"They share hive minds," Wo said. "Castle minds, in this case. There are only three organisms in the tank, actually. The fourth died. You see how her castle has fallen."
Kress looked back at the tank. "Hive minds, eh? Interesting." He frowned again. "Still, it is only an oversized ant farm. I'd hoped for something better."
"They fight wars."
"Wars? Hmmm." Kress looked again.
"Note the colors, if you will," Wo said. She pointed to the creatures that swarmed over the nearest castle. One was scrabbling at the tank wall. Kress studied it. To his eyes, it still looked like an insect. Barely as long as his fingernail, six-limbed, with six tiny eyes set all around its body. A wicked set of mandibles clacked visibly, while two long, fine antennae wove patterns in the air. Antennae, mandibles, eyes, and legs were sooty black, but the dominant color was the burnt orange of its armor plating. "It's an insect," Kress repeated.
"It is not an insect," Wo insisted calmly.
"The armored exoskeleton is shed when the sandkings grows larger. If it grows larger. In a tank this size, it won't." She took Kress by the elbow and led him around the tank to the next castle. "Look at the colors here."
He did. They were different. Here the sandkings had bright red armor; antennae, mandibles, eyes, and legs were yellow. Kress glanced across the tank. The denizens of the third live castle were off-white, with red trim. "Hmmm," he said.
"They war, as I said," Wo told him. "They even have truces and alliances. It was an alliance that destroyed the fourth castle in this tank. The blacks were becoming too numerous, and so the others joined forces to destroy them." Kress remained unconvinced. "Amusing, no doubt. But insects fight wars, too."
"Insects do not worship," Wo said.
"Eh?"
Wo smiled and pointed at the castle. Kress stared. A face had been carved into the wall of the higher tower. He recognized it. It was Jala Wo's face. "How . . .?"
"I projected a hologram of my face into the tank, then kept it there for a few days. The face of god, you see? I feed them. I am always close. The sandkings have a rudimentary psionic sense. Proximity telepathy. They sense me and worship me by using my face to decorate their buildings. All the castles have them, see." They did.
On the castle, the face of Jala Wo was serene,
peaceful, and very lifelike. Kress marveled at the workmanship. "How do they do it?"
"The foremost legs double as arms. They even have fingers of a sort, three small, flexible tendrils. And they cooperate well, both in building and in battle. Remember, all the mobiles of one color share a single mind."
"Tell me more," Kress requested.
Wo smiled. "The maw lives in the castle. Maw is my name for her-a pun, if you will. The thing is mother and stomach both. Female, large as your fist, immobile. Actually, sandking is a bit of a misnomer. The mobiles are peasants and warriors. The real ruler is a queen. But that analogy is faulty as well. Considered as a whole, each castle is a single hermaphroditic creature."
"What do they eat?"
"The mobiles eat pap, predigested food obtained inside the castle. They get it from the maw after she has worked on it for several days. Their stomachs can't handle anything else. If the maw dies, they soon die as well. The maw. . . the maw eats anything. You'll have no special expense there. Table scraps will do excellently."
"Live food?" Kress asked.
Wo shrugged. "Each maw eats mobiles from the other castles, yes."
"I am intrigued," he admitted. "If only they weren't so small!"
"Yours can be larger. These sandkings are small because their tank is small. They seem to limit their growth to fit available space. If I moved these to a larger tank, they'd start growing again."
"Hmmm. My piranha tank is twice this size and vacant. It could be cleaned out, filled with sand . . ."
"Wo and Shade would take care of the installation. It would be our pleasure."
"Of course," Kress said, "I would expect four intact castles."
"Certainly," Wo said.
They began to haggle about the price.
Three days later Jala Wo arrived at Simon Kress's estate, with dormant sandkings and a y work crew to take charge of the installation. Wo's assistants were aliens unlike any Kress was familiar with-squat, broad bipeds with four arms and bulging, multifaceted eyes. Their skin.
e
was thick and leathery and twisted into horns and spines and protrusions at odd places upon their bodies. But they were very strong, and e good workers. Wo ordered them about in a musical tongue that Kress has never heard before.
In a day it was done. They moved his piranha tank to the center of his spacious living room, arranged couches on either side of it for better viewing, scrubbed it clean, and filled it two thirds of the way up with sand and rock. Then they installed a special lighting system, both to provide the dim red illumination the sandkings preferred and to project holographic images s into the tank. On top they mounted a sturdy plastic cover, with a feeder mechanism built in. w "This way you can feed your sandkings without removing the top of the tank," Wo explained.
"You would not want to take any chances on the mobiles escaping."
The cover also included climate-control devices, to condense just the right amount of moisture from the air. "You want it dry, but not too dry," Wo said.
Finally one of the four-armed workers climbed into the tank and dug deep pits in the four corners. One of his companions handed the dormant maws over to him, removing them, one by one, from their frosted cryonic traveling cases.
They were nothing to look at. Kress decided they resembled nothing so much as mottled, half-spoiled chunks of raw meat. Each with a mouth.
The alien buried them, one in each corner of the tank. Then the work party sealed it all up and took their leave.
"The heat will bring the maws out of dormancy," Wo said. "In less than a week mobiles will begin to hatch and burrow up to the surface. Be certain to give them plenty of food. They will need all their strength until they are well established. I would estimate that you will have castles rising in about three weeks."
"And my face? When will they carve my face?"
"Turn on the hologram after about a month," she advised him, "and be patient. If you have any questions, please call. Wo and Shade are at your service." She bowed and left.
Kress wandered back to the tank and lit a joy stick. The desert was still and empty. He
drummed his fingers impatiently against the
plastic and frowned. t
On the fourth day Kress thought he glimpsed
motion beneath the sand-subtle subterranean
stirrings. s
On the fifth day he saw his first mobile, a
lone white.
On the sixth day he counted a dozen of them,
whites and reds and blacks. The oranges were -K
tardy. He cycled through a bowl of half
decayed table scraps. The mobiles sensed it at
once, rushed to it, and began to drag pieces .?
back to their respective corners. Each color
group was highly organized. They did not fight.
Kress was a bit disappointed, but he decided to
give them time.
The oranges made their appearance on the eighth day. By then the other sandkings had` begun carrying small stones and erecting crude fortifications. They still did not war. At the G moment they were only half the size of those he had seen at Wo and Shade's, but Kress thought they were growing rapidly.