Critical Threshold (14 page)

I concentrated on the smell. I concentrated so hard that I didn't notice at first what was happening. I was watching the people. I had got so used to the perennial presence of butterflies and their kin that I hardly saw them any more.

But soon there were so many that I had to see. They were all over: on the slope where the huts were, on the ridge around the crater, in the rocks where we crouched, even over the surface of the lake.

They were gathering—gathering into a flock of incalculable size. And the focal point of their gathering was the village below us. In particular, the hut into which the two cages had been taken. They were the species I'd already picked out as being abundant here. Black and yellow wings, with orange eye flashes. They were everywhere. They didn't seem to arrive in vast hordes, they were just
there.
Everywhere that the eye could see. And the numbers were growing.

Butterflies don't fly fast. They duck, they weave, they drift on the air. They meander along with a seeming total lack of purpose. They didn't seem to be in any hurry now, but they had a purpose all right.

The smell grew stronger, not because it was drifting in the almost-still air but because it was being generated around us now. The butterflies were producing it. And the more there were to produce it, the more arrived in response—positive feedback that would eventually bring every member of the species from miles around, gathered together into one great swirling cloud. Millions—billions of insects, gathering to mate.

This was springtime....

And then I dived for the pack that was six feet away, resting on an apron of rock. I tore open its fastenings brutally, hauling out the medical kit and spilling its contents all over the stones as I ripped it open. I picked up three masks—small gauze filter-masks with self-sealing adhesive edges.

There wasn't time for explanations or apologies. I grabbed Mariel's arm and jerked her up from her crouching position, slapping the mask over her mouth and nose. I ran my thumb rapidly round the seal to make sure it was tight. I thrust one at Karen and trusted her not to make any mistakes while I put my own on. She hesitated for a bare second, then realized the urgency of the matter and clapped the thing on to her face. Her expression told me she didn't know what the danger was, but she had the sense not to wait for explanations.

I knew as soon as I had the mask fitted that I was at least half a minute too late.

My head was already reeling as the air I had taken into my lungs before fitting the mask leaked through into my blood. I exhaled it as fully as possible and dragged new air through the filter. I was safe from further harm, but not from the effects of what I'd already taken in. No more than a few million molecules—perhaps thousands—but enough to take effect.

I was dizzy, and my legs were already beginning to give way. I clapped my hands to my head as the organs of balance in my ears began to go crazy. There were tears in my eyes.

I blinked furiously, and went down on one knee because I could no longer hold myself upright. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The world was hurling itself at me in a chaotic mass of color and shape. A hammer was driving my eyes deep into my skull and my sense of sight was imploding, sensations crowding in, crushed, intense, and then flowering again deep inside, within me somewhere....

My brain burned as the assault overwhelmed me.

And the butterflies....

They settled on my body, on my face, crawling on my skin.

I fell back, and my head came to rest on bare stone. The feel of the insects was like a thousand needles thrusting into my flesh, the feel of the rock and the pressure of my clothes was an unbearable sheet of fire, a sea of pain. When I waved a hand to stir the butterflies, to make them go away, the very sensation of moving my arm, electrifying the nerves and flexing the muscles, was a sensory overload that seemed to shatter in my brain. It seemed worse than any pain I had ever encountered. But I didn't faint, and I didn't die.

Dragging clouds of flame into my lungs, breathing in and out as deeply as I could, trying to force clean oxygen into my bloodstream, I tried to fight the drug, but its effects were too profound.

It had me, and it wasn't letting go.

And the butterflies clustered on my body, and wouldn't go away.

I still had the presence of mind to wonder if I could take the stuff in through my skin.

I had only a few seconds in hand. I groped for the rifle. It had to be within reach. I knew where Karen had let it rest.

The visual images were still inside me, falling like a cataract through the tunnel that had been my eyes, dazzling my mind.

Somewhere in the prismatic chaos was Karen, and next to her was Mariel. But how to find them when every slightest touch was like being skinned alive? I found the stock of the gun, like a great cluster of razor blades. I dared not grope at random.

Somehow, I found Mariel with my eyes, and pointed the gun. I fired into the web of bloody redness that had to be her tunic. I couldn't remember, while my brain boiled, what color Karen had been wearing, but as I moved the gun I felt it grabbed, and there was something like a bomb going off in my ears.

Someone was shouting.

She was trying to force the gun away. She thought I'd gone mad. But she wasn't ready for the feel of the barrel, and the river of agony it must have sent up her arm prevented her from deflecting the weapon.

I pressed it toward her—into what I thought must be her body.

Then I fired, and fired again.

The recoil threw me back, squirming over the rock shelf. I was convinced that I was dying. The whole universe was an irresistible deluge of pain and light and sound smashing into my skull.

The gun was between my legs, and one leg was crooked so that the muzzle lay up against the soft flesh of my calf. That accident of fortune was one hell of a lucky break.

I fired twice more.

And then I had to wait.

It all went on.

I didn't see how it could. I didn't understand how my being didn't just disintegrate, spread out like a water splash all over the rocks, liquefied and foaming.

But it wasn't poison. It wasn't a destroyer. I couldn't even lose consciousness until the anesthetic darts got to work. The experience, agonizing and utterly horrifying, possessed me and had me at its mercy for seconds which seemed eternal.

It was ripping my mind apart.

The sheer vastness of the internal sensory world opened by the drug was beyond comprehension. I felt myself involved with cosmic forces which flooded through me, forces that I had never known before. I felt utterly and hopelessly vulnerable—and yet godlike, for my inner being was the
core,
the
focus
of this new universe of perception.

It was
in
me, and
of
me.

The pain was unbearable and became meaningless.

The sight seemed to have been burned right out of my optic nerves, and yet I could see somehow, somewhere else.

The forces wrenching at my mind wanted to twist it, to change it, to make it something new—something else.

And I spun, like a crazy top, into an abyss where walls of nothing folded about me and accepted me into a deep, infinite hell.

The other drug—the drug in the darts—claimed me for its own, and it was all over.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It was pitch dark.

The sound of the waterfall filled the air.

I felt as bad as you usually feel coming out from under anesthetic. No better, but no worse. The effect of the other drug had worn off. I was slightly sick and completely disorientated, but alive and, so far as I was competent to judge, sane.

It took me a few moments to locate my memory and a few minutes more to sort things out into the right order. Then I began to grope around.

The first thing I found was a body. It was fairly large, female and alive. It was also sound asleep. I hauled myself up alongside it, and then had to pause as daggers of pain went into my leg. I reached down, searching with tentative fingers for the little darts embedded in the soft flesh. There were a couple of nasty rents in my clothing, and the wounds where the darts were felt ragged, caked with dry blood. You aren't supposed to fire those things at point blank range. My leg was going to be sore for a long time. I only hoped that I wouldn't be laid up.

My leg began to bleed again as I plucked out the darts, but I was surprised by the ease with which they came out. It was a good sign.

I turned my attention to Karen, then, praying that she had been as lucky. I knew that I'd fired into her body rather than her face, but I could still have done some pretty nasty damage if I'd hit the wrong spot. I passed my fingers rapidly over her prostrate form, and found one dart in her thigh. That was no trouble. When I whipped it out she twitched, but she didn't wake up. Her body weight was a good deal less than mine and the two darts would have had that much more effect. I knew she'd come round in her own good time.

I couldn't find the other dart immediately, and so I began feeling around for the packs. I needed some light.

I found the pack whose contents I'd spilled in extracting the masks from the medical kit, and was fortunate enough to locate the flashlight almost immediately. I flipped it on, shielding my eyes momentarily against the glare. The stab of light recalled, just for an instant, the incredible sensory hell that the swarming butterflies had brought. I shone the beam on Karen's inert body.

The other dart was in her side, between two of the lower ribs. She had fallen partly on top of it. The wound was messy but neither of the ribs was broken. We'd both been lucky. After I'd extracted the dart I directed the light toward the contents of the medical kit, and picked up antibiotics and dressings. I was half way through attending to Karen when it suddenly struck me that something was very wrong.

Something was missing.

Mariel.

I scanned the whole rock shelf with the beam of the torch. There was rock, and dirt, and a handful of dead butterflies. Beyond, there was grass and flowers.

Quickly, I finished dressing Karen's injuries. Then, just as swiftly, I bound up my leg. Then I stood up, and moved slowly around the immediate vicinity. She was definitely gone, and so were the insects.

Carefully, I broke the seal that held the filter-mask to my face. I sniffed cautiously, and then breathed deep in relief. The scent was gone. The wind, reasserting its mastery here at the edge of the forest, had carried it away with the butterflies themselves.

I walked to the water's edge and dipped the soft filter from the inside of the mask into the water. I carried it back to Karen and ran the small piece of damp material across her forehead. Slowly, I stripped off her own mask. She was beginning to stir, but I had to work hard on her to bring her round. While I worked, I tried to weigh up the situation. I had fired only one dart into Mariel. She was so much lighter—somehow, without thinking, I had assumed that one would be enough. But she wasn't
that
light. Forty-five kilos, at a guess. And I was just over seventy. She would have recovered first. She might, then, have left under her own steam.

But why?

She had presumably breathed in as much of the other drug as either of us, and by the same token, it could have affected her that much more. And maybe—just maybe—she had a head start on us anyhow.

Karen sat up, making noises at last.

I supported her, waiting patiently for her to recover. I watched anxiously, not quite certain that she
would
recover. But she seemed okay. My mind was oddly detached. As I contemplated the whole situation it seemed remote, reduced in meaning, like a page in a book or an old picture. I didn't really feel
involved.
My anxiety, my fear, my confusion were all superficial things, like tiny waves on an ocean.

“What the hell happened?” moaned Karen.

“Springtime,” I said. “The mating season.”

She didn't get it. I wasn't really surprised.

“The butterflies,” I said. “In the forest, there isn't any seasonal cycle. The insects don't have internal rhythms to regulate their life cycle. Instead, they spend the greater part of their existence in the innocent business of living, until a build-up happens in a particular place—the kind of place we passed through yesterday. When population density hits a certain level it triggers the release of pheromones, which attract more insects from outside, which builds up the density, which results in the release of more pheromones, and so on. Result—one hell of a crowd. Or perhaps I should say cloud. Millions of the things filling the air with their pungent odor—sex hormones, to attract mates by the million. An olfactory explosion. Instant orgy. The mating dance of the whole damn generation, packed into one small area, one brief moment bang!”

“The savages...,” she began.

I interrupted. “They triggered it. Deliberately. Those things they carried were cages with butterflies in them. They brought a crowd together...to critical mass. They weren't just doing it to promote a forest love affair. They get high on that drug. To them, what we experienced was a pleasant experience—a big kick. Any time they can pick up enough sex-starved butterflies...I don't know how often. Once a month, once a week.”

“And they
like
it?”

“Oh, it goes deeper than that. Far deeper. That sickly smell, which to the butterflies is just an invitation to the nuptial dance, has one hell of an effect on human metabolism. It affects the whole balance of nervous stimulus and response. It exaggerated the reactions of the sensory receptors in the brain, and to us it became a massive sensory overload. We hardly caught more than a breath or two. We got the shock effect. But they lapped it up. Because they've
adapted.

“When Nathan said something about minds being blown like fuses he was dead right. That's what exposure to this drug does. In changing the reactivity of the cortex it changes the whole meaning of patterns of electrical activity in the brain. It doesn't
destroy
tissue, it's not a poison, physiologically speaking. But what it does destroy is the organization of activity within the tissue—it literally rips the mind apart. The effect is temporary, and it's not by any means total, but there's no way that a human mind could survive being put through that at irregular intervals. In order to adapt, you'd have to build a new kind of mind—an alien mind. Or maybe you could run—run like hell to somewhere that you'd never have to face it again. There's the difference between the people at the settlement and the people of the forest. One group were exposed and ran. The rest were exposed and stayed.”

“But they couldn't,” she said. “Not in a couple of generations.”

“They could,” I said. “We aren't talking about genetic adaptation. We're talking about something much more subtle, much more malleable—the development of a rational mind within a brain. The kind of mind we have is much more dependent upon the kind of world we experience. Minds can be bent, twisted, changed much more easily, much more quickly, than bodies. The real wonder is not that these people have changed so much but that they have changed so little. They've undergone a metamorphosis—the way they perceive their world has been drastically altered, the way they communicate with one another has altered, but they still live a life which is in many ways human, intelligent, creative. The boats, the shelters, even the bows and arrows....”

“They're savages,” said Karen.

“They're successful savages.”

She shook her head slowly. She hadn't taken it in—not really. I couldn't blame her. This wasn't the time for expanding consciousness to take in new concepts. I marveled still at my feeling of detachment, of objectivity. I could see all this, sense it. I knew. I understood. I felt almost exhilarated for a moment, the ripple washing away those other superficial sensations, the anxiety, the fear.

Then I remembered. There was a reason for the anxiety.

Karen had realized too, in the meantime.

“Where's Mariel?” she demanded.

“I don't know,” I said, soberly. “I don't have the least idea.”