"Leinster, Murray - Doomsday Deferred UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

The inhabitants of Milhao became happily convinced that I was insane, and that it might be profitable insanity for them. Each person leaped to the nearest butterfly and blandly brought it to me. I spent a whole day explaining to bright-eyed people that matching the picture of Morpho andiensis required more than that the number of legs and wings should be the same. But, I repeated, I would pay one thousand milreis for a butterfly exactly like the picture. I had plenty of margin for profit and loss, at that. The last time a Morpho andiensis was sold, it brought $25,000 at auction. I'd a lot rather have the money, myself.

Jose Ribiera camй back. His expression was tense beyond belief. He plucked at my arm and said, "Senhor," and I grabbed him and dragged him to my inn.

I hauled out his treasure. "Here!" I said angrily. "This is not mine! Take it!"

He paid no attention. He trembled. "Senhor," he said, and swallowed. "My friendsЧmy friends do not think they can catch the butterfly you seek. But if you will tell themЧ" He wrinkled his brows. "Senhor, before a butterfly is born, is it a litfle soft nut with a worm in it?"

That could pass for a description of a cocoon. Josh's friendsЧhe was said not to have anyЧwere close observers. I said so. Jose seemed to grasp at hope as at a straw.

"MyЧfriends will find you the nut which produces the butterfly," he said urgently, "if you tell them which kind it is and what it looks like."

I blinked. Just three specimens of Morpho andiensis had ever been captured, so far as was known. All were adult insects. Of course nobody knew what the cocoon was like. For that matter, any naturalist can name 4 hundred speciesЧand in the Amazon valley aloneЧof which only-the adult forms have been named. But who would hunt for cocoons in jungle like that outside of Milhao?

"My friend," I said skeptically, "there are thousands of different such things. I will buy five of each different kind you can discover, and I will pay one milreis apiece. But only five of each kind, remember!"

I didn't think he'd even try, of course. I meant to insist that he take back his gold nuggets. But again he was gone before I could stop him. I had an uncomfortable impression that when I made my offer, Ms face lighted as if he'd been given a reprieve from a death sentence. In the light of later events, I think he had.

I angrily made up my mind to take his gold back to him next day. It was a responsibility. Besides, one gets interested in a manЧespecially of the half-breed classЧwho can unfeignedly ignore five pounds of gold. I arranged to be paddled up to his clearing next morning.

It was on the river, of course. There are no footpaths in Amazon-basin jungle. The river flowing past Milhao is a broad deep stream perhaps two hundred yards wide. Its width seems less because of the jungle walls on either side. And the jungle is daunting. It is trees and vines and lianas as seen from the stream, but it is more than that. Smells come out, and you can't identify them. Sounds come out, and you can't interpret them. You cut your way into its mass, and you see nothing. You come out, and you have learned nothing. You cannot affect it. It ignores you. It made me feel insignificant.

My paddlers would have taken me right on past Jose's clearing without seeing it, if he hadn't been on the river bank. He shouted. He'd been fishing, and now that I think, there were no fish near him, but there were some picked-clean fish skeletons. And I think the ground was very dark about him when we first saw him, and quite normal when we approached. I know he was sweating, but he looked terribly hopeful at the sight of me.

I left my two paddlers to smoke and slumber in the canoe. I followed Jose' into the jungle. It was like walking in a tunnel of lucent green light. Everywhere there were tree trunks and vines and leaves, but green light overlay everything. I saw a purple butterfly with crimson wing tips, floating abstractedly hi the jungle as if in an undersea grotto.

Then the path widened, and there was Jose's dwelling. It was a perfect proof that man does not need civilization to live in comfort. Save for cotton garments, an iron pot and a

machete, there was literally nothing in the clearing or the house which was not of and from the jungle, to be replaced merely by stretching out one's hand. To a man who lives like this, gold has no value. While he keeps his wants at this level, he can have no temptations. My thoughts at the moment were almost sentimental.

I beamed politely at Jos6's wife. She was a pretty young girl with beautifully regular features. But, disturbingly, her eyes were as panic-filled as Jose's. She spoke, but she seemed tremblingly absorbed hi the contemplation of some crawling horror. The two of them seemed to live with terror. It was too odd to be quite believable. But their childЧa brown-skinned three-year-old quite innocent of clothingЧwas unaffected. He stared at me, wide-eyed.

"Senhor," said Jose hi a trembling voice, "here are the things you desire, the small nuts with worms hi them."

His wife had woven a basket of flat green strands. He put it before me. And I looked into it tolerantly, expecting nothing. But I saw the sort of thing that simply does not happen. I saw a half bushel of cocoons!

Jose had acquired them somehow hi less than twenty-four hours. Some were miniature capsules of silk which would yield little butterflies of whig spread no greater than a mosquito's. Some were sturdy fat cocoons of stout brown silk. There were cocoons which cunningly mimicked the look of bird droppings, and cocoons cleverly concealed hi twisted leaves. Some were greenЧI swear itЧand would pass for buds upon some unnamed vine. AndЧ

It was simply, starkly impossible. I was stupefied. The Amazon basin has been collected, after a fashion, but the pupa and cocoon of any reasonably rare species is at least twenty times more rare than the adult insect. And these cocoons were fresh! They were alive! I could not believe it, but I could not doubt it. My hands shook as I turned them over.

I said, "This is excellent, Jose! I will pay for all of them at the rate agreed onЧone milreis each. I will send them to Sao Pedro today, and their prices will be spent for cattle and the bringing of the cattle here. I promise it!"

Jose did not relax. I saw him wipe sweat off his face.

"IЧbeg you to command haste, senhor," he said thinly.

I almost did not hear. I carried that basket of cocoons back to the river bank. I practically crooned over it all the way back to Milhao. I forgot altogether-about returning the gold pellets. And I began to work frenziedly at the inn.

I made sure, of course, that the men who would cart the parcel would know that it contained only valueless objects like cocoons. Then I slipped in the parcel of Jos6's gold. I wrote a letter to the one man in Sao Pedro who, if God was good, might have sense enough to attend to the affair for me. And I was almost idiotically elated.