Kunda pointed first to the tablet he was copying from, then to the one he was working on – which, depressingly, he’d so far inscribed with a mere two-and-a-half characters – and then to the ants. The ants grasped his meaning at once. They surged onto the smooth white face of the partially completed tablet and began to carve the remaining characters into the wood with their mandibles. Kunda, meanwhile, eased himself back against the stack of tablets, feeling rather smug. The ants would take much longer to finish the task than he would, but their patience and tenacity was immeasurably superior to that of any other creature and they would get it done eventually. In the meantime, he could kick back and relax for a spell.

He dozed off. In his dream he saw himself at the helm of a mighty army of more than a million ants, enthusiastically urging on his troops. The army swarmed over hundreds of blank tablets and like a black tide turned every one of them dark; before long, the tide withdrew, revealing a vast collection of tablets whose white surfaces now bore neat lines of orderly characters carved into them.

A series of slight pricks on Kunda’s lower leg roused him from sleep and when he raised his head he saw that several ants were gnawing at his left ankle. This was their customary way of getting a dinosaur’s attention. Seeing that he was awake, the ants gestured at the tablet with their antennae, to indicate the job was done. Kunda glanced up at the sun and realised that very little time had passed. He then looked at the tablet and promptly lost his temper. The ants had completed the half-written character at full size, but all the other characters they’d carved were many times smaller. It looked ridiculous – like a tiny tail trailing after the three large characters. Such shoddy work wasn’t just inadequate, it had ruined a whole tablet.

Kunda had known all along that the ants were crafty little mercenaries, and now he had proof. He raised a broom to mete out the punishment they deserved. But just as he was about to strike, he caught another glimpse of their wooden tablet and a sudden revelation flashed through his mind. The characters the ants had carved were small, but they were fully legible to dinosaur eyes. The reason characters were normally so big was not for ease of reading but because the dinosaurs were not dexterous enough to inscribe anything smaller. It occurred to him that the ants, who were twitching their antennae frantically in his direction, might very well be trying to explain this to him.