you see, so they would have time to carry it to the nest. That way we killed many instead of just two or three.'
Silence hummed in Webster's head… the silence of no thought, no words.
'Jenkins,' he said. 'Jenkins, are you…'
'Yes, Jon Webster, I am here.'
'That is all you want?'
'That is all I want.'
'I can go to sleep again.'
'Yes, Jon Webster. Go to sleep again.'
Jenkins stood upon the hilltop and felt the first rough fore-running wind of winter whine across the land. Below him the slope that ran down to the river was etched in black and grey with the leafless skeletons of trees.
To the north-east rose the shadow-shape, the cloud of evil omen that was called the Building. A growing thing spawned in the mind of ants, built for what purpose and to what end nothing but an ant could even closely guess.
But there was a way to deal with ants.
The human way.
The way Jon Webster had told him after ten thousand years of sleep. A simple way and a fundamental way, a brutal, but efficient way. You took some syrup, sweet, so the ants would like it, and you put some poison in it… slow poison so it wouldn't work too fast.
'The simple way of poison,' Jenkins said. 'The very simple way.'
Except it called for chemistry and the Dogs knew no chemistry.
Except it called for killing and there was no killing.
Not even fleas, and the Dogs were pestered plenty by the fleas. Not even ants… and the ants threatened to dispossess the animals of the world they called their birthplace.
There had been no killing for five thousand years or more.
The idea of killing had been swept from the minds of things.
And it is better that way, Jenkins told himself. Better that one should lose a world than go back to killing.
He turned slowly and went down the hill.
Homer would be disappointed, he told himself.
Terribly disappointed when he found the websters had no way of dealing with the ants…
