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

While I was making out the invoice that would carry my shipment by refrigerated air express from the nearest airport it could be got to, a large ant walked across my paper. One takes insects very casually in back-country Brazil. I mashed him, without noticing what he was. I went blissfully to start the parcel off. I had a shipment that would make history among bug collectors. It was something that simply could not be done!

The fact of the impossibility hit me after the canoe with the parcel started downstream. How the devil those cocoons had been gatheredЧ

The problem loomed larger as I thought. In less than one day, Jose had collected a half bushel of cocoons, of at least one hundred different species of moths and butterfies. It could not be done! The information to make it possible did not exist! Yet it had happened. How?

The question would not down. I had to find out. I bought a pig for a present and had myself ferried up to the clearing again. My paddlers pulled me upstream with languid strokes. The pig made irritated noises in the bottom of the canoe. Now I am sorry about that pig. I would apologize to its ghost if opportunity offered. But I didn't know.

I landed on the narrow beach and shouted. Presently Jose came through the tunnel of foliage that led to his house. He thanked me, dry-throated, for the pig. I told him I had ordered cattle sent up from Sao Pedro. I told him humorously that every ounce of meat on the hoof the town contained would soon be on the way behind a wheezing

steam launch. Jos6 swallowed and nodded numbly. He still looked like someone who contemplated pure horror.

We got the pig to the house. Jose's wife sat and rocked her child, her eyes sick with fear. I probably should have felt embarrassed in the presence of such tragedy, even if I could not guess at its cause. But instead, I thought about the questions I wanted to ask. Jose sat down dully beside me.

I was obvious of the atmosphere of doom. I said blandly, "Your friends are capable naturalists, Jos6. I am much pleased. Many of the 'little nuts' they gathered are quite new to me. I would like to meet such students of the ways of nature."

Jose's teeth clicked. His wife caught her breath. She looked at me with an oddly despairing irony. It puzzled me. I looked at Jos6, sharply. And then the hair stood up on my head. My heart tried to stop. Because a large ant walked on Josh's shoulder, and I saw what kind of ant it was.

"My God" I said shrilly. "Soldadosl Army ants!"

I acted through pure instinct. I snatched up the baby from its mother's arms and raced for the river. One does not think at such times. The soldado ant, the army ant, the driver ant, is the absolute and undisputed monarch of all jungles everywhere. He travels by millions of millions, and nothing can stand against him. He is ravening ferocity and inexhaustible number. Even man abandons his settlements when the army ant marches in, and returns only after he has leftЧto find every bit of flesh devoured to the last morsel, from the earwigs in the thatch to a horse that may have been tethered too firmly to break away. The army ant on the march can and does kill anything alive, by tearing the flesh from it in tiny bites, regardless of defense. SoЧI grabbed the child and ran.

Jose Ribiera screamed at me, "No! Senhor! No!"

He sat still and he screamed. I'd never heard such undiluted horror in any man's voice.

I stopped. I don't know why. I was stunned to see Jos6 and his wife sitting frozen where I'd left them. I was more stunned, I think, to see the tiny clearing and the house unchanged. The army ant moves usually on a solid front

The ground is covered with a glistening, shifting horde. The air is filled with tiny clickings of limbs and mandibles. Ants swarm up every tree and shrub. Caterpillars, worms, bird nestlings, snakes, monkeys unable to fleeЧanything living becomes buried under a mass of ferociously rending small forms which tear off the living flesh in shreds until only white bones are left. ^""

But Jos6 sat still, his throat working convulsively. I had seen soldados on him. But there were no soldados. After a moment Jose got to his feet and came stumbling toward me. He looked like a dead man. He could not speak.

"But look!" I cried. My voice was high-pitched. "I saw soldado ants! I saw them!"

Jose gulped by pure effort of will. I put down the child. He ran back to his mother.

"S-si. Yes," said Jose, as if his lips were very stiff and his throat without moisture. "But they areЧspecial soldados. They areЧpets. Yes. They are tame. They are myЧ friends. TheyЧdo tricks, senhor. I will show you!"

He held out his hand and made sucking noises with his mouth. What followed is not to be believed. An antЧa large ant, an inch or more longЧwalked calmly out of his sleeve and onto his outstretched hand. It perched there passively while the hand quivered like an aspen leaf.

"But yes!" said Jose hysterically. "He does tricks senhorl Observe! He will stand on his head!"

Now, this I saw, but I do not believe it. The ant did something so that it seemed to stand on its head. Then it turned and crawled tranquilly over his hand and wrist and up his sleeve again.

There was silence, or as much silence as the jungle ever holds. My own throat went dry. And what I have said is insanity, but this is much worse. I felt Something waiting to see what I would do. It was, unquestionably, the most horrible sensation I had ever felt. I do not know how to describe it. What I felt wasЧnot a personality, but a mind. I had a ghastly feeling that Something was looking at me from thousands of pairs of eyes, that it was all around me.

I shared, for an instant, what that Something saw and thought. I was surrounded by a mind which waited to see

what I would do. It would act upon my action. But it was not a sophisticated mind. It was murderous, but innocent. It was merciless, but na'ive.