Once or twice upon a time there was an ant called 4179003. He lived in an ants’ nest with a lot of other ants who all looked alike. He didn’t even have any friends, because ant number 4179004, with whom he had been quite friendly, had one day got trodden on by a dog. In the ants’ nest it was dark and every day was just like yesterday.
Then one day 4179003 was lumping around ants’ eggs with all the other ants and he thought, Why am I doing this? Is this what life is all about?
He stopped for a moment and put down his load.
That’s a subversive thought, he thought, shocked at himself. If the queen finds out, I’ll be executed and my number will be given to a new ant. I’m not being loyal to the nest.
He heaved the ants’ eggs a bit farther down the tunnel.
Yesterday I was carrying eggs and I’ll be carrying eggs tomorrow, he thought. It didn’t seem a very exciting prospect. The more he thought about it the less exciting it became.
So blow this for a lark, thought 4179003 finally, dropping his eggs and trotting toward the entrance.
It didn’t take long for his disappearance to be noticed. One of the soldier ants, the ones with great clicking jaws, was watching the column wind by when he noticed the gap in it. Immediately he gave the alarm.
“A defector!” he screamed. “Stop him!”
But it was too late. 4179003 had gone.
He was running through the grass stems, peering constantly over his shoulder. It was a good job he did. Soldier ants were swarming out of the nest, jaws clashing in fury.
He bumped into a blade of grass and for want of anything else to do sped up it. It shook as the soldiers trampled by.
“Hmm,” said a voice from right behind him.
“Gah!” said 4179003, spinning round. A large grasshopper was watching him, and then it peered over the edge of the blade.
“They’re going to a lot of trouble over one ant,” it said. “Done something nasty, have you? Hmmm?”
“It is forbidden to leave the nest without permission,” quavered 4179003.
“Oh, I won’t turn you in,” said the grasshopper. “We’re all open-minded here, I’m sure. What’s your name?”
“They call me Ant 4179003.”
“That’s a number! I mean, what do you call yourself?”
“Just me,” said 4179003.
“Well, Me’s good enough,” muttered the grasshopper. “You’ve got to have a name. Still, once an ant always an ant. I knew a bee once that felt the same as you. Wanted to see a bit more of the world. Didn’t work. Got hungry. Got cold. Fed up. No, the likes of you ought to stick in nests. Nip in quick before the soldiers come back, and I daresay no one’ll notice you’ve been away.”
“No! I want to see what’s going on!” said Me.
The grasshopper eyed him carefully. “Another reason you ought to get back in is that sometimes when I’m hungry I eat ants. No offense meant, I’m sure—it’s just in my nature. I mean, if I was to get hungry in the next few minutes I might feel called on to eat you.”
Me backed away and slid back down the grass stem.
“You’ll regret it,” sang the grasshopper from his perch. But Me scurried off through the grass.
At last he crawled up onto a dock leaf and looked around. There was no sign of the soldier ants who had been chasing him, or of the grasshopper.
Free! he thought, doing a little jig on the leaf. No more numbers! No more being bossed around. Whoopee!
The sun was shining and he felt marvelous. He cartwheeled across the leaf and did all those things he wasn’t allowed to do in the nest—somersaults, whistling and stamping all six feet. After about five minutes of this he’d run out of things to do and was getting hungry.
Honey, he thought. There must be some way of getting the stuff without going back to the nest. To tell the truth, he had never bothered about where food came from—he’d just queued up in the ants’ canteen, like everyone else.
Just then there was a buzzing above him. It stopped, there was a cough, and it started again. This happened several times, and then there was a crash, and a bee bounced off the dock leaf, cursing.
The ant peered over the edge. “Are you hurt?”
“Only my pride, laddie, only my pride,” said the bee from where he was lying. “Engine’s conked out. Have to walk home now. Are you this ant I’m supposed to be looking for?”
It dawned on the ant. “You must be the bee the grasshopper mentioned, the one who left the hive.”
“That’s me. Thought I’d look you up, y’know. We rebels must stick together. I say, I’d be obliged if you could help me up.”
The ant levered the bee up with a grass stem and helped him smooth out his wings.
“That’s better,” said the bee. “Name’s Bottomly. H’d y’do? Fancy a walk? Got a little place up under the hedge. Nothing flash, but homely. Expect you’re hungry. Got honey. Come on.” And he crawled away, with the ant running to keep up.
As they progressed, Bottomly explained, in brief sentences, how he’d got fed up with living in the hive and had decided to run away.
“That’s exactly what I thought too,” said the ant admiringly. “I got fed up with doing the same things every day.”
“Too true, laddie. ‘Where’s it all lead to?’ I asked myself. Nowhere. So I’ve got this deserted mouse hole, which is quite cozy. Sometimes I see a few old friends from the hive, but they’ve never got time to talk. Work, work, work, that’s all they care about.”
He led the ant up a bank and into the hole. It was small and warm inside, and the walls were lined with honey pots. Bottomly prized the lid off one and offered the ant a drink.
“Cheers,” he said.
“Cheers,” said the ant. It looked as though freedom wasn’t going to be too bad after all.
They were just starting on a second pot of honey when Bottomly glanced out of the mouse hole.
“Here come those soldier ants!” he cried. “They’ve followed us!”
The ant peered out and saw them marching up the bank. There were hundreds of them. He could hear their jaws clicking, their feet stamping out a tune, which they were chanting as they climbed:
“Us ants go marching left and right,
Hurrah, hurrah,
Ten thousand legs is quite a sight,
Hurrah, hurrah!
We work all day
’Cos that’s our way
And we all go marching on. . . .”*
“You don’t weigh much,” said Bottomly, picking Me up. “Hold on—I’m going to try to take off.”
With his wings going like buzz saws the bee bumped and bounced down the slope, and soared into the evening air just above the snapping jaws of the soldiers.
The ant looked dizzily down and saw the soldier ants invading the mouse hole.
“They’ll eat all your honey!” he said. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Never mind about that. I can’t fly far with you, so we’d better look for a landing spot. Fasten your seat belts and no smoking please.” He swallowed. “You seem to have got heavier.”
Me looked round—and saw a soldier ant hanging on to Bottomly’s back legs.
“We’ve been boarded!” he shouted.
“This is a hijack,” said the soldier ant. “Fly to the ant heap, or I’ll bite.” He clashed his jaws.
Bottomly soared upward and somersaulted. He spiraled and buzzed across the sky, with both ants clinging on tightly.
“No tricks—” began the soldier, but just then Me leaped at him and grabbed his legs, pulling him off Bottomly.
They tumbled down with the bee a tiny speck above them. The soldier, being heavier, fell faster, and the small ant was left alone, slowly floating in the breeze.
There was a whirr of wings and Bottomly soared down and hovered under him. “Climb aboard,” he said.
They swooped across a wood, and Bottomly hovered over a stream.
“Hold tight,” he called. “I can’t go on much longer.”
They landed in a clump of watercress and sat panting on the broad damp leaves.
“This looks a nice place,” said the ant as they scrambled up the bank. “Homely. And a nice long way from the ants’ nest.”
“That looks an interesting hole over there,” said the bee.
The hole had belonged to a rat but was now deserted except for an earwig, who scuttled away as they approached.
“Room for lots of honey here,” said Bottomly. “Roomy sort of place. Nice view of the water. Peaceful.”
And there they stayed, doing nothing at all most days but gathering a bit of honey and watching the stream go by, while the other ants and bees worked hard and never had time to watch anything.