Of Machines & Magics by Adele Abbot Page A

just the right time?”
    “Come back this way?” Calistrope had not given the matter of return any thought at all. “Well, yes, I suppose we do.” The concept of return seemed almost unreal.
    “If we set fire now, then we don’t have the problem—and don’t forget those villagers, too. With the nest gone, they will be able to trade with the coast again, their lives will change for the better.”
    “I can’t see them doing anything like that again. They’re too bound up with their imagined riotous living.”
    “Don’t be so hard on them. When they realize it’s possible, they will change.”
    “Very well then. Let me have that flame of yours.”
    Ponderos felt—very carefully—in several pockets before he found what Calistrope wanted. Moving his arms carefully and grunting at his hurts, he pulled out a small cylinder. Calistrope took his knife and crouched, he began to cut and tear long strips from the floor. A little while later, he gave up and sat back on his haunches. “No. It’s no use Ponderos. It’s too damp. Won’t burn.”
    “Then we’ll have to go back, higher. I expect condensation and other liquids run down the spiral and soak into the lower parts of the nest. It will be drier further up,” Ponderos lurched to his feet. “Give me the flame.”
    “Don’t be silly,” said Calistrope, “you aren’t fit enough. Stay here with Roli and I’ll go.”
    Calistrope left the others and began to climb back up the ramp. Somehow, he guessed, worker wasps had been alerted to the damage he had inflicted on the nest; he had climbed past two floors when a line of four of the insects filed past him and continued downwards. Calistrope turned and followed them. They stopped outside the enclosure where Roli and Ponderos were hiding; inside, the insects crowded the humans to one side and began to chew with their mandibles at the broken floor, as they worked each little bit into a sort of paste, they patted it down and smoothed it.
    As before, the workers would hide his friends from insects with more serious intent.
    Calistrope looked at the others. “There,” he said and grinned. “Protection”. He left them to it and ascended, running up the ramp. He passed the place where the workers had appeared and carried on until he was out of breath before stopping to test the floor and walls. Finally, Calistrope was satisfied that the material was really dry and would burn fiercely.
    He was still on the ramp and worked quickly to tear enough papery scraps up to start a fire. He uncapped Ponderos’ little cylinder, inside a small blue flame flickered, as it had done for the countless years that Calistrope could remember. He piled the scraps in the angle between floor and wall and set fire to them.
    A worker came by, two, three, several, alerted by the smell of smoke perhaps. Calistrope had to keep pushing them away to allow the flames to get hold and even when they were roaring up the wall, fed by a growing updraft of air, the insects attempted to extinguish it by smothering the flames with their own bodies. Had there been more of them, the wasps would have succeeded but a great number must have been trying vainly to repair the damage to the egg stores made by the worm.
    Satisfied the fire would not be put out, Calistrope tramped back down to his friends and supporting Ponderos between them, they made haste down the last four floors or so to reach the bottom of the nest where the main exit and entrance was.

    They came to a final turn of the ramp and Roli, slightly in front, stopped and backed up, dragging Ponderos’ bulk with him. “Soldiers,” he said. “Guarding the opening.”
    “How many?” asked Calistrope.
    Roli let go of Ponderos and sidled round the curve again. “Five,” he said a moment later.
    “That’s too many. Especially with Ponderos unable to fight.”
    “Oh come on…” started Ponderos.
    “No my friend, you’re in no condition…”
    “Will you listen? I was going to point out we