Bernard Werber’s "The Day of the Ant," Summary

French writer Bernard Werber’s science fiction detective story combines parallel analyses of two disparate societies — human society and the Myrmicine civilization of red wood ants ) Formica rufa) . The book was published in 1992 in France after years of manuscript preparation. Werber, then a science columnist for Le Nouvel Observateur , combined the biological research of myrmecologists with the thrilling intrigue of an investigation into mysterious deaths in a closed space.

The novel is part of the famous Ants trilogy, occupying the second position in it between the novels Ants (1991) and Revolution of the Ants (1996), and in 1993 the work was awarded the Grand Prix des lectrices de Elle (Grand Prix des lectrices de Elle) in the fantasy and fiction category.

The Mystery of Fazanderi Street

Brothers Sébastien, Pierre, and Antoine Salt are found lifeless in a locked Parisian apartment. There are no signs of forced entry, no poison in the food scraps, no gunshot wounds, no knife wounds, but their faces are frozen in grimaces of utter terror, and their ears are covered in dried blood. Young detective Jacques Méliès, fascinated by forensic paradoxes, initially attributes the brothers’ deaths to a simple suicide by poison due to the elder brother’s gambling debts. However, journalist Letitia Wells of the newspaper "Sunday News" publishes a scathing article, accusing the police of laziness and superficiality, as no autopsy was even performed, and the victims’ faces showed shock, not a peaceful exit.

Méliès decides to return to the case and requests an autopsy. The medical examiner makes a paradoxical diagnosis: a colossal adrenaline rush, perforation of the abdominal organs by multiple tiny ulcers and hemorrhages. Soon after, the brothers’ colleague at the chemical company "General Chemistry" (KOH), Caroline Nogard, dies under identical mysterious circumstances in a locked room. Méliès notices an important entomological detail: the bluebottle flies that arrive within five minutes of death somehow fail to touch the bodies, and tiny square slits in the fabric are found in the clothing of the deceased.

The split in Bel-au-Cané

In the vast red ant metropolis of Bel-o-Kane, recovering from last year’s fire, alarming events are unfolding. Queen Shli-pu-ni is promoting technological innovation: establishing a Chemical Pheromone Library, training rhinoceros beetles for the air cavalry, and digging up communication channels. Three rebel scouts infiltrate the archives and steal Memory Pheromone Number 81, where Shli-pu-ni announces an imminent all-out campaign against the giant monsters — the "Fingers" (humans). Two of the scouts are killed by the guards’ acid, and the severed head of the third, found in the city dump, manages to convey a warning to the experienced asexual soldier Number 103,683.

Number 103,683 finds the rebels in a secret hideout beneath a false ceiling above a rhinoceros beetle enclosure. It turns out they are the former secret guard of Queen Belo-kiu-kiuni, who previously guarded the secret of the intelligent Fingers’ existence beneath the city. The rebels fed the prisoners in the dungeon through a crack in the granite slab using a "Dr. Livingstone" apparatus. But the movement splintered: some soldiers, led by numbers 23 and 24, proclaimed the Fingers to be omnipotent gods who created the world and lapsed into religious mysticism.

Shli-pu-ni summons veteran 103,683 and tasks him with leading the vanguard of a great campaign against the humans, citing the Fingers’ violation of an ancient insect taboo and mastery of the destructive element of fire. Meanwhile, the rebels hand over to 103 the cocoon of a dead Spotted Sphinx moth. Hidden within the cocoon is a capsule — mission "Mercury," compiled by the dungeon dwellers, which must be delivered to the humans in the east.

Losses of chemists and the march across the river

The string of deaths among insecticide researchers continues: world-renowned Arkansas professor Maximilien Macharius dies in a hotel room, having scrawled the word "ANTS" on a sheet in his own blood before dying. Then, Ethiopian couple Gilles and Suzanne Auderjen die in their apartment, and the body of Chilean professor Miguel Cinerias is found in a stuck hotel elevator. All three were secretly developing a chemical compound called "Babylon," capable of neutralizing any communication pheromones and guaranteed to destroy every anthill on Earth.

Méliès suspects Letitia Wells after discovering a formicarium containing her late father, Edmond Wells’s, intercom in her home. She is arrested, but Cinériaz’s death while in custody proves her innocence. Police Prefect Charles Dupeyron demands an end to the attacks on the press. Dupeyron himself is attacked by ant army number 103683 during a family picnic in the forest; ant number 9 bites his son Georges’s skin, injecting the wound with bee venom, causing the boy to be taken away in severe shock.

Meanwhile, the ant army is dwindling due to natural disasters: a thunderstorm that flooded Bel-o-Kan, black woodpecker raids that infected the soldiers with cestodes, and attacks by tiger beetle larvae. The insects capture the Askolein beehive, capturing the queen larvae and forcing a squadron of bees to share their venom and join the expedition. Then, with the help of a mole cricket, they dig a tunnel under the Moxiluxun termite fortress, forming an alliance with them. After crossing the Vseyadu River on forget-me-not leaves and diving beetles, the detachment stops on an island with acacia cornigera. Here, naive sectarian number 24 decides to stay permanently and found a peaceful, multi-species commune, renounce war.

The Exposure of the House Master

Méliès and Laetitia join forces. Realizing the killer is targeting the scent of sweat, they set up an ambush in a hotel with a mannequin of the fictional Japanese professor Takagumi. That night, a scout enters the room, cuts out a piece of Méliès’s pajamas with his jaws, and later, hundreds of ants attack the doll from within. Following one of the ants, tagged with a radioactive marker, the detectives arrive at the toy store "Arthur, the King of Toys" on Phoenix Street.

There, they are targeted by Juliette Ramirez, a regular winner of the popular television quiz show "Spot the Clue." It turns out that her terminally ill husband, Arthur Ramirez, a former military engineer and creator of walking combat robots, has assembled tiny mechanical ants from gears and microchips capable of acting in a swarm based on ant swarm algorithms. It was Arthur who once intercepted a letter from Edmond Wells containing the plans for the Rosetta Stone linguistic apparatus and a volume of the Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge. Riddles from the encyclopedia earned the family prize money on television, and when Ramirez learned of the development of Project Babylon, he programmed his mechanical microrobots to destroy the creators of the deadly chemical. The Babylon ampoule itself was smashed by a robot after killing Cineriaz.

The end of the campaign and a breakthrough to dialogue

Army number 103,683, having crossed the highway (the End of the World), perishes near the post office: a municipal watering truck washes away almost all the fighters with a stream of soap. Survivor number 9 accuses 103 of betrayal, and in a brutal duel, 103 bites off his head. Left alone with the coveted cocoon, number 103,683 ends up in the trash, is introduced to the philosophy of cynical cockroaches, sees his reflection in the mirror, and climbs up the pipes to Leticia’s apartment.

While Letitia and Jacques are having sex, an ant climbs onto the bed and delivers a folded note from its cocoon. It’s Jonathan Wells’ message: seventeen people are alive in a dungeon beneath the anthill, sealed in by a granite slab.

Through Ramirez’s device, people engage in dialogue with the number 103,683. The ant refuses to immediately show them the way, demanding proof of human kindness. For several days, it studies human culture through a television screen, criticizing the senseless aggression and greed of humanoids, but admiring the selfless beauty of Leonardo da Vinci’s art and children’s toys. Recognizing people’s right to dialogue, the ant plans to reveal a cure for cancer — the discovery of a method for harmonizing resonant biological waves. However, an accidental loss of communication and the ant’s escape into the street nearly leads to tragedy: on the subway platform, Leticia accidentally steps on it with her heel.

Arthur Ramirez, on a microscopic operating table, repairs the broken legs and chitin of ant number 103,683. Having recovered, the ant shows rescuers the way to Bel-o-Kan. An expedition with jackhammers opens the dungeon, freeing the exhausted but deeply connected members of Wells’s group.

Meanwhile, in Bel-au-Kan itself, a fanatical uprising leads to the death of Shli-pu-ni at the silenced communications device, and the surviving ants prepare another emergency mating flight of young queens. During negotiations between the Minister of Scientific Research and the President of France, the idea of an alliance with insects runs into a wall of official skepticism and fear of ridicule, but the line of misunderstanding between the two civilizations has already been crossed.