Chapter 505: The problems of working together with humans

In the end, I decided that at least Whisper can contact Tamsha and ask him to give us good specialists in dam building.

This was a good idea—he quickly pointed out to us some humans with experience in making dams, irrigation channels and aqueducts. Tamsha claimed that they were more skilled than he (which was good), but couldn’t say anything about their relationship with bees.

The latter was also good, but in a way detrimental to our work, just like I expected. At least the language barrier stopped being a problem a long time ago, thanks to the amount of telepaths in the Bee Empire.

Working with humans was always a trial for both sides, despite the time the bee and human nations spent living side by side. A couple of years was a long time for bees, many of which were born after the unification of the Bee Empire—but for humans, it was too short.

They accepted us as their divine protectors and saviours, they prayed to Dalmanrach in temples, but many of them were also still fearful or distrustful of us. Agent Bees worked hard and listened to their thoughts day and night to make sure that fear didn’t turn to mass resentment, but this still happened in places.

When bees worked alongside humans, but not together, it was fine. Humans obeyed the orders of Agents, and bees did whatever they had to. We let humans work in mines, in construction, and many other places that required heavy lifting and didn’t have any buildings a human could accidentally step on.

However, when a bee asked a human for his OPINION… Most of them were too afraid or awed by such attention from a holy being to really give anything of use. Neither would they dare to give a bee directions.

There were very few humans with qualities that let them do so. High King Farini worked alongside bees some of the longest, and his relationship with Agent Whisper was almost friendly by this point. Tamsha was always very sceptical about the bees’ divine nature, and he was allowed to see more of us than many other people in return for our help.

There were others, of course, but not the three architects recommended by Tamsha.

As soon as Whisper got their addresses, she sent Agents to speak with them. On the same day, she reported to me:

‘Father, these guys are all so ecstatic to follow a direct command from bees that they lost all power of speech and thought… Except for the rewards that serving us can give them! It will take effort to make them be able to work as they should.’

‘But can your people do it?’

‘Of course. This will just slow everything down.’

‘Then we will take them. Three is better than one, anyway. We need a lot of dams.’

Within a week, the architects travelled to the dams they would have to rebuild. At this time, bees were already preparing for the construction work: Builder Bees, mechas and materials were brought to the future building sites, where cold-resistant guardians were making sure the existing dam didn’t fall apart.

During this week, the part of the anti-tree army that wasn’t called to return from the mountains stayed in place. This was just like the entire time we prepared for the flood—they were ordered to keep new ice-hole trees from growing, but not advance further.

We couldn’t allow another flood before we dealt with the consequences of the previous one!

The mountains weren’t the best place for an army to stop and rest, though. I hoped we could deal with the dams quickly.

My hopes were immediately strained after the invited architects began to draft their plans. By their estimates, dams of this size would take years to build!

Because everything took years for humans.

They couldn’t believe that bees could work differently, and they had no concept of how much workforce we could really bring forth if there was a need for them.

“Screw their estimates, then. Just make them draft plans for the dam-building and how many materials we must bring!” I ordered.

The architects managed to follow this order, at least.

The numbers were colossal, but… The side of the Bee Empire was colossal, too. And since we recently stopped expanding, we had a lot of manufacturing power that wasn’t spent on building new forts!

Now, all this went on making dams. Countless manufactories were mixing dry cement; dozens of thousands of mechas and other, more specialised, machines dug out and transported gravel.

Near the dam, bees worked day and night in shifts, piling sand and gravel into the river for the dam’s foundation. Many of them worked in mechas, but there weren’t enough mechas for everybody. Instead, millions of workers just carried materials by hand!

Every day, the mound that would turn into a dam later grew as if by magic, and the speed of it shocked the architects who were watching this happen!

‘They say that even with the ice dam stemming the flow of the water and making the job of building a secondary dam on top of it easier, the bees are building it a hundred times faster than humans would!’ Whisper told me. ‘The Agents listening to their thoughts find that very funny.’

I grinned with pride.

‘I expected nothing less with the amount of hard-working girls I sent onto this task! And this includes your Agents, of course,’ I told Whisper. ‘You think the dams will be ready in a couple of months?’

‘The Builder Bees on the project say that this is possible, but you should ask Workharder about the details, Father. Either way, I think you shouldn’t tell her to hurry too much. These humans are so full of emotion that I bet there are mistakes in the dam blueprints they are drawing right now! The Researchers and Builders should make sure twice that their blueprints are good and work well with the improvements they have already added.’

‘What? Yes, of course I will tell them to check the blueprints…’

Well, at least Whisper had warned me about inevitable delays.