Gnomon

by Nick Harkaway

So: two beekeepers walk into a pub. It’s a nice pub in the country somewhere, with really good beer. It’s been a longish time since they’ve seen one another, so they order a couple of pints and set to talking, and when they’ve talked about families and the papers and the church roof, they come—inevitably—to bees. “My bees didn’t do so well over the winter,” the first guy says. “How so?” asks the second. “Well,” the first guy says, “I lost a couple of hives. The queens died. So that was a shame. But on the upside there’s some really great new meadowland growing up around where I live, so the honey from the others tastes amazing.” “How many bees have you got now?” his friend wants to know. “Well,” the first guy says, “I’ve got maybe two hundred and fifty thousand, in eleven hives. I brought some in after January to make up for the losses, you know, and obviously that was pretty nervous because I didn’t want to import any diseases. I’ve petitioned the local council to move the cellphone mast, although I don’t really think that makes a difference, and I’ve shifted to a new brand of smoke in case the one I was using was too harsh. I’ve sprayed a bit with some fungicide, checked for varroa mites, all that. What about you? How many have you got now?” “Couple of million. I s’pose,” says the other. Well, the first guy had no idea his friend was working on that scale. “A couple of million? That’s huge! How many hives is that?” “Oh,” says the second guy, “you know, just the one.” Now...