Primordina followed her first instinct: food. No handmaiden waited on her now, she was a free ant. She wandered the spiral mazes of the colony and found, to her great surprise, her size caused traffic jams. They paid no attention to her until she was blocking a path. Food? She asked, but few talked to her.

She found a larder room which reeked of stored food. The room had a large partition of woven silk with workers on one side of the wall. The room was very dim, but Primordina waited and watched. No one served her, but being their queen mother, they also did not stop her from cutting in line. Primordina was oblivious that others waited.

Food! She commanded a worker. The worker did not like her tone of antenna, but regardless, it sized up the queen and went back behind a curtain. Primordina received a double portion, akin to a warrior of her size. The food was a simple bacterial mat, with little in the way of aphid juice.

After the meal, Primordina searched for something to do. Anything. She tried to avoid the smaller tunnels but even then consistently got in everyant’s way.

Move it Grandmother, their impatient antennae seemed to communicate.

Was this the ignoble fate of all mothers: To birth and raise children to complete independence and then fade away amidst the bustle of busy lives?

Later, in a bit of forgetfulness or forlornness, she returned to her royal chamber. Perhaps she could enter again. Inside she glimpsed the new queen, one of her daughters. She could be useful to the new queen. Give advice on how to lay eggs since she had once been an egg-laying monarch!

Stop. A soldier said. She was as large as Primordina, but far more agile and menacing. No way Primordina could win if a true fight started, but that option was never on the table. Another handmaiden came and also blocked her entry.

Go. The handmaiden commanded the old mother.

Go where? Primordina asked. This was the penultimate question of retirements. Where, now that one could go anywhere, does one actually go? What, when one can do anything, does one actually do? But those questions only afflicts higher intellects. This space ant was not pondering existential questions. Primordina had rarely left her royal chamber prior and literally did not know where to actually go.

Dreamers, the handmaiden replied. All questions were brought to the hive mind and answers returned. Follow Drone.

Primordina’s antenna tapped around. There, exiting the royal chamber, was the same male drone who had rejected her!

The handmaiden and the drone communicated. The drone looked at the old queen, then back at the handmaiden, and back again. Eventually, he approached the old queen mother. Follow. He said.

How more ignoble could this get for Primordina? But having no internalized map of her hive, nor much else to do, she followed.

Spiraling over and around tunnels and through cavernous rooms, the drone swiftly scurried over and around streams of ants. Primordina instead used her size to crash headfirst into perpendicular lines of traffic to follow close. Like a magnet of the same charge, oncoming traffic stopped and diverted to the side or rerouted down alternate tunnels when she approached.

Finally, she arrived with the drone to the heart of the hive. She spied an enigmatic scene. Scores of dreamers and signalers were interacting in strange ways. Primordina could not understand. Was this all they did, lie around and tap each other in odd ways? What lazy ants! Primordina almost thought. This did not look like work.

Stay, her drone guide said.

That was easy for Primordina. She had stayed in her room for almost her whole life and could count on less than her six legs the number of times she had left it. Once was when she got a new room, twice when it became flooded, and today.

The drone walked into the center of the room and workers unfurled his long silk banner. Drones were the inter-colony couriers in addition to genetic dispersers.

The signalers eagerly ran their antenna over it, reading and passing taps to other ants in the room.

The drone returned to the entry where he had left Primordina.

What? She inquired.

Counts, was all the drone said. The space ant knotting system reported the final output of counts from other hives. The drone knew a bit, but he could not read the cordage.

Primordina did not comprehend the drone’s response. Instead of clarifying, she burst into the room with the dream ants, and went to the oldest one.

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Job? She inquired.

The dream ant’s antenna was still in shock. It mistook her for a soldier until its bug eyes saw she was the old queen mother.

Follow drone. Was all it said.

Weavers came in. They stitched and knotted a new linear tapestry.

Wait. The dream ant then added and pointed at the weavers.

It took many moments for the four weavers to knot the cordage. Combined with the signalers and the dream ants, the hive could write, retrieve, and read information on a more permanent basis. The cool of the tunnels also preserved the silk from decay, and space ant societies could remember much. This cordage was the counts of warriors in the nearby cities. Except there were no counts from the colony below.

Where, Primordina stressed.

Deephive. Descend. A Signaler replied. It then went over to the drone. It simply repeated an order already asked. Get counts from Deephive, the signaler eventually communicated to the drone. That colony had been found deep under the ice and had not been heard from for several sleeps.

Follow, the drone said to Primordina.

Wait, she commanded. Name? She asked.

Runno, he replied.

Runno the drone, led Primordina, the old queen, to a barracks. It was dark, almost pitch black here, but she could hear a racket of soldiers rubbing their legs together. Her hairs picked up the sound which painted the room, and combined with her infrared she could sense well enough.

Runno gathered together twelve warriors. They carried several types of weapons and tools.

Weapons? Primordina asked. She had experienced their effectiveness when they excised her mites and was curious. Someant pushed a small blade along the ground over to her. She could see it by the lack of infrared. It was as black as ice.

It had a small coil of silk for her to carry it by. She got the loop over her aged and bumpy mantle with some difficulty.

And so, the shunned queen now became a follower. Or rather, no one ever told the Queen Mother what to do, and since she was the size of a warrior, so they doubly did not command her. Primordina became the thirteenth soldier.

They descended to Deephive.

At regular intervals, Primordina heard activity from the side tunnels. She met workers who exited with all manner and size of rocks. Rocks which were once asteroids but were too small to punch through the ice shell and sink to the bottomless ocean. Other workers took iron to the microorganism farms to feed the bacterial mats. Still more workers ran up the shaft carrying tufts of bacteria to restock the food larders.

They passed several big-headed ants which acted as watertight hatches. Space Ant society discovered by digging too deep there were pockets of water in the interstitial lakes, which always threatened to deluge a colony after ice quakes.

But there were strange things too. Pockets of gas, sometimes oxygen at high pressure, but other times filled with noxious air. Other times the gas chilled, aggregated and liquefied into pools of caustic fluid which were deadly to space-ants. Not all liquid was fit to drink. Sometimes a dead ant was the only sign of poison, other time silken ropes hung to prevent ants from stumbling into it.

The squad descended the central shaft. They were no longer in Overwater. Activity had died off, and the tunnel ceased being ant-made and was instead a natural shaft vacated of water by the gas and pressure.

At the bottom, they finally encountered a deep pool of water.

Runno tested it with his antenna. Good Water. His legs stamped out the message.

Space ants could hold their breath and swim, but the frigid temperature was hard to counter. The best solution was to breathe in the air, then get underwater and exhale enough into their hairs to trap insulating air bubbles. This had the benefit of helping them float, but floating only helped to walk along the ceiling of submerged chambers.

Primordina heard the clicks and chirrups from the squad behind her, but the noises yielded little insight. Then she asked Runno. How?

The twelve other warriors had all stood on the walls above and around, awaiting orders.

Primordina, put her antenna into the frigid water. It was completely black down here, so she saw nothing but slight variations in temperature. Her memory of water from the times long ago when her chamber was flooded filled in her mind and indeed she imagined the ripples reflect off the walls and collide back with her antenna.

The warriors behind her went silent.

Follow, Runno said to the old queen.

Cold, she tried to reply, but then Runno dove into the water. He exhaled and the tiny hairs caught pockets of air around his body.

Primordina passed on the instructions to the soldiers and hesitated to follow him. She had been used to cold, but this was absolutely death stabbing cold. It was though her exoskeleton was no armor at all, and could not protect from the million pricks she felt. Almost instinctively, she exhaled, and the hairs trapped the air and insulated her. Soon she felt better.

The water had a strange feeling. Sound was distorted, senses addled, and body parts numbed. Her antenna swished like she was swinging a dead aphid as it searched ahead for the salvation of unknown air. Anything’s better than being submerged in water. She climbed down, then over, and finally back up. Space ant colonies had p-trap type tunnels in the vertical shafts to try to trap the noxious air out.

She climbed out, shook off the water, and tasted the air.

The black chamber was much larger than expected and her antenna searched around until it found Runno.

They waited for the dozen warriors behind her. The air was not poisonous, but it was stale, and there were no chemical trails she could detect. It had been a long time since this path’s air had been breathed by any space ant.

How far? Primordina asked Runno.

Close, he replied. Runno inspected the sides of the dome, searching for any information. Sometimes ants embedded rudimentary counts of distance into the walls, but he could find nothing.

Another soldier rubbed her leg, generating a chirrup, chirrup, sound.

The room lit up for them all to sense, though the wet hairs dampened the perception. They each could sense the chamber. Above was a featureless dome. Someant had constructed simple platforms to stand over the channel of water at the bottom.

They all sensed something blank ahead of them and walked forward and found a different tunnel. They went sideways for a spell until they found a second dry shaft.

Descend. Runno instructed her.

Primordina passed the order to the soldiers behind her.