but was also more sensitive to them. On detecting even a faint trace of the chemicals, the soldier rushed about in search of enemies. Soldiers in combat attracted other soldiers. When they entered a high concentration of the alarm signal at the site of the action, they ran in frenzied loops and threw themselves at any alien object that moved. Deadly threats and overwhelming opposition were of no concern to the soldiers. They were the suicide warriors of the colony.
The Woodland Colony could not afford to raise soldiers while it was small. The investment would have increased the defense capability of the colony and lessened the risk of total destruction by a dangerous enemy. But additions to the worker force were more important for colony growth, and rapid growth was crucial. The colony could gamble that no lethal enemy would appear during its infancy, but it could not gamble with its growth. The larger the population of workers specialized to gather food and feed the young, the faster the colony grew. And the faster its growth, the better chance it had to live another day, and yet another day, until it could afford to convert some of its time and energy into the production of virgin queens and males, thus creating new colonies of its own kind. Soldiers were added along the way, but the number of these military specialists was kept under strict control. Too few, and the colony was at higher risk of destruction by enemies--especially during wars with colonies of the same species. Too many, and the colony grew more slowly. It harvested less food from its territory, and, again, failure was imminent. A colony out of kilter in its military investment could not compete for long with colonies of the same species that kept their investment closer to the optimum for both survival and growth. To reach the right balance between defense and productive labor was a matter of life and death.
The Woodland Colony added its first soldier only when the worker population reached approximately two hundred. The colony grew swiftly during the long hot days of the summer. When the total population reached a thousand, more soldiers were added. The year following the Supercolony disaster, the total Woodlander population approached ten thousand. Of this number, five hundred were soldiers, ready and waiting for any call to action. Their presence made the colony almost invulnerable to invasion by fire ants and other enemies short of armadillos and poison-wielding gods.
This summer the formerly meek Woodlanders were at the height of power for a colony of their species. They found themselves on the edge of an unexplored ant continent left empty by the god-given extinction of Supercolony. As they expanded their territory, in a growing circle foot by foot away from their nest, the colony as a whole grew in overall intelligence. The mental life of the colony was not shared by each worker equally. What any worker knew and thought was only part of what the colony knew and thought. The colony intelligence was distributed among its members, in the same way human intelligence is distributed among the gyri, lobes, and nuclei of the human brain. One cadre of Woodlander workers knew about a particular part of the territory outside the nest, a second cadre knew about another part. Groups of nest-builders remembered their way through various sections of the nest perimeter, and still others were informed about the condition of the brood. Different veteran huntresses had experienced separate conditions of rain, enemy combat, and the nectar-milking of aphids and other sap-suckers. A few scouts knew the way to the expanding frontier of the colony territory.
The Woodland Colony as a whole learned in this manner by calling up pieces of knowledge and putting them together as need demanded, communicated by means of a pheromonal language. Because the superorganism knew much more than any individual ant, it was far smarter.
Enjoying its good fortune, the Woodland Colony also learned the price of prosperity. It was soon cramped in its original hiding place. The workers had been excavating new tunnels and rooms beneath and around the original nest, piece by tiny piece as large as a single ant could carry between her two mandibles. But the meager duff and soil in which the nest was sited was too dry and friable to be ideal for a colony of this species, and the rootlets all around were too thick and tough for the workers to cut. Even worse, the tangled and