Episode 2

Kress blinked, and peered, and corrected himself; actually only three castles stood. The fourth leaned; a crumbled, broken ruin. The

other three were crude but intact, carved of stone and sand. Over their battlements and through their rounded porticoes, tiny creatures

climbed and scrambled. Kress pressed his face against the plastic. “Insects?” he asked.

“No,” Wo replied. “A much more complex lifeform. More intelligent as well. Considerably smarter than your shambler. They are

called sandkings.”

“Insects,” Kress said, drawing back from the tank. “I don't care how complex they are.” He frowned. “And kindly don't try to gull me

with this talk of intelligence. These things are far too small to have anything but the most rudimentary brains.”

“They share hiveminds,” 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. “Hiveminds, 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 told him. She pointed to the creatures that swarmed over the nearest castle. One was scrabbling at

the tank wall. Kress studied it. It still looked like an insect to his eyes. 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 sandking 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 getting too numerous, 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 highest tower. He recognized it. It was

Jala Wo's face. “How...?”

“I projected a holograph of my face into the tank, 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 and 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 said.

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, so 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.”

“Hmmmm. 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,” said Kress, “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’ estate, with dormant sandkings and a 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 was thick and leathery, twisted into horns and spines and protrusions at odd spots upon their bodies. But they were very

strong, and good workers. Wo ordered them about in a musical tongue that Kress had never heard.

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 into the tank. On top they.

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