[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
sure, and so forth. He says vinegar feels ice-cold, quinine
sharp-hot, cologne warm-velvet-prickly, and... he blushes
when he touches a musky perfume."
Paul laughed, and the hollow sound startled him.
"It may be several' generations before we know all that
will happen," Seevers went on. "I've examined sections of rat
brain and found the microorganisms. They may be working
at rerouting these new receptors to proper brain areas. Our
grandchildren if Man's still on Earth by then can perhaps
taste-analyze substances by touch, qualitatively determine
the contents of a test tube by sticking a finger in it. See a
warm radiator in a dark room by infrared. Perhaps there'll
be some ultraviolet sensitization. My rats are sensitive to it."
Paul went to the rat cages and stared in at three gray
pelted animals that seemed larger than the others. They re-
treated against the back wall and watched him warily. They
began squeaking and exchanging glances among themselves.
"Those are third-generation hypers," Seevers told him.
"They've developed a simple language. Not intelligent by
human standards, but crafty. They've learned to use their
sensory equipment. They know when I mean to feed them,
and when I mean to take one out to kill and dissect. A slight
change in my emotional odor, I imagine. Learning's a big
hurdle, youngster. A hyper with finger pores gets sensations
from them, but it takes a long time to attach meaning to the
various sensations through learning. A baby gets visual
sensations from his untrained eyes but the sensation is ut-
terly without significance until he associates milk with white
mother with a face shape, and so forth."
"What will happen to the brain?" Paul breathed.
"Not too much, I imagine, I haven't observed much hap-
pening. The rats show an increase in intelligence, but not in
brain size. The intellectual boost apparently comes from an
ability to perceive things in terms of more senses. Ideas, con-
cepts, precepts are made of memory collections of past sen-
sory experiences. An apple is red, fruity-smelling, sweet-acid
flavored that's your sensory idea of an apple. A blind man
without a tongue couldn't form such a complete idea. A hyper,
on the other hand, could add some new adjectives that you
couldn't understand. The fully developed hyper I'm not one
yet has more sensory tools with which to grasp ideas. When
he learns to use them, he'll be mentally more efficient. But
there's apparently a hitch.
"The parasite's instinctive goal is to insure the host's sur-
vival. That's the substance of the warning. If Man has the
capacity to work together, then the parasites will help him
shape his environment. If Man intends to keep fighting with
his fellows, the parasite will help him do a better job of that,
too. Help him destroy himself more efficiently."
"Men have worked together "
"In small tribes," Seevers interrupted. "Yes, we have group
spirit. Ape-tribe spirit, not race spirit."
Paul moved restlessly toward the door. Seevers had turned
to watch him with a cool smirk.
"Well, you're illuminated, youngster. Now what do you
intend to do?"
Paul shook his head to scatter the confusion of ideas.
"What can anyone do? Except run. To an island, perhaps."
Seevers hoisted a cynical eyebrow. "Intend taking the con-
dition with you? Or will you try to stay nonhyper?"
'Take... are you crazy? I mean to stay healthy?"
"That's what I thought. If you were objective about this,
you'd give yourself the condition and get it over with. I did.
You remind me of a monkey running away from a hypodermic
needle. The hypo has serum health-insurance in it, but the
needle looks sharp. The monkey chatters with fright."
Paul stalked angrily to the door, then paused. "Therers a
girl upstairs, a dermie. Would you "
"Tell her all this? I always brief new hypers. It's one of
my duties around this ecclesiastical leper ranch. She's on the
verge of insanity, I suppose. They all are, before they get
rid of the idea that they're damned souls. What's she to
you?"
Paul strode out into the corridor without answering. He
felt physically ill. He hated Seevers' smug bulldog face
with a violence that was unfamiliar to him. The man had
given the plague to himself! So he said. But was it true?
Was any of it true? To claim that the hallucinations were
new sensory phenomena, to pose the plague as possibly
desirable Seevers had no patent on those ideas. Every
dermie made such claims; it was a symptom. Seevers had
simply invented clever rationalizations to support his
delusions, and Paul had been nearly taken in. Seevers was
clever. Do you mean to take the condition with you when
you go? Wasn't that just another way of suggesting, "Why
don't you allow me to touch you?" Paul was shivering as he
returned to the third-floor room to recoat himself with the
pungent oil. Why not leave now? he thought.
But he spent the day wandering along the waterfront,
stopping briefly at the docks to watch a crew of monks scram-
bling over the scaffolding that surrounded the hulls of two
small sea-going vessels. The monks were caulking split
seams and trotting along the platforms with buckets of tar
and paint. Upon inquiry, Paul learned which of the vessels
was intended for his own use. And he put aside all
thoughts of immediate departure.
She was a fifty-footer, a slender craft with a weighted fin-
keel that would cut too deep for bay navigation. Paul
guessed that the colony wanted only a flat-bottomed vessel
for hauling passengers and cargo across from the mainland.
They would have little use for the trim seaster with the
lines of a baby destroyer. Upon closer examination, he
guessed that it had been a police boat, or Coast Guard
craft. There was a gun-mounting on the forward deck,
minus the gun. She was built for speed, and powered by
diesels, and she could be provisioned for a nice long cruise.
Paul went to scrounge among the warehouses and
locate a stock of supplies. He met an occasional monk or
nun, bat the gray-skinned monastics seemed only desirous
of avoiding him. The dermie desire was keyed principally,
by smell, and the deodorant oil helped preserve him from
their affections. Once he was approached by a wild-eyed
layman who startled him amidst a heap of warehouse
crates. The dermie was almost upon him before Paul heard
the footfall. Caught without
an escape route, and assailed by startled terror, he shattered
the man's arm with a shotgun blast, then fled from the ware-
house to escape the dermie's screams.
Choking with shame, he found a dermie monk and sent
him to care for the wounded creature. Paul had shot at other
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]