Each queendom a city-state perfect in every detail: the broad colonnades running through nectar gardens that feed the citizens' senses as much as their bodies; the tiered, hexagonal dormitories where sister sleeps beside sister; the marbled dance halls, the golden palace. Each worker-citizen equal to her thousand sisters, each sharing each other's joys, each thinking for herself but always in agreement. Their ideas communicated through the precise placement of wings and antennae; the language of their souls written in dance. At the center, the queen. The dark equations of inheritance permit her no pity for the haploid drones who die in mating her, falling from paradise. (First published in Star*Line.)