that of a Chinese Gordon or a Lord
Kitchener in Egypt.
I was in no way subjected to ordinary military discipline
or held to the hours of drill, mess, and physical encounter
work that absorbed all the common soldiers’ time. Instead, I was given complete authority to end the army’s confused method of fighting and instill in the regiments a
kind of discipline to which they were unaccustomed: a
system of fighting in platoons and teams instead of in
solitary combat.
I had early discussed this with Halket, after describing
to him the inefficient Rubicundian assault on the Cam-
ponotans. And the co-operative, community idea involved had appealed to him strongly. In fact, this one aspect of my suggestion, I learned afterward, had much
to do with the favor with which the leaders looked on
my work. As winter set in, and the gateways were therefore closed I found myself daily involved in long hours of drill to make a number of disciplined companies out
of the thousands of swaggering soldiers of whom Fusa’s
forces were composed. From morning till night I spent
my time at this task, in the same oval in which I had
earlier battled for my life.
Meanwhile it was as if the city itself had swallowed up
Atta and Subser, and this I gradually perceived to be
inevitable. For no close personal relationship, I soon
saw, was either practicable or possible in Fusa. Work,
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and the nature of their shared interests. Likely to be unchanged throughout a lifetime, the prospect affected me with a kind of dreariness that I can only say reminded
me of my childish picture of Heaven in my first Sunday
School. Yet I supposed it was inevitable, being inherent
in a social system based on the conviction of having arrived at perfection.
Only at the top, among the caste leaders, I found, was
there a semblance of variety or personal original thought,
and even this was strictly watered down by rigid conventions. Otherwise, among ordinary Fusans, so repetitive and mechanical were their actions and reactions that I do not wonder that human naturalists have credited Formicans with instinct but not intelligence.
In any event I was sufficiently overawed by the social
code of Fusa to postpone any attempt to seek out Atta;
and after some time I was well acquainted on my own
with the city empire and no longer capable of being astonished by beliefs and practices different from those to which I had been brought up.
Among other things I soon learned why neither Atta
nor Subser had ever spoken with affection of their parents or had any longing for what we call home; and this, though already known to naturalists, was, I think, the
most shocking to me of all my discoveries. For I discovered in effect that, in common with all Formicans, they had had no home or parents in our sense of the
words, and had never known such a relationship. Infants
were removed by nurse workers from their mothers at
birth, and maternity itself was essentially a factory job
performed by females bred for the task until they were
little more than mere producers of young.
As a result, brothers and sisters ceased to recognize
one another after several months in a good nursery,
primitive family feelings were practically unknown, and
individual love had long since died out.
Such was the picture I got of Fusa and the Fusans,
and needless to say it afforded me little pleasure during
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the weeks I spent putting it together. For there had been
strangers in Fusa before, I soon realized, and their fate
was obvious. I saw their mummies preserved in a kind
of rosin in what was called the Benefactors’ Museum,
where dozens of stupid Subsers stood and stared at them
of an afternoon. All these strangers had aided Fusa in
some way, it appeared, and when they had ceased to be
useful the community had honored them with public
embalming: a circumstance on which Nuru looked with
great pride. Indeed, he was very candid about my Own
chances of eventually attaining such an honor, particularly if I were as successful in the field capturing slaves for Fusa as I had been in defending my own life in the
oval.
“That is the object of our campaigns at present,” he
explained gently, “to obtain slaves—and I think I may
say that it is also the reason why Draca and Oban now
look on you with such favor. All of us are positive that
you will be of immense value on the field of battle. We
only trust that you will justify our hopes and the recognition we have already given you.”
And with that candid statement my picture of Fusa,
together with my future place in the city, was at length
complete.
Chapter 11
That I found this future forbidding and menacing I
think will be obvious to anyone who has followed my
fortunes thus far. As you may have noticed, I have a
lively appreciation of the chances of personal survival,
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and the light that Nuru’s disquisitions threw upon my
own chances in Fusa was a frightening one in the extreme. Verily, if life in Fusa depended on a slavish loyalty to the community and a denial of all personal emotions and ideas, it would not be long before I was found out
for what I was: an individual and a Stranger, to be used
and duly embalmed in the Benefactors’ Museum. Particularly, if friendship was outside the pale, what would happen to Atta and me if the truth of our relationship
should by chance be discovered?
For the life of me I could not shake off this dreadful
possibility, and I confess that for the first few nights
after I had left the Memorizer of the Records and gone
to my own private gallery I lay for hours on my solitary
couch like some trapped animal and thought of little
except how to outwit my enemies.
It was useless, I saw clearly, to seek out Atta for advice. I could do him no greater disservice than to call our relationship to public attention. In the Fusan world
he was the last of the Formicans as they had been originally created. The rest were as they had made themselves.
The conclusion gradually turned me hard and bitter,
and it was out of bitterness that my first decision eventually came: to make myself so feared and so powerful in Fusa that not even Oban would dare touch me.
Even so I spent many a night pacing the cold streets,
hoping for a passing glimpse of Atta. I even made a
number of official visits to the galleries of the different
Public Mothers under the pretext of interest in all aspects of Nuru’s work. For I was able at last to appreciate the quality of devotion and gratitude that my vanished
friend had given me from the moment when I had rescued him in the now distant summer. In a man, I realized now, such feelings would have been natural, if unusual;
but in a Formican they were little short of miraculous.
They showed that genuine individual feelings could still
persist. Perhaps only the fact that Atta had been brought
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up in a distant provincial town where some of the customs of the past still survived had made it possible for us to understand each other at all. And yet---
Whence had come the impulse which made him what
he was: a sensitive, warm-hearted individual in a world
of iron-jawed Ants? God rest Atta, was the only answer
I could make.
Nevertheless I did not find him on any of my visits to
the Maternity Centers, nor did he come to
see me in
the immediate winter months that followed my departure
from Nuru’s apartment to quarters of my own. I suppose I was a marked man during all these weeks, and he knew it. I can see that now. But I must have more
than satisfied Nura by my silence if by nothing else, for
I was left in the evenings to my own devices. Soon my
days and nights, too, were given up to long conferences
with Halket and his staff, to occasional grim dinners with
the leaders of the Castes, and finally to the drills and
maneuvers that I held with regiment after regiment in
the arena. For this was the beginning of the interlude
I have mentioned: my military service without Atta.
At this I worked hard, and I met with more than a
small measure of success. Indeed, I should not be surprised if there is today a rough replica of me in rosin in the Benefactors’ Museum. For I had the advantage of a
number of Nuru’s factotums in my immediate entourage,
and their advice in getting Fusan soldiers to adopt my
tactics and methods was invaluable. Without Nuru’s assistance I should perhaps have failed. As it was, however, I did succeed: tactics, flame-feeding battalions, and all. If any credit can be claimed for so discreditable an
undertaking, I can claim it.
Such an effort takes time, of course, and I felt both
fortunate to have time at my disposal and chagrined that
so much of it was necessary. For it was late in the spring
before all my experiments were over and I felt ready to
risk my reputation in the field; and by that time it
seemed to me that Atta and I were destined never to
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meet again. Outside the South Gate even the snow was
gone and the green blades of spring were beginning to
thrust their way up against the sky, harbingers of the
great bamboo woods of summer.
Indeed, the bright green of the well-remembered forest
is still the detail that I remember most vividly outside
the South Gate on the spring morning when at last I
gave the order to march forth and deploy in the level
grain fields outside the city. Somewhere in the swale