Anthologies - SEP by Fantasy;Science Fiction 01

Author:Fantasy;Science Fiction 01
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-09-06T19:46:18+00:00

Miihao betweentall banks of joagfe. It weda flatboat on which were twenty headof cattle—poor, <IH|WIBTII,tick-infested creatures. I had them tethered fast.My teeth chattered as I stepped on the flatboat. If the Sum thing, tolaed what it could

do------ But my hands obeyed me. I shot a doll-eyed cow

through the head. I assassinated an emaciated stter. I systematically murdered every one. I was probably wid-eyed and certainly fever-thin and positively lunatic in the eyes of the Brazilian launch crew. But to them osSenkores 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 if 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, in 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

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