The Green Brain

Chapter VII

“YOU SAID the vehicle would not fly!” the Brain accused.

Its sensors probed the messenger pattern on the cave ceiling, listened for the afferent hum that might expand the meaning. But the configuration revealed on the ceiling by the phosphor-light of servant insects remained firm, as steady as the patch of stars standing in the cave-mouth beyond the messengers.

Chemical demands pulsed through the Brain, sending its servant nurses into a frenzy of ministrations. This was the closest to consternation the Brain had ever experienced. Its logical awareness labeled the experience as an emotion and sought parallel references even while it worked on the substance of the report.

The vehicle flew only a short distance and landed on the river. It remains on the river with its thrusting force dormant.

But it can fly!

The first serious doubt of its information entered the Brain’s computations then. The experience was a form of alienation from the creations which had created it.

“The claim that the vehicle would not fly came directly from the humans,” the messengers danced. “Their assessment was reported.”

It was a pragmatic statement, more to fill out the report predicting the escape try than to defend against the Brain’s accusation.

That fact should have been part of the original report, the Brain thought. The messengers must be taught not to intervene, but report all details complete with weight-by-source. But how can this be done? They’re creatures of firm reflex and tied to a self-limiting system.

Obviously new messengers would have to be designed and bred.

With this thought, the Brain moved even further from its creators. It understood then how an action-of-mimicry, a pure reflex, gave birth to itself, but the Brain, the thing-produced-by-reflex, was having an inevitable feedback effect, changing the original reflexes which had created it.

“What must be done about the vehicle on the river?” the messengers asked.

With its new insight, the Brain saw how this question had been produced—out of survival reflex.

Survival must be served, it thought.

“The vehicle will be allowed to proceed temporarily,” the Brain ordered. “There must be no visible sign of molestation for the time being, but we must prepare safeguards. A cluster of the new little-deadlies will be conveyed to the vehicle under the cover of night. They must be instructed to infiltrate every available hole on the vehicle and remain in hiding. They must not take action against the occupants of the vehicle without orders! But they must stand ready to destroy the occupants whenever necessary.”

The Brain fell silent then, secure in the knowledge that its orders would be carried out. And it took up its new understanding to examine as though this were an autonomous fragment. The experience was both fascinating and terrifying because here, living within its single-self, was an element capable of debate and separate action.

Decisions—conscious decisions, the Brain thought, these are a punishment inflicted upon the single-self by consciousness. There are conscious decisions that can fragment the single-self. How can humans stand up under such a load of decisions?

Chen-Lhu tipped his head back, resting in the corner between the window and rear bulkhead, stared up at the melon-curve of moon lifting across the sky. The moon was the color of molten copper.

An acid-etched frost line ran diagonally down the window to the faired curve of exterior skin. Chen-Lhu’s eyes followed the line and, for a moment as he stared at the place where the window ended beside him, he thought he saw a row of tiny dots, like barely visible gnats marching across the window.

In an eyeblink, they vanished.

Did I imagine them? he wondered.

He thought of alerting the others, but Rhin had been near hysteria for almost an hour now since witnessing the death of their camp. She’d have to be nursed back to usefulness.

I could’ve imagined them, Chen-Lhu thought. Only the moon for illumination—spots in front of my eyes; nothing unusual about that.

The river had narrowed here to no more than six or seven times the pod’s wingspan. A shadowy wall of overhanging trees hemmed in the track of water.

“Johnny, turn on the wing lights for a few minutes,” Chen-Lhu said.

“Why?”

“They’ll see us if we do,” Rhin said.

She heard the almost-hysteria in her own voice and was shocked by it. I’m an entomologist, she told herself. Whatever’s out there, it’s just a variation on something familiar.

But this reasoning lacked comfort. She realized that some primal fear had touched her, arousing instincts with which reason could not contend.

“Make no mistake,” Chen-Lhu said, and he tried to speak softly, reasonably. “Whatever overwhelmed our friends… it knows where we are. I merely wish the light to confirm a suspicion.”

“Are we being followed, eh?” Joao asked.

He snapped on the wing lights. The sudden glare picked out two caverns of brilliance that filled with fluttering, darting insects—a white-winged mob.

The current swung the pod around a bend. Their lights touched the river bank, outlined twisting medusa roots that clutched dark red clay, then swung with the vagaries of an eddy to pick out a narrow island—tall reeds and grass bending to the current, and the cold green reflections of eyes just above the water.

Joao snapped off the lights.

In the abrupt darkness, they heard the whining hum of insects and the metallic chime calls of river frogs… then, like a delayed comment, the coughing barks of a troop of red monkeys somewhere on the right shore.

The presence of the frogs and monkeys, Joao felt, carried a significance that he should understand. The significance eluded him.

Ahead, he could see bats flicker across the moonlit river, skimming the water to drink.

“They’re following us… watching, waiting,” Rhin said.

Bats, monkeys, frogs, all living intimately with the river, Joao thought. But Rhin said the river carried poisons. Was there reason to lie about that?

He tried to study her face in the dim reflections of moonlight that penetrated the cabin, but received only the impression of gaunt, withdrawn shadows.

“I think we are safe,” Chen-Lhu said, “as long as we keep the cabin sealed and get our air through the vent filters.”

“Open only in daylight,” Joao said. “We can see what’s around us then and use our rifles if we need to.”

Rhin pressed her lips together to prevent them from trembling. She tipped her head back, looked up through the transparent strip across the roof of the cabin. A wilderness of stars flooded the sky, and when she lowered her gaze she could still see the stars—a shimmer of points, tremulous on the river surface. Quite suddenly the night filled her with a sensation of immense loneliness that was at the same time oppressive, holding her locked between the river’s jungle walls.

The night was odorous with jungle smells that the vent filters could not remove. Every breath was thick with baited and repelling perfumes.

The jungle took on a form of conscious malignancy in her imagination. She sensed something out there in the night—a thinking entity which could swallow her without a moment’s hesitation. The sense of reality with which her mind invested this image flowed over her and through her. She could give it no shape except immensity… but it was there.

“Johnny, how fast is the current along here?” Chen-Lhu asked.

Good question, Joao thought.

He bent forward to peer at the luminous dial of the altimeter. “Elevation here’s eight hundred and thirty meters,” he said. “If I’ve located us correctly on the right river, the channel drops about seventy meters in the next thirty kilometers.” He worked the equation in his head. “I can only approximate, of course, but it’ll be a six to eight knot current.”

“Won’t there be a search for us?” Rhin asked. “I keep thinking…”

“Don’t think that way,” Chen-Lhu said. “Any search, if it comes at all, will be for me—and not for several weeks. I knew where to look for you, Rhin.” He hesitated, wondering if he was saying too much, giving Joao too many clues. “Only a few of my aides knew where I was going, and why.”

Chen-Lhu hoped she’d hear the secrecy in his voice, get off this subject.

“You know how I got in here,” Joao said. “If anybody thought to look for me… where’d they look?”

“But there’s a chance, isn’t there?” Rhin asked. Her voice revealed how desperately she wanted to believe in that chance.

“There is always a chance,” Chen-Lhu said. And he thought: You must calm yourself, Rhin. When I need you, there must be no problems of fear and hysteria.

He set his mind then to the way Joao Martinho must be discredited if they reached civilization. Rhin’s help would have to be enlisted in this enterprise, of course. Joao was the perfect scapegoat and this situation was made to order—if Rhin could be persuaded to help. Naturally, if she proved obstinate, she could be eliminated.

Midnight came to the cave above the river chasm before the Brain received its next report on the three humans and their floating vehicle.

Most of the conversation reported by the dancing messengers revealed only the tensions and pressures of the humans’ circumstances. The humans realized, at least unconsciously, that they were in a loose trap. Most of this conversation could be set aside for later evaluation, but there was one matter for the Brain’s immediate attention. The Brain felt something approaching chagrin that it had not anticipated this problem with its own logic.

“Enough action groups must be dispatched at once,” the Brain ordered, “to accompany the vehicle but stay out of sight in the adjoining growth. These action groups must be ready to fly over the river whenever needed and hide the vehicle from any searchers or chance passersby in the sky above them.”

One of the pod’s stub wings brushed vines along the shore, awakening Joao from a light doze. He glanced back through the gloom to see Chen-Lhu alert and staring.

“It is time for you to awake and take your watch,” Chen-Lhu said. “Rhin still sleeps.”

“Have we been touching the shore very much like that?” Joao whispered.

“Not much.”

“I should put out that sea anchor… Vierho made.”

“That would not prevent us touching the shores. And it might snag on something and delay us.”

“Padre covered the hooks on the grapnel. I don’t think it’ll snag. Wind’s upriver right now, will be until morning. A drag in the water like that could speed us up.”

“But how will you put it out there?”

“Yeah…” Joao nodded. “Better wait until morning.”

“It would be best, Johnny.”

Rhin stirred restlessly.

Joao snapped on the winglights. Twin shafts of illumination leaped out to the jungle wall, revealed a cluster of sago palms in front of a screen of caña brava. The lights began to siphon in two flows of fluttering, darting insects.

“Our friends are still with us,” Chen-Lhu whispered.

Joao turned off the lights.

Rhin began breathing in ragged gasps as though she were choking. Joao gripped her arm, spoke softly: “Are you all right?”

Without coming fully awake, Rhin felt his presence beside her, experienced a primitive demand for his protective masculinity. She nestled against him, murmured, “It’s so hot. Doesn’t it ever cool off?”

“She dreams,” Chen-Lhu whispered.

“But it is hot,” Joao said. He felt embarrassed by Rhin’s obvious need for him, sensing that this amused and pleased Chen-Lhu.

“Towards morning we should get a little relief from the heat,” Joao said. “Why don’t you sleep for awhile, Travis?”

“Yes, I’ll sleep now,” Chen-Lhu said. He stretched out on the narrow gig-box, wondering: Will I have to kill them? They are such fools, Rhin and Johnny… so obviously attracted to each other, but fighting it.

The night breeze rocked the pod. Rhin nestled closer to Joao, breathing deeply, peacefully. Joao stared out the windows.

The moon had gone down behind the hills, leaving only starlight to block out dark shadows along both shores. The hypnotic flow of dim shapes filled Joao with drowsiness. He concentrated on staying awake, peered through the black, his senses strained to the limit.

There was only the movement of the river and a hesitant rocking motion from the breeze.

The night awakened in Joao a sense of mystery. This river was haunted, peopled by the ghosts of every passenger it had ever carried, and now… by another presence. He could feel this other presence. The night was hushed with it. Even the frogs were silent.

Something barked in the jungle to the left. And Joao suddenly thought he heard a nerve beat of log drums. Distant… very distant: a still-vibration more felt than heard. It was gone before he could be sure.

The Indians were all cleared out of the Red, he thought. Who could be using drums? I must’ve imagined it; my own pulse, that’s what I heard.

He held himself still, listening, but there was only Chen-Lhu’s breathing, deep and even, and a small sigh from Rhin.

The river widened and its current slowed.

An hour passed… another. Time seemed dragged out by the current. A weary loneliness filled Joao. The pod around them felt fragile, inadequate: a corrupt and impermanent thing. He wondered how he had trusted his life to this machine high above the jungle when it was so vulnerable.

We’ll never make it! he thought.

Chen-Lhu’s voice, a low rumble, broke the silence: “This river, it is the Itapura, for sure, Johnny?”

“I’m reasonably certain of that,” Joao whispered.

“What is the nearest civilization?”

“The bandeirante staging area at Santa Maria de Grao Cuyaba.”

“Seven or eight hundred kilometers, eh?”

“More or less.”

Rhin stirred in Joao’s arms, and he felt himself responding to her femininity. He forced his mind to veer away from such thoughts, concentrated instead on the river ahead of them: a winding, twisting course with rapids and sunken limbs. It was a track menaced for its full length by that deadly presence which he sensed all around them. And there was one more peril he had not mentioned to the others: these waters abounded with cannibal fish, piranha.

“How many rapids ahead of us?” Chen-Lhu asked.

“I’m not sure,” Joao said. “Eight or nine—maybe more. It depends on the season and height of water.”

“We will have to use the fuel, fly across the rapids.”

“This thing won’t stand many takeoffs and landings,” Joao said. “That right hand float…”

“Vierho did a good job; it’ll suffice.”

“We hope.”

“You have sad thoughts, Johnny. That is no way to face this venture. How long to this Santa Maria?”

“Six weeks, with luck. Are you thirsty?”

“Yes. How much water do we have?”

“Ten liters… and we have the little pot still if we need more.”

Joao accepted a canteen from Chen-Lhu, drank deeply. The water was warm and flat. He returned the canteen.

Far off, a night bird called, “Tuta! Tuta!” with a fluting voice.

“What was that?” Chen-Lhu hissed.

“A bird… nothing but a bird.”

Joao sighed. The bird cry had filled him with foreboding, like an evil omen out of his superstitious past. A flux of night sounds pulsed in his temples. He stared out into darkness, saw a sudden witch light of fireflies along the right shore, smelled the wind from the jungle like an exhalation of evil breath.

The near hopelessness of their position pressed in upon him. They stood at the edge of the rainy season, separated from any sanctuary by hundreds of kilometers of whirlpools and chasms. And they were the target of a cruel intelligence which used the jungle as a weapon.

A musk perfume lifted into his nostrils from Rhin. It left him with a profound awareness that she was female… and desirable.

The river tugged at the pod.

Joao felt then their alliance with the current dragging itself down to the sea like a black chord.

Another hour passed… and another.

Joao grew conscious of a red fireglow off to the right—dawn.

The hoots and cries of howler monkeys greeted the light. Their uproar aroused birds to morning talk in the sheltered blackness of the forest: staccato peepings, chirrings up and down the scale, intermittent screeches.

Pearl luster crept across the sky, became milk-silver light that gave definition to the world around the drifting pod. Joao looked out to the west, seeing foothills—one after another, piled waves of hills pounding against the Andean escarpment. He realized then that they had come down out of the first steep descent of the river to the high plateau.

The pod floated quietly like a great water bug against a backdrop of trees laced with the dancing flames of forest flowers. A sluggish current twisted into whorls against the floats. Curls of mist hung on the water like puffs of gauze.

Rhin awoke, straightened out of Joao’s arms, stared downstream. The river was like a cathedral aisle between the tall trees.

Joao massaged his arm where Rhin’s head had slowed the circulation. All the while, he studied the woman beside him. There was a small-child look about her: the red hair disarrayed, an unlined expression of innocence on her face.

She yawned, smiled at him… and abruptly frowned, coming fully awake to their situation. She shook her head, turned to look at Chen-Lhu.

The Chinese slept with his head thrown back into the corner. She had the sudden feeling that Chen-Lhu embodied fallen greatness, as though he were an idol out of his country’s past. He breathed with a low, burred rasp. Heavy pores indented his skin and there was a burnt leather harshness to his complexion that she had never before noticed. A graying wheat stubble of hair stood out along his upper lip. She realized suddenly that Chen-Lhu dyed his hair. It was a touch of vanity that she had not suspected.

“There’s not a breath of wind,” Joao said.

“But it’s cooler,” she said.

She looked out the window on her side, saw wisps of reedy grass trailing from the float. The pod was twisting at the push of every random current. The movement carried a certain majesty; slow sweeping turns like a formal dance to the river’s rhythm.

“What do I smell?” she asked.

Joao sniffed: rocket fuel… very faint, the musk of human sweat… mildew. He knew without exploring it that mildew was the odor that had aroused her question.

“It’s mildew,” he said.

“Mildew?”

She looked around her at the interior of the cabin, seeing the smooth tan fabric of the ceiling edges, chrome on the instrument panel. She put her hands on the dual wheel of her side, moved it.

Mildew, she thought.

The jungle already had a beachhead inside here.

“We’re almost into the rainy season, aren’t we?” she said. “What’ll that mean?”

“Trouble,” he said. “High water… rapids.”

Chen-Lhu’s voice intruded: “Why look at the worst side?”

“Because we have to,” she said.

Hunger awoke suddenly in Joao. His hands trembled; his mouth burned with thirst.

“Let’s have a canteen,” he said.

Chen-Lhu passed a canteen forward. It sloshed as Joao took it. He offered it to Rhin, but she shook her head, overcome by a strange sensation of nausea.

Poison in water conditioned me to a temporary rejection pattern, she thought. The sound of Joao drinking made her feel ill. How greedily he drank! She turned away, unable to look at him.

Joao returned the canteen to Chen-Lhu, thinking how secretively the man awoke. The first you knew about it was his voice, alert and intrusive. Chen-Lhu probably lay there pretending sleep, but awake and listening.

“I… I think I’m hungry,” Rhin said.

Chen-Lhu produced ration packets and they ate in silence.

Now she felt thirst… and was surprised to have Chen-Lhu produce the canteen before she asked. He handed it to her. She knew then that he studied her and was aware of her emotions, saw many of her thoughts. It was a disquieting discovery. She drank in anger, thrust the canteen back at Chen-Lhu.

He smiled.

“Unless they’re on the roof where we can’t see them, or under the wings, our friends have left us,” Joao said.

“So I’ve noticed,” Chen-Lhu said.

Joao allowed his gaze to traverse both shores as far as he could see.

Not a movement of life.

Not a sound.

The sun had mounted high enough now to burn the mist off the river.

“It’s going to be a hellish hot day in here,” Rhin said.

Joao nodded.

The warmth had a definite moment of beginning, he thought. One instant it wasn’t there, then it forced itself upon the senses. He released his safety harness, tipped his seat aside and slid into the rear of the cabin, put his hands on the dogs that sealed the rear hatch.

“Where’re you going?” Rhin demanded. She blushed as she heard her own question.

Chen-Lhu chuckled.

She felt herself hating Chen-Lhu’s callousness then, even when he tried to soften the effect of his reaction by saying, “We must learn certain blind spots of western conventionality, Rhin.”

The derision was still there in his voice, and she heard it, whirled away.

Joao cracked open the hatch, examined the edges of it, inside and out. No obvious sign of insects. He looked down at the flat surface of the float extending to the rear beside the rocket motors—two and a half meters of low platform almost a meter wide. No sign of insects there.

He dropped down, closed the hatch.

As soon as the hatch closed, Rhin turned on Chen-Lhu.

“You are insufferable!” she blazed.

“Now, Doctor Kelly.”

“Don’t pull that we-professionals-together bit,” she said. “You’re still insufferable.”

Chen-Lhu lowered his voice, said, “Before he comes back, we’ve a few things to discuss. There’s no time for personalities. This is IEO business.”

“The only IEO business we have is to carry your story to headquarters,” she said.

He stared at her. This reaction had been predictable, of course, but a way had to be found to move her. The Brazilians have a saying, he thought, and said, “When you talk of duty, speak also of money.”

“A conta foi paga por mim,” she said. “I paid that account.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that you pay anything,” he said.

“Are you offering to buy me?” she snapped.

“Others have,” he said.

She glared at him. Was he threatening to tell Joao about her past in the IEO’s investigative/espionage branch? Let him! But she’d learned a few things in the line of duty, and she assumed a look of uncertainty now. What did Chen-Lhu have in mind?

Chen-Lhu smiled. Westerners were always so susceptible to cupidity. “You wish to hear more?” he asked.

Her silence was acquiescence.

“For now,” Chen-Lhu said, “you will ply your wiles upon Johnny Martinho, make him a slave of love. He must be reduced to a creature who’ll do anything for you. For you, that should be fairly easy.”

I’ve done it before, eh? she thought.

She turned away. Well… I have done it before: in the name of duty.

Chen-Lhu nodded to himself behind her. The patterns of life were unshakable. She’d come around—almost out of habit. The hatch beside him opened and Joao climbed up into the cabin.

“Not a sign of anything,” he said, slipping back into his seat. “I left the hatch on half-lock in case anyone else wants to go out now.”

“Rhin?” Chen-Lhu said.

She shook her head, took a shivering breath. “No.”

“Then I’ll avail myself of the opportunity,” Chen-Lhu said. He opened the hatch, climbed down to the float, closed the hatch.

Without turning, Rhin knew the hatch only appeared to be closed, that Chen-Lhu had left open a crack and had his ear to the opening. She stared straight ahead at the river’s quicksilver track. The pod lay suspended in a blue vault of motionless air that slowly inflated with heat until she knew it must explode.

Joao looked at her. “You all right?”

There’s a laugh! she thought.

A minute passed in silence.

“Something’s wrong,” Joao said. “You and Travis were whispering while I was out there. I couldn’t make out what you said, but there was anger in your tone.”

She tried to swallow in a dry throat. Chen-Lhu was listening to this, sure as hell. “I… he was teasing me.”

“Teasing you?”

“Yes.”

“About what?”

She turned away, studied the feathered softness of hills lifting to the right, and glimpsed far away there the snow cone of a mountain with a black tonsure of volcanic ash. Some of the mountain’s serenity invaded her senses.

“About you,” she said.

Joao looked at his hands, wondering why her admission embarrassed him.

In this silence, Rhin began to hum. She had a good voice and knew it: throaty, intimate. The voice was one of her best tools.

But Joao recognized the song and wondered at her choice. Even after she fell silent, the melody hung around him like a vapor. It was a native lament, a Lorca tragedy arranged for guitar:

Stay your whip, Old Death—

It is not I who seeks your dark sea.

I would not whine, nor beg—

But ask it as one who has done your work.

This river which is my life,

Let it flow yet awhile in tranquility;

For my love has gray smoke in her eyes…

And farewells are difficult.

She’d only hummed the song, but the words were there, all the same.

Joao looked out to the left.

The river was lined here with mango trees, dense green foliage broken by the lighter sage of tropical mistletoe and occasional fur-coated chonta palms. Above the jungle’s near reaches hovered two black and white urubu vultures. They hung in the burned-out steel blue sky as though painted there on a false backdrop.

The apparent tranquility of the scene held no illusions for Joao. And he wondered if this were the tranquility referred to in the song.

A flock of tanagers caught his attention. They swept overhead, glistening turquoise, dived into the jungle wall and were swallowed by it as though they’d never been.

The mango shore on the left gave way to a narrow strip of grass on a medium embankment, red-brown earth pitted with holes.

The hatch opened, and Joao heard Chen-Lhu clamber into the cabin. There came the sound of the hatch being closed and dogged.

“Johnny, do I see something moving in the trees behind that grass?” Chen-Lhu asked.

Joao focused his attention on the scene. Yes! Something just inside the tree shadows—many figures that moved like a flitting current to keep pace with the pod.

Joao lifted the sprayrifle which he had wedged to the left of his seat.

“That’s a long shot,” Rhin said.

“I know. I just want to put them on notice—keep them at a distance.”

He fumbled with the seal on the gunport, but before he could open it, the figures stepped out of the shadows into the full sunlight of the grassy bench.

Joao gasped.

“Mother of God, Mother of God…” Rhin whispered.

It was a mixed group standing as though on review along the shore. They were mostly human in shape, although there were a few giant copies of insect forms—mantidae, beetles, something with a whip-like proboscis. The humans were mainly in the form of Indians and most of those like the ones who’d kidnapped Joao and his father.

Interspersed along the line, though, stood single editions, individuals: there, one identical in appearance to the Prefect, Joao’s father; beside him… Vierho! and all the men from the camp.

Joao pushed the sprayrifle through the port.

“No!” Rhin said. “Wait. See their eyes, how glassy they look. Those could be our friends… drugged or…” She broke off.

Or worse, Joao thought.

“It’s possible they’re hostages,” Chen-Lhu said. “One sure way to find out—shoot one of them.” He stood up, opened the gig-box. “Here’s a hard-pellet…”

“Stuff that!” Joao snarled. He withdrew his sprayrifle, sealed the port.

Chen-Lhu pursed his lips in thought. These Latins! So unrealistic. He returned the hard-pellet rifle to the box, sat down. One of the lesser individuals could have been chosen as target. Valuable information could have been gained. Pressing the issue now would gain nothing, though. Not now.

“I don’t know about you two,” Rhin said, “but in my school we were taught not to kill our friends.”

“Of course, Rhin, of course,” Chen-Lhu said. “But are those our friends?”

She said, “Until I know for sure…”

“Exactly!” Chen-Lhu said. “And how will you know for sure?” He pointed toward the figures standing now behind them as the shore once more drifted into a line of overhanging trees and vines. “That is a school, too, Rhin—that jungle over there. You should learn its lesson, too.”

Double meaning, double meaning, she thought.

“The jungle is a school of pragmatism,” Chen-Lhu said. “Absolute judgments. Ask it about good and evil? The jungle has one answer: ‘That which succeeds is good.’”

He’s telling me to get on with the seduction of Senhor Johnny Martinho while the poor fool’s still wide open from shock, she thought. True enough—danger, shock and horror, they all create their own rebound.

She nodded to herself. But where do I bounce?

“If those were Indians, I’d know why they put on that show,” Joao said. “But those are not really Indians. We cannot tell how these creatures think. Indians would do that sort of thing to taunt us, saying: ‘You’re next.’ But these creatures…” He shook his head.

Silence invaded the pod: an impressive solitude magnified by heat and the hypnotic flow of shoreline.

Chen-Lhu lay back, drowsing, thought: I will let the heat and idleness do my work for me.

Joao stared at his hands.

He’d never before been trapped in a situation where both fear and idleness forced him to look inward. The experience terrified and fascinated him.

Fear is the penalty of consciousness forced to stare at itself, Joao thought. I should be busy with something. With what? Sleep, then.

But he feared sleep because he sensed dreams poised there.

Emptiness… what a prize that would be: emptiness, he thought.

He felt that somewhere in his past he had reached a glowing summit devoid of before-and-after complications, a place of no doubts. Action… play… reflex motion—that had been the life. Now, it all lay there, open to introspection, open to study and re-examination.

But he sensed there might be a tip-over point with introspection, that somewhere within him lurked memories which could engulf him.

Rhin rested her head against the back of the seat, looked up at the sky. Someone’ll start looking for us soon, she thought. They must… they must… they must.

Must rhymes with lust, she thought. And she swallowed, wondering where that thought had originated. She forced her attention to the sky—so blue… blue… blue: a blank surface upon which anything could be written.

Searchers could come over us at any minute now.

Her gaze wavered, went to the mountains along the western horizon. Mountains grew and diminished there as the river carried her through its blue furrow.

It’s the things we must not think about because they’d overpower us with emotion, she thought. These things are the terrible burden. Her hand crept out, clasped Joao’s. He didn’t look at her, but the pressure of his response was more than a hand enfolding hers.

Chen-Lhu saw the motion and smiled.

Joao stared out at the passing shore. The pod drifted on an enchanted current between drooping curtains of lianas. The current carried them around a bend, exposing the towered brilliance of three Fernan Sanchez trees: imperative red against the green. But Joao’s eye went to the water where the river was at work, slowly undercutting clawed roots in the muddy bank.

Her hand in mine, he thought. Her hand in mine.

Her palm was moist, intimate, possessive.

Rising waves of heat encased the pod in dead air. The sun grew to a throbbing inferno that drifted over them… slowly, slowly settling toward the western peaks.

Hands together… hands together, Joao thought.

He began to pray for the night.

Evening shadows began to quilt the river’s edges. Night swept upward from the trench of slow current towards the blazing peaks.

Chen-Lhu stirred, sat up as the sun dipped behind the mountains. Amethyst vapors from the sunset produced a space of polished ruby water ahead of the pod—like flowing blood. There came a moment at the dark when the river appeared to cease all movement. Then they entered the damply cushioned night.

This is the time of the timid and the terrible, Chen-Lhu thought. The night is my time—and I am not timid.

And he smiled at the way the two shadows in the front seats had become one shadow.

The animal with two backs, he thought. It was such an amusing thought that he put a hand to his mouth to suppress laughter.

Presently, Chen-Lhu spoke: “I will sleep now, Johnny. You take the first watch. Wake me at midnight.”

The small stirring noises from the front of the cabin ceased momentarily, then resumed.

“Right,” Joao said, and his voice was husky.

Ahh, that Rhin, Chen-Lhu thought. Such a good tool even when she does not want to be.