Back on the Farm:

It is 1917. Anger has spontaneously arisen in the heart of James Hive-Maker, who has decided that he wants to have all the wealth of the Mesopotamian bees for himself. Hive-Maker cannot abide the fact that Abbassid continues to experiment with his bee stock. Hive-Maker has also accurately guessed that the bees have some relation to the future dead, a fact which somehow fits in his always opaque plans.

In the interim, Ella's television experiments have continued, but her repeated efforts to bring the dead into their world through the use of scanning plates and new types of electron tubes have failed.