DOOMSDAY DEFERRED BY WILL F. JENKINS
If I were sensible, I'd say that somebody else told me this story, and then cast doubts on his veracity. But I saw it all. I was part of it. I have an invoice of a shipment I made from Brazil, with a notation on it, "Jose Ribiera's stuff." The shipment went through- The invoice, I noticed only today, has a mashed soldado ant sticking to the page. There is nothing unusual about it as a specimen. On the face of things, every element is irritatingly commonplace. But if I were sensible, I wouldn't tell it this way.
It began in Milhao, where Jose Ribiera came to me. Milhao is hi Brazil, but from it the Andes can be seen against the sky at sunset. It is a town the jungle
unfortunately did not finish burying when the rubber boom collapsed. It is so far up the Amazon basin that its principal contacts with the outer world are smugglers and fugitives from Peruvian justice who come across the mountains, and nobody at all goes there except for his sins. I don't know what took Jose Ribiera there. I went because one of the three known specimens of Morpho andiensis was captured nearby by Bohler in 1911, and a lunatic millionaire in Chicago was willing to pay for a try at a fourth for his collection.
I got there after a river steamer refused to go any farther, and after four days more in a canoe with paddlers who had lived on or near river water all their lives without once taking a bath in it. When I got to Milhao, I wished myself back hi the canoe. It's that sort of place.
But that's where Jose" Ribiera was, and in back-country Brazil there is a remarkable superstition that os Senhores Norteamericanos are honest men. I do not explain it. I simply record it. And just as I was getting settled in a particularly noisome inn, Jose knocked on my door and came in. He was a small brown man, and he was scared all the way down deep inside. He tried lo hide that. The things I noticed first was that he was clean. He was barefoot, but his tattered duck garments were immaculate, and the rest of him had been washed, and recently. In a town like Milhao, that was startling.
"Senhor," said Jose in a sort of apologetic desperation, "you are a Senhor Norteamericano. I—I beg your aid."
I grunted. Being an American is embarrassing, sometimes and in some places. Jos£ closed the door behind him and fumbled inside his garments. His eyes anxious, he pulled out a small cloth bundle. He opened it with shaking fingers. And I blinked. The lamplight glittered and glinted on the most amazing mass of tiny gold nuggets I'd ever seen. I hadn't a doubt it was gold, but even at first glance I wondered how on earth it had been gathered. There was no flour gold at all—that fine powder which is the largest part of any placer yield. Most of it was gravelly particles of pinhead size. There was no nugget larger than a half pea. There must have been five pounds of it altogether, though,
and it was a rather remarkable spectacle.
"Senhor, said Jose tensely, "I beg that you will help me turn this into cattle! It is a matter of life or death."
I hardened my expression. Of course, in thick jungle like that around Milhao, a cow or a bull would be as much out of place as an Eskimo, but that wasn't the point. I had business of my own hi Milhao. If I started gold buying or cattle dealing out of amiability, my own affairs would suffer. So I said in polite regret, "I am not a businessman, Senhor, do not deal in gold or cattle either. To buy cattle, you should go down to Sao Pedro"—that was four days' paddle downstream, or considering the current perhaps three—"and take this gold to a banker. He will give you money for it if you can prove that it is yours. You can then buy cattle if "you wish."
Jose looked at me desperately. Certainly half the population of Milhao—-and positively the Peruvian-refugee half—would have cut his throat for a fraction of his hoard. He almost panted: "But, senhor! This would-be enough to buy cattle in Sao Pedro and send them here, would it not?" I agreed that at a guess it should buy all the cattle in Sao Pedro, twice over, and hire the town's wheezy steam launch to tow them up river besides. Jos6 looked sick with relief. But, I said, one should buy his livestock himself, so he ought to go to Sao Pedro in person. And I could not see what good cattle would be in the jungle anyhow.
"Yet—it would buy cattle!" said Jose, gulping. "That is what I told—my friends. But I cannot go farther than Milhao, senhor. I cannot go to Sao Pedro. Yet I must—I need to buy cattle for—my friends! It is life and death! How can I do this, senhor?"
Naturally, I considered that he exaggerated the emergency.
"I am not a businessman," I repeated. "I would not be able to help you." Then at the terrified look in his eyes I explained, "I am here after butterflies."
He couldn't understand that. He began to stammer, pleading. So I explained.
"There is a rich man," I said wryly, "who wishes to possess a certain butterfly. I have pictures of it. I' am sent
to find it. I can pay one thousand milreis for one butterfly of a certain sort. But I have no authority to do other business, such as the purchase of gold or cattle."
Jose looked extraordinarily despairing. He looked numbed by the loss of hope. So, merely to say or do something, I showed him a color photograph of the specimen of Morpho andiensis which is in the Goriot collection in Paris. Bug collettors were in despair about it during the war. They were sure the Nazis would manage to seize it. Then Jose's eyes lighted hopefully.
"Senhor!" he said urgently. "Perhaps my—friends can find you such a butterfly! Will you pay for such a butterfly in cattle sent here from Sao Pedro, senhor?"
I said rather blankly that I would, but—then I was talking to myself. Jose had bolted out of my room, leaving maybe five pounds of gravelly gold nuggets in my hands. That was not usual.
I went after him, but he'd disappeared. So I hid his small fortune in the bottom of my collection kit. A few drops of formaldehyde, spilled before closing up a kit of collection bottles and insects, is very effective in chasing away piferers. I make use of it regularly.
Next morning I asked about Jose'. My queries were greeted with shrugs. He was a very low person. He did not live in Milhao, but had a clearing, a homestead, some miles upstream, where he lived with his wife. They had one child. He was suspected of much evil. He had bought pigs, and taken them to his clearing and behold he had no pigs there! His wife was very pretty, and a Peruvian had gone swaggering to pay court to her, and he had never come back. It is notable, as I think of it, that up to this time no ant of any sort had come into my story. Butterflies, but no ants. Especially not soldados—army ants. It is queer.
I learned nothing useful about Jose, but I had come to Milhao on business, so I stated it publicly. I wished a certain butterfly, I said. I would pay one thousand milreis for a perfect specimen. I would show a picture of what I wanted to any interested person, and I would show how to make a butterfly net and how to use it, and how to handle butterflies without injuring them. But I wanted only one
kind, and it must not be squashed.
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 cam© 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 friends—my friends do not think they can catch the butterfly you seek. But if you will tell them—" 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 friends—he was said not to have any—were close observers. I said so. Jose seemed to grasp at hope as at a straw.
"My—friends 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 species—and in the Amazon valley alone—of 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 man—especially of the half-breed class—who 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 child—a brown-skinned three-year-old quite innocent of clothing—was 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 green—I swear it—and would pass for buds upon some unnamed vine. And—
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 on—one 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.
"I—beg 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.
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 gathered—
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 left—to 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. So—I 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 flee—anything 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 are—special soldados. They are—pets. Yes. They are tame. They are my— friends. They—do 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 ant—a large ant, an inch or more long—walked 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 was—not 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.
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. But—your 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 creature—one creature—says 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 clearing—its body cells were soldado ants—had 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 food—animal food—in 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 inn—in 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 were—and 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 cattle—poor, 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 do— 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 kit—which did not stay white where it fell, but turned red—and 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 themselves—because that was what the Something would desire—and 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 undermined—a little tree, I specified—to fall hi the river.
The men of the launch had the flatboat grounded when a slender tree trunk quivered. It toppled slowly outward, delayed in its fall by lianas that had to break. But it fell on the flatboat and the carcasses of slaughtered cattle. The rest was automatic. Army ants swarmed out the thin tree trunk. The gory deck of the flatboat turned black with them. Cries of "Soldados!" arose in the launch. The towline was abandoned instantly.
I think Jose caused me to be hauled up into the launch, but I was responsible for all the rest. We paused at Milhao, going downstream, exactly long enough to tell that there were soldados in the jungle three miles upstream. I got my stuff from the inn. I paid. I hysterically brushed aside the
final effort of a whiskery half-breed to sell me an unrecognizable paste of legs and wings as a Morpho andiensis. Then I fled.
After the first day or so I slept most of the time, twitching. At Sao Pedro I feverishly got fast passage on a steamer going downstream. I wanted to get out of Brazil, and nothing else, but I did take Jos6 and his family on board.
I didn't talk to him, though. I didn't want to. I don't even know where he elected to go ashore from the steamer, or where he is now. I didn't draw a single deep breath until I had boarded a plane at Belem and it was airborne and I was on the way home.
Which was unreasonable. I had ended all the danger from the Something in Jose's clearing. When I slaughtered the cattle and made that shambles on the flatboat's deck, I spread the contents of a three-pound, formerly airtight can of sodium arsenate over everything. It is wonderful stuff. No mite, fungus, mold or beetle will attack specimens preserved by it. I'd hoped to use a fraction of a milligram to preserve a Morpho andiensis. I didn't. I poisoned the carcasses of twenty cattle with it. The army ants which were the Something would consume those cattle to bare white bones. Not all would die of the sodium arsenate, though. Not at first.
But the Something was naive. And always, among the army ants as among all other members of the ant family, dead and wounded members of the organism are consumed by the sound and living. It is like the way white corpuscles remove damaged red cells from our human blood stream. So the corpses of army ants—soldados—that died of sodium arsenate would be consumed by those that survived, and they would die, and their corpses in turn would be consumed by others that would die. . . .
Three pounds of sodium arsenate will kill a lot of ants anyhow, but in practice not one grain of it would go to waste. Because no soldado corpse would be left for birds or beetles to feed on, so long as a single body cell of the naive Something remained alive.
And that is that. There are times when I think the whole thing was a fever dream, because it is plainly unbelievable. If it is true—why, I saved a good part of South American civilization. Maybe I saved the human race, for that matter. Somehow, though, that doesn't seem likely. But I certainly did ship a half bushel of cocoons from Milhao, and I certainly did make some money out of the deal.
I didn't get a Morpho andiensis in Milhao, of course. But I made out. When those cocoons began to hatch, in Chicago, there were actually four beautiful andiensis in the crop. I anesthetized them with loving care. They were mounted under absolutely perfect conditions. But there's an ironic side light on that. When there were only three known specimens in the collections of the whole world, the last andiensis sold for $25,000. But with four new ones perfect and available, the price broke, and I got only $6800 apiece! I'd have got as much for one!
Which is the whole business. But if I were sensible I wouldn't tell about it this way. I'd say that somebody else told me this story, and then I'd cast doubts on his veracity.