CHAPTER 500: WELL, DAM

At least three weeks.

This was the most optimistic estimate—realistically, we would have to add at least a week to that. Perhaps up to three.

"Do you think we have this much time?" I asked my Advisers.

After a long, uneasy pause filled with doubtful glances, Bloodhero cleared her throat and spoke up:

"I don’t think so, Father. The upper layer of snow will probably melt much sooner."

I glanced at Undecided, who shook her head in a silent response.

"At least we have one week for sure, I guess. In this case, if the snow won’t give us six weeks, we must make them. Measures must be taken to prevent the Bee Empire from flooding while we build the wall."

"Building the dams is the most lengthy part of the entire project, Father. If we focused on the wall itself, we could finish it much sooner. Then, we will have at least some protection," Workharder suggested immediately.

"We can also harvest seeds here instead of in the mountains. Wouldn’t that be more efficient, if risky?" Tabletina said.

I raised my eyebrows, realising what she meant.

"Nice idea! Instead of carrying all the seeds from the mountains, we can carry just a few on a dragon. Although few dragons will fly this close to the mountains, sending just one will be enough. This will save us a few days."

Workharder perked up, then nodded enthusiastically.

"This would speed things up. We can make the ice-hole tree produce seeds within a day! Father, are you sure you don’t want to farm them for food? It’s dangerous, but so profitable!"

I huffed.

Bees could digest even grass and tree leaves (although they were rarely tasty or nutritious). Ice-hole trees weren’t venomous and could be eaten by us just fine. The problem with farming them was having ice-hole trees nearby, threatening to freeze everything and spread without control.

Even if this wasn’t a factor, I didn’t trust a species that was already so evolved to not evolve even further and develop more defensive measures.

No, the fewer ice-hole trees there were, the better.

"Still too risky," I said. "Let’s focus on the wall."

We updated the project with our ideas. Now the wall itself would go first, using seeds we will farm near where they are needed. To make sure that none of them fly away and land somewhere in the Bee Empire, all trees planted for seeds would be grown under a roof—in human houses.

I wasn’t sure if these trees needed sunlight to grow, but I doubted that. Either way, a single window was much more easily guarded than the open sky.

***

The new estimate told me that the wall will be built within ten to fourteen days. But we could still get flooded near the rivers while the dams were being built.

I issued a global warning to bees and humans over the radio, telling people to prepare for floods. Regional Queens and human rulers got orders to be ready to evacuate people from regions with flood risk. The latest harvest was rapidly gathered from the nearby fields.

A few days later, Undecided brought me a prediction about the incoming flood, and the evacuation plans became much more precise. At the same time, scouts from the mountains brought stories about all the snow melting up there, and about mountain creeks gradually turning into rivers.

All this time, teams of cold-resistant bees worked as fast as they could to make the tree wall happen. They were pulled rapidly from the mountains and from the training camps near them. In a way, their new tasks were even harder.

To be faster than the water, these bees sometimes had to work 14-hour shifts... Even before my arrival, bees didn’t work so much in one go—they took breaks flying from flower to flower!

But this was due to physical limitations. I always told my girls not to overwork themselves, so they kept to the schedules I approved. 8-hour shifts that left bees plenty of free time.

If they wanted to spend more of it working, the system accommodated it, but it wasn’t mandatory. Even for Hardbees, who had way too much free time on their hands thanks to their reduced need for sleep. (Bees just loved to work too much to deny them an opportunity to work some more.)

But thanks to the genes I gave them, many bees could totally work 14-hour shifts. They had the endurance for it—as long as there was some food they could munch on while working.

Now my girls put all this endurance into work, and it was heartwarming.

Because the wall was progressing even faster than I expected!

By the end of the week, a row of carefully pruned ice-hole trees was growing all over our border with the mountain. But this was also when the increase in water levels in mountain rivers became impossible to ignore.

The work on building dams began, but here, the bees and humans helping them were met with a roadblock.

Filled with extra water, the mountain rivers became faster and more dangerous. Even the rivers that were usually relatively calm (and near mountains, they rarely were) were now rapid enough to carry away entire ports with ice-hole tree saplings—each pot weighing several tons!—before they could freeze.

Building a dam in these circumstances was extremely hard. Not impossible, but it would slow us significantly. Worse—the more time passed, the harder it would be to build anything.

At least, the idea of an ice wall worked. The water that spilt from the rivers’ banks froze near the ice-hole trees planted on them. Sadly, this meant that the rest of the water pushed into a single hole and made it even harder to place anything there.

’This is a vicious circle...’ I thought, listening to my Advisers’ reports on these events. ’If we don’t break it, we might end up with a flood that devastates half of the Bee Empire. But is this even possible?’