Adrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Time

Don’t be foolish. You cannot equate every ignorant, crawling male with one such as yourself. Of course you are protected and valued for your accomplishments. That is only natural, that merit be rewarded. The great host of males beneath us, though, the surplus, what use are they? What good are they? You are an exceptional male. Something female got into you in the egg, to make you thus. But you cannot expect my sisters to blindly extend such consideration to every male in the city just because of you. What would we do with them?

Put them to work. Find their strengths. Train them. Use them. Apparently Fabian has given this matter some thought.

Use them as what? What use can they be?

You can never know, because you do not try.

She rears up in frustration, sending him scuttling back, momentarily terrified. She would not have struck, but for a moment she wonders if that sudden injection of fear might assist her argument. When he settles himself across the chamber from her, though, he seems even more resolved.

What you ask is unnatural , she tells him sternly, controlling herself.

There is nothing about what we do that is natural. If we prized the natural we would still be hunting Spitters in the wilderness, or falling prey to the jaws of ants, instead of mastering our world. We have made a virtue of the unnatural.

She does not trust herself to answer, so she scurries past him, almost knocking him aside. You will reconsider , she tells him, pausing in the doorway to beat out the rhythms of her anger. You will give up this foolish dream.

Fabian watches her go, eyes glinting with rebellion.

He cannot simply walk out of the peer house. From a genuine concern for his safety, Portia has given instructions that Fabian is not to leave. She does not see it as an imprisonment; it is simply not fitting for any male to wander freely. Valued males who have secured the patronage of powerful females are expected to be at their beck and call, or to labour out of sight for their betters. Other males are preferably out of sight as well as out of mind.

Fabian paces the boundaries of his laboratory chamber, knowing that he must manufacture an exit, but fearful of taking that irreversible step. If he leaves now , after that confrontation with Portia, he will be leaving behind everything he has known. Curiosity is built into the spider genome, but in males it is not encouraged. Fabian is fighting centuries of conditioning.

Finally he conquers his timidity and sends out a chemical signal. Shortly afterwards, the scent is picked up by a handful of ants from the city maintenance colonies, passing nearby on their endless round of duties. Their entire colony has been reprogrammed by Fabian, his master-architecture already set in place. Nobody has noticed, because the secondary structures that guide the colony about its task are functionally identical to those that were originally bred into the ants generations before – if a little more elegantly designed. Now, though, the pheromones that Fabian has released instil new behaviours in these individuals, bringing them to the silk side of his chamber, where they cut a neat exit wound for him to depart through. After they are done, he resets them, and they go about their duties with no sign that they were ever subverted. Fabian has been busy these last months in testing his discovery, with the whole of Great Nest as his experimental subject.

He has listened to the news constantly recycled by the peer group. He knows who is causing Portia distress, who has tried to challenge the order of the world – other than himself. He is a male, vulnerable from the moment he slips from the peer house. He knows where he needs to go, but he fears journeying alone. He needs a guardian. He needs a female, in fact, however much he might regret that.

Fabian’s ideal female has three characteristics: she must be intellectually useful, so a commodity in her own right; she must be in a position of weakness that will allow even a male to bargain with her; she must have no interest in mating with him, or otherwise harming him. Regarding the last, he knows he must trust to chance. The first two criteria have already suggested a travelling companion. He knows who has caused Portia to fret most.

Fabian is going to see Bianca.

He pauses halfway down the tree trunk from the peer house, gazing back up at its complex collection of suspended chambers and tents. For a moment he is uncertain – should he not trust the safety of its walls, and give up his ambitions? And what will Portia think, once she finds him gone? She represents all that he intends to overthrow, and yet he likes and respects her, and she has always done her best for him. Everything he has accomplished has been made possible only by what Portia has given him.

But no, it is that kind of gifting that he must break away from. A life lived entirely at the whim of another is no life at all. He has always been surprised at the large number of other males who see matters differently, revelling in their own cosseted captivity.

Previous excursions outside have given him the opportunity to lay groundwork, and where he has not travelled himself, he has sent his proxies instead. His new chemical architecture allows him to use ants as the delivery agent of his instructions, with colonies programming other colonies. Nobody suspects just how far this has all gone.

He suborned the prison colony relatively recently, paving the way for his insurrection. When he arrives, the ants at the tunnel mouth start forwards, antennae waving, mandibles wide in challenge. He releases a distinct, simple scent, a back door into their societal structures, and they are instantly his. With a rapid cycling of olfactory clues he alters their behaviour in specific, precise ways. The tunnel guards turn and enter their colony, unleashing a cascade of his amended architecture throughout their fellows. Fabian follows them in, as though they are his honour guard.

It takes him time to find Bianca’s chamber amongst all the others held in custody. Great Nest holds no prisoners for long, executing the males and exiling females but, as the Temple tightens its dogmatic grip, the number of those crushed within its grasp only increases. With no way of getting the ants to locate an individual, Fabian is aware of time passing – already he will have been missed, but nobody should guess that here would be his destination.

Part of his mind is already considering that he should have arranged for a tissue sample somehow, with which he could program an ant to track its original. Fabian often thinks about more than one thing at once, just to save time.

Then he stumbles into Bianca’s cell, and for a moment she rears up, frightened and angry, and he thinks she might strike him down without even hearing what he has to say.

I am here with an offer , he hammers out hurriedly.

Portia sent you? Bianca is suspicious.

Portia and I have taken different paths.

I know you. You are her creature, one of her males.

Fabian gathers his courage. He must say it, so as to make it real. I am not hers. I am my own.

Bianca watches him carefully, as though he is some prey animal behaving in an unexpected way. Is that so?

I am intending to leave Great Nest tonight , he tells her. I will travel to Seven Trees.

Why? But she is interested, inching closer.

He is very aware of her fangs, in this confined space. He does not know Bianca like he knows Portia; he cannot judge her limits and tolerances so well. Because Seven Trees was rebuilt by males. Because they have been forced to accord males a value there.

The flurry of her palps is a gesture of cynicism. Seven Trees is a poor city. The males there would give all the value they are held in to be looked after by a strong Great Nest peer house, just as you have been. Life is hard there, I have heard.