2015년 3월 1일 일요일

Astounding Stories of Super-Science 4

Astounding Stories of Super-Science 4



Tommy looked about him. He was astonished to see that the place was, in
a way, furnished. Bram had carved out a very creditable couch, and
several low chairs, evidently with a stone ax, for by the light of the
fire, which cast a fair illumination even at that distance, Tommy could
see the marks of the implement, rough and irregular, in the wood.
 
On the ground were thick rugs, woven of hair, and two or three more rugs
of the same material lay on the couch. It was evident that the human
herd was expected to furnish textile materials as well as meat.
 
"Sit down, and make yourself comfortable," said Bram, when they had
raised Dodd to the couch. "We'll have dinner, and then we'll talk. I can
give you a fine vegetarian meal. Those dirty shrimp-eating savages look
on me as a cannibal because I eat the fruits of the trees." He grinned.
"There's a bad shortage of food in Submundia, as I've named this part of
the world," he went on, "for until I came the beetles simply devoured
the humans wholesale, instead of breeding them, like I taught them. And
there's another of the hundred-and-fifty year swarms due to hatch out
soon. However, we'll talk about that later. And all those fine fruits
going to waste! Excuse me, Travers."
 
* * * * *
 
He disappeared, and returned in a minute or two with a small table,
piled high with luscious fruits unknown to Tommy, though among them were
some that looked like loaves of natural bread.
 
Tommy, whose appetite never failed him even in the worst circumstances,
fell to with a will. He was enjoying his meal when he happened to look
up, and saw that the penumbra at the edge of the lighted zone was dense
with beetles.
 
Thousands--perhaps millions, for they stretched away as far as the eye
could see, were packed together, their antenna waving in unison, their
heads, beneath the shells, directed toward the fire.
 
Bram saw Tommy's look of disgust, and laughed. "The fire seems to
intoxicate them, Travers," he said. "They always throng the entrance
when I'm here. It's as far as they dare go. They're quite blind in the
least light. Care to smoke? I've learned the art of making some quite
decent cigars." He produced a handful. "Oh, by the way, you didn't see
my lighter anywhere, did you?" he went on, with a pretense of
carelessness.
 
"No," lied Tommy. "I was surprised you--"
 
"Oh, there's a supply of petrol in the rocks. No matter," answered Bram
carelessly. "Your friend looks bad," he added, glancing at Dodd, who had
fallen asleep. "Travers, I'm sorry I lost my temper. The--the shock of
meeting men from the upper world, you know."
 
* * * * *
 
Dodd opened his eyes and tried to whisper. Tommy bent over him and
listened.
 
"He wants to know whether he can have that girl to take care of him," he
said.
 
"What, the one I saw you with? Why, she's a cull, Travers."
 
"What d'you mean?" asked Tommy.
 
"Why--useless, you know. There's several of them running loose, and
waiting to be rounded up. We raise two breeds, one for replenishing the
stock, and one for meat. She's just a cull, a reversion, no use for
either purpose. I'll have her brought by all means. I--I like Dodd. I
want to get him to like me," Bram went on, with a sort of penitence
that had a pathetic touch. "Our little differences--quite absurd, and I
can prove he's wrong in his ideas.
 
"Make yourself comfortable as long as you're here, Travers, and don't
mind me. Only, don't try to escape. The beetles will get you if you do,
and there's no way out of here--none that you'll find. And don't try to
follow me. But you're a sensible man, and we'll all get along famously,
I'm sure, as soon as Dodd recovers."
 
 
 
 
CHAPTER V
 
_Doomed!_
 
 
There were no means known to Tommy of reckoning time in that strange
place of twilight. His watch had been broken in the airplane fall; and
Dodd never remembered to wind his, but they estimated that about two
weeks had passed, judging from the number of times they had slept and
eaten.
 
In those two weeks they had gradually begun to grow accustomed to their
surroundings. Haidia, the girl, had arrived on beetle-back within an
hour after Bram's departure, apparently into a cleft of the rocks--how
he had communicated his order to the beetle steeds Tommy had no idea.
And under the girl's ministrations Dodd was making good progress toward
recovery.
 
That Haidia was in love with Dodd in quite a human way was evident. To
please the girl, both Dodd and Tommy had learned to eat the raw shrimps,
which, being bloodless, were really no worse than oysters, and had a
flavor half-way between shrimp and crawfish. To please the men, Haidia
tried not to shudder when she saw them devouring the breadfruit and
nectarines of which Bram always had a plentiful supply. Bram was
solicitous in his inquiries for Dodd's health.
 
"Jim, I've been thinking about our chances of getting away," said Tommy
one morning. "It's evident Bram's only waiting for your recovery to put
some proposition up to us. Suppose you were to feign paralysis."
 
"How d'you mean? What for?" demanded Dodd.
 
"If he thinks you're helpless, he'll be less on his guard. You haven't
walked about in his presence." That was true, for the activities of the
two had been nocturnal, when Bram had vanished. "Let him think a nerve's
been severed in your neck, or something of the sort. If it doesn't work,
you can always get better."
 
* * * * *
 
Dodd's realistic portrayal of a man with a partly paralyzed right side
brought cries of horror from Bram next morning. Solicitously he helped
Dodd back to the couch. Bram, when not under the influence of his drug,
had moments of human feeling.
 
"Can't you move that arm and leg at all, Dodd?" he asked. "No feeling in
them?"
 
"There's plenty of feeling," growled Dodd, "but they don't seem to work,
that's all."
 
"You'll get better," said Bram eagerly. "You must get better. I need
you, Dodd, in spite of our differences. There's work for all of us,
wonderful work. A new humanity, waiting to be born, Dodd, not of the
miserable ape race, but of--of--"
 
He checked himself, and a cunning look came over his face. He turned
away abruptly.
 
At the end of two weeks or so, an amazing thing happened. One day
Haidia, with a look of triumph in her eyes, addressed Dodd with a few
English words!
 
Her brain, which had probably developed certain faculties in different
proportions from those of the upper human race, had registered every
word that either of the two men had ever spoken, and remembered it. As
soon as Dodd ascertained this, he began to instruct her, and, with her
abnormal faculties of memory, it was not long before she could talk
quite intelligently. The obstacle that had stood between them was swept
away. She became one of themselves.
 
In the days that followed the girl told them brokenly something of the
history of her race, of the legend of the universal flood that had
driven them down into the bowels of the earth, of the centuries-long
struggle with the beetles, and of the insects' gradual conquest of
humanity, and the final reduction of the human race to a miserable,
helpless remnant.
 
* * * * *
 
Everywhere, Haidia told them, were beetle swarms, everywhere humanity
had been reduced to a few handfuls. Bram, by breeding mankind from
prolific strains, and using the new-born progeny for food, had
temporarily averted universal starvation. But a new swarm of beetles was
due to hatch out shortly, and then--
 
The girl, with a shudder, put her hand to her bosom, and brought out a
little bright-eyed lizard.
 
"The old man you saw with me, who is one of our wise elders, has told
our people that these things feed upon the beetle larvae," she said. "We
are putting them secretly into the nests. But what can a few lizards do
against millions." She looked up. "In the earth above us, the beetle
larvae extend for miles, in a solid mass," she said. "When they come out
as beetles, it will be the end of all of us."
 
Bram had grown less suspicious as the time passed. His sudden visits to
the cavern had ceased. Dodd and Tommy knew that he spent the nights--if
they could be termed nights--lying in a drugged slumber somewhere among
the rocks. They had asked Haidia whether there was any way of escape
into the upper world.
 
"There are two ways from here," answered the girl. "One is the way you
came, but it is impossible to pass the beetle guards without being torn
to pieces. The other--"
 
She shuddered, and for an instant drew back the film from across her
pupils, then uttered a little cry of pain at the light, dim though it
was.
 
"There is a bridge across that terrible monster that devours all it
touches," she said, shuddering, meaning the fire.
 
Suddenly Dodd had an inspiration. He still had the fur coat that he had
worn, and, reaching into a pocket he drew out a pair of snow goggles,
which he adjusted over Haidia's nose.
 
"Now look!" he said.
 
Haidia looked, blinked and, with an effort kept her eyes open. She gazed
at Dodd in amazement. Dodd laughed, and pulled her toward him. He kissed
her, and Haidia's eyes closed.
 
"What is this?" she murmured. "First you give me medicine that opens my
eyes, and then you give me medicine that closes them."
 
"That's nothing," grinned Dodd. "Wait till you understand me better."
 
* * * * *
 
Bram's eyes were preternaturally bright. It was evident that he had been
increasing his dose of late, and that he was fully under the influence
of it now.
 
"Well, gentlemen, the time has come for us to be frank with one
another," he said, as the three were gathered about the little table,
while Haidia crouched in a far corner of the cave. "I want you to work
for me in my plans for the regeneration of humanity. The time for which
I have long labored is almost at hand. Any day now the new swarm of
beetles may emerge from the pupal stage. But before I speak further,
come and see them, gentlemen!"
 
He rose, and Dodd and Tommy rose too, Tommy supporting Dodd, who let his
arm and leg trail awkwardly as he moved.
 
Bram led the way into the cleft among the rocks into which he had been
in the habit of passing. Beyond this opening the two men saw another
smaller cavern, with a beetle guard standing on either side, antenna
waving.
 
Bram shrilled a sound, and the antenna dropped. The three passed
through. Tommy saw a hair-cloth pallet set against the rocks, a table,
and a chair. Beyond was a sloping ramp of earth. Overhead was a rock
ceiling.
 
Bram led the way up the ramp, and the three stepped through a gap in the
rocks and found themselves on an extensive prairie. But in place of the
red grass there was a vast sea of mud.
 
By the light cast by the petrol fire, which roared up in the distance, a
veritable fiery fountain, the two Americans could see that the mud was
filled with huge encysted forms, grubs three or four feet long,
motionless in the soil.
 
* * * * *
 
Bram scooped up one of them and tossed it into the air. It thudded to
their feet and remained motionless.
 
"As far as you can see, and for miles beyond, these pupae of the beetles
lie buried in the decaying vegetation in which the eggs were hatched,"
said Bram. "Every century and a half, so far as I have been able to
judge from comparative anatomy, a fresh swarm emerges. See!"
 
He pointed to the pupa he had unearthed, which, as if stirred into
activity by his handling, was now beginning to move. Or, rather,
something was moving inside the cocoon.
 
The shell broke, and the hideous head and folded antenna of a beetle
appeared. With a convulsive writhing, the monster threw off the covering
and stepped out. It extended its wings, glistening, with moisture, from
the still soft and pliant carapace, or shell, and suddenly zoomed off
into the distance.
 
* * * * *
 
Tommy shuddered as the boom of its flight grew softer and subsided.
 
"Any day now the entire swarm will emerge," cried Bram. "How many
moultings they undergo before they undergo the finished state, I do not
know, but already, as you see, they are prepared for the battle of
life. They emerge ravenous. That beetle will fall upon the man-herds and
devour a full grown man, unless the guards destroy it."
 
He raised his arms with the gesture of an ancient prophet. "Woe to the
human race," he cried, "the wretched ape spawn that has cast out its
teachers and persecuted those who sought to raise it to higher things!"
 
* * * * *
 
Tommy knew that Bram was referring to himself. Bram turned fiercely upon
Dodd.
 
"When I joined the Greystoke expedition," he cried, "it was with the
express intention of refuting your miserable theories as to the fossil
monotremes. I could not sleep or eat, so deeply was I affronted by them.
For, if they were true, the dasyuridae are an innovation in the great
scheme of nature, and man, instead of being a mere afterthought, a jest
of the Creative Force, came to earth with a purpose.
 
"That I deny," he yelled. "Man is a joke. Nature made him when she was
tired, as the architect of a cathedral fashions a gargoyle in a sportive
moment. It is the insect, not man, who is the predestined lord of the
ages!"
 
And for once in his life, perhaps because at this point Tommy dug him
violently in the ribs, Dodd had the sense to remain silent. Bram led the
way swiftly back into the larger cave.
 
"When this swarm hatches out," he said, "I calculate that there will be
a trillion beetles seeking food. There is no food for a tithe of them
here underneath the earth. What then? Do you realize their stupendous
power, their invincibility?
 
"No, you don't realize it, because your minds, through long habit, are
only attuned to think in terms of man. All man's long history of
slaughter of the so-called lower creatures obsesses you, blinds your
understanding. A beetle? Something to be trodden underfoot, crushed in
sport! But I tell you, gentlemen, that nature--God, if you will--has
designed to supplant the man-ape by the beetle.
 
"He has resolved to throw down the wretched so-called intelligence of
your kind and mine, and supplant it by the divine instinct of the
beetle, an instinct that is infinitely superior, because it arrives at
results instantaneously. It knows where man infers. Attuned closely to
nature, it alone is able to fulfil the divine plan of Creation."
 
* * * * *
 
Bram was certainly under the influence of his drug; nevertheless, so
violent were his gestures, so inspired was his utterance, that Tommy and
Dodd listened almost in awe.
 
"They are invincible," Bram went on. "Their fecundity is such that when
the new swarm is hatched out their numbers alone will make them
irresistible. They do not know fear. They shrink from nothing. And they
will follow me, their leader--I, who know the means of controlling them.
How, then, can puny man hope to stand against them?
 
"Join me, gentlemen," Bram went on. "And beware how you decide rashly.
For this is the supreme moment, not only of your own lives, but for all
humanity and beetledom. Upon your decision hangs the future of the
world.
 
"For, irresistible as the beetles are, there is on thing they lack. That
is the sense of historic continuity. If they destroy man, they will know
nothing of man's achievements, poor though these are. My own work on the
fossil monotremes--"
 
"Which is a tissue of inaccuracies and half-baked deductions!" shouted
Dodd.
 
Bram started as if a whip had lashed him. "Liar!" he bawled. "Do you
think that I, who left the Greystoke expedition in a howling blizzard
because I knew that here, in the inner earth, I could refute your
miserable impostures--do you think that I am in the mood to listen to
your wretched farrago of impossibilities?"
 
"Listen to me," bawled Dodd, advancing with waving arms. "Once and for
all, let me tell you that your deductions are all based upon fallacious
premises. No, I will not shut up, Tom Travers! You want me to aid your
damned beetles in the destruction of humanity! I tell you that your
phascalotherium, amphitherium, and all the rest of them, including the
marsupial lion, are degenerate developments of the age following the
pleistocene. I say the whole insect world was made to fertilize the
plant world, so that it should bear fruit for human food. Man is the
summit of the scale of evolution, and I will never join in any infamous
scheme for his destruction."
 
Bram glared at Dodd like a madman. Three times he opened his mouth to
speak, but only inarticulate sounds came from his throat. And when at
last he did speak, he said something that neither Dodd nor Tommy had
anticipated.
 
"It looks as if you're not so paralysed as you made out," he sneered.
"You'll change your mind within what used to be called a day, Dodd.
You'll crawl to my feet and beg for pardon. And you'll recant your lying
theories about the fossil monotremes, or you die--the pair of you--you die!"

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