With the help of SeaPort Downs microbees, I am passing
along this story under my own seal in hopes that the Queen
will be lenient to those who have helped us along the
way, and that our Mistress Honeyness will receive the
praise so richly due her for the accomplishments
of her waxware engineers, accomplishments which led to
the healing of my own dear daughter.
Some of our number were excited by the prospect, but I for one
was not. We humans have long been in the shadow of the Hives,
and dark though it may seem, it is yet a familiar comfort to us.
For we have children with us, and so long as they remain with
us, we are at the mercy of the Buzzers, and their Bee masters.
Long ago we traded lands and taxes for the superior health care the
Buzzers could provide; for maggot surgeries, and mosquito injections.
For love of our children, and the desire
that they receive the best medical care, we ended our own researches,
and let
bee and ant secretions take the place of our own medicines.
We never thought that health care could become chains to bind
us, that bonds of medicine would be used to tie our hands behind
our backs.
But we bear it all gladly, because of our children, and in our
human weakness, if it be such, we only appear to be slaves to
the Bees. In our hearts, we know that love of our little ones,
and this love only, could make us bend the knee. Our
bee slavery is but the slightest garlic on our breath, as we whisper love and
health to our sons
and daughters.
This was never more evident than on our second day apart from
the bees. I was most mindful of the possibilities of being left
without health care, and warned parents to keep a close rein on the
children in our midst.
Unescorted, with no bees warning the insects to stay clear of our feet,
we were bound to swampwalk in the lowlands by
the sea.
As the reader knows, in mid-week past the news came from the Queen
that there was
trouble at SeaPort
Downs, requiring the presence of our party's bees and
Wolves. We humans were abruptly left to fend for ourselves.
Scrapes, cuts, and other disasters could fall upon our children in these lowland soups of infection we were passing through.
Perhaps I warned them too harshly, and made cuts and bruises seem something to be ashamed of, and hidden from us. It was my own daughter, Sara, who hoarded a cut upon her foot, hid from me until it was too late to simply wash it. At the end of the second day, by the camp at night, I felt her forehead, and it seemed overly warm.
Alarmed, I asked her if she had cut herself. Crying, she spoke a 'No' which pleaded 'Yes' There was no light to examine her by, as campfires and candles have long been outlawed or outlawyered, being deadly to Buzzers in their night light madnesses. As best I could by starlight, I examined her hands and feet, and found a hot angry bump on her left foot, where a thorn had broken off. I knew in an instant that Sara was in deadly trouble.
I summoned the loudest singers in the camp, who circled and sang the wolf cry for help and health, hoping there might be Wolves in the vicinity. They could run for us to SeaPort, or back to zzz'Ora's Hive, summoning the skilled maggots to lance her infection, and mosquitos full of the all important Ant-biotics.
Though Wolves are treaty-bound to answer such cries, there were none in the vicinity, and our songs returned to us unchorused.
It was only after Sara herself began to cry in pain, and the whole camp supported her wailing with our joined voices, that any stirring was heard. It was a single, sharp, yelp, as if the throat of its owner was reluctant to let loose. We all waited anxiously for the Wolf to find us.
What pushed through the brush seemed monstrous. By his misshapen bulk he could have outweighed the largest of us, this hunchbacked animal more suited to old stories told on dark hills in the Enclave, than to being Sara's savior/messenger. We drew back from him, and waited, silent. A few Wolf clicks of tongue in teeth, and fireflies streamed from holes in his hump. Blue-lit in their phosphorescent glow, the Wolf's grotesqueness became clear, suddenly.
'He's wearing a hive!" cried one of our number. And so he was. Upon the wolf's muscular back, strapped on with LeatherLeaf, was a small hive. Impossibly tiny bees buzzed around it, their high-pitched tones more whistle than hum.
"But still he's a Wolf!" I shouted. "And bound by the health-care treaty to run for us!" The wolf only shook his head, unsnarling, and with a look of resignation in the way his lips lay over his teeth.
"The bees, Whoa!, would speak," said the Wolf. I took my message slate from where it dangled beneath my shirt, and set it upon my palm, as far from my neck as its chain allowed. While fireflies buzzed to illuminate it, a blanket of the tiny bees covered my slate with a honey-scripted message. It was too small to read, so I licked it clean, enjoying the tasty erasure.
"You must be microbees," I said. "Write larger." Their second attempt was more legible.
"We came, not by treaty, but by compassion. The Queen's treaties are all melting at SeaPort Downs."
"But surely, with this hive here . . . you must carry medical honeys, and ant secretions? And a doctor!"
The tiny bees answered curtly. "Only veterinaries, for the wolf."
"The Queen would never break her word to us. You are bees, for Hive's sake! If not for her, then what of 'noblesse o'Bee?'"
Sara, silent through all the stirring, began to moan, punctuating my urgency. "Surely, there must be some value in helping the leader of the Southern Enclave!"
This caused a great stirring among the bees, so that their whine rose to the level of a shout. When they quieted, the bees wrote, "You are part of the BubbleLand Expedition? Where are your bees? Your wolves?"
"Gone ahead to SeaPort Downs. The Queen has heard about Meadows 15911, and sent them to investigate."
This last news shocked them into silence. Finally, they again inked a honey message. "The SeaPort Downs Queen must be warned!"
"There isn't time! Even for a wolf!"
The bees returned to their wolf-back hive, but the wolf gave no signs of moving. The hive upon his back began expressing a sickly sweet odor, recognizable to anyone as RookWeed.
It was but a moment later, when the bees returned to write upon my slate. "We've gotten word that zzzzz'Zoe and the rest of your party surprised SeaPort Downs. There was a skirmish. The SeaPort Queen has captured the Archaeological Party, but some Wolves fled for Hive Home with news. One of them escaped our own Wolves, and will surely reach zzzzz'Drom. We can no longer hide what has happened with the Meadows 15911 Urban Hive."
Astonished, I stared at the slate. The words spoke of skirmish, or revolt, of that there was no mistaking. But the instrument by which they were delivered was the real revolution. "How did the message pass? I thought a complete Urban Hive was required to pass messages across the air to InternetEarth?"
They replied, "The waxware engineers have long known differently. We've isolated the Browser resonances. What you see before you is a Browser Hive."
"The Queen should be gloriously happy at your accomplishment!"
"Undoubtedly! Whoa!" said the Wolf. "Delerious that if Browser Hives spread . . . no one will, Whoa!, need her Urban Hives, and no Sister Queen will pay her taxes. "
A handful of moths appeared, as if from nowhere, brushing our cheeks and circling the hive. The Wolf's neck-hair bristled. "They've, Whoa!, found us again!" "I must run!"
"Wait!" I said. "Couldn't a doctor's knowledge could be as easily summoned as your Queen was warned?" I asked, hopefully. "Your veterinary might know enough to take instruction."
The Wolf paused. "We, Whoa!, have but minutes until the, Whoa!, RoseMoths finish their mating circle, Whoot!"
"Mating circle? I didn't think bees . . . and moths . . . " There was an angry buzzing from the hive, and another explosion of RookWeed scent. In a moment the bees were back upon my slate, with the news:
"Slow net tonight. Many servers are down, but we've managed to reach an EarthSect, a physician who will direct the injections of the mosquitos. The necessary scent images are being downloaded now. But . . . " the message cautioned, "the techniques are very advanced. These EarthSects, can not only afford medicines, but alternatives to medicines."
I was somewhat relieved. "What do the EarthSects call their doctors?"
"Acupuncturists," wrote the Bees. "Bring your daughter two miles west, along the swamp, and she will be treated there. We must move the hive, because . . . No, we don't!"
"Don't what?"
The Wolf abruptly knifed away into the underbrush, leaving a cloud of amorous RoseMoths dancing night romances with the scents the Hive left behind, and me, wondering what my daughter would find, in the hand of this 'acupuncturist.'
I will dictate more of these things in my next report.
