Stephen Baxter - Coalescent

“The numbers are different for ants. The way they pass on their genes is different from mammals — if you’re an ant your sister is actually closer to you genetically than your own daughter! — so they have a predisposition to this kind of group living, which is no doubt why it rose so early and so often among the insects. But the principle’s the same.

“George, an ant colony isn’t a dictatorship, or a communist utopia. It is a family. It’s a logical outcome of high population densities and a hostile external environment. Sometimes it pays to stay home with Mom, because it’s safer that way — but you need a social order to cope with the crowding. So you help Mom bring up your sisters. It’s harsh, but it’s a stable system; emergence makes the colony as a whole work, and there is a genetic payoff for everybody, and they all get along just fine … The biologists call this way of living ‘eusociality’ — eu like in utopia , meaning ‘perfect.’ “

“A perfect family? Now that’s scary.”

“But it’s not like a human family. This genetic calculus doesn’t have much to do with traditional human morality … Not until now,” he said mysteriously. “And it’s not just ants.” He played his trump card. “Consider naked mole rats.”

I had finished the beer. I let Peter call for another one.

Naked mole rats turned out to be spectacularly ugly little rodents — Peter showed me pictures on his handheld — that live in great underground colonies beneath the African deserts. They have bare, unweathered skin, and their bodies are little fat cylinders, to fit into their dark tunnels.

The mole rats’ favorite food is tuber roots, which they have to go dig for. But the roots are widely scattered. So although they are stuck in cramped conditions underground, it is better to produce a lot of little mole rats than a few big ones, because many little helpers tunneling off to find the roots are more likely to succeed than a few.

“Exactly the conditions where you might expect eusociality to develop,” Peter said. “A situation where you’re forced to live with high population density, limited resources …”

Mole rats live in great swarms — and in each colony, of maybe forty individuals, at any one time there is only one breeding pair. The other males simply keep zipped up, but the other females are functionally sterile. They are kept that way by behavior, by bullying from the “queen.”

The workers even have specialized roles — nest building, digging, transporting food. A mole rat will go through several roles as she ages, gradually moving outward from the center. “Some of the ants are like that,” Peter said. “The young serve inside the nest, where they do such chores as nest cleaning. When they get older they serve outside, maybe constructing or repairing the nest, or foraging for food …”

For the mole rats, everything works fine until the queen shows signs of falling from her throne. The sterile workers suddenly start to develop sexual characteristics, and there is a bloody succession battle — and the prize for the victor is nothing less than the chance to pass on her genes.

“And that’s why the old fogies are pushed out to the perimeter of the colony,” Peter said coldly. “They are the ones in the front line when a jackal digs up a tunnel — but they are dispensable. You want your young at the center, where they can be quickly deployed to replace the reproductive. But the old ones sacrifice themselves for the sake of the group readily enough. That’s another eusocial trait — suicide to protect others.

“You see what I’m saying. The mole rats are eusocial,” he said. “There is absolutely no doubt about that. As eusocial as any ant or termite or bee — but they are mammals .”

He talked on about mole rats, and other mammals with traces of eusociality — hunting dogs in the desert, for instance. One detail startled me. In the mole rat warrens, the rodents would swarm and huddle to control the flow of air through their passageways. It was just like the Crypt, though I hadn’t told him about Rosa’s antique ventilation system.

By now I knew exactly where he was going. I felt cold.

“Mammals but not human,” I said heavily. “And humans make choices about how they live their lives, Peter. Rational and moral choices. We’re in control of ourselves, in a way no animal can be.”

“ Are we? How about that traffic jam?”

“Peter — get to the point. Forget the mole rats. Talk about the Order.”

He nodded. “Then we have to talk about Regina, your great-great-greatest-grandmother. Because it all started with her.”

In those first few turbulent decades, for the band of women huddling in their pit under the Appian Way, it had been just as it was for a band of naked mole rats out on the savanna — or so Peter’s analysis went.

With imperial Rome crumbling around them, it became a lot safer for daughters to stay home with their mothers, to extend the Crypt rather than to migrate.

“So you have just the same kind of resource and population pressures as in a mole rat colony.”

I frowned. “But Regina would never have made a choice about eusociality. In the fifth century she couldn’t even have formulated it.”

“But she had the right instinct. It’s all there, in her own words. Remember those three slogans, carved on the walls?”

“Sisters matter more than daughters. Ignorance is strength. Listen to your sisters.”

“Yes.” He called up another file on his handheld. “… Here we are.”

It was an extract from Regina’s biography. I read: “Regina asked her followers to consider the blood of Brica, her daughter, and that of Agrippina, her granddaughter. Agrippina’s blood is half the blood of Brica, half of her father, and so a quarter mine, said Regina. But if Agrippina were to have a baby her blood would mix with the father’s, and so the baby would be only an eighth mine. Suppose I have to choose between a baby of Agrippina’s, or another baby of Brica’s. I can only choose one, for there is no room for both. Which should I choose? And they said, You would choose for Brica to have another child. For sisters matter more than daughters …”

Peter looked at me. “ Sisters matter more than daughters. Regina thought in terms of keeping her blood from being diluted. It doesn’t matter that the mechanics actually works with genes — her instinct was right. And once that is established, much else follows. The breeding rights of a few mothers, your mamme-nonne , are favored over everybody else’s rights, even over their own children’s. The drones’ only chance of passing on their own genes is to help their mothers, and their sisters …”

It was the first time he had used the word drones .

“Slogan two: Ignorance is strength. Regina understood systems. And she wanted the Order’s system, the whole, to dominate over the parts. She didn’t want some charismatic fool taking over and ruining everything in the pursuit of some foolish dream. So she ordered that everybody should know as little as possible, and should follow the people close to them. The Order drones are agents who work locally, with only local knowledge, and no insight into the bigger picture.

“Three: Listen to your sisters. That slogan encourages feedback. Inside the Crypt there’s a relentless pressure to conform. You told me you felt it, when you were in the Crypt, the endless social weight. Poor Lucia, who wouldn’t conform, suffered exclusion. The social pressure is a homeostasis — like the temperature regulator of an air-conditioning system, a negative feedback that keeps everybody in their place.”