Nursery of the Exchange
Where the Exchange of Calves takes place. A long, low hall of white wax and pale laterite, lit through silk screens, built at both scales: broad straw-bedded bays for the elephant calves of their third year, and above and around them the brood galleries of the ants, so that every calf sleeps under the murmur of larvae being sung the Mandate. Ant nurses tend the calves all day – grooming, feeding them chewed fruit, teaching them to read trail through the tips of their trunks – and every ant larva...
Located in The Chitinous Mandate.