he thought. "It"s normal; I"m doing that almost every day."
The feeling he experienced as he swung into action was strange. As he walked back and forth it felt like somnambulic walk; something his limbs did without an act of will. As his hands did things expertly and skillfully the feeling was that they were instruments automatically moved not by his own volition but by some power outside himself.
His movements were those of a child serenely at play, a child incongruously tall and gaunt and grey-haired constructing little causeways and bridges on the ground with the logs of the fireplace; a happy child engrossed in an innocent game....
It took about an hour and then causeways of fresh pulpwood were laid from every termite hill to every feeding gate, from every gla.s.s cubicle to the south wall and along the south wall to the "Lignin-Filler-Spout"; and from the ground up to the spout a little tepee of sticks had been built.
Admiringly the grey-haired child looked at its handiwork through thick-lensed gla.s.ses. "It"s been an interesting game," Lee thought, "it might turn out to be a valuable new experiment. I"ll sit down now and observe what happens...."
He went over to the desk again and settled down. He opened his files and laid out his charts on the desk and there were colored pencils to be sharpened for the entries. He was glad of that; his conscious mind rejoiced now over every little pursuit of routine, of normalcy, of the established scientific order of things; it concentrated on these. Pencil in hand, reclined in comfort, his heartbeat even, he kept expectant eyes upon the staggered rows of fluorescent screens, ready to note any significant developments.
He didn"t have to wait long; their strange sixth sense, the telepathy of their collective brains, the spirit of the hive with the immortality of their race for its supreme law, had already told them of a promised land and of new worlds to conquer.
On the fluorescent screens Lee watched their preparations for the big drive: The nasicorn-soldiers clotting together at the exit tunnels like a.s.sault troops at the bow of invasion barges when the bottom sc.r.a.pes the landing beach; the fierce, virginal workers struggling up from the deep shelters of the nurseries, carrying in their mandibles the squirming larvae, the living future of the race. The walls of the queen"s prison broken down in the innermost redoubt and the guards closing in on the idol of the race, moving the big white body like a juggernaut.
In a matter of minutes the "activity" and "emotionality" curves on the fluorescent screens surged to heights which Lee had never seen.
It started with the crossbreeds of "_termes-bellicosus_," with army-ants and devil-ants, and spread quickly all along the line of non-belligerent varieties. Famine had given them the impetus to change their mode of life; famine, the inexorable tyrant, whipped them onward into their exodus.
On the foremost fluorescent screens Lee saw it start: Small groups of warriors reconnoitering into no-man"s-land and quickly darting back again.... And then the dark columns of the first a.s.sault wave descending from their city-gates, lock-stepped like Prussian guards of old, marching as if to the beat of drums. On the visi-screens which magnified them a hundred times they looked an awesome sight with the rostrums of their horns, bigger than all the rest of their bodies, swinging like turrets of battleships being trained upon the enemy. From the loudspeakers which magnified all noise a hundred times, the excited tremors of their bodies, the locked steps of a million feet swelled into a vast roar sounding almost like thunder.
Jotting down observations in rapid pencil strokes, Lee thought: "Starvation is producing very interesting results; it"s a worthwhile experiment." With all his mental energy he suppressed the silent prayer which struggled to arise from the deep of his unconscious: "Good Lord let The Brain not realize _what_ is going on."
The visi-screens now showed the second wave of the a.s.sault: endless columns of workers, their mandibles twitching with eagerness to devour, bustling along the logs, kept in line by two rows of warriors to their right and left. The noises they produced in the loudspeakers were as of some big cattle-drive.
With no interruption in the lengthening line the third wave followed: the virgin nurses, the frustrated mothers carrying the whitish larvae, like babes in arms, carrying them with the indomitable determination to preserve their lives which human nurses showed in the Second World War as the bombs crashed into maternity wards. And then at last the heavy rearguard: the holiest of holies, the living spirit of the hive, the queen. Majestically she was carried on her warrior"s backs; enormous as she loomed on the visi-screen, the white of her uncouth body was hardly visible, swarmed over as she was by her fanatical courtiers which, licking and caressing, kept her covered as by a shield. Her consorts trotted meekly in her trail; unhappy little men, rudely aroused from their harem sinecure, jealously guarded and prodded on by the queen"s countless ladies in waiting and the palace guard.
Things moved very fast now; Lee"s quick pencil strokes could hardly follow the events:
10:30 a.m. The foremost columns are now out of reach of the visi-screens. But I can see them moving along the logs with the naked eye. Interesting new fact: the crossbreeds from the most belligerent species are far and ahead of the rest. They don"t take time out to drive tunnels. But even the tunnels of the more pacific strains are forging ahead at an extraordinary rate; six feet across the floor already....
10:40: "_Bellicosus_" has reached the south wall; it is now moving along the wall toward the "Lignin-Filler-Spout." There is no hesitancy as they change direction at the angle of 90 degrees. The Queens are now coming up at a very rapid rate from the mounds farthest to the rear.
It"s fortunate we have these differences in behaviorism and temperament because otherwise a terrific traffic jam would occur at the "Filler-Spout"....
10:50: "_Bellicosus_" is now ascending to the "Filler-Spout." The warriors have ringed the pipe. With their body-tremors they are giving the "come-on" signal to the workers. The workers are piling in--an average batch--about 65,000. It"s a good thing that there is an air s.p.a.ce in these horizontal nerve-path pipes. That gives them a chance to march along the ceiling and work down from there....
11:00: There are now a score of columns converging at the "Filler-Spout." Amazing that even under such provoking conditions "_ant-termes_" won"t fight. The warriors act like the most accomplished traffic-cops; it"s marvelous how they keep their columns in order and keep them moving side by side into The Brain....
11:10: The first million, I should say, is now well inside the "Filler-Spout." They"re marching at a rate of at least 300 yards per hour; amazing speed; I never saw them move that fast before. Even so I won"t have time to watch the outcome of the experiment. I"ve put everything I had into this thing. 500 hives--that would make it 35 million individuals of the species at a conservative estimate. It"s the biggest ma.s.s-migration I"ve ever seen, but will it be big enough to do the trick?
11:20: The foremost columns must have reached the neighboring apperception centers to the right and left of mine by now. But they won"t stop; I know that from experience in Australia. To them it"s just like any other "hollow tree"; they"ll drive right on to the top; they won"t bivouak before they are completely exhausted. That won"t be before five or six hours. At the rate of 900 feet per hour that would make it almost a mile, covering the whole "occipital region" of The Brain. And then they are going to feast; boy, will they be ravenous....
11:30: About 3 million are safely inside now I should say. Don"t think that I could stay at my post much longer. There"s a certain extracurricular idea coming up from the subconscious like a tidal wave.
The dams of willpower don"t seem able to hold back that idea; I"ve got to get out before it spills across the dam and floods my consciousness.
The phone rings; for once it is a welcome sound.
It was Oona"s voice; trembling with emotion as if she were still suffering from this morning"s shock or had suffered another:
"Semper, are you all right?"
Lee rea.s.sured her that he was and then listened astounded as she heaved a sigh of relief.
"Listen, Semper, this is terribly important. I"ve got to see you immediately. No, I cannot tell you over the phone; it"s a personal matter and it concerns you. You cannot make it? Is your business _that_ important? You"re in the midst of a vital experiment? That"s awful, Semper; it really is in this case. No; I"m all right personally; it isn"t that. It"s _you_ Semper, it"s _you_. 5 p.m. at the earliest, is that the best you can do? All right then. Meet me at the airport. And take good care of yourself, do you hear me: _take good care of yourself, Semper_, up to that time."
She hung up quickly, as if suddenly disturbed.
Lee frowned at the clock: 11:35. He could have managed to meet Oona during her lunch hour at the hotel. But there were things he still had to do even more important than Oona. More important to him than even Oona. He shook his head; it wouldn"t have seemed possible a few days ago....
With the climax of the experiment now over Lee felt his mental resistance ebbing fast.
"They"re on the move," he thought. "Nothing can stop them now; it"s beyond my control, but they"re marching. I"d better get out of here...."
With fevered eyes he glanced around the floor and like a victim of delirium saw it moving, crawling as with snakes, crawling into their hole all of them, black snakes, grey snakes, red snakes, endless their lengthening bodies....
He carefully closed the door of the lab, locked it and then pressed the b.u.t.ton which opened the elevator door. Only as the cage tore down through the "dura mater", only when he felt safe from the sensory organs of The Brain, only when he was sure that not even a human eye would see him in this racing little cage, only then did the dam of willpower collapse. He put both hands before his eyes in vain attempt to stop the tears from streaming; those tears of a soldier over the body of his fallen chum; those tears of a greying scientist who sacrificed the results of his life"s work to some higher cause.
Lee caught the one p.m. Greyhound-Helicopter for Phoenix only a second before the start. He panted from the run, but in his sunken eyes there was a light and in his mind a new serenity which comes to men when they are fortunate enough to meet with some very wonderful woman, when with admiration and humility they stand confronted with a courage greater than man"s. Gus"s wife had been that woman; the way she had taken the terrible news was the source of Lee"s new strength and confidence.
The flying commuter was almost empty.
Noting Lee"s astonished glance the stewardess gave a nervous little laugh:
"People get jumpy traveling," she volunteered.
"That so; why do they?"
"Didn"t you hear the news all morning; wait...."
She flicked the radio on. On the television screen appeared an aerial view of a big city, vaguely familiar looking, yet as foreign as Venice, and then the voice of the announcer broke through.
"New Orleans: It is now ascertained that the break in the levees was caused by a huge trench digging machine left unattended overnight at a lonely spot twenty miles South of Baton Rouge. Levee engineers believe that its engine was started possibly by saboteurs, approximately at midnight and that it then proceeded automatically digging itself into the levee until it was drowned by the incoming river. The initial eight-foot breach has now been widened by the Mississippi to a width of 200 feet. Along Ca.n.a.l street and all over downtown New Orleans the flood has reached a level of ten feet above the streets as evacuation continues. The government has concentrated every available piece of equipment to close the breach. All normal activities have come to a standstill; property damages are estimated at 50 million dollars; the death toll has pa.s.sed the 500 mark in this most catastrophic flood in New Orleans" history."
New aerial pictures, similar to the results of a blockbuster bombing attack flicked on the screen:
"New York: The bursting of the watermains at dawn this morning at seven different points of Manhattan"s downtown area which has already caused the collapse of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel and seven big apartment buildings along Park Avenue now threatens Macy"s and the Public Library on 42nd Street.
"All subway traffic has stopped. Evacuation of panicky Metropolitans from the Central Park district proceeds in an orderly manner. In the Harlem district, however, disorders and plunderings have been reported.
An estimated seven million people are without drinking water. Trucks carrying water from New Jersey are severely hampered by unprecedented traffic snarl-ups, since owners of private automobiles are fleeing the city with their families. Due to the flooding of sub-street levels in both Grand Central and Penn Station, evacuation by rail can proceed only from 163rd Street for the New York Central and from New Jersey for the Pennsylvania Railroad system. Effectiveness of railroad transport is reduced to less than 30% of normal capacity. I. C. Moriarty, Sanitary Commissioner of New York, declared in his press conference that the catastrophic bursting of the watermains was caused by failure of the remote-controlled automatic mainstem valves. For reasons which still puzzle city engineers these valves closed suddenly and completely at 5 a.m. this morning. Because of the failure of the alarm system, high-pressure pumps in the powerhouses continued to work and to build up pressure in the closed system of the watermains till almost simultaneously, and with explosive force, the breaks occurred, the first one right under the Columbus monument. In view of the extremely grave situation which threatens the world"s biggest city, Governor Charles declared martial law this morning at 10 a.m.
"Chicago: The city-wide calamity caused by the unprecedented breakdown in the sewage disposal system gets more threatening with every minute.
As engineers are still unable to enter the atomic power plant and as the sewage disposal-pumps continue to work in reverse, all Chicagoland is rapidly turning into a cesspool as millions of toilets and kitchen sinks spill sewage into every apartment. The Fire Department has received more than two million calls from hara.s.sed citizens battling vainly against the unsavory flood.