5 - The Great Hive

Diryish Pollus, Emperor of the Hive Lords of Lainz, Descendent of A Major Shareholder, Queen Bee of the Great Hive, paced away from his balcony, having watched the funeral procession into the heat-shimmer of the distance, ignoring the smooth chatter from Nadian at his one elbow and from Billiph at the other.

The clatter and buzz of the rest of the court behind was almost less than the neutral buzz of the Great Hive and Diryish stopped in the centre of the hall.  “Shashi,” he said imperiously, holding out his hand.  Nadian’s eyes blinked over his veil and then narrowed.

“Wife,” he called.  “Attend.  His Radiance demands.”

From the butterfly garden of veils in the crowd, Nadian’s wife came forward, her delicate hand coming out of the formal third veil, gossamer black spangled with sequins of platinum, to rest upon the Emperor’s proffered palm. It wasn’t that Nadian was terribly concerned that the Emperor would take his wife... after all, everyone knew that His Radiance was probably too old to concern himself with petty thoughts of sex.  It was a coup for him, actually, that the most Luminous called for his wife to adorn his arm, rather than anyone else’s.

“We shall enter the Great Hive.  Everyone but Shashi Basserus... remove yourselves.  I shall call you when I want you.”  Diryish hid his own smile behind his veil.  They’d be gnawing themselves into a frenzy trying to figure out how to be first at the Great Hive door when he came out.

“Of course, Radiance.”

Do they ever think, Diryish thought as he stepped to the hexagonal door that supposedly marked the entrance to the Great Hive, that an old man might wish to be alone to mourn the last of his own line?  Did they even mark that it was my baby Ty who died?  The little boy who had my grandaughter’s eyes and her laugh?  Who danced with the bees like my daughter?  Who cried when his kitten died, like my youngest son?

You fools, it’s not about power.  It’s about family.  It’s about survival. It’s not about power but about love.

The door clicked behind him and Shashi and she didn’t just let go his hand.  Her fingers squeezed and she turned to stop him walking downstairs.  “Diryish.”  Her eyes, misty through the three formal veils, were as direct and intense as her father’s, unveiled.  “Are you all right?”

He paused, looking down into her face.  “I... must be all right, my dear.  I will be.  There is no one else, right now, to keep the people of Lainz balanced and surviving.”  A single bee squeezed through a crack in a partly open door below and buzzed up to land on his hand.  He looked down at it and raised a single fingertip to stroke the blue/green coded wings.  “Little sister,” he said quietly.  “Help me be calm. Let me continue well.”

The bee shivered her wings and when she stung him it was almost gentle.  He did not flinch.  The bee buzzed away down the stairs ahead of them.

“Shashi.  Thank you.  Thank Mother Thriti for all of your care for me and mine.  I will find or engender an heir.  I just need to mourn this little boy right now.”

Shashi nodded, yanked the third veil up unceremoniously and threaded her arm through his as if to give her as much of her support as she could as they proceeded downstairs.  “I understand.  He was a good boy and I hoped he’d play with my girls for many long years.”

“As I had hoped,” Diryish said.  “Command authorization code “Zero two point four.”  The door at the bottom of the stairs eased open.  It didn’t matter if Shashi heard the codes.  The city wouldn’t respond to her bloodline with those numbers.

The hum of the hive as the door opened was soothing.  He swallowed his grief as he had swallowed dozens of other griefs in his life, smiled at Shashi and sent her off to her own design space.   

When you are an old man you have practice at dealing with these things, endurance is the purview of the old.

His office, once his only means of expression in the city when he was a mere prince and his father looked to be likely to live forever, felt like an expensive, well made old shoe.  He sat down and looked from the small wax designs waiting on his desk, to the massive beeswax image of the whole city of Lainz.   It was on a pedestal that mimicked the mesa, melded to it, growing out if it, in the middle of the room.

The ceiling shimmered with the moving bodies of the workers in the hive, bees buzzing around the model, delicate feet, delicate feelers, tasting, modifying, dancing the city that would eventually support a full million strong.  Right now it was barely limping along to support eight hundred thousand or so.

The air was full of the sweet scent of the wax, the soothing hum of construction.  He leaned back in his chair, looking out the open door of his office at the rows of designer’s desks, the zardukar of Lainz, the elegant, perfect women, with their veils thrust back off their faces and back from their hair, their hands clutched in it as they thought about their designs.

Most of Lainz thought of the young women... and the young men... as only as sexual workers.  They heard everything.  They knew what happened in the city, from every bedroom, from every pillow.  And their Radiance knew it.  Their Radiance, if he cared a whit, would fit the wishes and dreams and prayers of the people into every machine designed in the Great Hive.