Robert Silverberg: The Impossible Intelligence

“Have no fear,” di Cesare murmured. “Old Starbuck and I are beyond the years of lustfulness, and we are medical men besides. Your husband waits just without.”

Within a few seconds, we had four conscious and near-hysterical women on our hands. Di Cesare spoke to them each in turn, soothing them, using his unique powers of comfort and solace, until they were calm. He threw his cloak over

Elinor Collins, and we helped the four women to their feet and out of the dank cave.

Not one of the four could explain the strange compulsion that had caused her to go to the cave. They spoke of delirium, nightmares, a beckoning. Each remembered having seen one of the strange insects just before the onset of her mysterious hallucinations.

Ambulances were waiting outside the cave. The good Berkowitz had arrived as well, as had relatives of the other three missing women. There was a tearful scene of reunion, and then the four were bundled off for a night of rest in Phillipsburg General Hospital.

Berkowitz shook his head puzzledly. “All right, Dr. di Cesare. What’s the explanation this time? What possesses four girls to go creeping off into a cave?”

“I am not yet certain,” di Cesare replied. “Be good enough to leave us, Signor Berkowitz. Quite possibly I will have an explanation for you in the morning—although I think it quite probable, it is an explanation you will not care for.”

Still shrugging, Berkowitz returned to his car and drove away. Now only di Cesare and I remained at the entrance to the cave. It was past midnight now, but I felt not the slightest trace of sleep.

“Vieni, Starbuck mio. There is work yet for me, and you must help.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“I have a patient, my friend, badly in need of my aid. A stranger patient than ever my practice has brought me before. I would not care to face him unwatched.”

Di Cesare refused to carry his explanation any further. Turning, he led me back through the passageway to the room where the missing girls had been.

To my amazement, he lowered himself to the clammy floor and sprawled out on his back. Almost instantly, half a dozen of the spider-like insects scuttled toward him and began to envelop him in webbing.

“Di Cesare! Those obnoxious insects …”

“I know,” he smiled. “ Pace, good friend. Remain here and watch. I will enter a deep sleep, as did those girls. Watch over me, but do not attempt to wake me.” He took his brandy flask from his pocket. “When I stir, pour a few drops of this precious fluid between my lips. If necessary, administer a stronger stimulant. I will be expending perhaps nearly the last molecule of my strength, and I will need you when I awaken.”

I was utterly mystified. But I was conditioned to obey di Cesare in all things, no matter how preposterous they might seem on the surface. Stepping back, I forced myself to look idly on as di Cesare composed himself as if for sleep, while the energetic insects spun their web about his face and body. His eyes closed. Within moments, his breath was rising and falling with the even, regular rhythm characteristic of the hypnoid state.

His lips began to move after a moment. I was astonished, upon detecting a few stray words, to learn that he was speaking as if addressing a new patient in the early stages of analysis! Had he gone mad? Surely it was madness to lie on clammy stone deep within a cave, mouthing the phrases of Freudian analysis while strange spiders spun webs over him!

Time ticked slowly past. Di Cesare spoke less and less, as though we were now listening to a patient’s flow of consciousness. I found my eyes nodding; an hour went by, two hours. It was getting into the small hours of the morning. I fought with myself to stay awake. Di Cesare looked pale and somehow shrunken now; his lean face was beaded with sweat, his usually neat beard looked straggly and unkempt. I could almost sense strength being drained rapidly from him. What insanity was this?

Now it was three o’clock in the morning, half past … I nodded … I slipped into a light doze …

I heard di Cesare’s hoarse cry. “Starbuck! The brandy, Starbuck!”

Waking with a start, I saw di Cesare looking beady-eyed and white-faced. He was clawing away the spiders’ webs and was trying to sit up. I rushed to him, unscrewed the cap of the flask, put the flange to his lips. He took a deep pull of brandy, gasped, smiled.

“Sant’angeli, I know now how a man of ninety years feels. Help me to my feet, Star-buck. We must go outside, and we shall behold a sight never seen before by mortal man!”

He lurched to his feet and nearly toppled floorward again. I caught him. Together we tottered to the passageway and thence to the open air. To my surprise, I saw a steady stream of insects preceding us outward—rushing scurryingly past us and heading for the water!

Di Cesare was absolutely drained of strength. Normally he was a powerful man, for all his lack of bulk, but now he could barely swing one leg after the other. We reached the outside and he sank limply down on a boulder at the mouth of the cave.

“Look,” he cried. “Your spiders, friend Starbuck—rushing toward the lake.”

I watched in bewilderment as the creatures swept into the dark water and were gone.

“Di Cesare, what is this all about?”

He smiled wanly. “I have just performed an analysis—a year’s work in three hours. Per carita, it was a strain! But it is done now. The lake, Starbuck— osservate, the lake!”

The lake was beginning to roil and bubble, as though something monstrous were rising from its depths. Before my startled eyes, the surface broke, and a metal shape emerged, rose higher. A submarine? No—something else, something stranger, with a tail of fire. It rose higher and higher, until I could feel the fiery blast overhead, and suddenly it was gone, with an enormous roar, dwindling into the gray sky of early dawn.

“Great Scott, di Cesare, what on Earth was that?”

He laughed. “It is no longer on Earth, friend Starbuck. Nor did it belong here. We have had a rare privilege, seeing the departure of a strange visitor.”

“From some other world?”

“Si. A traveller in distress. Several weeks ago, when we saw the particularly bright meteor flash across the sky—it was a spacegoing vessel, coming to rest at the bottom of our lake. A small vessel, admittedly, no larger than my Fiat. But containing a creature of formidable mind—formidable, but sick.

“Picture the situation, Starbuck. A solitary space traveler, his only companions the insect-creatures that serve as his sensory extensions, struck by crippling psychosis in mid-travel. An irrational fear, magnified, exalted into total terror. A forced landing. The sending out of the insects, which are mere transmitters for the thought-waves of the sick creature from the stars. The random capture of four young housewives—bringing them together to the cave, in hopes that they could heal the sick mind. Alas, they are incapable! On the stranger’s world, things are different. Bene. We come. We find the women. I pick up an insect; I receive the impulses. I learn the truth of the situation. I lie down here, place myself en rapport with the creature, take upon myself the burdens of the alien ego.”

“Impossible!” I ejaculated. “Why you didn’t even know its language and thought-patterns …”

“So? And likewise the ‘insects’ are the impossible extensions of this impossible intelligence.” He shrugged. “Had you asked me yesterday were it possible, I think I would have said no. But—I have to try; and this I find—that the flow of thoughts makes possible in a few hours what would take years were mere words employed. Perhaps this being’s case was a relatively simple one, you think?—I do not know … But, as you did see, freed of the psychosis, the creature is able to continue his journey.”