Dark Benediction

“Of course they cared. Their fallacy was that we would open it as they would have done—cautiously. Perhaps they couldn’t see how a creature could be both brash and intelligent. They meant for us to read the warning on the shells before we went further.”

“Warning… ?”

Seevers smiled bitterly. “Yes, warning. There was one group of oversized symbols on all the spheres. See that pattern on the top ring? It says, in effect—‘Finder-creatures, you who destroy your own people—if you do this thing, then destroy this container without penetrating deeper. If you are self-destroyers, then the contents will only help to destroy you.’”

There was a frigid silence.

“But somebody would have opened one anyway,” Paul protested.

Seevers turned his bitter smile on the window. “You couldn’t be more right. The senders just didn’t foresee our monkey-minded species. If they saw Man digging out the nuggets, braying over them, chortling over them, cracking them like walnuts, then turning tail to run howling for the forests—well, they’d think twice before they fired another round of their celestial buckshot.”

“Doctor Seevers, what do you think will happen now? To the world, I mean?”

Seevers shrugged. “I saw a baby born yesterday—to a woman down the island. It was fully covered with neuroderm at birth. It has some new sensory equipment—small pores in the finger tips, with taste buds and olfactory cells in them. Also a nodule above each eye sensitive to infrared.”

Paul groaned.

“It’s not the first case. Those things are happening to adults, too, but you have to have the condition for quite a while. Brother Thomas has the finger pores already. Hasn’t learned to use them yet, of course. He gets sensations from them, but the receptors aren’t connected to olfactory and taste centers of the brain. They’re still linked with the somesthetic interpretive centers. He can touch various substances and get different perceptive combinations of heat, pain, cold, pressure, 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 retreated 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 utterly 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 happening. 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, concepts, precepts—are made of memory collections of past sensory 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 survival. 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.