The Green Brain

Chapter V

JOAO SAT up, clawed the jelly hood from his face, stared across the savannah. The grass there seethed and boiled with insects around an Irmandades airtruck.

A voice said, “Did you kill everything inside the pod?”

“Everything that moved.” The reply was husky, halting, as though overcoming pain.

“Is there anything in it we can use?”

“The radio’s destroyed.”

“Of course. That’s the first thing they go for.”

Joao looked around him, counted seven of his Irmandades—Vierho, Thome, Ramon, Pietr, Lon…

His eye was caught by the group clustered beyond his men—Rhin Kelly among them. Her red hair was awry. Dirt streaked her face. There was a wild, glazed look in her green eyes. She was glaring at him.

He saw his pod then, to the right, on its side and just within what appeared to be a perimeter ditch. Foam and spray residue were all over it. His eye traversed the line of the ditch, saw that it ringed a hard-packed dirt area with the tents in the center and savannah beyond. Two men in green IEO uniforms stood beside him holding sprayer handtanks.

Joao returned his attention to Rhin, remembering her as he’d seen her in Bahia’s A’Chigua. Now she wore a plain IEO field uniform, its green blotched by red-brown dirt. Her eyes held no invitation at all.

“I see poetic justice in this—traitors,” she said.

Her hysterical tone of voice caught Joao’s ear and it took a second for her words to filter through. Traitors?

He grew aware of the bedraggled, worn look of the IEO people.

Vierho approached, helped Joao to his feet, proffered a cloth to wipe off the jelly.

“Jefe, what is happening?” Vierho asked. “We picked up your signal, but you didn’t answer.”

“Later,” Joao rasped as he recognized the anger in Rhin and her companions. Rhin appeared feverish and ill.

Hands brushed Joao, clearing dead insects off him. The pain from the stings and bites receded under the medicant neutralizer.

“Whose skeleton is that in your pod?” one of the IEO people asked.

Before Joao could answer, Rhin said, “Death and skeletons should be nothing new for Joao Martinho, traitor of the Piratininga!”

“They are crazy, that is the only thing, I think,” Vierho said.

“Your pets turned on you, didn’t they?” Rhin demanded. “The skeleton, that’s all that’s left of one of you, eh?”

“What is this talk of skeletons?” Vierho asked.

“Your jefe knows,” Rhin said.

“Would you be so kind as to explain?” Joao asked.

“I don’t need to explain,” she said. “Let your friends out there explain.” She pointed toward the rim of jungle beyond the savannah.

Joao looked there, saw a line of men in bandeirante white standing untouched amidst the leaping, boiling insects in the jungle shadow. He took a pair of binoculars from around the neck of one of his men, focused on the figures.

Knowing what to look for made the identification easy.

“Padre,” Joao said.

Vierho bent close, rubbing at an insect sting beneath the acid scar on his cheek.

In a low voice, Joao explained about the figures at the jungle edge, handed over the glasses so that Vierho could see for himself the fine lines in the skin, the facet-glitter of the eyes.

“Aiee,” Vierho said.

“Do you recognize your friends?” Rhin demanded.

Joao ignored her.

Vierho passed along the glasses with an explanation to another of the Irmandades. The two IEO men who had sprayed Joao came close, listening, turned their attention to the figures in the jungle shadows.

One of the IEO men crossed himself.

“That perimeter ditch,” Joao said. “What’s in it?”

“Couroq jelly,” said the IEO man who’d crossed himself. “It’s all we had left for an insect barrier.”

“That won’t stop them,” Joao said.

“But it has stopped them,” the man said.

Joao nodded. He was having unpleasant suspicions about their position here. He looked at Rhin. “Dr. Kelly, where are the rest of your people?” Joao passed his gaze around the IEO personnel, counting. “Surely there’re more than six in an IEO field crew.”

Her lips compressed, but she remained silent.

The more Joao looked at her, the more ill she appeared.

“So?” Joao said. He glanced around at the tents, seeing their weathered condition. “And where is your equipment, your trucks, lab hut, jitneys?”

“Funny thing you should ask,” she said, but there was uncertainty in the sneering quality of her voice—and that definite hysterical undertone. “About a kilometer into the trees over there”—she nodded to her left—“is a wrecked jungle truck containing most of our… equipment, as you call it. The track spools of our truck were eaten away by acid before we knew anything was wrong. The lift rotors were destroyed the same way—everything.”

“Acid?”

“It smelled like oxalic, but acted more like hydrochloric,” said one of her companions, a blond Nordic with a recent acid burn beneath his right eye.

“Start from the beginning,” Joao said.

“We were cut off here…” He broke off, glanced around.

“Eight days ago,” Rhin said.

“Yes,” the blond man said. “They got our radio, our truck—they looked like giant chiggers. They can shoot an acid spray about fifteen meters.”

“Like the one we saw in the Bahia Plaza?” Joao asked.

“There’re three dead specimens in containers in my lab tent,” Rhin said. “They’re cooperative organization, hive-clusters. See for yourself.”

Joao pursed his lips, thinking.

“I heard part of what you told your men there,” she said. “Do you expect us to believe that?”

“It’s of no importance to me what you believe,” Joao said. “How’d you get here?”

“We fought our way in here from the truck using caramuru cold-fire spray,” said the blond man. “That stalled them a bit. We dragged along what supplies we could, dug a trench around our perimeter, poured in the couroq powder, added the jell and topped it off with all our copahu oil… and here we sat.”

“How many of you?” Joao asked.

“There were fourteen of us in the truck,” Rhin said. She stared at Joao, studying him. His manner, his questions—everything consistent with innocence. She tried to reason from this assumption, but her mind bogged down. She wasn’t thinking clearly, and knew it. Ever since the first attack; there’d been something, a drug very likely, in the stings of the insects that had got through the caramuru. But her lab wasn’t equipped to determine what the drug was.

Joao rubbed the back of his neck where the insect stings were beginning to burn. He glanced around at his men, assessing their condition and equipment, counted four spray rifles, saw that the men carried spare charge cylinders on slings around their necks.

And there was his truck pod safe inside the perimeter. The spray they’d poured into it probably had played hob with the control circuits, though. But there still remained the big truck out in the savannah.

“We’d better try to fight our way out to the truck,” he said.

“Your truck?” Rhin asked. She looked out to the savannah. “I think it’s been too late for that since a few seconds after it landed, bandeirante.” She laughed, and the hysteria was close to the surface. “I think in a day or so there’ll be a few less traitors. You’re caught in your own trap.”

Joao whirled to stare at the Irmandade airtruck. It was beginning to tip crazily over onto its left side. “Padre!” he barked. “Tommy! Vince! Get…” He broke off as the truck sagged over even farther.

“It’s only fair to warn you,” Rhin said, “to stay away from the edge of the ditch unless you first spray the opposite side. They can shoot that acid stream at least fifteen meters… and as you can see”—she nodded toward the airtruck—“the acid eats metal and even plastic.”

“You’re insane,” Joao said. “Why didn’t you warn us immediately? We could’ve…”

“Warn you?”

Her blond companion said, “Dr. Kelly, perhaps we’d…”

“Be quiet, Hogar,” she said. She glared at the man. “Isn’t it time you looked in on Doctor Chen-Lhu?”

“Travis? Is he here?” Joao asked.

“He arrived yesterday with one companion, since deceased,” she said. “They were searching for us. Unluckily, they found us. Dr. Chen-Lhu probably will not live through this night.” She glared at her Nordic companion. “Hogar!”

“Yes, ma’am,” the man said. He shrugged, headed for the tents.

“We lost eight men to your playmates, bandeirante,” Rhin said. She looked at the small group of Irmandades. “Our lives are little enough to pay now for the extinction of eight of you… traitors!”

“You are insane,” Joao said, and he felt the beginnings of a crazy anger in himself. Chen-Lhu here… dying? That could wait. First there was work to do.

“Stop playing innocent, bandeirante,” Rhin said. “We’ve seen your companions out there. We’ve seen the new playmates you bred… and we understand that you were too greedy; your game has gotten out of hand.”

“You’ve not seen my Irmaos doing these things,” Joao said. He looked at Thome. “Tommy, keep an eye on these insane ones. Don’t permit them to interfere with us.” He lifted a sprayrifle and spare charges from one of his men, indicated the other three armed men. “You—come with me.”

“Jefe, what do you do?” Vierho asked.

“Salvage what we can from the truck,” Joao said.

Vierho sighed, took one of the sprayrifles and charges, motioned their owner to stay with Thome.

“Sure, go get yourselves killed,” Rhin said. “Don’t think we’ll interfere with that!”

Joao stopped himself from turning on her with a burst of outraged curses. His head ached with the anger and the need to suppress it. Presently he walked toward the ditch nearest the stranded airtruck, laid down a hard mist of foamal in the grass beyond, beckoned the others to follow and leaped the ditch.

Later, Joao did not like to think about that time in the savannah. They were out little more than twenty minutes before retreating to the island of tents. Joao and his three companions were acid burned, Vierho and Lon seriously. And they’d salvaged less than an eighth of the material in the truck—mostly food. The salvage did not include a transmitter.

The attack came from all sides, from creatures hidden in the tall grass. Foamal immobilized them temporarily. None of the sprayrifle poisons seemed to do more than slow the creatures. The attack stopped only when the men were safely back behind the ditch.

“It’s evident the devils went first for our communications equipment,” Vierho gasped. “How could they know?”

“I don’t want to guess,” Joao said. “Stand still while I treat those burns.” Vierho’s cheek and shoulder were badly splashed with acid, his clothing peeling away in smoking tatters.

Joao spread neutralizer salve over the area, turned to Lon. The man already was losing flesh off his back, but he stood there panting, waiting.

Rhin came up to help with the treatment and bandaging, but refused to speak, even to answering the simplest questions.

“Do you have any more of this salve?”

Silence.

“Have you taken any samples of the acids?”

Silence.

“How was Chen-Lhu injured?”

Silence.

Presently, Joao touched up three splash burns on his left arm, neutralized the acid and covered the injuries with flesh-tape. He gritted his teeth against the pain, stared at Rhin. “Where are these chigua specimens you killed?”

Silence.

“You are a blind, unprincipled megalomaniac,” Joao said, speaking in an even tone. “Don’t push me too far.”

Her face went pale, and the green eyes blazed, but her lips remained closed.

Joao’s arm throbbed, his head ached and he felt there was something vaguely wrong with every color he saw. The woman’s silence enraged him, but the rage was like something happening to another person. The odd feeling of detachment persisted even after he recognized it.

“You act like a woman who needs violence,” Joao said. “Would you like to be turned over to my men? They’re a little tired of you.”

He found the words strange even as he spoke them—as though he’d wanted to say something else and these words had forced themselves out.

Rhin’s face flamed. “You wouldn’t dare!” she grated.

“Ah, we can speak,” he said. “Don’t be melodramatic, though. I wouldn’t give you the pleasure.”

Joao shook his head; that wasn’t what he’d wanted to say at all.

Rhin glared at him. “You… insolent…”

Joao found himself producing a wolfish grin, saying, “Nothing you say will make me turn you over to my men.”

The silence that followed was filled with sense of drawing apart—farther, farther. Joao felt that Rhin actually was growing smaller. He grew aware of a distant roaring, wondered if it was a sound in his own ears.

“That roaring,” he said.

“Jefe?”

It was Vierho directly behind him.

“What is that roaring?” Joao asked.

“It’s the river, Jefe; a chasm.” Vierho pointed to a black rock escarpment rising distantly above the jungle. “When the wind is right we hear it. Jefe?”

“What is it?” Joao felt a surge of anger at Vierho. Why couldn’t the man speak right out?

“A word with you, Jefe.” Vierho drew him toward the blond Nordic who was standing outside one of the tents. The man’s face looked gray except around the acid burn on his cheek.

Joao looked back at Rhin. She had turned away from him, stood with her arms folded. The stiffness of her back, the pose, all of it struck Joao as almost humorous. He suppressed laughter, allowed himself to be led up to the blond fellow. What had she called him? Ahh, Hogar. Yes, Hogar.

“The gentleman here”—Vierho indicated Hogar—“says the female doctor was bitten by insects that got past their barriers.”

“The first night,” Hogar whispered.

“She has not been the same since,” Vierho said. “In the head, you understand? We humor her, Jefe, no?”

Joao wet his lips with his tongue. He felt dizzy and warm.

“The insects that bit her were similar to the ones that were on you,” Hogar said. His voice sounded apologetic.

He’s making fun of me! Joao thought.

“I wish to see Chen-Lhu,” Joao said. “At once.”

“He was badly poisoned and burned,” Hogar said. “We think he is dying.”

“Where is he?”

“In the tent here, but I…”

“Is he conscious?”

“Senhor Martinho, he is conscious but not in condition for any prolonged…”

“I give the orders here!” Joao snapped.

An odd look passed between Hogar and Vierho.

Vierho said, “Jefe, perhaps…”

“I will see Doctor Chen-Lhu now!” Joao said. He brushed past Hogar and into the tent.

The place was a gloomy hole after the morning sunlight outside. It took an instant for Joao’s eyes to adjust themselves. In that instant, Hogar and Vierho joined him in the tent.

“Please, Senhor Martinho,” Hogar said.

Vierho said, “Jefe, perhaps later.”

“Who is there?”

The voice was low, but controlled, and came from a cot at the far end of the tent. Joao made out the form of a human figure stretched on the cot, the white marks of bandages, recognized Chen-Lhu’s face in the half-light.

“It is Joao Martinho,” Joao said.

“Ahh, Johnny,” Chen-Lhu said, and his voice sounded stronger.

Hogar passed Joao, knelt beside the cot, said, “Please, Doctor, do not excite yourself.”

The words held an odd ring of familiarity for Joao, but he couldn’t place the association. He crossed to the cot, looked down at Chen-Lhu. The man’s cheeks were sunken as though after a long famine. His eyes appeared immersed in two black pits.

“Johnny,” Chen-Lhu said, his voice a whisper. “We are rescued, then.”

“We are not rescued,” Joao said. And he wondered why the fool prattled so.

“Ahhh, too bad,” Chen-Lhu said. “Then we’ll all go together, eh?” Chen-Lhu asked. And he thought: What irony! My scapegoat caught in the same trap. What futility!

“There’s still hope,” Hogar said.

Joao saw Vierho cross himself, thought: Silly fool!

“While there’s life, eh?” Chen-Lhu asked. He stared up at Joao. “I’m dying, Johnny, but most of my past eludes me.” And he thought: We’ll all die here. And in my homeland—they’ll all die there, too. Starvation or poison, what’s the difference?

Hogar looked at Joao, said, “Senhor, please go.”

“No,” Chen-Lhu said. “Stay. I’ve things to tell you.”

“You mustn’t tire yourself, sir,” Hogar said.

“What difference?” Chen-Lhu asked. “We’ve marched to the West, eh, Johnny? I wish I could laugh!”

Joao shook his head. His back ached and tingling sensations ran along the skin of both arms. The interior of the tent seemed suddenly brighter.

“Laugh?” Vierho whispered. “Mother of God!”

“You want to know why my government won’t let in your observers?” Chen-Lhu asked. “Such a joke! The Great Crusade has backfired in my land. The earth goes barren. Nothing helps it—fertilizers, chemicals, nothing.”

Joao experienced difficulty assembling the words into meaningful form. Barren? Barren?

“We face such a famine as history has never seen,” Chen-Lhu rasped.

“Is it the lack of insects?” Vierho whispered.

“Of course!” Chen-Lhu said. “What else has changed? We’ve broken key links in the ecological chain. Of course. We even know what links… now that it’s too late.”

Barren earth, Joao thought. It was a very interesting idea, but his head felt too hot to explore the thought.

Vierho, dismayed by Joao’s silence, bent over Chen-Lhu, said, “Why don’t your people admit this thing and warn the rest of us before it’s too late?”

“Don’t be a fool!” Chen-Lhu said, and there was some of the old, harsh command in his voice. “We’d lose all before we’d lose that much face. I tell it here now because I’m dying and because none of you will survive me for long.”

Hogar stood up and stepped back from the cot as though fearful of contamination.

“We need a scapegoat, you see?” Chen-Lhu said. “That’s why I was sent here—to find a scapegoat. We’re fighting for more than our lives.”

“You could always blame the North Americans,” Hogar said, his tone bitter.

“I fear we’ve worn that one out, even with our people,” Chen-Lhu said. “We did the thing ourselves, you see? There’s no escaping that. No… all we could hope for was to find here a way of blaming someone else. The British and French provided some of our poisons. We explored that with no success. Some Russian teams helped us… but the Russians haven’t realigned their entire country—only to the Ural Line. They could show the same problems as we have and… you see? They’d make us appear foolish.”

“Why haven’t the Russians said anything?” Hogar asked.

Joao looked at Hogar, thinking: Senseless words, senseless words.

“The Russians are quietly rolling back their Ural line into the Green,” Chen-Lhu said. “Reinfesting, you see? No… my last orders were to find a new insect, typically Brazilian, that would destroy many of our crops… and for whose presence we could blame… who? Perhaps some bandeirantes.”

Blame bandeirantes, Joao thought. Yes, everyone is blaming the bandeirantes.

“The really amusing thing,” Chen-Lhu said, “is what I see in your Green. Do you know what I see?”

“You’re a devil!” Vierho grated.

“No, just a patriot,” Chen-Lhu said. “Are you not curious as to what I see in your Green?”

“Speak and be damned!” Vierho said.

That’s telling him, Joao thought.

“I see the signs in your Green of the same blight that has struck my poor nation,” Chen-Lhu said. “Smaller fruit, smaller crops—smaller leaves, paler plants. It’s slow at first, but everyone will see it soon.”

“Then maybe they’ll stop before it’s too late,” Vierho said.

That’s foolishness, Joao thought. Who ever stops before it’s too late?

“Such a simple fellow you are,” Chen-Lhu said. “Your rulers are the same as mine: they see nothing but their own survival. They will see nothing else until it’s too late. This is always the way with governments.”

Joao wondered why the tent was growing so dark after being so bright. He felt hot and his head whirled as though he’d had too much alcohol. A hand touched his shoulder. He looked down at it, followed the hand up to an arm… a face: Rhin. There were tears in her eyes.

“Joao… Senhor Martinho, I’ve been such a fool,” she said.

“You heard?” Chen-Lhu asked.

“I heard,” she said.

“A pity,” Chen-Lhu said. “I’d hoped to preserve some of your illusions… for a little while, anyway.”

What an odd conversation, Joao thought. What an odd person, this Rhin. What an odd place, this tent with its ridgepole coming around to face me.

Something thudded against his back and his head.

I’ve fallen, he thought. Isn’t that odd?

The last thing he heard before unconsciousness flooded his mind with black ink was Vierho’s startled voice:

“Jefe!”

There was a dream in which Rhin hovered over him saying, “What difference does it make who gives the orders?” And in the dream, he could only turn a baleful stare on her and think how hateful she looked—in spite of her beauty.

Someone said, “What’s the difference? We’ll all be dead soon anyway.”

And another voice said, “Look, there’s a new one. That one looks like Gabriel Martinho, the Prefect.”

Joao felt himself sinking into a void where his face was held by clamps that forced him to stare into the monitor screen on the dash of his airtruck’s pod. The screen showed a giant stag beetle with the face of his father. And the sound was a cicada hum up and down the scale with a voice inside the hum: “Don’t excite yourself. Don’t excite yourself…”

He awoke screaming to realize there was no sound in his throat—only the memory of screams. His body was bathed in perspiration. Rhin sat beside him wiping his forehead. She looked pale and thin, her eyes sunken. For a moment he wondered if this emaciated Rhin Kelly were part of a dream; she seemed to give no notice to the fact that his eyes were open although she looked right at him.

He tried to speak, but his throat was too dry. The movement attracted Rhin, though. She bent over him, peered into his eyes. Presently she reached behind her, brought up a canteen, trickled a few drops of water down his throat.

“What…” he croaked.

“You had the same thing that hit me, but more of it,” she said. “A nerve drug in the insect venom. Don’t try to exert yourself.”

“Where?” he asked.

She looked at him, sensing the broader question. “We’re still in the same old trap,” she said, “but now we have a chance of getting out.”

His eyes spoke the question that his lips couldn’t form.

“Your truck pod,” she said. “Some of its circuits were badly damaged, but Vierho rigged substitutes. Now be quiet a moment.”

She checked his pulse, put a blood-gauge thermometer against his neck, read it. “Fever’s down,” she said. “Have you ever had heart trouble of any kind?”

Instantly he thought of his father; but this question wasn’t directed to his father.

“No,” he whispered.

“I have a very few energy packs,” she said. “Direct feed. I can give you one if you don’t have a weak heart.”

“Do it,” he said.

“I’ll use a vein in your leg,” she said. “They gave it to me on the left arm and I saw blue and red lights for an hour.” She bent to a case beside the cot, took a flat black cartridge from it, pulled the blanket off his feet and began applying the energy pack to his left leg.

He could feel her working there, but it was so far away and he was so drowsy.

“This is how we brought Dr. Chen-Lhu around,” she said, pulling the blanket back over his feet.

Travis didn’t die, he thought. He felt that this was an extremely important fact, but couldn’t place the reason.

“It was more than the nerve drug, of course,” she said. “With Dr. Chen-Lhu and with me, that is. Vierho spotted it in the water.”

“Water?”

She took the word as a request, dribbled more water down his throat from the canteen.

“Our second night here we dug a well in one of the tents,” she said. “River seepage, naturally. Water’s loaded with poisons, some of them ours. That’s what Vierho tasted: the bitterness. But my tests shows there’s something else in that water: a hallucinogenic that produces a reaction very like schizophrenia. It isn’t anything humans put there.”

Joao could feel energy pumping into him from the pack on his leg. A cramp like acute hunger knotted his stomach. When it passed, he said, “Something from… them.”

“Very likely,” she said. “We’ve rigged a crude still. There’s a variable resistance to this hallucinogenic. Hogar appears to be completely immune, but he didn’t get any of the venom drug. That seems to leave you wide open.” Again she checked his pulse. “Are you feeling stronger?”

“Yes.”

The cramps were in the muscles of his thighs now—rhythmic and painful. They receded.

“We’ve analyzed that skeleton in your pod,” she said. “An amazing thing. Remarkably like a human skeleton except for ridges and tiny holes—presumably where the insects attach themselves and articulate it. It’s bird-light but very strong. The kinship to chitin is quite apparent.”

Joao thought about this, letting the energy from the pack on his leg accumulate. He was feeling stronger by the second. So much seemed to have happened, though: the pod repaired, that skeleton analyzed.

“How long have I been here?” he asked.

“Four days,” she said. She glanced at her wristwatch. “Almost to the hour. It’s still fairly early.”

Joao grew aware then of the forced cheerfulness in her tone. What was she hiding? Before he could explore the question, a hiss of fabric and brief flash of sunlight told of someone entering the tent.

Chen-Lhu appeared behind Rhin. The Chinese seemed to have aged fifty years since Joao had last seen him. Skin sagged and wrinkled at his jawline. The cheeks were concave pockets. He walked with a fragile caution.

“I see the patient is awake,” he said.

The voice surprised Joao by its strength—as though all the man’s physical energy had been channeled into this one aspect of him.

“He’s under pack right now,” she said.

“Wise,” Chen-Lhu said. “There isn’t much time. Have you told him?”

“Only that we’ve repaired his truck pod.”

This must be phrased very delicately, Chen-Lhu thought. Very delicately. Latin honor can shoot off at strange tangents.

“We are going to attempt escaping in your pod,” Chen-Lhu said.

“How can we?” Joao asked. “That pod won’t lift more than three people at the most.”

“Three people is all it’ll carry, that is correct,” Chen-Lhu said. “But it won’t be required to lift them; in fact, it cannot lift them.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your landing was rather rough: one of your float-skids is damaged and you ruptured the belly tank. Most of the fuel was gone before we discovered the damage. There’s also the matter of controls: they’re not of the best, even after the Padre’s most ingenious ministrations.”

“That still means only three people in it,” Joao said.

“If we can’t transmit a message, we can carry it,” Rhin said.

Good girl, Chen-Lhu thought. He waited for Joao to absorb this.

“Who?” Joao asked.

“Myself,” Chen-Lhu said. “Only for the reason that I can testify to the debacle in my nation, warn your people before it’s too late.”

Chen-Lhu’s words brought an entire conversation flooding back into Joao’s awareness—in the tent: Hogar, Vierho… Chen-Lhu babbling about… about…

“Barren earth,” Joao said.

“Your people must learn before it’s too late,” Chen-Lhu said. “So I will be one of the passengers. And Rhin here because…” He managed a weak shrug. “…because of chivalry, I would say, but also because she’s resourceful.”

“That’s two,” Joao said.

“And you will make three,” Chen-Lhu said, and he waited for the outburst.

But Joao merely said, “That doesn’t make sense.” He lifted his head, stared down along the length of his body on the cot. “Four days here and…”

“But you’re the one with pistolao—political connections,” Rhin said. “You can make people listen.”

Joao dropped his head back onto the cot.

“My own father wouldn’t even listen to me!”

The statement evoked a surprising silence. Rhin looked up at Chen-Lhu, back to Joao.

“You have your own political pipelines, Travis,” Joao said. “Probably better than mine.”

“And perhaps not,” Chen-Lhu said. “Besides, you’re the one who saw this creature close up, the one whose skeleton we will take back with us. You are the eye-witness.”

“We’re all eye-witnesses.”

“It was put to a vote,” Rhin said. “Your men insist.”

Joao looked from Rhin to Chen-Lhu, back to Rhin. “That still leaves twelve men here. What happens to them?”

“Only eight now,” Rhin whispered.

“Who?” Joao managed.

“Hogar,” she said. “Thome of your crew; two of my field aides: Cardin and Lewis.”

“How?”

“There is a thing that looks like a qena flute,” Chen-Lhu said. “The creature in your truck pod carried one.”

“Dart gun,” Joao said.

“No,” Chen-Lhu said. “They mimic us better than that. It’s a generator of a sonic-disruption pattern. What it disrupts is human red blood cells. They must get fairly close with it, though, and we’ve been keeping them back since we discovered it.”

“You can see we have to get this information out,” Rhin said.

No doubt of that, Joao thought.

“Surely there must be someone stronger, better able to insure the success of this,” Joao said.

“You’ll be as strong as any of us in a couple of hours,” Rhin said. “We are not in the best condition, none of us.”

Joao stared up at the gray light of the tent ceiling. Very little rocket fuel, damaged controls. They mean to make for the river, of course: float out in the pod. It’ll afford some protection from those… things.

Rhin stood up. “You rest and build up your strength,” she said. “I’ll bring you some food in a little while. We have nothing but field rations, but at least they’re loaded with energy.”

What river is that? Joao wondered. The Itapura, very likely. He made a rough estimate based on his knowledge of the region and the length of his flight over it before the crash landing here. It’ll be seven or eight hundred kilometers by river! And we’re right on top of the rainy season. We don’t stand a chance!