The Journal of BubbleLand Studies
Scented into wax by me, zzzzz'ZOE, the Royal First Cousin, on this day, Eighteen Oak, in the year 15910.The struggling New Republic of BubbleLand was caught between two dangers. In their path, a seemingly hostile tribe of hiveless Bees, and in the rear, somewhere, Queen zzzzz'Drom's Bee forces, intent on capturing them, and killing the new Queen, Sarah, a six-year-old girl.
First, Prime Minister zz'Tain's negotiations with the hiveless Bees break down, and he flees back to the rebel camp. Unknown to him, a tracker hides in the fur of zz'Tain's bearer wolf.
When the hiveless Bee is discovered, a fight breaks out in which the rebels cannot subdue him, due to his odd method of attaching stingers from deceased relatives upon his butt, and being able to sting without fear of death.
During the struggle, Queen Sarah comes out of hiding, causing a strange change of behavior in the hiveless Bee. He ceases fighting completely. In the lull, zzzzz'Drom's forces strike in great number, and without warning.
The hiveless Bee urges zzz'Zoe to fight for Sarah, but zzz'Zoe convinces him that her safety is in remaining unknown, anonymous among the other children.
The hiveless Bee escapes, but not before showing zzz'Zoe a picture, bite-scarred into his wings, a picture of a girl Queen Sarah's age. He calls her by the name, zzEmma.
The Bee Counter and zz'Tain
By
zzzzz'ZOE, For Queen Sarah I
In the pre-dawn dim, the captured remnants of the rebel party beheld the machine of destruction, a simple framework of painted wood, entrapping a pane of glass, a weave of metal screen, and a space between them. Innocent enough in the darkness, with the coming of dawn and sunlight it would be turned to a place of torture, a trap which could raise Bee wings into suicidal crazed urgings to seek the sun, a trap by which the Bee Counters turned Bee bodies against their owners, in involuntary suicides. 
Queen zzzzz'Drom and her Prime Minister, the Bee Counter Vz'Calc, waited atop the dreaded window, which had been carried on the backs of Worker-Bee humans. Two of them stood silently by, supporting the window, their skin circumstained in stacked rings of alternating brown and yellow. "Manhood For Total Queen Management -- A trade I Can Live With," prominently tatooed the forehead of one. His abdomen was horribly swollen, having been converted to honey storage for the Bee army.
The second human was taller, heavily-muscled, and obviously well treated. His chest bore the slogan, "See my smile? I've Got That Royalty Loyalty!" He was Queen zzzzz'Drom's living throne, wearing a tiny wax Hive upon his head, just large enough for the Queen and her personal guard.
Together, zzzzz'Drom and her Prime Minister, Vz'Calc watched over their captives. Though the rebellion had ended when zzzzz'Drom's forces caught up to us, the children in our party still held strong to their instructions, sitting enmass before the window, allowing Queen Sarah to hide within their ranks. All were close-mouthed about her identity.
"I have calculated this, my Queen," said Vz'Calc. "We need only torture her friend . . . and she will reveal herself to care for him."
Queen zzzzz'Drom waved a haughty antenna. "We do not torture Our subjects, Vz'Calc, We 'DownPleasure' them."
I took the opportunity, and begged Vz'Calc on zz'Tain's behalf.
"May zzzzz'Drom grant clemency to zz'Tain, and Vz'Calc an audience to zzz'Zoe, the Queen's Cousin."
Now Vz'Calc was a slender Bee, with the refined, almost silky wings characteristic of a youth, or a Bee Counter, wings unworked by seasons of lifting pollens and wax. He pretended to ignore my question, and waited in silence until he could appear to have initiated the conversation, in the name of Bee Counter leadership.
Like all Bee Counters, he carried a highly polished beewax calculating comb. This triumph of waxware engineering had all the capability of hive calculating stations, and stored the historical and statistical scents of the entire KinterSylvanian tradition, all in abdomen-top size.
Rolling over onto his back, cradling the comb with his feet, Vz'Calc tapped and scented its antennae interface while manipulating a small pointing device known as an 'aphid.' His head nodded rhythmically, in a mix of prayer and calculation. Finally, he looked up, his self-satisfied expression forecasting his answer.
"He is to be DownSized," said Vz'Calc. "My abtop calculating comb has divined it."
"But zz'Tain is a unique being who can still serve KinterSylvania," I said. "How can the panic race of scents inside your wax machine comprehend a Bee's genius, and then dare to blot it out?"
"Oh of course he has genius," said Vz'Calc. "There is a column that takes that into account. However, it has calculated that zz'Tain's torture and DownSizing is for the good of the Hive, in the long run."
"Must all things be done that can be calculated?" I said. "A column of hexcells is a tiny thing compared to a life."
He looked at me as if I were a larva, his yellow eyes glazed with the peculiar joy of the Bee Counter. "Hexcells tiny things? Yes. But such a power! GigaSniff calculating combs . . . " He struggled for words. " . . . we once were sumless, productless, quotientless, but now we see! Once subjected to nature and social chaos . . . now we have Power! The means to change lives from unique into uniform with the flick of an antenna!" He waved the calculating comb in my face.
"Power?" I said. "Hasn't history proved that power always corrupts?"
"In governments," he said. "Not in instruments!" He fondled his abtop calculator like a drunk drone romancing an inflatable queen. "Numbers! Numbers! Numbers . . . are the scales of nature's justice, and our calculating combs are blindfolds allowing us to be judge and jury over all living.
"If this comb, this blind eye, chooses zz'Tain's name for torture, or his life for DownSizing, it is as much an act of nature as the white snow that freezes the flowers in winter."
"But that is an act of God!" I said.
"You speak well, for one of no Account," he replied. "Power doesn't corrupt God, and proves, then, that Power need not corrupt. We who use counting to blindfold our passions, become as incorruptible as God."
"That's hard to argue with," I said, hiding my irony in the momentum of Vz'Calc's self pleasure.
"And besides," he added. "We will only place zz'Tain in the window pane. We will not kill him. If God desires mercy, the sun will not come up, and zz'Tain will not be DownSized. Dawn's very presence will prove that God is with the Bee Counters."
He rolled onto his feet, and walked the edge of the window pane, toward Queen zzzzz'Drom. I felt a shiver in my wings, just being near a Bee who could spread death and torture and DownSizing like snow upon a flower field, freezing everything, including his own mercy, in the icy-cold cells of the calculating comb.
And calling it justice.
I flew below, to where the tiny waxware engineer, zz'Tain, was under heavy guard, behind the window mesh. "I did what I could for you," I told him. He simply nodded, resigned to his fate. Already, the diffused light of pre-dawn tensed his wings, and they vibrated with the urge to dash themselves into the window glass.
"No matter what they do," he strained to say, "I will not reveal who Sarah is. She is my past, and my future."
"Future?" I said. "How can you speak of future?"
"Friend," he said, drawing near to the screen, so that my antennae almost touched his much smaller ones. "For a time we had again a Queen, did we not? One we could admire, a nation we could love, a home that was secure, even as we fled."
Bitterly, I said, "Secure? It is only zzzzz'Drom that is secure!"
"No!" He looked into my eyes and spoke to comfort me, he who was about to die. "Slogans, zzz'Zoe can't long be nailed onto living hearts without breaking them. Queen Sarah opened our hearts to see what the Past has always whispered of. The Past we hadn't been able to preserve, one where leaders were admired and admirable, where work and worker were honorable and honored, and where values that counted were not eclipsed by the value of accountants."
His eyes got a strange glow to them, two fires flaming their last flames brilliantly. "I am not a captive. It is zzzzz'Drom. zzz'Zoe, when the past is better than the future, the future is always held hostage until it measures up once again. Emma will not let zzzzz'Drom have a legacy. Emma Who Watches has secured our future."
My heart burned within me. "Do you speak of the one the hiveless Bees call zz'Emma?"
zz'Tain's face drew near the screen. "Emma," he said.
"It's so hard to believe," I said. "Queen zzz'Omma, Who Watches -- her name always had the z of a Bee, regardless of how her name was pronounced."
The first stabs of dawn light traced across zz'Tain's back, lighting it in all its yellow and brown beauty. It was softened by a blanket of fog on the horizon. God was with the Bee Counters, but perhaps would cool zz'Tain's craziness in a bit of mercy. As his wings broke into flight, he was still able to speak, his words almost drowned in the buzzing of his wings.
"The hiveless Bees . . . took me to the ButterSnow Mountains . . . "
My archaeologist heart leapt. "You've been there?"
"I have seen a Soldier Bee cut in stone . . . as tall as a Human."
"Did you see BubbleLand?" I said.
He nodded his head, eyes blazing. "A Soldier Bee, resting on the ear of a girl, cut into a mountain, guarding a high valley." His grip on the screen finally broke free, and his wings battered his face into the glass of the window pane, but his mandibles still gripped a smile.
"Emma!" I whispered. "Queen Emma!"
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17 July, 1996 -- Expedition Report -- 18 Oak, 15910
