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To resist would be to tear the membrane, and Flora was forced to hurry with her.
    “If you cannot perform the simplest task”—Sister Bindweed pushed Flora out into the busy corridor—“then good for nothing is what you are, and no more use to this hive!” Sister Bindweed shouted so vehemently that Flora smelled the half-digested pollen bread on her breath and the slow taint of old age moving in her belly.
    “You stand there until the police patrol comes by—they’ll know what to do with you, make no mistake.” Sister Bindweed shuddered at the smell of her own hands where she had grabbed Flora and went back inside.
     
    T HE D RONES’ A RRIVAL H ALL opened onto a main lobby filled with thousands of bees moving in all directions, never colliding. For a few moments Flora stood motionless, absorbing the tides of scent information that surged in the air and the vibrations in the coded tiles.
    Rose Teasel Malus Clover came the rapid knowledge as different sisters passed by Flora. Clover Plantain Burdock SAGE—
    At that last and fast-approaching kin-scent, a jolt of fear propelled Flora into the great moving mass of bees in the lobby. Instinctively she wanted to hide, and though a thousand floor codes pulsed their messages at her, one overrode them all, and it came from her heart: Beware the Sage.

Seven
    T HE SCENT OF THE PRIESTESSES FADED AS F LORA WENT deeper into the warm, aromatic crisscrossing of her sisters, their body heat blending their kin-scents together in fragrance and gossip. To listen to their bright voices and understand all they said was a wonderful thing, and she was soon caught up in the major news of the moment, coming through the floor codes and the excited antennae all around her: the rain had stopped, the clouds had parted, the foragers were returning.
    “Nectar comes!” shouted some bees. “The flowers love us!”
    The comb shimmered, and every bee felt joy running through her feet at the sweet smell coming up from the lower level. The bees pushed back to make a passageway through their numbers, and Flora found herself crammed wing to wing at the front of one cheering group, making space for those who were to come.
    The bees redoubled their cheers as a forager ran between their cordon, her throat distended with the precious burden of nectar she carried. Filaments of golden scent drifted on the air behind her, telling of the flower that had yielded its sweetness. Flora stared, enraptured, as more and more of them came through—sisters of all ages and kin, some with ragged wings, some young and perfect, all with the golden fragrance of nectar streaming behind them.
    As the molecular structure of the flowers went into Flora’s brain, a strange, loud sound startled her. Sisters on either side of her looked at her with compassion—and Flora realized it was her own voice, moaning incoherently as she tried to join in the cheering. The last forager ran past, the golden filaments of nectar scent trailing behind her, calling for Flora to follow.
    The golden fragrance drew Flora on, until to her shock she realized she had passed unscathed through the scent-gates on the staircase to the highest level of the hive. There was no time to wonder at that, for now the party of nectar bearers was passing down a long corridor whose immaculate pale tiles were inlaid with details of flowers. They were prayer tiles, preparing those who walked on them for the sacred mysteries beyond, and each step triggered the unscrolling of chemical verses.
    At the back of the procession, Flora waited for an alarm to sound at her profane presence on this highest and restricted level of the hive—but a cloud of incense rose up beneath her feet just as from those ahead and joined her to the procession. And then, as the two tall double doors in the middle of the passageway swung open to admit them, her soul filled with joy. Waves of raw floral fragrance billowed out on warm air. Flora entered the sacred refinery of the Fanning Hall