The Embedding

SEVENTEEN

Now, at long last, a climax seemed imminent.

As the first bodies began to brush directly up against the wet straw wall, the Bruxo emitted a series of snorts from his bloody nostrils like a bull with asthma, slowing the dance to a halt. Then the painted figure shouted out at the top of his voice what even Sole, ignorant of the Xemahoa language, could recognize for the grand finale of the myth cycle.

In the silence that followed, with a final wag of his orange bush of pubic feathers, the old man disappeared into the hut.

The rest of the men drifted together before the doorway, with the Frenchman near the back of the group—tight albino buttocks among all the rotund tan-brown bums.

“I’m going to have another shot at talking to him—”

The play of light and shadows on the men’s sweaty bodies made their decorated genitals seem grotesquely deformed. Already he was surrounded by alien beings as alien as any of the Sp’thra, as he slipped through the Indians to his friend’s side.

“Pierre—”

The Frenchman stared in his face and nodded in recognition. His eyes were widely dilated by the drug—the pupils all black filling up the whole space of the iris. Sole glanced down. That ridiculous penis sheath of his with its blue bush! Eileen would—But what would Eileen think? Sole dismissed the thought, half-formed, and it easily disappeared.

“Do you realize the water’s going down, Pierre? The dam’s gone, you know. Finished. Kaput.”

“Quoi?”

“The dam’s been blown up, Pierre. Can’t you feel the water pulling your feet?”

Pierre stared at the water then bent down to touch it. He thrust his hands under the surface and groped about.

“The Xemahoa are safe. So is the fungus.”

A scream of pain cut through the night from the inside of the hut, followed by a howl of words in the Bruxo’s voice that set the crowd shuffling about nervously.

Sole seized hold of Pierre’s arm and dragged him upright.

“What the hell was that?”

“C’est une césarienne, vous savez—”

“A caesarian? You mean the old man’s operating on that poor woman?”

Pierre nodded enthusiastically.

“But he’ll kill her—he’s stoned out of his mind. He won’t know what he’s doing!”

“Oui, mais la pierre est coupée—”

“What stone is split?”

The Bruxo must be opening the pregnant woman like you’d crack a nut to get the kernel out, thought Sole in horror—as another scream set the crowd rustling.

“What stone?” repeated Sole.

But he already had the answer—it was in the Xemahoa story about how the brain came into existence. He tried to remember what happened, according to Pierre’s diary. A stone had been tricked into opening itself up—and a man snake had slipped in and tied himself in knots. The origin of the brain that invented the embedded speech, Xemahoa B.

The rest of the story was about the origin of entrails. By the sound of it, the woman’s entrails were being ripped open brutally now to bring that brain-child out into the open!

A last scream. Then the Bruxo shouted, and his shout rapidly became a howl that drove the Xemahoa back in an agitated pack—as though something evil was writhing out of the hut, some invisible snake coiling across the water. They knocked into Sole and Pierre, nearly sweeping them off their feet.

From the corner of his eye, Sole noticed Chester hoisting the dart gun behind the crowd, hoped he wouldn’t be stupid and bloody-minded enough to use it.

The Bruxo rushed out of the hut, his eyes wild and hysterical. He waved bloody fingers at the crowd, took a couple of steps forward then fell into the water. He crouched there like a beast and howled a single word.

“MAKA-I!”

“Bugger taboos!” snarled Sole. He dragged Pierre with him towards the hut, skirting the roaring creature in the water.

Nobody tried to stop them.

Inside, he shone a torch on to the rough pallet bed.

The woman lay in a semi-conscious state with her baby tucked against her breast. Her belly gaped open, roughly cut by the sharp flint lying beside it. The chopped-off birth cord hung out of it.

But the baby—

Sole stared at it, too shocked to feel sick.

Three brain hernias spilled from great vents in its skull—grey matter slung in tight membrane bags about its head, like codroe at the fishmonger’s. The top part of its face, beneath those bags of brain, had no eyes—two smooth dents where they ought to have been.

From several places in its torso spilled ruptures. They jutted out of a body that only approximately contrived to contain itself within itself.

Pierre bent over the tiny being pulsing by the woman’s side. The question whether it was male or female seemed immaterial now.

“Living!” he cried in a kind of raptured disgust.

“Yes, Pierre—alive. But for how long!”

The head squirmed towards the sound of their voices. The eyeless forehead tracked them. The mouth opened red and empty as a baby bird’s and a shrill squeal came out of it.

“Ah,” sighed Pierre, as though he understood something in that primal squeal of sound.

From outside, incredibly, came cries of joy—unmistakable shouts of victory.

Sole whirled away from Pierre to the door to see what was going on.

Kayapi stood by the Bruxo, gesturing at the waters—he’d realized at long last that the flood was going down.

Solemnly, the young Indian put his arm round the Bruxo’s shoulder and helped him up. Coughing, and bleeding from the nose, the old man clung to his natural son, to stop himself from stumbling.

The Bruxo’s apprentice splashed towards them but Kayapi made an angry, spiteful gesture at him to get back, and the youth shrank away through the other men, unnoticed and unwanted.

Sole returned to the bed and plucked Pierre away from the woman and her freak. He came away reluctantly, rubbing his eyes.

“What’s Kayapi saying now, Pierre? Translate, damn you.”

“Maka-i himself drinks the flood,” Pierre stammered.

“Yes?”

“Feel him drink the waters—they pour down his throat—”

“Go on.”

“The great plan has worked, thanks to Father Bruxo.

But the baby—ah, the cunning devil, Kayapi—!”

“Go on!”

“The baby isn’t Maka-i himself. It’s his message to the Xemahoa. Maka-i cannot come in person. But it’s a true message he’s sent—he drinks the flood to prove it. Now his message has to be explained to the Xemahoa by the right man—”

“I’ve got it!” Sole cried. “Eh?”

“Listen to me, Pierre, you go to Kayapi and tell him he’s right about the baby being a message and having to explain it. But remind him that he can’t do that while the old Bruxo’s still here. He’ll have to go away—and we’ll take him away! Say that. And the woman in the hut too, we’ll take her. Go on, promise him. You don’t know how important it is.”

(Christ, though, the woman—would none of the Xemahoa women enter the hut to help her? She had to be kept alive, her mind was saturated in the drug awareness!)

Sole dragged Pierre across the clearing to face Kayapi.

“Go on, tell him,” he shouted. “We’ll take the old man and the woman. Then Kayapi will have a free hand—”

Leaving him standing there, he hurried on to Chester and Zwingler, praying Pierre had the wit to do what he was told. Chester was still waving the dart gun about, but with less confidence now. Tom Zwingler started asking questions, but Sole interrupted:

“Either of you know any first aid? The mother is lying all torn up by the clumsiest caesarian operation in history and we need her—she’s saturated in the drug. She’ll satisfy the Sp’thra, same as the old Bruxo will. And if Pierre tells Kayapi what I said to tell him, we’ll be able to take mother and Bruxo out of here without having to fire a single dart into anyone.”

“Is the baby alive?”

“Christ, that’s a disaster. It’s alive—but with multiple hernias, brain and body. Kayapi’s trying to explain it away right now. But we’ve got to save that woman, she’s hurt bad—”

“Can you handle it, Chester?”

“Give me the bag.” The Negro thrust his dart gun at Zwingler to hold and rummaged through the airline bag.

“Some sulfa powder here, and penicillin tablets. A few other things. See what I can do.”

He grinned broadly.

“Hope she doesn’t think the Devil’s come for her.”

“She’s in no shape to think anything. Here, take the torch—you’ll need it.”

Chester pushed his way brusquely through the Indians. Their whole attention was centred on Kayapi now. Sole still felt surprised at how suddenly the ‘taboo’ on the hut had evaporated now that the child was born. Now it didn’t seem to matter who went in there.

“Where the hell’s the bloody helicopter, Tom?”

Zwingler tucked the gun under his arm and shrugged.

“How far’s this Franklin place?”

“Eighty, ninety miles. We won’t have to walk. They’ll have a helicopter. They’ll send it, if anything’s happened to Chase and Billy.”

“They just might send it too bloody late.”

Zwingler swung away from Sole abruptly, to end the conversation.

Overhead, a skyful of stars and scudding rainclouds. He stared up at them, pursing his lips—whistling soundlessly.

After a time, the clouds gathered into larger masses that masked the stars, and rain began to fall again.

Now that the Xemahoa knew the flood was receding, no one bothered to heap any more dry wood on to the bonfire platforms. In another half-hour the fires guttered out.