Book 2 (4): Winter’s Distant Thunder — Chapter 5: |
Chapter 5
To be honest, I have absolutely no sense of direction.
Some time ago, when Satoru and I were wandering through the queerat nest, I remember saying that I wasn’t good at remembering the twists and turns of the tunnels. It’s actually a lot worse than that. The truth is that I wouldn’t even be able to get from one place to another in my own town if it weren’t for the street signs on the canals.
“…hmm, is this the right direction?”
Unlike me, Satoru has the navigational abilities of a homing pigeon, but since we were following a different path from the previous trip, he often stopped to make sure we were going the right way.
“It’s right. I think,” I agreed.
It’s not like I could actually tell, so I couldn’t respond in any other way. But that seemed to annoy Satoru.
“Saki…you’re not even really thinking about it, are you?”
“That’s not true.”
“I told you I thought about it.”
Satoru shook his head disbelievingly and continued climbing the hill, grumbling to himself. I followed in his tracks.
I felt pretty optimistic about the situation. I thought that as soon as we arrived at Maria’s snow hut, our mission would be half completed. Plus, joining up with Satoru was an accomplishment too.
“Huh? I thought we passed through here before?”
As we crested a snowy peak and left the bamboo forest, a familiar scenery appeared before us.
“Did we get it wrong? We did leave skii tracks in the area last time.”
Satoru looked disappointedly at the powdery snow all around us. In just one day, enough snow had piled up to erase our tracks.
“No, it’s the right place. I’m positive!”
I was confident, but Satoru said slowly, “Why do you say that?”
“Because I remember it.”
“Really? Because you didn’t remember anything on the way here.”
“Well, that was the path…” I didn’t really want to admit that, but I needed to convince him I was confident. “I remember the place. See? Like those trees.” I pointed to the rowan trees growing off to the side. “You don’t see those around here often, right? That’s why I remembered them.”
“Are you sure?” he asked doubtfully.
“And that rock too. It looks like a snake coiling around itself. It’s easy to recognize.”
“Actually it looks more like a pile of shit,” Satoru said. But he seemed to believe me anyway. “If this is the place, then we’re getting close.”
We started along the slope. Even without any trails to follow, I gradually started recognizing my surroundings. Excited to be on the right track, we sped up.
The hill became steeper. We were now much higher up, and the valley on our left looked like in infinite drop. The snow continued to fall and we were forced to slow down as visibility decreased.
“Where’s that flat rock? The place where Mamoru’s sled fell.” Satoru asked.
“I have no idea. I can’t see it at all,” I answered honestly.
There was nothing memorable on the hill, and the falling snow made everything look different. It wasn’t light, powdered snow either, but big wet flakes that stuck to everything.
We stopped.
“It’s dangerous to keep going like this. We might end up falling from that rock too,” Satoru said as he rubbed his numb fingers together.
“We should be okay if we go slowly.”
“That’ll take too long. And no matter how slowly we go, if we fall, we fall.”
We looked at one another. Each of us hoped that the other had a secret plan, but of course it wasn’t that easy. To make things worse, the snow was coming down harder and thicker than before, and the wind was picking up. The bare hill provided no shelter and we suddenly realized how cold it was. Skiing up the hill, though largely cantus-assisted, had kept us warm. But I hadn’t eaten since morning, and all the energy I had burned made me lightheaded.
“The important thing is to just avoid the rock, right? Even without taking the exact same route, we’ll still be able to find the next part of the path.”
I could still clearly remember the animal trail in the bushes higher up on the hill.
“Sure, but how are you going to do that?”
“Make a path with our cantus?”
“I see…yeah. That’ll work.”
I wonder if our judgement had been impaired by fatigue and anxiety. The plan was just as reckless as Mamoru hauling a child’s sled up a steep hill. We cleared a path in front of us using the image of a giant shovel. The path that cut through the snow looked much safer than the slippery road we had been using.
“Alright, let’s go.”
We went single-file along the narrow path. The cleared path was only about forty or fifty meters, so when we reached the end, we had to stop and remove more snow.
Then, there was an unpleasant creaking sound.
“Shit. An avalanche…!”
We stood, petrified. Come to think of it, we had cleared a horizontal path right in the middle of a steep hill. I’d have been surprised if there wasn’t an avalanche.
“A roof!”
“Split it!”
We shouted over each other. A terrifying torrent of snow was rushing toward us with the intent of burying us alive, but was diverted by two invisible wedges right above our heads to either side. The snow fell to the bottom of the valley in a glistening shower.
It was over in less than a minute, but felt like an eternity.
The avalanche stopped before we even realized it. Most of the snow on the hill had fallen off and only small dustings of snow continued to trickle down every now and then.
“Saki, are you okay?”
“Yeah, you?”
“Totally fine.”
Both of us had used the image of a gabled roof. Instead of trying to stop the entire mass of the snow coming toward us, diverting its path was a better alternative. Luckily, our cantus did not touch, and the two of us were uninjured. Still, it took us a while to calm down and stop shaking.
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger…yeah right. Look.” He pointed at the top of the hill.
Now that all the snow was gone, all that was left was the rough, frozen snow from yesterday. If we had caused an avalanche right at the beginning, we would have been able to travel more safely. But there’s no point dwelling on the past.
Soon, we found the place where Mamoru’s sled had fallen. We took the faint animal trail in the bushes up the hill.
“Almost there.”
There were no footprints to follow, but Satoru knew where he was going. At the thought of being reunited with Maria, I sped up unconsciously.
“Huh?” Satoru stopped without warning and I almost crashed into him.
“Don’t stop all of a sudden like that!”
“I don’t see the snow hut.”
“No way…”
I looked around at the sparse forest. I thought this was the place, but I wasn’t completely sure. It might be just a little farther ahead…
Me eyes fell upon two pine trees about thirty meters ahead.
“Over there! It was between those trees.”
We searched the area carefully. There was no trace of the hut, but something looked off. There were clumps of snow stuck high up on the trunk.
“Someone destroyed the hut and leveled the snow.” Satoru rubbed his chin, a sign that he was deep in thought. “A queerat couldn’t have done it. There was a lot of snow; I don’t think it could have managed to pulverize all of it and spread it around. Either Maria or Mamoru did it with cantus.”
I felt slightly relieved. At least they had been fine when they left here.
“But which way did they go?” I looked around again. There were no footsteps or sled tracks.
“No idea. It looks like they made sure that no one would be able to follow them.”
“You think they went to the trouble of erasing all their tracks?”
“The queerat probably did. Maria can fly quite well even when carrying Mamoru.”
I was at a loss for words. I had thought everything would be fine once we made our way here. Now I realized how ridiculously naive I had been.
“…I don’t suppose they went back home?” I asked hopefully.
Satoru shot me down immediately. “If they did, they wouldn’t have had to erase their tracks.”
What were we supposed to do? I was about to cry, but managed to hold it back because Satoru was with me.
“We have to look for them.” Even as I said that, I was painfully aware that we didn’t really have a plan.
“I know…but we should rest a little first. Let’s build a fire and make lunch. It’s no good trying to do anything when you’re half-starving.” Satoru brushed away the snow on a fallen log, sat down, and opened his backpack.
Feeling just slightly relieved, I sat down beside him
Having to retrace our path back to the boats felt like a colossal waste of energy. But I couldn’t complain. There wasn’t a lot of time left.
The sky had grown darker as the cloud covered sun moved slowly west. It was probably just after three in the afternoon. The snow had mostly stopped; only the occasional flake fell here and there.
Our speedboats flew up the dark grey river.
Compared to two years ago, our steering skills had improved dramatically. That, plus the fact that the boats had been engineered for speed meant we traveled at a blistering pace. We passed through the Holy Barrier at some point, but since the rope didn’t extend out onto the water, I’m not sure when exactly we did.
Our landing point wasn’t clear, but we managed to do alright based on Satoru’s sense of direction. There was a map in the boat, but we didn’t have the time to study it, so we pressed on ahead.
Satoru slowed the boat and shouted across to me. “I think this is the right spot!”
“Are we going ashore?”
He pointed ahead to a wide bank with a snow-covered plain extending all the way north from it. This wouldn’t be a bad starting point.
We moored the boats and went ashore. Since we had been using cantus the entire time, my head felt hot and stuffy. I wanted to stop and rest, but there wasn’t time. We strapped on our skis and started moving immediately. We went up a hill and soon crested the ridge. From there we descended a gentle slope, letting gravity pull us down. Once we were on level ground, we shuffled forward using only our legs.
My head felt better after a while, but now the physical exertion made it hard to breathe. I gasped and wheezed desperately for air.
“Wait a sec…” I managed to call out as I stopped.
Satoru slowly turned around and came back toward me. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, just let me rest for a bit.”
I collapsed onto the powdery snow and waited for my breathing to return to normal. The wind felt good against my burning face, but soon my sweat made me clammy and uncomfortable. Wisps of steam rose from my body as I dried it with cantus.
“Try to stay hydrated,” Satoru said, handing me a cup of tea from his bottle.
“Thanks.”
I looked up at Satoru as I drank. For the first time I saw how kind and reliable he was.
“What are you staring at?”
“I was just thinking about how nice you are.”
He turned away abruptly.
“…hey, do you think we’ll find them?”
“We will,” he said firmly, looking back at me. “That’s our only chance of saving them, right?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s why we’ve come all the way…what’s wrong?”
I had frozen with the tea halfway to my mouth.
“Don’t turn around. About a hundred meters behind you…there’s something on the hill.”
“What?”
“A queerat, I think.”
All I could see was a dark shadow so I wasn’t sure. It wasn’t a bear or a monkey and it was too small to be human. I couldn’t think of any other creatures that would be in this area.
Satoru used one of his special cantus techniques to create a floating mirror about thirty centimeters square and aimed it carefully at the hill far behind him.
“There it is,” he said in a flat, quiet voice.
“Can we catch it?”
“It’s too far away. We’d have to get closer.”
Just then, the sun came out from behind the clouds and its light glinted off the mirror. The dark shadow vanished.
“It noticed us.” Satoru clicked his tongue in frustration.
“We have to chase it.”
We flew over the snow. The short break had restored my strength for the time being.
There was no way we’d catch it skiing as leisurely as we had been earlier. We put all our cantus into making the skis go faster.
We crossed the open field in an instant and were barreling up the hill.
“Which colony is it from?”
“Who knows? But it isn’t Squonk, is it?”
It couldn’t have gone that far in such a short amount of time.
The queerat was nowhere to be seen when we got to the top of the hill. We hurriedly scanned the ground for tracks.
“There!”
At the other end of the hill was a line of small footprints.
“This way,” I said and immediately set off following the trail.
“Wait!” Satoru shouted.
“Huh?” The second I turned, the ground dropped out from under me.
I felt myself floating gently, falling through the snow.
Satoru’s voice came from far away.
Then everything went dark.
I opened my eyes.
Above me was a ceiling made of woven bamboo. Light came from a paper lamp, making the shadows on the ceiling waver. I was in a small room, lying on top of a thin futon. There was a small hearth right next to me, on top of which was a bubbling iron kettle.
“Saki.”
Satoru’s voice. I turned toward it.
“What happened?”
Satoru smiled with what seemed to be relief. “You stepped through a cornice.”
“A what?”
“An overhang of snow that collects on the edge of a mountain. From the top it looks like normal ground, but it’s really just snow so if you walk onto it, you fall through.”
“Did I fall all the way to the bottom?”
“No, I managed to stop you just before you hit. So you shouldn’t have any injuries. I was worried because you didn’t wake up though.”
I moved my arms and legs slowly. Everything seemed to work. After the surge of fear, all I felt was weariness. I wanted to sleep.
“What is this place?”
“Take a guess. You’ll be surprised. It’s the place we’ve been looking for. ”
“No way…seriously? The Robber Fly colony?”
“Yeah. It’s a small place, but this is the colony’s guesthouse.”
Satoru explained that the queerat we had been chasing was a soldier of the Robber Fly colony. When it saw me fall, it had hurried back to report the incident. The colony had sent out a rescue team and brought me back.
“So you’ve met Squealer already?”
“Yeah. But he’s been promoted and has a different name now.”
I heard a voice outside the room.
“Thank goodness you’ve awoken.”
“Squealer!”
Appearance-wise Squealer looked no different from other queerats, but his voice was unmistakable. Two years ago he had been wearing shabby armor, but he now had on a comfortable bear fur robe.
“It has been a long time, gods.”
“It really has. Have you been doing well in the meantime?”
“Yes, thank you. …lately the chances to show devotion to the gods have been plentiful, and I was honored to be bestowed with a most noble name,” he said, puffing out his chest a little.
“What is it?”
“I am now Yakomaru. It’s written with the characters for ‘wild fox’.”
It seemed that Squealer…Yakomaru really had been promoted. Since he was more of a strategist than a warrior, it was fitting that his name had the word ‘fox’ in it, in contrast with Kiroumaru’s ‘wolf’.
“In the past two years, the Robber Fly colony has made great strides towards recovery. Once, our very existence had hung in the balance, but we have merged with a few neighboring colonies and our numbers now reach eighteen thousand. This was possible only because of the favor of the gods…”
“I’d love to hear about the colony later, but we have an emergency right now,” Satoru said, interrupting the beginning of what sounded to be a long-winded speech. “We need your assistance.”
“Certainly,” Yakomaru agreed without even listening to the request. “Leave everything to your servant Yakomaru. I will always lay down my life to aid the two that I am most indebted to.”
He sounded almost too willing, but at the time that was the reassurance we wanted to hear.
“Where’s the Goat Moth colony?” I cut straight to the point.
“About four or five kilometers northwest of here. It’s not affiliated with the Giant Hornet colony, and has been unwilling to join our coalition…one of the few independent colonies.” His eyes flashed. “What would your business with the Goat Moths be?”
Satoru and I looked at each other. We needed Yakomaru’s help, but that meant we had to reveal a certain amount of information.
“We’re looking for our friends…” Satoru said, trying to summarize the situation without giving away more than he had to.
“I understand! And the fastest way would be to located the individual called Squonk. We’ll go to the Goat Moth colony first thing tomorrow.”
“I’d rather go right away…”
“I understand your feelings in the matter, but the snowy paths are dangerous at night. I fear that the Goat Moths might also construe our approach as a raid. There are only four or five hours until sunrise, if you don’t mind waiting.”
I was surprised that it was already so late. I looked over to Satoru, and he nodded, agreeing to postpone our departure until morning.
“We have prepared a simple meal. It’s not much, but I hope you will enjoy it.”
At his signal, two queerats came in bearing lacquered trays.
It reminded me of the rice gruel I had eaten at the Giant Hornet’s camp two years ago. Soft rice, miso soup with burdock, taro and other ingredients, unidentifiable dried foods, and grilled fish. The dried food was tasteless and hard as shoe leather, but everything else was alright.
Yakomaru stayed with us as we ate and pestered us with questions. It was obvious he was only pretending to chat with us in order to glean more information, and that annoyed me. When we finished eating, I decided to make a request.
“When we came here two years ago, it was nighttime too, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, yes. I’m very fond of that memory. Though, to be exact, it wasn’t at this location.”
“That time, we paid a visit to the queen even though it was already very late. I would like to greet the queen now, too.”
For some reason, Yakomaru looked perplexed. “I see…very well. I suppose the queen would be resting right now, but let us go anyway. If you like, I could show you the colony at the same time. It has changed considerably.”
We left the guest house and followed him into the colony. We were stunned by what we saw.
Two years ago, the queerats had mostly lived underground. The only things close to aboveground structures were small towers that resembled anthills. But now, the collection of dwellings they had looked just like a town.
The most common buildings were shaped like giant mushrooms. Yakomaru explained that the framework was made of wood or bamboo, and then covered with clay or processed manure. Lights glowed in the round windows and doors.
“Since we’re subterranean creatures by nature, all the houses are connected by a network of tunnels.”
There were factories for smelting, weaving, dyeing, and paper-making all crammed together and bustling with night workers. There was even a cement plant in the center of it all. Limestone brought all the way from Mt. Tsukuba was pulverized, mixed with clay and baked at high temperatures. It was then mixed with gypsum and pulverized again to make cement. Sand or gravel was added to make mortar or concrete.
“And this is the first of our buildings made with concrete.” Yakomaru gestured to the center of the colony.
It was a round, flat-topped structure thirty meters in diameter. I could only stare in wonder at this building that was as dignified as any building from the ancient civilization.
“This is assembly hall of the colony,” Yakomaru said proudly. “The sixty representatives of the eighteen thousand of us discuss and decide matters in this building.”
Two years ago, the colony was centered around the queen’s nest. How was it possible to bring about such a drastic change in such a short amount of time?
“What happened to the nest?
His tone darkened a little at my question. “As you can see, we have moved most of our activities aboveground. As such, restructuring of the nest was also inevitable. In addition, as colonies joined, they each brought their own queen, and it became necessary to consolidate them under one roof…”
“Then let’s go. We have to ask her about tomorrow too.”
“As you will. …but colony matters are decided by the assembly. In this particular case, I, Yakomaru, will act as the representative and take all responsibility of-”
“Whatever,” Satoru snapped. “We just want to say hello.”
Yakomaru looked defeated. “…very well. I will show you the way.”
Just then, the servant that had been sent ahead to check on the queen returned. He made his report in a squeaky voice and Yakomaru dismissed him with a wave of the hand.
“If you will follow me.”
Lantern in hand, Yakomaru led us away from the factories toward the nearest of a row of dirt buildings.
“What’s this…?”I frowned in confusion.
The queen’s dwelling was extremely shabby. It was fairly large, but had only rough dirt walls and a thatched hay roof. It looked like a building for livestock.
An offensive smell greeted us as the heavy doors were opened.
I remembered that the nest had a pungent, animal smell when we last visited. But this was different. It was a more bearable stink, but there was also the tang of disinfectant in it, creating a strangely repulsive scent.
To be more specific, the old nest had a terrifyingly strong scent of life. But this building smelled like a hospital filled with compost from the Lotus Farms–an unnatural, sickly odor.
The building had a long, rectangular shape, with a passage running down the center of its length. It reminded me of a barn. Sturdy wooden enclosures were built along both sides, but it was too dark to see inside them.
But I felt the presence of a number of giant creatures. They stirred as they caught our scent, but made no other noises, not even a sigh or a groan. Over the rustling sounds, I heard the jingle of chains.
I looked toward Yakomaru in surprise, but his face was outside the circle of lamplight so I couldn’t see his expression.
“Here lives our queen,” he said, stopping in front of one of the enclosures.
“Your highness, it’s been a long time. I’m Saki, we’ve met before,” I said quietly.
There was no response.
“Please enter.” Yakomaru opened the door and walked in briskly.
We followed timidly.
He shone his lantern on the queen who crouched at the far end of the enclosure.
What looked like a giant hornworm appeared. A wrinkled, pale body with four stubby legs.
There was a quiet puffing sound, like a pair of bellows. It was the regular breathing of someone sleeping.
I felt relieved. She was asleep. Of course, it was past midnight, after all.
Gently, so as not to wake the queen, I touched her abdomen. It moved up and down in a slow, leisurely way characteristic of most giant animals.
“Sleep well.”
As we walked, I ran my hands over her head. On her forehead, I felt a strange joint. The queen did not wake.
“Careful.” Satoru sounded worried. “She might bite even if she’s sleeping.”
“It’s okay. I’ll be able to tell if she’s about to wake up.”
Just as I said that, my hand slipped and poked the queen’s eye. I jumped and jerked my hand back. Her head twitched, but there was no other response.
A feeling of horror welled up inside me. The eye I had just poked…
“Bring the light over here!” I commanded.
Yakomaru hesitated for an instant, then turned slowly.
The queen’s eyes were open. She hadn’t been asleep. But her pupils were dilated, and there was no gleam of intelligence in her eyes. No, more than that, her eyes were dry–she was probably blind. Her mouth hung open, revealing teeth even bigger than an impure cat’s, and drool soaked the hay she was lying on.
I snatched the lantern from Yakomaru and approached the queen. On the right side of her forehead was a V-shaped surgical scar. The thick sutures rose up like a ridge on her skin.
“What the hell is this?” Satoru demanded.
“We had no other choice,” Yakomaru said dejectedly.
“No other choice? What did you do to your queen?”
As our voices echoed in the barn, the sounds of rustling and clinking chains grew louder.
“I will explain. Let us go outside.”
We left the building. The wind chilled me to the bone, but blew away the stench that clung to our clothes.
“It was not our intent to treat the queen so cruelly. …she is, after all, the mother of the colony.”
“Then why?” I drew closer to him.
As I did so, queerat soldiers appeared out of nowhere and surrounded us. Yakomaru dismissed them with a slight shake of the head.
“Did you not feel it when you last saw her? The queen has not been mentally stable for a while now.”
“Yes, somewhat.”
“In any colony, the queen holds absolute power. Our queen has always been rather tyrannical, but she became more and more violent as her illness worsened. She attacked innocent servants on a whim, injuring and killing them on a regular basis. On top of that, she became increasingly paranoid and executed all the ministers who had been working tirelessly to help us recover from the Ground Spider attack. If we had allowed this to continue, it would only have been a matter of time until our colony became extinct.”
“That’s why you…” Satoru started to say, but stopped.
“We swear absolute loyalty to the colony and the queen. But we are not tools to be discarded. We are second in intelligence only to the gods of this planet, and are unlike other social animals such as ants or bees. And so, based on this belief, all who worried for the future of our colony gathered of their own volition and formed a union.”
“A union?”
“Yes. It was necessary to negotiate with the queen to preserve our most basic rights. But the queen was enraged. She regarded our actions as an act of treason. …there were a number of complications, and it was with great reluctance we chose this path.”
“This path…you joined forces and completely crippled her. Wouldn’t it have been better just to kill her?” Satoru asked.
Yakomaru shook his head. “No. We did not wish to completely destroy her mental faculties. We only performed a frontal lobe lobotomy. After the surgery, her aggressiveness declined greatly and she became submissive. She continues to bear children and contribute to the growth of the colony. I’m sure the queen herself is much happier like this compared to when she was trapped by her mental illness. …however, since it was our first time performing the procedure, there were several complications with regards to hygiene. Shortly afterward, she began suffering from encephalitis and her mental functions declined considerably.
“That’s terrible…” I whispered.
“It is natural to think that, I suppose. How regrettable.” Yakomaru looked at us accusingly. “Should not all intelligent individuals be given equal rights? That is what I read in the books of the gods. It is the core principle of democracy.”
We looked at each other, bewildered. I never thought I would hear such words spoken by these creatures.
“Even if your queen was a tyrant, what about the others? Was it really necessary to lock them up like animals in that barn?”
“All the colonies who joined us were dealing with the same problem to some degree. Only the queen can reproduce, so her existence is indispensable. Even so, she should not be able to claim the entire colony as her possession on those grounds. The queen is responsible only for childbirth, whereas intellectual pursuits such as governance and military leadership are handed to those with the greatest aptitude. That is the foundation of the Robber Fly colony.”
The two most powerful colonies at the time, the Giant Hornet and Robber Fly colonies, had very different philosophies. The Giant Hornet colony had over thirty thousand members, making them the largest colony. Although General Kiroumaru led the colony, he was a traditionalist who was deeply loyal to the queen, thus preserving the traditional social structure. All traditionalist colonies held to the idea that the queen was an absolute monarch.
On the other hand, the Robber Flies disregarded bloodline purity and joined with other colonies in a highly unorthodox, rapid bid for power. Traditionalist colonies viewed them as heretics and had started to become wary of them.
“…I see. Well, I have no intention of interfering with your business,” Satoru said, stretching. “I’m kind of tired. We’ll go rest until dawn.”
“As you wish. I will have beds prepared immediately.” Yakomaru’s eyes glowed faintly green in the dark.
We returned to the guest house. Once Yakomaru left, Satoru stoked the fire in the hearth and sat down to warm his feet. He sighed loudly.
“I don’t like this. I really don’t like this.”
“Why?”
“The colony, Squealer…Yakomaru, it’s all really fishy. What they say and what they think seem to be completely different. I can’t trust them.”
“But we need their help if we want to find Maria and Mamoru.”
“That’s true,” he said, still looking troubled. “But you saw what he did to the queen. She’s his own mother! How could he do something so terrible?”
“Well, I mean, it shocked me too.” I shivered as I recalled the empty look in the queen’s eyes. “…but, no matter how articulate queerats are, they’re still beasts in the end. No matter how much their emotions resemble ours, they’re not the same. What Yakomaru said has a certain logic to it. They only did what they had to do to survive.”
“Look at you defending them.”
“I’m not,” I said, sitting up straight. “Don’t humans always project their own values onto animals? We say they have a gentle personality, or that mothers should sacrifice themselves for their child. But that’s not realistic. I’ve read books on animal behavior from the ancient civilization.”
Since my mother was a librarian, I probably had more chances to access restricted books than anyone else.
“And what they said was really surprising. Take hippos for example. In the picture books from Harmony School, they show hippos making a circle around one of their dead in order to grieve. But the truth is that hippos are omnivorous, and they surround dead hippos in order to eat them.”
“Yeah, I know that.”
“Kangaroos are the worst. We all think that they keep joeys in their pouches in order to take care of them.”
“And?”
“When they’re being chased by predators, the mother will throw the baby out of her pouch and escape as the predator eats the joey.”
Satoru frowned. “That’s kind of what minoshiro do. But worse, because they give up their own body parts.”
“That’s why it’s a mistake to judge queerats through the lens of human ethics.”
Satoru clasped his hands behind his neck. “Hmm. But that’s not what I meant when I said I don’t like this. It’s more like they seem too similar to humans.”
“It’s true that there are no other animals like them.”
Satoru shuffled over to the door to make sure no one was outside. “I have the strange feeling they’re trying to replace humans. There aren’t any concrete buildings in Kamisu 66. When I saw their factories, I could only think that they are trying to claim for themselves the material culture that we’ve abandoned.”
I asked the question that had been gnawing away at me. “I wonder where Yakomaru gained all that knowledge. He said he read about it.
“But he couldn’t have simply come across a book that explained everything he wanted to know.”
“Then how?”
“This is just my guess, but maybe he captured a false minoshiro. False minoshiro can hypnotize people with its lights, but they might not have any effect on queerats.”
The more I talked with Satoru, the more frightened I became. The existence of queerats has always been viewed as something ominous, but now I suddenly felt the full weight of this sentiment.
“…queerats couldn’t possibly be planning to overthrow humans, could they?”
“Isn’t that impossible? I mean, just the two of us could easily crush the entire colony.”
Indeed, no matter how much queerats developed their material culture, there was no way for them to defeat a human with cantus. Besides, cantus was what had destroyed highly developed culture in the first place. But I couldn’t shake off my feeling of unease.
“Hey, what would happen if Yakomaru did to a human what he did to the queen?”
Satoru furrowed his brows. “I suppose they’d become just as disabled. …I know what you’re thinking. If they perfect their technique, they might be able to produce humans they can control.”
I felt a chill. “Wouldn’t…if that happened, wouldn’t it be a disaster?”
“Nope, it would be fine,” Satoru grinned. “The frontal lobe controls our will and creativity. That means our cantus is also controlled by the frontal lobe. Someone who has their will and creativity taken away would never be able to use their power. So there’s no need to worry.”
We stopped there and spent the next few hours trying to get what little sleep we could. I might have gotten a lot of sleep earlier, but Satoru hadn’t.
As I drifted off on the bed the queerats had prepared, a series of nightmarish images floated through my mind. Like Satoru, I had felt something was horribly wrong ever since I came to the Robber Fly colony.
But before I could figure out what that thing was, I drifted away into darkness.