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

That is what I felt. The feeling doubtless has a natural explanation which reduces it to nonsense, but at the moment I believed it. I acted on my belief. I am glad I did.

"Ah, I see!" I said hi apparent amazement. "That is (clever, Jos6! It is remarkable to train an ant! I was absurd to be alarmed. ButЧyour cattle will be on the way, Jose! They should get here very soon! There will be many of them!"

Then I felt that the mind would let me go. And I went.

My canoe was a quarter mile downstream when one of the paddlers lifted his blade from the water and held it there, listening. The other stopped and listened too. There was a noise in the jungle. It was mercifully far away, but it sounded like a pig. I have heard the squealing of pigs at slaughtering time, when instinct tells them of the deadly intent of men and they try punily to fight. This was not that sort of noise. It was worse; much worse.

I made a hopeless spectacle of myself hi the canoe. Now, of course, I can see that, from this time on, my actions were not those of a reasoning human being. I did not think with proper scientific skepticism. It suddenly seemed to me that Norton's theory of mass consciousness among social insects was very plausible. Bees, says Norton, are not only units in an organization. They are units of an organism. The hive or the swarm is a creatureЧone creatureЧsays Norton. Each insect is a body cell only, just as the corpuscles in our blood stream are individuals and yet only parts of us. We can destroy a part of our body if the welfare of the whole organism requires it, though we destroy many cells. The swarm or the hive can sacrifice its members for the hive's defense. Each bee is a mobile body cell. Its consciousness is a part of the whole intelligence, which is that of the group. The group is the actual creature. And ants, says Norton, show the fact more clearly still; the ability of the creature which is an ant colony to scarifice a part of itself for the whole. ... He gives illustrations of what he means. His book is not accepted by

naturalists generally, but there in the canoe, going downriver from Jose's clearing, I believed it utterly.

I believed that an army-ant army was as much a single creature as a sponge. I believed that the Something in Jos6's jungle clearingЧits body cells were soldado antsЧhad discovered that other creatures_perceived and thought as it did. Nothing more was needed to explain everything. An army-ant creature, without physical linkages, could know what its own members saw and knew and felt. It should need only to open its mind to perceive what other creatures saw and knew and felt.

The frightening thing was that when it could interpret such unantish sensations, it could find its prey with a terrible infallibility. It could flow through the jungle in a streaming, crawling tide of billions of tiny stridulating bodies. It could know the whereabouts and thoughts of every living thing around it. Nothing could avoid it, as nothing could withstand it. And if it came upon a man, it could know his thoughts too. It could perceive in his mind vast horizons beyond its former ken. It could know of foodЧanimal foodЧin quantities never before imagined. It could, intelligently, try to arrange to secure that food.

It had.

But if so much was true, there was something else it could do. The, thought made the blood seem to cake in my veins. I began frantically to thrust away the idea. The Something in Jose's clearing hadn't discovered it yet. But pure terror of the discovery had me drenched hi sweat when I got back to Milhao.

All this, of course, was plainly delusion. It was at least a most unscientific attitude. But I'd stopped being scientific. I even stopped using good sense. Believing what I did, I should have got away from there as if all hell were after me. But the Something in Jos6's clearing may already have been practicing its next logical step without knowing it i Maybe that's why I stayed.

Because I did stay hi Milhao. I didn't leave the town again, even for Josh's clearing. I stayed about the inn, halfheartedly dealing with gentry who tried every known device, except seeking the Morpho andiensis, to extract a

thousand milreis from me. Mostly they offered mangled corpses which would have been useless for my purpose even if they'd been the butterfly I was after. No argument would change their idea that I was insane, nor dash their happy hope of making money out of my hallucination that butterflies were worth money. But I was only half-hearted in these dealings, at best. I waited feverishly for the cattle from Sao Pedro. I was obsessed.

I couldn't sleep. By day I fought the thought tiiat tried to come into my head. At night I lay hi the abominable innЧin a hammock, because there are no beds hi back-country Brazilian inns, and a man would be a fool to sleep hi them if there wereЧand listened to the small, muted, unidentifiable noises from the jungle. And fought away the thought that kept trying to come into my mind. It was very bad.

I don't remember much about the time I spent waiting. It was purest nightmare. But several centuries after the shipment of the cocoons, the launch from Sao Pedro came puffing asthmatically up the reaches of the river. I was twitching all over, by that time, from the strain of not thinking about what the Something might discover next.

I didn't let the launch tie up to shore. I went out to meet it hi a canoe, and I carried my collection kit with me, and an automatic pistol and an extra box of cartridges. I had a machete too. It was not normal commercial equipment for consummating a business deal, but I feverishly kept my mind on what I was going to do. The Something hi Jose's clearing wouldn't be made suspicious by that. It was blessedly naive.

The launch puffed loudly and wheezed horribly, going past Milhao between tall banks of jungle. It towed a flatboat on which were twenty head of cattleЧpoor, dispirited, tick-infested creatures. I had them tethered fast. My teeth chattered as I stepped on the flatboat. If the Something realized what it could doЧ But my hands obeyed me. I shot a dull-eyed cow through the head. I assassinated an emaciated steer. I systematically murdered every one. I was probably wild-eyed and certainly fever-thin and positively lunatic hi the eyes of the Brazilian

launch crew. But to them os Senhores Norteamericanos are notoriously mad.

I was especially close to justifying their belief because of the thought that kept trying to invade my mind. It was, baldly, that if without physical linkage the Something knew what its separate body cells saw, then without physical linkage it also controlled what they did. And it it could know what deer and monkeys saw and knew, then by the same process it could control what they did. It held within itself, hi its terrifying innocence, the power to cause animals to march docilely and blindly to it and into the tiny maws of its millions of millions of parts. As soon as it realized the perfectly inescapable fact, it could increase in number almost without limit by this fact alone. More, in the increase its intelligence should increase too. It should grow stronger, and be able to draw its prey from greater distances. The time should come when it could incorporate men into its organism by a mere act of will. They would report to it and be controlled by it. And of course they would march to it and drive their livestock to it so it could increase still more and grow wiser and more powerful still.

I grew hysterical, on the flatboat. The thought I'd fought so long wouldn't stay out of my mind any longer. I slashed the slain animals with the machete until the flatboat was more gruesome than any knacker's yard. I sprinkled everywhere a fine white powder from my collection kitЧwhich did not stay white where it fell, but turned redЧand pictured the Amazon basin taken over and filled with endlessly marching armies of soldado ants. I saw the cities emptied of humanity, and the jungle of all other life. And then, making whimpering noises to myself, I pictured all the people of all the world loading their ships with their cattle and then themselvesЧbecause that was what the Something would desireЧand all the ships coming to bring food to the organism for which all earth would labor and die.

Jose Ribiera screamed from the edge of the jungle. The launch and the flatboat were about to pass bis clearing. The reek of spilled blood had surrounded the flatboat with

a haze of metallic-bodied insects. And Jose", so weakened by long terror and despair that he barely tottered, screamed at me from the shore line, and his wife added her voice pipingly to echo his cry.

Then I knew that the Something was impatient and eager and utterly satisfied, and I shouted commands to the launch, and I got into the canoe and paddled ashore. I let the bow of the canoe touch the sand. I think that, actually, everything was lost at that moment, and that the Something knew what I could no longer keep from thinking. It knew its power as I did. But there were thousands of flying things about the flatboat load of murdered cattle, and they smelled spilt blood, and the Something in the jungle picked theur brains of pure ecstasy. Therefore, I think, it paid little heed to Jose or his wife or me. It was too eager. And it was naive.

"Jose," I said with deep cunning, "get into the canoe with your wife and baby. We will watch our friends at their banquet."

There were bellowings from the launch. I had commanded that the flatboat be beached. The Brazilians obeyed, but they were upset. I looked like a thing of horror from the butchering I had done. I put Jos6 and his family on the launch, and I tried to thrust out my hand to the Something in the jungle. I ^ imagined a jungle tree underminedЧa little tree, I specifiedЧto fall hi the river.