A summary of Bernard Werber’s "The Ants"

French entomologist Edmond Wells leaves his nephew Jonathan an apartment on Rue des Sybarites in Paris and a note categorically forbidding him from going down to the basement. The author combines a detective drama about a human family with a detailed chronicle of the life of the Belle-aux-Quannes forest anthill in the Fontainebleau forest, interspersing chapters with excerpts from the scientist’s fictional work, "Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge." The writer worked on the book from the age of sixteen, rewrote drafts dozens of times, and published the finished version in 1991 in France. The novel was the first in a trilogy that later included "The Day of the Ants" and "The Ant Revolution."

The Inheritance and the Secret of the Basement

Jonathan moves into an old basement house with his wife, Lucy, son, Nicolas, and miniature poodle, Ouarzazate. The locksmith has lost his regular job as a nighttime locksmith, leaving the family with no money left to pay rent. Soon, the dog squeezes through a crack in the locked basement door and disappears into the darkness. Jonathan picks the heavy lock and descends the spiral staircase to search.

He returns eight hours later, delirious and feverish. The mechanic holds the mangled body of a poodle, while the man himself keeps ranting about a rat attack and an insurmountable red zone. The husband buys metalworking tools, a cutting torch, and reinforced concrete slabs, and heads downstairs again.

Jonathan disappears for two days. A worried Lucy finds six matches her husband left on the table for Nicolas to solve as a puzzle. She cuts the padlock on the basement door and steps into the darkness.

Nicolas is left home alone. The boy goes to the police, after which Inspector Galen and eight firefighters with their gear head down the steps. Not a single member of the rescue team returns. Nicolas is sent to an orphanage, and Commissioner Bilsheim takes a squad of gendarmes and begins the descent.

The Awakening of Bel-o-Kan

Several kilometers from home, the main anthill of the Red Forest Ant Federation awakens. The city comprises dozens of underground and aboveground levels.

Male number 327 warms the torpid workers before joining the first spring hunting expedition. A detachment of twenty-eight warriors marches west at an angle of 23 degrees to the midday sun. The scouts find a cave with a warm sulfur spring, kill an earwig with acid, and prepare provisions. On the return journey, the male lags behind the group, cutting down a red daisy. When he catches up with his companions, all twenty-eight warriors lie dead, without a single trace of wounds or burns.

The male runs to the capital and sounds the alarm, warning of an unknown weapon from the neighboring dwarf anthill, Shi-ga-pu. The city’s inhabitants don’t believe his words. The male makes his way to the old queen, Belo-kiu-kiuni, but the queen refuses to declare war until the spring repairs to the dome are completed.

In the tunnels, 327 is attacked by two fellow tribesmen with the scent of stone. The big one and the lame cleaner strip the identification pheromones from his antennae, preparing to dump the fugitive in the garbage dump. An earthquake saves the male from inevitable reprisal. A green woodpecker pierces the nest lining with its beak, but legions of riflemen pour acid down the bird’s throat, and workers gnaw through its carotid arteries and eat out the predator’s brain from the inside.

Allies and Dungeons

The scentless male sneaks into the princesses’ chambers. There, he engages in a struggle with female number 56, pinning her by the back with his jaws and engaging her in direct contact with his antennae. The seventh segments fuse. The female accepts the memory of the lost expedition and becomes his loyal ally.

They are soon joined by soldier number 103,683, who is recruiting volunteers in the wrestling arena. Hunters scenting stone track the trio. The fugitives gnaw through the soil and burrow into the tunnel wall. They crawl to the fiftieth floor through abandoned storage facilities, fending off earthworms and red bugs.

In a secret chamber at the bottom of the anthill, the friends find thirty decapitated bodies of the soldier’s comrades. A lomechusa beetle crawls nearby, drugging its fellows with its narcotic juice. The soldier burns the beetle with acid, and under an inconspicuous rock in the granite, the fugitives discover a huge food warehouse. Drums beat on the dome: the Argentine ants have laid siege to the allied city of La-shola-Kan.

Poppy Battle

The Federation is gathering an army to lift the siege. On Poppy Hill, Bel-o-Kan’s engineers are unveiling a new invention: six workers carry heavy clickcracker ants armed with enormous cutters on their backs. These living tanks crush enemy infantry.

The dwarves employ bacteriological weapons. They shower the battlefield with the heads of their kin, infected with spores of the deadly Alternaria fungus. The Belokans suffer losses, but quickly coat their shells with protective snail slime.

Later, enemy riflemen sever the legs of tank carriers and rip open the abdomens of lumbering giants. The battle devolves into merciless hand-to-hand combat in the pouring rain. Around five million insects perish in the carnage, the dwarves retreat, and La-shola-Kan gains its long-awaited freedom.

A Journey to the End of the World

The capital celebrates the Rebirth Festival. Female 56 searches for 327 in the living quarters before departure, but finds a male with a severed head. The princess breaks through a swarm of sparrows into the sky, mates with dozens of other birds flying behind her, and falls into the river. Reaching dry land, she tears off her own wings, eats the first defective eggs to survive, and founds the city of Shli-pu-Kan.

Meanwhile, soldier 103,683 and old warrior 4,000 head east. They pass through the city of Zubi-Zubi-Kan, a tunnel under the Satei River, and end up in a dead termite mound, where they find mountains of intact corpses poisoned by an unknown gas. Before being decapitated, a dying termite queen tells the guests about the end of the world and merciless giants with blackboards.

The travelers reach the edge of the known world. It turns out to be a highway. Number 4000 steps onto the road and is instantly crushed by a truck. Soldier 103,683, along with the local reapers, digs a tunnel under the asphalt to the other side, ending up on an orphanage tennis court and running back in terror from the white balls falling from above.

The Mystery of the Old Temple

Commissioner Bilsheim finds a reinforced concrete wall with letter keys in the dungeon. After entering the word "pyramid," the officers enter a corridor swarming with aggressive rats, and then squeeze through a steel trapdoor with sharp spikes.

Later, Augusta, a hundred-year-old grandmother, descends to them with Edmond’s friends, Jason Bruegel and Professor Daniel Rosenfeld. Behind a sliding floor and a deep safety net, the guests discover Jean Androuet Ducerceau’s underground Protestant church.

All the missing people turn out to be alive. Jonathan, Lucy, Nicolas, the firefighters, and the gendarmes have settled into a well-appointed room with running water and a self-contained nuclear generator. No one can return to the surface due to the locksmith’s one-way trap.

Jonathan introduces the guests to the Rosetta Stone. Edmond created a mass spectrometer, a pheromone synthesizer, and the mechanical ant Doctor Livingstone, connected by tubes through the granite rock to the very base of Bel-o-Kan. The elderly queen knew about the humans, received advice from them for years, and supplied the community with food, while hunters scenting the stone killed any of their kind who approached the forbidden secret.

Orphanage boys Jean and Philippe decide to avenge the disappearance of Nicolas. They find a large anthill in the forest, pour methylated spirits and herbicide onto the dome, and set fire to the entrance. Fire breaks through the ventilation ducts and destroys the solariums. Five million ants are burned alive, and the queen ant suffocates in the smoke.

The surviving legions in the ashes are led by Shli-pu-ni, who has come to their aid. Taking the name of the new Belo-kiu-kiuni, she sends a single word to the man through the underground terminal: "Why?"