Parkins. You may go," he said, then turned to the old man, an apology in his expression, his voice imprinted, as it were, with an echo of Mr. Sackett's hard-edged whisper of command. "We're all finished here."
An hour later, Reggie Panicker was released, with all charges against him dropped, and the next day, at the inquest, the death of Richard Woolsey Shane was officially ruled to have been the result of an accident whose nature was not then or afterward specified.
7
The bees did speak to him, after a fashion. The featureless drone, the sonic blank that others heard was to him a shifting narrative, rich, inflected, variable, and distinct as the separate stones of a featureless gray shingle, and he moved along the sound, tending to his hives like a beachcomber, stooped and marveling. It meant nothing, of course-he wasn't as batty as all that-but this did not imply, not at all, that the song had no meaning. It was the song of a city, a city as far from London as London was from heaven or Rangoon, a city in which all did precisely what they were supposed to do, in the way that had been prescribed by their most remote and venerable ancestors. A city in which gems, gold ingots, letters of credit, or secret naval plans were never stolen, in which long-lost second sons and ne'er-do-well first husbands did not turn up from the Wawoora Valley or the Rand with some clever backwoods trick for scaring an old moneybags out of his wits. No stabbings, garrotings, beatings, shootings; almost no violence at all, apart from the occasional regicide. All of the death in the city of the bees had been scheduled, provided for, tens of millions of years ago; each death as it occurred was translated, efficiently and immediately, into more life for the hive.
It was the sort of city in which a man who had earned his keep among murderers and ruffians might choose to pass the remainder of his days, listening to its song, as a young man fresh to Paris or New York or Rome (or even, as he still dimly recalled, London) stood on a balcony, at the window of a bedsit, on the roof of a tenement house, listening to the rumble of traffic and the fanfare of horns, and feeling that he was hearing the music of his own mysterious destiny.
Between the epic of the bees and the rasp of his own respiration within the tent of his protective netting, he failed to hear, as he had failed to anticipate, the long black saloon car that turned up the day after his interview with Parkins. It was not until the man from London was ten feet behind him that the old man turned. Easy prey, he thought, disgusted with himself. Fortunate, really, that all one's enemies are dead.
The man from London was dressed like a cabinet minister but he moved like a cashiered soldier. Broad-chested, fair-haired, squinting as against a hostile sun, a curious shuffling motion in his left foot, in its good Cleverley brogue, as he came toward the hives. Old enough to have accumulated a score of enemies, certainly, but not yet old enough to have outlived them all. His driver waited by the car with its London plates and its slitted blackout headlights that echoed the sun-blasted squint of its passenger.
"Do they ever sting you?" the man from London said.
"Constantly."
"Does it hurt?"
The old man raised the netting, so that he would not have to waste a perfectly good yes on such a fatuous question. The man from London concealed the traces of a smile in his graying blond mustache.
"Suppose it would," he said. "Like honey, do you?"
"Not particularly, no," said the old man.
The man from London appeared to be a little surprised by this reply, then nodded and confessed that he was not terribly fond of honey himself.
"Know who I am?" he said, after a moment.
"Genus and species," the old man said. He lifted a hand to the veil of net as if to lower it again. Then he pulled off the hat entirely, and tucked it under his arm. "You'd better come inside."
The man from London took the chair by the window,
An hour later, Reggie Panicker was released, with all charges against him dropped, and the next day, at the inquest, the death of Richard Woolsey Shane was officially ruled to have been the result of an accident whose nature was not then or afterward specified.
7
The bees did speak to him, after a fashion. The featureless drone, the sonic blank that others heard was to him a shifting narrative, rich, inflected, variable, and distinct as the separate stones of a featureless gray shingle, and he moved along the sound, tending to his hives like a beachcomber, stooped and marveling. It meant nothing, of course-he wasn't as batty as all that-but this did not imply, not at all, that the song had no meaning. It was the song of a city, a city as far from London as London was from heaven or Rangoon, a city in which all did precisely what they were supposed to do, in the way that had been prescribed by their most remote and venerable ancestors. A city in which gems, gold ingots, letters of credit, or secret naval plans were never stolen, in which long-lost second sons and ne'er-do-well first husbands did not turn up from the Wawoora Valley or the Rand with some clever backwoods trick for scaring an old moneybags out of his wits. No stabbings, garrotings, beatings, shootings; almost no violence at all, apart from the occasional regicide. All of the death in the city of the bees had been scheduled, provided for, tens of millions of years ago; each death as it occurred was translated, efficiently and immediately, into more life for the hive.
It was the sort of city in which a man who had earned his keep among murderers and ruffians might choose to pass the remainder of his days, listening to its song, as a young man fresh to Paris or New York or Rome (or even, as he still dimly recalled, London) stood on a balcony, at the window of a bedsit, on the roof of a tenement house, listening to the rumble of traffic and the fanfare of horns, and feeling that he was hearing the music of his own mysterious destiny.
Between the epic of the bees and the rasp of his own respiration within the tent of his protective netting, he failed to hear, as he had failed to anticipate, the long black saloon car that turned up the day after his interview with Parkins. It was not until the man from London was ten feet behind him that the old man turned. Easy prey, he thought, disgusted with himself. Fortunate, really, that all one's enemies are dead.
The man from London was dressed like a cabinet minister but he moved like a cashiered soldier. Broad-chested, fair-haired, squinting as against a hostile sun, a curious shuffling motion in his left foot, in its good Cleverley brogue, as he came toward the hives. Old enough to have accumulated a score of enemies, certainly, but not yet old enough to have outlived them all. His driver waited by the car with its London plates and its slitted blackout headlights that echoed the sun-blasted squint of its passenger.
"Do they ever sting you?" the man from London said.
"Constantly."
"Does it hurt?"
The old man raised the netting, so that he would not have to waste a perfectly good yes on such a fatuous question. The man from London concealed the traces of a smile in his graying blond mustache.
"Suppose it would," he said. "Like honey, do you?"
"Not particularly, no," said the old man.
The man from London appeared to be a little surprised by this reply, then nodded and confessed that he was not terribly fond of honey himself.
"Know who I am?" he said, after a moment.
"Genus and species," the old man said. He lifted a hand to the veil of net as if to lower it again. Then he pulled off the hat entirely, and tucked it under his arm. "You'd better come inside."
The man from London took the chair by the window,
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