I have asked Things-Things and Tabletina to study the ice-hole trees and their wood. After the amount of effort it took to kill these things, it felt bad not to get any trophies from it.
In all our previous wars, at the very least, bees got the bodies of their fallen enemies afterwards, which could be eaten or turned into equipment. The carapaces of evolved hornets even now served as material for some of our best armour, put on the best Warrior Bees (those who didn’t already have skin tougher than this armour, of course).
In the past weeks, our Craftsmen and Physicians thoroughly examined the ice-hole trees. For a few days now, they were ready to bring me the results—I was just too busy in this war to receive them.
So today, both my Advisers invited me to see the results of their work. What was most surprising was that they were accompanying me to the workshop where the Craftsmen Bees put their prototypes.
"I thought you worked independently on your projects, girls. What are you doing here, Tabletina?" I said as Things-Things ushered me inside the workshop.
"Our projects turned out to be related," Tabletina said enigmatically.
The spacious workshop with dozens of workstations and countless shelves and stands with materials and half-finished works was shockingly empty of bees. When she noticed my surprised look, Things-Things smiled broadly.
"My Craftsmen are very-very nice and I love them, but I know how noisy workshops get when they are there! I wanted to explain things to you in peace, and I know them all to explain, yes-yes, so I can do it on my own."
She almost danced toward one of the stands, where I saw a pile of light blue wood. It wasn’t the only blue wood, but I recognised the ice-hole trees by their gnarled trunks and branches, as well as some needles lying on the floor nearby.
"The wood is soft and light. In itself, it’s good for furniture and many other things. And it burns reeeeally brightly, by the way," Things-Things chirped. "But this isn’t the best use for it. Especially if we make it go extinct, and we won’t have a limitless amount of the wood..."
I raised my brows, curious.
"Is there anything in this wood that might make it worth farming, considering how dangerous it is? Getting wood for crafting with the speed with which the ice-hole trees grow would be amazing, of course, but the risks aren’t worth it. Slow and steady wins the race."
"When I studied the trees, Father, I found that they had a strange compatibility with other plants," Tabletina said. "Father, remember how you taught me the basics of grafting to use in farming?"
Plant grafting was a common practice on Earth. Branches and other parts of one plant can often be transplanted onto another plant and then keep growing and even bear fruit!
This way, instead of bothering with propagating an expensive fruit tree, a farmer could just graft its branches onto other trees and get fruit without risks of mutation or plant inbreeding. Not to mention, some modern fruit species lacked seeds altogether...
"But how does this relate to the ice-hole trees? Their branches are dead, anyway. Otherwise, they’d be too dangerous to hold in one’s hands."
"They are dead, but they could still get grafted. And... I found that they can be grafted onto living creatures, too."
As soon as Tabletina said this, Things-Things pulled a sheet of fabric off a large stand.
On it was the strangest assortment of items—nothing I ever expected to see today! There were wooden arms and legs, an assortment of fingers, an elegant wooden wing and even an eyeball.
But at least those were copies of body parts I recognised as those of bees. Unlike the few limbs and pieces that looked way stranger.
Some had long metal claws in them, others had things that looked like built-in tools...
"What is this, girls? Prostheses? Or... body augments?"
They looked way too detailed for primitive wooden prostheses. They had dozens of joints and were painstakingly cut into shape similar to those of real limbs. There was no point in cutting an ordinary wooden prosthesis like that!
Or making an eye prosthetic from wood.
"I know you would understand immediately what I tried to do, Father. Yes. Each of these pieces is perfectly compatible with any bee, even those who don’t have immunised blood to prevent infections. No, bees with immunised blood suffered even more from implants—their bodies rejected them hard. But they don’t suffer with these ones."
I raised my eyebrows.
Despite all the improvements in safety measures, there were still plenty of bees who were crippled by injuries or work accidents. Tabletina already learned how to make simple prostheses from them, and when you had four arms, the loss of one or two wasn’t felt as strongly, but...
"How does it even work? And what are these designs? There are too many moving parts that won’t be able to move, for a start."
"It’s this wood. It’s really-really strange, Father!" Things-Things said excitedly. "It’s like... Even when dead, it keeps living! Keeps absorbing! Keeps... adapting!"
"And when it’s grafted onto a creature, it adapts to be a part of it," Tabletina continued. While I wasn’t looking at her, she pulled out a scalpel and was twirling it in her hand—a sign that she was just as excited as Things-Things, despite her much cooler expression. "I have a theory that if a graft is kept on a creature for long enough, it will become a fully-working part of its body."
"A theory, Tabletina? Okay, but what about NOW?"
"Now I have a few bees—volunteers, of course!—who have prosthetic limbs grafted on them. They not only suffer no ill effects from this, but also..." Tabletina smiled. "Father, I know you like dramatic shows. Would you like me to show you the answer dramatically instead of just telling?"