The sight of the book moved the recipient. For so long, once again, he had been among the stars, yet had not seen them for so long. Worse, he was not able to make friends with the people who had bestowed upon him this new voyage along with this new life. The cabin, as he had requested, was furnished half in the style of a sea vessel and half in the style of an old merchant rocket: the living quarters of a helmsman or a navigator, in no way resembling a passenger's cabin, because this was not a place for a brief stay, like a hotel. It was a home.
He even had a bunk bed. Usually he laid his clothes on the top bunk when he undressed. Over the pillow of the bottom bunk he switched on a little lamp, covered his feet with the blanket, and, thinking that once again he was giving in to the sins of sloth and passivity—but perhaps now for the last time—opened the book in the place marked by Gerbert.
For a moment he read without comprehension, such was the strong effect the ordinary black print had on him. The type face of the letters, the yellowed, fragile pages, the real stitches of the binding, the bulge of the cover along the spine, all seemed incredibly familiar to him, unique, a thing lost and then found—though, heaven knows, he had never been an avid reader. But now he felt a solemnity in reading, as if the dead author had made a promise to him once and, although many obstacles had to be overcome, the promise was kept.
He had an odd habit: he would open a volume at random and begin reading there. The writers would not have been too pleased. Why did he do this? Perhaps he wanted to break into the fictional world not through its prepared entrance but all at once, in the middle.
"…tell you?"
The Professor folded his hands on his chest.
"By ship to Port Boma," he began, sinking into the chair. He closed his eyes.
"Paddleboat to Bangala… That's where the jungle begins. Then six weeks on horseback, no more is possible. Even mules will drop. Sleeping sickness… There was one old shaman there, Nfo Tuabé." He pronounced the word with a French accent on the last syllable. "I had come to catch butterflies. But he showed me the way…"
He stopped for a moment, opened his eyes.
"You know what the jungle is? But how could you? Life, green and mad. Everything quivering, watching, moving. In the underbrush, a crowd of ravenous mouths. Insane flowers like explosions of color. Hidden insects in sticky webs. Thousands, thousands of unclassified species. Not like here, in Europe. No need to go looking for them. In the night the whole tent was covered by moths as big as a hand, insistent, blind, falling into the fire by the hundreds. Shadows passed across the canvas. The natives trembled. The wind carried thunder from different quarters. Lions, jackals… But that was nothing. Then came the weakness and the fever. We left the horses, continued on foot. I took serum, quinine, German camomile, everything. Finally, one day—there is no reckoning of time there: a man gets to feel that the division of the week, the whole calendar, is a silly, artificial thing—one day, it was impossible to go on. The jungle ended. There was another native village, at a river. The river isn't on the map—three times a year it disappears into quicksand. Part of the bed is underground. A few huts made of sun-baked clay and silt. That's where Nfo Tuabé lived. Didn't know English. How could he? I had two translators. One put my words into the dialect of the coast, the other put that into Bushman. Over that whole belt of jungle, from the sixth parallel, rules an ancient royal family. Descendants of the Egyptians, I would guess. Taller, much more intelligent than the blacks of Central Africa. Nfo Tuabé even drew a map for me, showing the borders of the kingdom. I had saved his son from the sleeping sickness. It was for that…"
Not opening his eyes, the Professor reached into an inner pocket. From a notebook he took out a piece of paper scribbled with red ink. The lines were tangled and twisted.
"Hard to read… The jungle stops here, as if cut with a knife. It's the border of the kingdom. I asked what lay beyond. He didn't want to talk about that in the night. I had to come back during the day. Only then, in that stinking hole of a hut without windows—you can't imagine the stench—did he tell me that there were ants beyond. White, blind ants that built great cities. Their realm extended for many kilometers. Red ants fought the white. They came in a great, living river through the jungle. Elephants would leave the vicinity then in herds, making curved tunnels through the underbrush. Tigers fled. Even the snakes. Of the birds, only the vultures remained. The ants traveled variously: sometimes for a month, day and night, in a rust-red, moving current. Whatever stood in their path they destroyed. They reached the edge of the jungle, came upon the mounds of the whites, and the battle began. Nfo Tuabé, in his lifetime, had seen it once. The red ants, overcoming the sentries of the whites, entered their cities. And never returned. What happens to them, no one knows. But next year new legions come plowing through the jungle. It was this way in the time of his father, his grandfather, his great-grandfather. It was always this way. The soil in the place of the white ants is fertile. Long ago, the natives tried to cultivate it, tried to burn down the mounds of the termites. They lost that battle. The crops were destroyed. They built huts and enclosures of wood; the termites reached these through underground passageways, penetrated the structures, ate them out from inside, so that a touch of the hand made them crumble. The natives resorted to clay. Then, instead of workers, soldiers appeared. These"—he pointed to a jar.
In the center, fastened with surgical clips to glass plates, were specimens of giant termites. Several warriors: enormous and deformed creatures. A third of the thorax was covered by horny armor, with a helmet ending in open scissors. The broad armor weighed down the delicate legs and abdomen.
"Nothing new to you, I suspect? We know that there are regions in which termites rule. In South America… They have two kinds of soldier, defenders and something like an internal police. The mounds reach eight meters in height. Built of sand and excrement, they're harder than Portland cement. Proof against any steel. Eyeless, white, soft insects that have lived for some twenty million years away from the light. Studied by Packard, Schmelz, many others. But not one of them ever dreamed… You understand? I saved his son, and in exchange… Oh, he was wise. Knew how to repay a white man, royally. Completely gray Negro. Skin like ashes, the face a mask, smoke-cured. He said to me:
"'The mounds go on for miles. The whole plain is covered with them. Like a forest, a dead forest, one after another, giant petrified trunks. It is difficult to pass between them. Everywhere the ground is hard, it booms underfoot like a drum, and is strewn with braids of thick string. Those are the tubes through which the termites run. Made of the same cement as the mounds, they go very far, down into the earth and up again, and they branch, intersect, and lead inside the mounds, and every fifty or sixty centimeters they widen, so that the termites running in different directions can pass each other. And in the center of the city, among a million stonelike termitaria that seethe with blind, violent life, there stands a different mound. Smaller, black, and bent like a hook.' He showed me how with his brown thumb. 'The heart of the ant nation lies there.' More he did not want to say."
"And you believed him?" whispered the listener. The dark eyes of the Professor burned.
"I returned to Boma. Bought fifty kilograms of dynamite in pound sticks, the kind used in mines. Picks, shovels, spades, a complete outfit. Tanks of sulfur, metal hoses, gas masks, netting—the best I could obtain. And cans of airplane gasoline, and an arsenal of insecticides, more than you can imagine. Then I hired twelve bearers and went into the jungle.
"Are you acquainted with Collenger's experiment? It's considered nonsense. He was not, true, a myrmecologist, only an amateur. Cut through an entire termite mound from top to bottom and inserted a steel plate, so that the two halves could not communicate with each other in any way. The mound was young, the termites had only begun building it. After six weeks he removed the plate. It turned out that the new tunnels had been constructed in such a way that their mouths, on either side of the barrier, exactly corresponded—not a millimeter o
ff, vertically or horizontally. Just as men build a tunnel, beginning the work simultaneously on both sides of the mountain and meeting in the middle. How did the termites communicate through the steel? And then—Gruss's experiment. Also not verified. He maintained that if you killed the termite queen, workers that were several hundred meters from the mound immediately showed agitation and returned to the nest."
Again he paused. He stared at the red embers in the fireplace and the flickering blue flames that appeared and disappeared over them.
"I had a map … yes. First the guide ran off, then the translator. They left their things and disappeared. Early one morning I awoke in my mosquito net—silence, bulging eyes, terrified faces, whispering behind my back. I ended up tying the lot of them to me, wrapped the cord around my hand. Took their knives, so they couldn't cut themselves loose. From lack of sleep or from the sun, my eyes became inflamed. In the morning I could hardly open the lids, they were so badly stuck. Summer was on us. My shirt was stiff with sweat, as if starched, and if you touched the helmet on the outside, you immediately got blisters. The rifle barrel burned like a red-hot poker.
"We hacked our way for thirty-nine days. I didn't want to go through old Nfo Tuabé's village, as he had asked me not to. So we came to the edge of the jungle without warning. Suddenly that hellish, stifling thicket of leaves, vines, and screaming parrots and monkeys ended. As far as the eye could see, a plain, yellow as the skin of an old lion. On it, among clumps of cacti, stood cones. The mounds. Built blindly from within, hence formless in conception. We spent the night here. At dawn I awoke with a fierce headache. The day before, I had carelessly removed my helmet for a moment. The sun was high. The heat was such that the air burned the lungs. The shapes of objects shimmered, as if the sand were on fire. I was alone. The natives had fled, chewing through their cord. The only one remaining was a thirteen-year-old, Uagadu.
"I began to walk. Together we carried the baggage a distance of fifty feet. Then went back and brought the rest of the things. We had to repeat this five times under the sun, which burned infernally. Despite my white shirt I developed sores on my back, which did not heal. I had to sleep on my stomach. But this is unimportant. All day we penetrated the city of the termites. I don't think there is anything in the world more eerie. Imagine: on all sides—in front of you, in back of you—stony mounds two stories high. In places so close, one could barely squeeze between them. An endless forest of rough gray columns. And from the center of each column, when one stopped, came a faint, incessant, steady rustling, at moments changing into individual taps. The walls trembled constantly to the touch day and night. Several times it happened that we crushed one of the tunnels, which looked like ash-gray cords scattered over the ground in bundles. We saw endless rows of white insects marching. Then there would appear, suddenly, the horned helmets of the soldiers, who cut the air blindly with their pincers and ejected a sticky, burning fluid.
"For two days we wandered, for there was no possible way to get bearings. Two, three, four times each day I would clamber up a mound higher than the others, to look for the mound of which Nfo Tuabé spoke. But all I saw was a forest of stone. The jungle behind us became a green strip, then a blue line on the horizon, then finally disappeared. Our water supply dwindled. But the mounds went on and on. Through my telescope I saw them merge in the far distance, like a field of corn. The lad amazed me. Without complaint he did everything that I did, but not knowing why or wherefore. We proceeded thus for four days. I was drunk with the sun. The sunglasses didn't help. There was a terrible glare in the sky—one could not look up before dusk—and the sand blazed like mercury. And all around, palisades of mounds, unending. No trace of any living creature. Even the vultures did not venture here. There was only an occasional, solitary cactus.
"Finally, in the evening, having rationed out the water for that day, I climbed to the top of a very large mound. I think the thing went back to the days of Caesar. Without hope now, I looked around, when suddenly I saw a black spot in the telescope. My first thought was that the glass was dirty. But no, it was that mound.
"The next day I got up when the sun was still below the horizon. I could barely waken my boy. We began to carry our things in the direction that I had marked on the compass. I had also made a sketch. Meanwhile the mounds, though a little lower, grew nearer to one another. Finally they formed such a stockade that I could not force my way through. The black boy still could, so I passed the packages to him between two columns of cement. Then I would squeeze through higher up. This lasted five hours, in which time we covered, perhaps, three hundred feet. I saw that we were accomplishing nothing, but I was in a fever. Not a fever, exactly, though I had a constant temperature of more than a hundred degrees. The climate must affect the brain. I took five sticks of dynamite and blew up the mound that stood in our way. We hid behind other mounds after I lit the fuse. The explosion was muffled, its force went downward. The ground shook. But the other mounds remained standing. Of the one blown up there were only large, crusty fragments, alive with writhing white bodies.
"Until now we had not harmed one another. But now the battle began. It was impossible to cross the crater made by the explosion. Tens of thousands of termites poured from the pit and spread in a mass, like a wave. They felt their way over every inch of ground. I lit the sulfur, put the tank on my back. You know what the device looks like: what gardeners use to spray shrubbery. Or a flame thrower. The acrid smoke burst from a nozzle I held in my hand. I put on a gas mask, gave one to the boy. Gave him, also, boots specially made for the purpose—wrapped in metal netting. In this way we were able to cross. I discharged a stream of smoke, which drove off the termites. The ones that didn't retreat perished. In one place I had to use the gasoline. Poured it out and lit it, creating a wall of fire between us and the torrent of termites.
"Some three hundred feet remained to the black termitarium. Sleep was out of the question. We sat by the continually belching tank, our flashlights on. What a night! Ever spend six hours in a gas mask? No? Try imagining what it is like to keep your face buried in hot rubber. When I wanted to breathe more freely, easing the mask away, I would choke on the smoke. And so the night passed. My boy shivered and shivered. I feared it might be a fever.
"The new day came, finally. We now had only one can of water left. It could last us, at best, if we drank sparingly, three days. It was necessary to return as quickly as possible."
The Professor stopped, opened his eyes, and gazed at the fireplace. The embers had turned completely gray. The lamp filled the room with a soft green light, as if filtered through a sheet of water.
"We reached the black mound."
He raised his hand.
"Like a bent finger. Like this. Smooth surface, as if polished. The thing was surrounded by low mounds that were, curiously, not vertical but inclined toward it: larvae of stone making a grotesque obeisance.
"I gathered all my supplies at one point on this circle—it measured some forty feet around—and set to work. I didn't want to destroy the black mound with the dynamite. The moment we entered this area, the termites ceased appearing. At last it was possible to remove the mask from my face. What a relief! For a few minutes, there was not a man on earth happier than I. The indescribable pleasure of breathing freely—and that mound, black, strangely bent, unlike anything I had ever known. Like a madman I danced and sang, not caring about the drops of sweat that rained from my brow. Poor Uagadu watched, frightened. Perhaps he thought that I was worshipping before a black idol…
"But I sobered quickly. There was little reason for rejoicing: the water was running out; the dried food barely sufficed for two days. True, there were the termites. The natives considered them a delicacy. But I could not bring myself to… Hunger, however…"
He broke off. His eyes glittered.
"To make a long story short, I knocked down that mound. Old Nfo Tuabé had spoken the truth."
He leaned forward. His features sharpened. The words came in a rush.
>
"There was, first, a layer of fibers, of a material of unusual smoothness and strength. Inside—a central chamber, surrounded by a thick coat of termites. Were they termites at all? I had never seen termites like these. Enormous, flat like a hand, covered with silver hairs, and having funnel-shaped heads that ended in something resembling antennae. These antennae were all touching a gray object no bigger than my fist. The insects were extremely old. Motionless, as if made of wood. They did not even attempt to defend themselves. The abdomens pulsed. But when I swept them from the central object—that round, strange thing—they perished instantly. Came apart beneath my fingers like rotten rags. I hadn't the time or the strength to study all this. I took the object from the chamber, locked it in a metal box, and immediately headed back with my Uagadu.
"I won't go into how I reached the coast. We encountered the red ants. I blessed the moment that I'd decided to drag back with me the single can of gasoline. If not for the fire… But enough of that. It's a separate story. I'll say only this: At the first stopping place I examined carefully the thing that I had taken from the black mound. When I cleaned off the deposits on it, it was revealed to be a perfect sphere, of a heavy substance that was transparent, like glass, but having a much higher index of refraction.
"And then, there in the jungle, a certain phenomenon manifested itself. At first, I paid no heed to it, thinking that I was imagining things. But when I reached the civilized areas on the coast, and afterward, I became convinced that it was not my imagination…"
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