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"Both of us mutes," said Sel, "and all of us deaf"

"What I wouldn't give to have just one of them alive"

"But there couldn't be just one," said Sel "They hived They needed hundreds, perhaps thousands to reach the critical ence"

"Or not," said Po "It could also be that only the queen was sentient Why else would they all have died when the queens died?"

"Unless the queen was the nexus, the center of a neural network, so they all collapsed when she did But until then, all of them individuals"

"As I said, I e had one alive," said Po, "so we could know so from a few desiccated corpses"

Sel silently rejoiced that yet another generation of this colony had produced at least one who thought like a scientist "We have more of them preserved than any of the other colonies Here, there are so few scavengers that can eat theet to the planet's surface and freeze soot to study structure"

"But no queens"

"The sorrow of my life," said Sel

"Really? That's your greatest regret?"

Sel fell silent

"Sorry," said Po

"It's all right I was just considering your question My greatest regret What a question How can I regret leaving everything behind on Earth, when I left it in order to help save it? And cos that other scientists could only dream of I have been able to name more than five thousand species already and come up with a rudimentary classification system for an entire native biota More than on any of the other formic worlds"

"Why?"

"Because the formics stripped those worlds and then established only a limited subset of their own flora and fauna This is the only world where most of the species evolved here The only place that's ht fewer than a thousand species to their colonies And their hoone"