Dark Banquet - Bill Schutt [48]
A skillful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war.
—Samuel Butler
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.
—Mary Shelley
6.
A BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP
On the Ulanga River, East Africa
At the start of World War I
As Humphrey Bogart’s character Charlie Alnutt struggles to haul the African Queen through the reedy tributary that he hopes will lead to Lake Tanganyika, he is utterly unaware (and just as unconcerned) that his movements are producing waves of pressure change in the chest-high water. The waves carry away from his body like the ripples radiating from a pebble someone might have flipped into a goldfish pond.
Charlie shoots a quick glance over his shoulder. Rosie (Katharine Hepburn) looks worried. “Don’t worry, old girl,” he says with as much cheer as he can muster.
Rosie’s angular face breaks into a smile, but her body language betrays her. “I’m just fine, Mr. Alnutt,” she says. Her New England accent has a distinctive quaver, but now Alnutt is alarmed at something else in her voice—something even worse than fear. This is more like doubt.
“Mr. Alnutt, please take care down there.”
“Sure, Rosie, sure,” he says, giving her a wave. Only after turning away does he snarl at the recurring image of the skinny missionary dame pouring out all of his gin.
Crazy old broad, he thinks, moving forward once again and wincing as the towrope bites into his shoulder.
Below the surface of the dark water, Alnutt’s movements have sounded an ancient alarm, and as they have done since before the age of dinosaurs, the prehistoric hunters react instinctively.
Several resident leeches have been clinging to the reed shafts, which are to them the size of good-sized tree trunks. They hold on using a suction cup located near their tail end, and so their bodies hang free, drifting in the easy current. Combined with their green coloration, this mimicry gives them the appearance of reeds and serves to protect them from the hungry fish and birds that patrol the swamp.
Mostly the leeches just wait. Time means nothing to them, but with the sounding of a silent, internal alarm, they are instantly driven by a single, mindless directive.
To a human it can roughly be interpreted as FOOD.
Over millions of years, natural selection has equipped these leeches with an array of adaptations that make them well suited for a blood-feeding lifestyle. They include several sensory systems that provide a steady stream of information about their environment and the potential predators and prey that move through it. Ten eyespots are arranged in rows near the leech’s head end, but unlike vertebrate eyes, with their complex focusing ability, these photosensors are specialized at detecting movement and sudden changes in light intensity.
At this distance, between the reeds and Charlie’s boat, the eyespots register nothing out of the ordinary. Instead, each of the leeches inhabiting this small section of swamp feels a slight sensation run down one side of its body. Holding on with their caudal suckers, they extend themselves to full length, then freeze into an alert posture. The leeches hold this position for several seconds, and as they do, their sensory systems become attuned for additional incoming stimuli.
There. The vibration has come again.
SAME SIDE
STRONGER
The leeches briefly bend their bodies into horseshoe shapes, a position that enables them to store the potential energy that will be released an instant later when they spring away from the reeds that have held them above the mud.
Their simple brains are unaware that their bodies are covered by hundreds of tiny touch detectors. Nor do the leeches perceive that some of these mechanoreceptors*69 have been activated by the first wave of pressurized water radiating from Charlie Alnutt as he tows the African Queen into their lair.
Now the free-floating leeches hesitate for