The Green Brain

Chapter VIII

THE REPORT, although interesting for its variations, added little to the Brain’s general information about humans. They reacted with shock and fear to the display along the river bank. That was to be expected. The Chinese had demonstrated practicality not shared by the other two. This fact, added to the apparent attempts of the Chinese to get the other two to mate—that might be significant. Time would tell.

Meanwhile, the Brain experienced something akin to another human emotion—worry.

The trio in the vehicle were drifting farther and farther away from the chamber above the river chasm. A significant delay factor was entering the system of report-computation-decision-action.

The Brain’s sensors reviewed once more the messenger pattern being repeated on the cavern ceiling.

The vehicle was approaching a series of rapids. Its occupants could be killed there and irrevocably lost. Or they might renew their efforts to fly away in the craft. There lay a worry-element requiring a heavy weighing factor.

The vehicle had flown once.

Computation-decision.

“You report to the action groups,” the Brain commanded. “Tell them to capture the vehicle and occupants before they reach the rapids. Capture the humans alive, if possible. Order of importance if some of them must be sacrificed: first the Chinese is to be taken, then the dormant queen, and finally the other male.”

The insects on the ceiling danced their message pattern and hummed the modulation elements to fix them, then took off into the dawn light at the cave mouth.

Action.

Chen-Lhu stared downriver across the front seats, watching the moon-path crawl beneath the pod. The path rippled with spider lines in the eddies, flowed like painted silk in the broad reaches.

The breathing sounds of deep, satiated sleep came from the front of the cabin.

Now I probably will not have to kill that fool, Johnny, Chen-Lhu thought.

He looked out the side windows at the moon, low and near to setting. Bronze earthlight filled out the middle circle. Within this darker area there appeared the likeness of a face: Vierho.

He is dead, Johnny’s companion, Chen-Lhu thought. That was a simulacrum we saw beside the river. Nothing could’ve survived that attack on the camp. Our friends out there have copied dear Padre.

Chen-Lhu asked himself then: I wonder how Vierho encountered death—as an illusion or as a cataclysm?

A bootless question.

Rhin turned in her sleep, pressed close to Joao. “Mmmmm,” she murmured.

Our friends will not hold off the attack much longer, Chen-Lhu thought. It’s obvious they’ve just been awaiting the proper time and place. Where will it come—in a rock-filled gorge, at a narrow place? Where?

The thought turned every shadow outside into a source of peril, and Chen-Lhu wondered at himself that he could have allowed his mind to play such a fear-inspiring trick.

Still, he strained his senses against the night.

There was a waiting-silence outside, a feeling of presence in the jungle.

This is nonsense! Chen-Lhu told himself.

He cleared his throat.

Joao turned against the seat, felt Rhin’s head cradled against him. How quietly she breathed.

“Travis,” he whispered.

“Yes?”

“Time’s it?”

“Go back to sleep, Johnny. You’ve a couple more hours.”

Joao closed his eyes, lay back into his seat, but deep sleep evaded him. Something about the cabin… something. There was something here demanding his recognition. His awareness came farther and farther out of sleep.

Mildew.

It was stronger in the cabin than it had been—and there was the acrid tang of rust.

The smells filled Joao with melancholy. He could feel the pod deteriorating around him, and the pod was a symbol of civilization. These imperative odors represented all human decay and mortality.

He stroked Rhin’s hair, thought: Why shouldn’t we grab a little happiness here, now? Tomorrow we could be dead… or worse.

Slowly, he sank back into sleep.

A flock of parakeets announced the dawn. They chattered and gossiped in the jungle beside the river. Smaller birds joined the chorus—flutterings, chirps, twitters.

Joao heard the birds as though from an enormous distance pulling him upward to wakefulness. He awoke, sweating, feeling oddly weak.

Rhin had moved away from him in the night. She slept curled against her side of the cabin.

Joao stared out at blue-white light. Smoky mist hid the river upstream and downstream. There was a feeling of moist, unhealthy warmth in the closed cabin’s air. His mouth tasted dry and bitter.

He sat up straight, leaned forward to look through the overhead curve of windshield. His back ached from sleeping in a cramped position.

“Don’t look up for searchers, Johnny,” Chen-Lhu said.

Joao coughed, said, “I was just looking at the weather. We’re going to get rain soon.”

“Perhaps.”

So gray, that sky, Joao thought. It was an empty slate prepared as a setting for one vulture that sailed into view across the treetops, wings motionless. The vulture tipped majestically, beat its wings once… twice… and flew upstream.

Joao lowered his gaze, noted that the pod had become part of a drifting island of logs and brush during the night. He could see parasite moss on the logs. It was an old island—at least one season old… no, older. The moss was thick.

As he watched, an eddy came between the pod and the logs. They parted company.

“Where are we?” Rhin asked.

Joao turned to see her sitting up, awake. She avoided his eyes.

What the hell? he thought. Is she ashamed?

“We are where we’ve always been, my dear Rhin,” Chen-Lhu said. “We’re on the river. Are you hungry?”

She considered the question, found that she was ravenous.

“Yes, I’m hungry.”

They ate in quick silence with Joao growing more and more convinced that Rhin was avoiding him. She was first out the hatch to the float and stayed a long time. When she returned, she lay back in the seat, pretending sleep.

To hell with her, Joao thought. He went out the hatch, slammed it after him.

Chen-Lhu leaned forward, whispered close to Rhin’s ear, “You were very good last night, my dear.”

She spoke without opening her eyes: “To hell with you.”

“But I don’t believe in hell.”

“And I do?” She opened her eyes, stared at him.

“Of course.”

“Each in his own way,” she said, and she closed her eyes.

For some reason he couldn’t explain, her words and action angered him, and he tried to goad her with what he knew of her beliefs: “You are a terrible aboriginal calamity!”

Again, she spoke without opening her eyes: “That’s Cardinal Newman. Stuff Cardinal Newman.”

“You don’t believe in original sin?” he jeered.

“I only believe in certain kinds of hell,” she said, and again she was looking at him, the green eyes steady.

“To each his own, eh?”

“You said it; I didn’t.”

“But you did say it.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes! You said it!”

“You’re shouting,” she said.

He took a moment to calm himself, then, in a whisper: “And Johnny, was he good?”

“Better than you could ever be.”

Joao opened the hatch and entered the cabin before Chen-Lhu could answer, found Rhin staring up at him.

“Howdy, Jefe,” she said. And she smiled, a warm, intimate, sharing smile.

Joao answered the smile, slipped into his seat. “We’re going to hit rapids today,” he said. “I can feel it. What were you shouting about, Travis?”

“It was nothing,” Chen-Lhu said, but his voice still grated with anger.

“It was an ideological issue,” Rhin said. “Travis remains a militant atheist to the end. Me, I believe in heaven.” She stroked Joao’s cheek.

“Why do you think we are near rapids?” Chen-Lhu asked. And he thought: I must divert this conversation! This is a dangerous game you play with me, Rhin.

“Current’s faster, for one thing,” Joao said. He stared out the front windows. A new, surging character definitely had come over the river. Hills had drawn closer to the channel. More eddies trailed their lines from the shores.

A band of long-tailed monkeys began pacing the pod. They roared and chittered through the trees along the left bank, only to abandon the game at a river bend.

“Every creature I see out there, I have to ask myself: Is that really what it seems?” Rhin said.

“Those are really monkeys,” Joao said. “I think there are some things our friends cannot imitate.”

The river straightened now, and the hills pressed closer. Thick twistings of hardwood trees along both shores gave way to lines of sago palms backed by rising waves of the jungle’s omnipresent greens. Only infrequently was the green broken by smooth red-skinned trunks of guayavilla leaning over the water.

Around another bend, and they surprised a long-legged pink bird feeding in the shallows. It lifted on heavy pinions, flew downstream.

“Fasten your seatbelts,” Joao said.

“Are you that certain?” Chen-Lhu asked.

“Yes.”

Joao heard buckles snapping, fastened his own harness, looked at the dash to review Vierho’s changes in controls. Igniter… firing light… throttle. He moved the wheel; how sluggish it felt. One silent prayer for the patch on the right hand float, and he set himself in readiness.

The sound came as a faint roaring like wind through trees. They felt another quickening of the current that swept the pod around a wide bend, turning in an eddy until it faced directly downstream, and there, no more than a kilometer away, they saw the snarled boiling of white water. Foam and misting spume hurled itself into the air. The sound was a crashing drum roar growing louder by the second.

Joao weighed the circumstances—high walls of trees on both sides, narrowing channel, high black walls of wet rock on both sides of the rapids. There was only one way to go: through it.

Current and distance required careful judgment: the pod’s floats had to hit the crosscurrent waves above the rapids at just the right moment for those waves to help break the river’s grip on the floats.

This’ll be the place, Chen-Lhu thought. Our friends’ll be here… waiting for us. He gripped a sprayrifle, tried to see both shores at once.

Rhin gripped the sides of her seat, pressed herself backward against the cushions. She felt that they were hurtling without hope toward the maelstrom.

“Something in the trees on our right,” Chen-Lhu said. “Something overhead.”

A shadow darkened the water all around them. Fluttering white shapes began to obscure the view ahead.

Joao punched the igniter, counted—one, two, three. Light off—throttle.

The motors caught with a great banging, spitting roar that drowned the sound of the rapids. The pod surged through the screen of insects, out of the shadow. Joao swerved them to avoid a line of foaming rocks in the upper pool. He nursed the throttle by the feeling of G-pressure against his back.

Don’t blow, baby, he prayed. Don’t blow.

“A net!” Rhin screamed. “They have a net across the river!”

It lifted from the water above the rapids like a dripping snake.

Reflex moved Joao’s hand on the throttle, sent the knob slamming against the dash.

The pod leaped, skimmed across a glossy pool. Slithering current tugged them sideways toward smooth black walls of rock. The net stood out directly ahead when the pod lifted, floats breaking from the water.

Up… up.

Joao could see the river plunge off beyond the net, water leaping in crazy violence there as though trying to escape the glassy black walls of rock.

Something slapped the floats with a screech and sound of tearing. The pod’s nose dipped, bounced up as Joao hauled on the wheel. A staccato rattling shook the craft. Spray filled the air all around.

In one flickering moment, Joao saw motion along the chasm’s rim. A line of boulders thundered down there, fell behind.

Then they were out of it, airborne and climbing—lurching, twisting… but climbing. Joao eased the throttle back.

The pod thundered over a line of trees, back across the river. Another tree-spiked hill hot beneath them. A long straight avenue of water opened up ahead of them like turbulent brown grease.

Joao grew conscious of Rhin’s voice: “Look at us go! Look at us go!”

“That was inspired flying,” Chen-Lhu said.

Joao tried to swallow in a dry throat. The controls felt heavy under his hands. He saw downstream a great bend in the river, and beyond that a wide island-broken lake of flooded land.

Brown river… flooded land, he thought.

He fishtailed the pod, shot a look back to the west. Brown clouds were piled there, with black beneath them: thunderheads! Rain in the hills behind us, he thought. Flood here. It must’ve happened during the night.

And he cursed himself for not noticing the change in water color earlier.

“What’s wrong, Johnny?” Chen-Lhu asked.

“Nothing we can do anything about.”

Joao eased the throttle back another notch, another. The motors sputtered, died. He shut off all fuel.

Wind whistled around them as Joao eased back on the wheel, trying to gain as much distance as possible. The pod began to stagger at the edge of stalling. He tipped the nose down, still nursing it for distance. But the pod flew like all pods—gliding like a rock.

The wind of their passage was an eerie whistling that filled the cabin.

The river curved off to the left through more drowned land. A thin furrow of turbulent water marked the main channel. Gently, Joao banked the pod, turned to follow that furrow. The water rushed up to meet them. The pod began to yaw and Joao fought the controls.

Floats touched in a splashing, rocking motion with too much drag. An eddy turned the pod. The right wing began to drop—lower, lower.

Joao aimed for a brown sand beach on their left.

“We’re sinking,” Rhin said, and her voice conveyed both surprise and horror in a flat tone of understatement.

“That right float,” Chen-Lhu said. “I felt it hit the net.”

The left float grated on sand, stopped, spun the sinking float in a short arc until it, too, touched. Something gurgled under the water to the right and a burst of bubbles lifted to the surface. Less than six millimeters of air remained between the right wing tip and the water.

Rhin buried her head in her hands and shuddered.

“Now what?” Chen-Lhu asked. And he felt shocked amusement as he heard the dismay in his own voice.

Now it is the end, he thought. Our friends will find us here. It is the end for sure.

“Now we repair the float,” Joao said.

Rhin lifted her face from her hands, stared at him.

“Out here?” Chen-Lhu asked. “Ahhh, Johnny…”

Rhin pressed the back of her left hand against her mouth, thought: Joao—he just said that to keep me from despair.

“Certainly, out here!” Joao snapped. “Now shut up while I think.”

Rhin lowered her hand, said, “Is it possible?”

“If they give us enough time,” Joao said.

He broke the canopy seals, folded it forward. The sound of brawling water impressed itself on his senses. He unfastened his safety harness, all the while looking around, studying the air, the jungle, the river.

No insects.

Joao climbed out, slipped down to the slanted surface of the left float, studied the jungle beyond the beach: a confusion of interlaced branches, vines, creepers and tree ferns.

“There could be an army just inside that jungle and we couldn’t see them,” Chen-Lhu whispered.

Joao looked up. The Chinese stood at the inner edge of the cabin.

“How do you propose to repair the float?” Chen-Lhu asked.

Rhin appeared beside him, waited for the answer.

“I don’t know yet,” Joao said. He turned, looked downstream. A line of ripples moved up the river there, pushed by a wind out of a furnace. The ripples fanned out before the wind and grew as the wind grew. Then the wind died. Air and water wavered in the damp heat. A pressure of heat radiated from the pod’s metal and from the beach.

Joao slid off into the water. It felt warm and thick.

“What about the cannibal fish?” Rhin asked.

“They can’t see me; I can’t see them,” Joao said. “A fair exchange.”

He splashed around beneath the rocket motors. The smell of unburned fuel was strong there and an oily glaze of it was beginning to trail off downstream. Joao shrugged, bent and ran a hand gently along the outer edge of the right float, wading forward as he explored the hidden surface.

Just back of the leading edge, his fingers encountered a jagged rip in the metal and trailing remnants of Vierho’s patch. Joao explored the hole. It was a dismayingly big one.

Metal scraped as Chen-Lhu dropped down to the left float, a sprayrifle in his hand. “How bad is it?” he asked.

Joao straightened, waded out to the beach. “Bad enough.”

“Well, can it be fixed?” Chen-Lhu demanded.

Joao turned, looked at the man, surprised by the grating quality in Chen-Lhu’s voice.

He’s frightened silly! Joao thought.

“We’ll have to get that float out of the water before I can be sure,” Joao said. “But I think we can patch it.”

“How’ll you get it out of the water?”

“Vines… a Spanish windlass, limbs for rollers.”

Rhin spoke from the cabin: “How long?”

“By tonight, if we’re lucky,” Joao said.

“They won’t give us that long,” Chen-Lhu said.

“We gained thirty or forty kilometers on them,” Joao said.

“But they, too, can fly,” Chen-Lhu said. He raised the sprayrifle, aiming upstream. “And here they come.”

Joao whirled as Chen-Lhu fired, was in time to see a broad front of spray-bursts knock down a fluttering line of white, red and gold insects, each as long as a man’s thumb. But more came behind… and more… and more…

“And again it flew,” the Brain accused.

The messengers on the ceiling danced and hummed their report, made way for a new group flitting in like bits of golden mica through the sunlight at the cave mouth.

“The vehicle is down and badly damaged,” the newcomers reported. “It no longer floats on the water, but lies partly beneath the water. The humans do not appear to be damaged. We already are leading the action groups to the place, but the humans are shooting their poisons at everything that moves. What are your instructions?”

The Brain worked to quiet itself for computation and decision. Emotions… emotions, it thought. Emotions are the curse of logic.

Data-data-data—it was loaded with data. But always there was that shading-off factor. New events modified old facts. The Brain knew many facts about humans—observational facts, some achieved deductively and inductively, some garnered from microfilm libraries the humans had stored in the Red against the time of their return.

So many gaps in the data.

The Brain longed then for the ability to move about by itself, to observe with its own sensors what it could only gather from messengers now. The wish brought a rash of fuzzy signals from the dormant and almost atrophied muscle-control centers. Nurse insects scurried over the Brain’s surface, feeding where these unusual demands arose, countering with hormonal additives the frustration blockages that for a moment threatened the entire structure.

Atheism, the Brain thought, as chemical serenity returned. They spoke of atheism and heaven (religion-subtended). These matters puzzled the Brain. The conversation, reportedly, had come out of an argument and pertained somehow to the human mating pattern… at least among the humans in the vehicle.

The insects on the ceiling jittered through a repetition of their message. “What are your instructions?”

What are my instructions?

My instructions.

I… me… my.

Again, the nurse insects scurried.

Calmness returned to the Brain, and it wondered at the fact that thoughts—mere thoughts—could bring such upset. The same thing appeared to occur with humans.

“The humans in the vehicle must be captured alive,” the Brain commanded. (And it realized the command was a selfish one. It had so many questions for this trio.) “Take in all available action groups. Locate a suitable place downriver, better than the last one, and post half the action groups there. The other half must attack as soon as possible.”

The Brain subsided without releasing its messengers, then, almost as an afterthought: “If all else fails, kill everything except their heads. Save and maintain their heads.”

Now, the messengers were released. They had their instructions, and they fluttered out of the cave into the bright sunlight above the roar of water.

In the west, a cloud passed over the sun.

And the Brain marked this fact, noting that the sound of the river was louder today.

Rains in the highlands, it thought. This thought elicited images within its memory: wet leaves, rivulets on the forest floor, damp cold air, feet splashing on gray clay.

The feet of the image appeared to be its own, and the Brain found this an odd fact. But the nurse insects had the chemical serenity of their charge well in hand now, and the Brain went on to consider every datum it possessed about Cardinal Newman. Nowhere could it discover reference to a stuffed Cardinal Newman.

The patch consisted of leaves bound with tent lines and vines on the outside and spray coagulants from a doctored foamal bomb which Joao had exploded inside the float. The pod floated upright on the river beside the beach now while he stood waist deep beside it, checking their work.

The charged hiss and cork-popping of sprayrifles and foamal bombs went on intermittently above him. The air was thick with the bitter smell of the poisons. Black and orange scum floated past him down the river and lay in puff mounds on the beach around the remains of their vine-powered windlass. Each bit of scum carried its imbedded collection of dead and dying insects.

Rhin leaned over during a lull in the attack, said, “For the love of God, how much longer?”

“It seems to be holding,” Joao rasped.

He rubbed at his neck and arms. Not all the insects were being caught by the sprayrifles and bombs. His skin felt like fire from the accumulation of stings and bites. When he looked up at Rhin, he saw that her forehead was welted.

“If it’s holding, shove us off,” Chen-Lhu said. He appeared above Joao, standing behind Rhin, glanced down and returned his attention to the sky.

Joao staggered with a sudden dizziness, almost fell. His body ached with weariness. It required a distinct effort to lift his head and scan the sky around them. Distant sky. They had perhaps an hour of daylight left.

“For God’s sake, shove off!” Rhin shouted.

Joao grew aware that the firing had resumed. He pulled himself along the float toward the beach, and the action sent the pod outward. It swung over him and he stared stupidly upward at the patched belly tank wondering who had done that work.

Oh, yes—Vierho.

The pod continued to drift outward, caught now by the current. It was at least two meters from Joao when he realized he was supposed to be aboard it. He lunged for the right float, caught its rear edge and hauled himself sprawling onto it with almost the last of his strength.

A hand reached down from the open hatch, grabbed his collar. With the help of the hand, he clambered to his knees, crawled up into the cabin. Only when he was inside did he see that it was Rhin’s hand.

They had the canopy down and sealed, he noted. Chen-Lhu was darting around the interior smashing insects with a roll of charts.

Joao felt something sting his right leg, looked down to see Rhin kneeling there and applying a fresh energy pack.

Why is she doing that? he wondered. Then he remembered: Oh, yes—the stings, the poisons.

“Won’t we have some immunity from the last bout?” he asked and was surprised when his voice came out a whisper.

“Maybe,” she said. “Unless they hit us with something new.”

“I think I have most of them,” Chen-Lhu said. “Rhin, did you seal the hatch?”

“Yes.”

“I sprayed with the hand unit under the seats and dash.” Chen-Lhu reached down, put a hand under Joao’s arm. “Here we go, Johnny. Into your seat, eh?”

“Yes.” Joao staggered forward, sank into the seat. His head felt as though it rested on slack rubber. “Are we in the current?” he gasped.

“We seem to be,” Chen-Lhu said.

Joao sat there panting. He could feel the energy pack like a distant army working inward against his weariness. Perspiration flooded his skin, but his mouth felt dry and hot. The windshield ahead of him was dappled with the orange and black spray and foam residue.

“They’re still with us,” Chen-Lhu said. “Along the shore over there and some kind of a group overhead.”

Joao peered around him. Rhin had returned to her seat. She sat with a sprayrifle across her lap, her head thrown back, eyes closed. Chen-Lhu knelt on the gig-box and peered at the left-hand shore.

The interior of the cabin appeared to Joao to be filled with dappled gray-green shadows. His mind told him there must be other colors present, but he saw only the gray-greens—even Chen-Lhu’s skin… and Rhin’s.

“Something’s… wrong… with… color,” he whispered.

“Color aberration,” Chen-Lhu said. “That was one of the symptoms.”

Joao looked out a clean place in the right windows, saw through the trees a scattering of dun peaks and a gray-green sun low above them.

“Close your eyes, lean back and relax,” Rhin said.

Joao rolled his head on the seat back, saw that she had put aside her sprayrifle and was bending over him. She began massaging his forehead.

She spoke to Chen-Lhu: “His skin feels hot.”

Joao closed his eyes. Her hands felt so peaceful and cool. The blackness of utter fatigue hovered around him… and far off on his right leg he felt a drumbeat: the energy pack.

“Try to sleep,” Rhin whispered.

“Rhin, how do you feel?” Chen-Lhu asked.

“I put a pack on my leg during that first lull,” she said. “I think it’s the A.C.T.H. fractions—they seem to give immediate relief if you haven’t been hit too hard.”

“And Johnny got much more than we did from our friends.”

“Out there? Of course he did.”

The word sounds were a distant fuzziness to Joao, but the meanings rang through with a startling clarity, and he found himself fascinated by voice overtones. Chen-Lhu’s voice was loaded with concealment. Rhin’s carried suppressed fear and genuine concern for himself.

Rhin gave his forehead one last soothing caress, sank back into her seat. She pushed her hair back, looked out to the west. Movement there, yes: white flutterings and things that were larger. She moved her gaze upward. Alto cirrus clouds hung in the distance above the trees. Sunset poured color through them as she watched and the clouds became waves as red as blood.

She averted her eyes, looked downstream.

The current swept the pod around a sickle-shaped bend and they drifted almost due north in a widening channel. Along the eastern shore the water flowed with mauve-tinted silver, metallic and luminous.

A deep booming of jungle doves sounded from the right bank—or was it doves. Rhin looked around her, feeling the hushed stillness.

The sun dipped behind distant peaks and the nightly patrol of bats flickered overhead, swooping and soaring. Noises of evening birds lifted, stilled and were replaced by night sounds—the far off coughing growl of a jaguar, rustlings and quiverings and a nearby splash.

And again that hushed stillness.

Something out there that everything in the jungle fears, Rhin thought.

An amber moon began to climb over them. The pod drifted down the moon-path like a giant dragonfly poised on the water. A skeleton butterfly fluttered into view through the pale light, waved the filigree of its transparent wings on the pod’s windshield, departed.

“They’re keeping a close watch on us,” Chen-Lhu said.

Joao could feel warmth coursing upward from the energy pack as the A.T.P., the calcium and acetylcholine, the A.C.T.H. factions diffused in his body. But a sensation of dizziness remained, as though he were many persons at once. He opened his eyes, looked out to the fuzzy spread of moonlit hills. He realized he actually saw this, but part of him felt as though it clung to the fabric ceiling of the cabin behind the canopy, crouching there, really. And the moon was an alien moon, like none he had ever known, its earthlighted circle far too big, its melon-curve of sun reflection far too bright. It was a false moon on a painted backdrop and it made him feel small, dwindling away to a tiny spark lost in the infinity of the universe.

He pressed his eyes tightly closed, berating himself: I mustn’t think like that or I’ll go crazy! God! What’s wrong with me?

Joao felt that a pressure of silence filled the cabin. He strained to hear tiny sounds—Rhin’s controlled breathing, Chen-Lhu clearing his throat.

Good and evil are man-made opposites: there is only honor. Joao heard the thought as words echoing in his mind and recognized them. Those were his father’s words… his father, now dead and become a simulacrum to haunt him by standing beside the river.

Men anchor their lives at a station between good and evil.

“You know, Rhin, this is a Marxian river,” Chen-Lhu said. “Everything in the universe flows like this river. Everything changes constantly from one form to another. Dialectic. Nothing can stop this; nothing should stop this. Nothing’s static, nothing ever twice the same.”

“Oh, shut up,” Rhin muttered.

“You western women,” Chen-Lhu said. “You don’t understand dialectical reality.”

“Tell it to the bugs,” she said.

“How rich this land is,” Chen-Lhu murmured. “How very rich. Do you have any idea of how many of my people this land could support. With only the slightest alteration—clearings, terraces… In China, we’ve learned how to make such land support millions of people.”

Rhin sat up, stared across the seat back at Chen-Lhu. “How’s that again?”

“These stupid Brazilians, they never learned how to use this land. But my people…”

“I see. Your people come in here and show them how, is that it?”

“It is a possibility,” Chen-Lhu said, and he thought: Digest that for a bit, my dear Rhin. When you see how great the prize, you will understand the price that might be paid.

“And what about the Brazilians—quite a few million of them—who’re crowded into the cities and the farm plots of the Resettlement Plan while their Ecological Realignment is progressing?”

“They are becoming used to their present condition.”

“They can stand it only because they have hopes for something better!”

“Ah, no, my dear Rhin, you don’t understand people very well. Governments can manipulate people to gain anything that’s found necessary.”

“And what about the insects?” she asked. “What about the Great Crusade?”

Chen-Lhu shrugged. “We lived with them for thousands of years… before.”

“And the mutations, the new species?”

“Yes, the creations of your bandeirante friends—those we very likely will have to destroy.”

“I’m not so sure the bandeirantes created those… things out there,” she said. “I’m sure Joao had nothing to do with it.”

“Ah… then who did?”

“Perhaps the same people who don’t want to admit their own Great Crusade’s a failure!”

Chen-Lhu put down anger, said, “I tell you it is not true.”

She looked down at Joao breathing so deeply, obviously asleep. Was it possible? No!

Chen-Lhu sat back, thinking: Let her consider these things. Doubt is all I need and she will serve me most usefully, my lovely little tool. And Johnny Martinho—what a lovely scapegoat: trained in North America, an unprincipled tool of the imperialists! A man of no shame, who made love to one of my own people right in front of me. His fellows will believe such a man capable of anything!

A quiet smile moved Chen-Lhu’s lips.

Rhin, looking into the rear of the cabin, could see only the harsh angular features of the IEO chief. He’s so strong, she thought. And I’m so tired.

She lowered her head onto Joao’s lap like a child seeking comfort, burrowed her left hand behind his back. How feverishly warm he felt. Her burrowing hand encountered a bulky metallic shape in Joao’s jacket. She explored the outline with her fingers, recognized it as a gun… a hand weapon.

Rhin withdrew her hand, sat up. Why does he carry a weapon which he conceals from us?

Joao continued to breath deeply, feigning sleep. Chen-Lhu’s words screamed through his mind, warning him, urging him to action. But caution intervened.

Rhin stared downstream wondering… doubting. The pod floated down a lane of moon glitter. Cold glows like fireflies danced in the forest darkness on both sides. A feeling of corruption came to her from that darkness.

Joao, reflecting on Chen-Lhu’s words, thought: “Everything in the universe flows like a river.” Why do I hesitate? I could turn and kill the bastard… or force him to tell the truth about himself. What part does Rhin play in this? She sounded angry with him. “Everything in the universe flows like a river.”

Introspection came hard to Joao, bringing dread, inner trembling that moved toward terror. Those creatures out there, he thought, time is on their side. My life is like a river. I flow—moments, memories… nothing eternal, no absolutes.

He felt feverish, dizzy and his own heartbeat intruded on his awareness.

Like a river.

He’s not going to warn anyone about the debacle in China. He has a plan… something in which he wants to use me.

The night wind had grown stronger and now it imparted an uneasy shifting motion to the pod, catching first one stub wing and then the other. As it came through the vent filters, a damp nutrient in the wind fed Joao’s awareness. He moaned as though awakening, sat up.

Rhin touched his arm. “How are you?” There was concern in her voice, and something else Joao could not recognize. Withdrawal? Shame?

“I… so warm,” he whispered.

“Water,” she said, and lifted a canteen to his lips.

The water felt cool, although he knew it must be warm. Part of it ran down his jaw and he realized then how weak he was in spite of the energy pack. The effort of swallowing required a terrible energy drain.

I’m sick, he thought. I’m really sick… very sick.

He allowed his head to fall against the back of the seat, stared up through the canopy’s transparent strip. The stars intruded on his awareness—sharp specks of light that stabbed through rushing clouds. The fitful wind-swayed motion of the pod sent stars and clouds tipping across his field of vision. The sensation began to make him feel nauseated, and he lowered his gaze, saw the flitting lights on the right shore.

“Travis,” he whispered.

“Heh?” And Chen-Lhu wondered how long Joao had been awake. Was I fooled by his breathing? Did I say too much?

“Lights,” Joao said. “Over there… lights.”

“Oh. Those. They’ve been with us for quite awhile. Our friends out there are keeping track of us.”

“How wide’s the river here?” Rhin asked.

“A hundred meters or so,” Chen-Lhu said.

“How can they see us?”

“How can they not in this moonlight?”

“Shouldn’t I give them a shot just to…”

“Save the ammunition,” Chen-Lhu said. “After that mess today… well, we couldn’t stand off another such day.”

“I hear something,” Rhin said. “Is it rapids?”

Joao pushed himself upright. The effort it required terrified him. I couldn’t handle the controls like this, he thought. And I doubt if Rhin or Travis know how.

He grew aware of a hissing sound.

“What is that?” Chen-Lhu asked.

Joao sighed, sank back. “Shallows, something in the river. Off there to the left.” The sound grew louder; the rhythmic lament of water against a stranded limb—and faded behind them.

“What’d happen if that right float hit something like that?” Rhin asked.

“End of the ride,” Joao said.

An eddy turned the pod, began swaying it back and forth in a slow, persistent pendulum—around, back, around… The floats danced across ripples and the pendulum stopped.

The darkly flowing jungle, the lights sent waves of drowsiness through Joao. He knew he could not stay awake if his life depended on it.

“I’ll stand watch tonight, Travis,” Rhin said.

“I wonder why our friends out there don’t bother us much at night?” Chen-Lhu said. “It’s very curious.”

“They’re not losing sight of us, though,” Rhin said. “Go to sleep. I’ll take the first watch.”

“Watch and nothing else,” Chen-Lhu said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just don’t go to sleep, my dear Rhin.”

“Go to hell,” she said.

“You forget: I don’t believe in hell.”

Joao awoke to the sound of rain and darkness that slowly crept into gray dawn. The light increased until he could see steel lines of downpour slanting against pale green jungle on his left. The other shore was a distant gray. It was a rain of monotonous violence that drummed against the canopy and pocked the river with countless tiny craters.

“Are you awake?” Rhin asked.

Joao sat up, found he felt refreshed and curiously clear headed. “How long’s it been raining like this?”

“Since about midnight.”

Chen-Lhu cleared his throat, leaned forward close to Joao. “I’ve seen no sign of our friends for hours. Could it be they don’t like rain?”

“I don’t like rain,” Joao said.

“What do you mean?” Rhin asked.

“This river’s going to become a raging hell.”

Joao looked up to his left at clouds hovering low above the trees. “And if there ever were going to be searchers, they sure as hell couldn’t see us now.”

Rhin wet her lips with her tongue. She felt suddenly emptied of emotion, realized then how much she had counted on being found. “How… how long does the rain last?” she asked.

“Four or five months,” Joao said.

An eddy turned the pod. Shoreline twisted across Joao’s vision: greenery dimmed to pastel by the torrent. “Anybody been outside?” he asked.

“I have,” Chen-Lhu said.

Joao turned, saw dark patches of wetness on the IEO fatigues.

“Nothing out there except rain,” Chen-Lhu said.

Joao’s right leg began to itch. He reached down, was surprised to find the energy pack gone.

“You began showing muscle spasms during the night,” Rhin said. “I took it off.”

“I must’ve really been asleep.” He touched her hand. “Thanks, nurse.”

She pulled her hand away.

Joao looked up, puzzled, but she turned, stared out her window.

“I’m… going outside,” Joao said.

“Do you feel strong enough?” she asked. “You were pretty weak.”

“I’m all right.”

He stood up, made his way back to the hatch and down to the pontoon. The rain felt warm and fresh against his face. He stood on the end of the float, enjoying the freshness.

In the cabin, Chen-Lhu said, “Why didn’t you go out and hold his hand, Rhin?”

“You’re an utter bastard, Travis,” she said.

“Do you love him a little?”

She turned, glared at him. “What do you want from me?”

“Your cooperation, my dear.”

“In what?”

“How would you like to have an emerald mine all your very own? Or perhaps diamonds? More wealth than you could possibly imagine?”

“In payment for what?”

“When the moment comes, Rhin, you’ll know what to do. And meanwhile, you make a pliant blob of putty out of our bandeirante.”

She silenced an angry outburst, whirled away. And she thought: Our bodies betray us. The Chen-Lhus of the world come along, push buttons, bend us and twist us… I won’t do it! I won’t! This Joao is too nice a guy. But why does he carry that weapon in his pocket?

I could kill her now and push Johnny off the float, Chen-Lhu thought. But this is a difficult craft to manage… and I’m not experienced in such matters.

Rhin turned a molten look on him.

Perhaps she’ll come around, Chen-Lhu thought. I know her weaknesses, certainly—but I must be sure.

Joao returned, slipped into his seat. He brought a fresh smell of wetness into the cabin, but the odor of mildew remained and it was growing stronger.

As the morning wore on, the rain slackened. A warm, misty feeling permeated the cabin’s air. Clouds of gun-metal cotton lifted to brush the hilltops above the river and a beaded drapery of raindrops hung on every visible tree.

The pod bobbed and twisted along a swift mud-brown flow accompanied by more and more flotsam—trees, brush, root islands as large as the pod, whole floes of grass and reeds.

Joao drowsed, wondering at the change in Rhin. In their world of the casual liaison, he knew he should merely shrug and make some witty remark. But he didn’t feel casual or witty about Rhin. She had touched some chord in him that the pleasures of flesh had never before reached.

Love? he wondered.

But their world had fallen out of the notion of romantic love. There was only family and honor where those things counted and all else involved doing-the-right-thing, which usually meant salvaging the least messy aspects from any situation that happened to fall apart.

No clear way of approaching his problem presented itself. Joao knew only that he was being nudged and pushed from within, that physical weakness contributed to the fuzziness of his thinking… and besides, their whole situation was hopeless.

I’m sick, he thought. The whole world’s sick.

In more ways than one.

A buzzing sound invaded Joao’s torpor. He snapped upright, wide awake.

“What’s wrong?” Rhin asked.

“Be quiet.” He held up a hand to silence her, cocked his head to one side.

Chen-Lhu leaned forward over the back of Joao’s seat. “A truck?”

“Yes, by God!” Joao said. “And it’s low.” He glanced at the sky around them, started to release the canopy, was restrained by Chen-Lhu, who put a hand on his arm.

“Johnny, look there,” Chen-Lhu said. He pointed to the left.

Joao turned.

From the shore came what appeared at first to be an odd cloud—wide, thick, moving with a purposeful directness. The cloud resolved itself into a mob of fluttering white, gray and gold insects. They came in at about fifty meters above the pod and the water darkened with their shadow.

The shadow reached out all around the pod and paced it, a moving cover to hide them from anything in the sky.

As the import of the maneuver penetrated Joao’s awareness, he turned, stared at Chen-Lhu. The man’s face appeared gray with shock.

“That’s… deliberate,” Rhin whispered.

“How can it be?” Chen-Lhu asked. “How can it be? How can it be?”

In the same moment, Chen-Lhu saw how Joao studied him, realized his own emotions. Anger at himself filled Chen-Lhu. I must not show fear to these savages! he thought. He forced himself to sit back, to smile and shake his head.

“To train insects,” Chen-Lhu said. “It is almost unbelievable… but someone obviously has done it. We see the evidence.”

“Please, God,” Rhin whispered. “Please.”

“Oh, stop your silly prattle, woman,” Chen-Lhu said. And even as he spoke, he knew that was the wrong tack to take with Rhin, and he said, “You must remain calm, Rhin. Hysterics serve no purpose.”

The rocket sound grew louder.

“Are you sure it’s a truck?” Rhin asked. “Perhaps…”

“Bandeirante truck,” Joao said. “They’ve rigged it to fire alternate pairs and save fuel. Hear that? That’s a bandeirante trick.”

“Could they be searching for us?”

“Who knows? Anyway, they’re above the clouds.”

“And above our friends, too,” Chen-Lhu said.

The pulsating counterpoint of rocket motors echoed along the hills. Joao turned his head to follow the sound. It grew fainter upstream, blended with the lapping-swishing-tumbling of the river.

“Won’t they come down and look for us?” Rhin pleaded.

“They weren’t looking for anyone,” Joao said. “They were just going from someplace to someplace.”

Rhin looked up at the covering blanket of insects. From this angle and distance, the individuals blended one into another and the whole cloud of them appeared to be one organism.

“We could shoot them down!” she said. She reached for a sprayrifle, but Joao grabbed her arm, stopped her.

“There’re still the clouds,” he said.

“And our friends have more reinforcements than we have spray charges,” Chen-Lhu said. “That I’ll wager.”

“But if the clouds weren’t there,” she said. “Won’t the clouds ever… go away?”

“They may burn off this afternoon,” Joao said, and he tried to speak soothingly. “This time of year they do that quite often.”

“They’re going!” Rhin said. She pointed at the insect cover. “Look! They’re going.”

Joao looked up to see the fluttering mass start to move back toward the left shore. The shadow accompanied them until they went into the trees and were lost from sight.

“They’re gone,” Rhin said.

“That only means the truck is no longer with us,” Joao said.

Rhin buried her face in her hands, fought down shuddering sobs.

Joao started to caress her neck, to comfort her, but she shook off his hand.

And Chen-Lhu thought: You must attract him, Rhin, not repel him.

“We must remember why we are here,” Chen-Lhu said. “We must remember what it is we must do.”

Rhin sat up, lowering her hands, took a deep breath that hurt the muscles of her chest.

“We must keep ourselves occupied,” Chen-Lhu said. “With trivia if necessary. It is a way to prevent… fear, boredom, angers. I tell you—I will describe for you an orgy I once attended in Cambodia. There were eight of us, not counting the women—a former prince, the minister of culture…”

“We don’t want to hear about your damned orgy!” Rhin snapped.

The flesh, Chen-Lhu thought. She dares not listen to anything that reminds her of her own flesh. That is her weakness, for sure. It is good that I know this.

“So?” Chen-Lhu said. “Very well. Tell us then about the fine life in Dublin, my dear Rhin. I love to hear of the people who trade wives and mistresses and ride horses and pretend the past has never died.”

“You’re really a terrible man,” Rhin said.

“Excellent!” Chen-Lhu said. “You may hate me, Rhin; I permit it. Hate keeps one occupied, too. One may indulge hate while one thinks about such things as wealth and pleasures. There are times when hate is a much more profitable occupation than making love.”

Joao turned, studied Chen-Lhu, hearing the words, seeing the harsh control on the man’s face. He uses words as weapons, Joao thought. He maneuvers people and pushes them with words. Doesn’t Rhin see this? But of course she doesn’t… because he’s using her for something, wielding her. For a moment, Joao sat stupefied with discovery.

“You watch me, Johnny,” Chen-Lhu said. “What do you think you see?”

Two can play that game, Joao thought. And he said, “I watch a man at work.”

Chen-Lhu stared. It wasn’t the kind of answer he’d expected—too subtly penetrating and leaving too much uncommitted. He reminded himself that it was difficult to control uncommitted people. Once a man had invested his energies, he could be twisted and turned at will… but if the man held back, conserved those energies…

“Do you think you understand me, Johnny?” Chen-Lhu asked.

“No, I don’t understand you.”

“Really, I’m quite uncomplicated; it’s not difficult to understand me,” Chen-Lhu said.

“That’s one of the most complicated statements any man ever made,” Joao said.

“Do you mock me?” Chen-Lhu asked, and he put down an upsurge of dismay and anger. Johnny was acting most out of character.

“How could I mock if I don’t understand?” Joao asked.

“Something has come over you,” Chen-Lhu said. “What is it? You are behaving most strangely.”

“Now we understand each other,” Joao said.

He goads me, Chen-Lhu thought. HE goads ME! And he asked himself: Will I have to kill this fool?

“See how easy it is to keep busy and forget our troubles,” Joao said.

Rhin glanced back at Chen-Lhu, saw a smile spread across his face. He was speaking mostly for my benefit, she thought. Wealth and pleasures—that’s the price. But what do I pay? She looked at Joao. Yes, I hand him a bandeirante on a platter! I give him Joao to use as he sees fit.

The pod floated backward down the river now, and Rhin stared upstream at hills that disappeared into drifting clouds. Why do I bother with such questions? she wondered. We don’t stand a chance. There are only these moments and the opportunity to take whatever pleasure we can from them.

“Are we down a little on the right side?” Joao asked.

“Perhaps a little,” Chen-Lhu said. “Do you think your patch is leaking?”

“It could be.”

“Do you have a pump in this stuff?”

“We could use a sprayhead from one of the hand units,” Joao said.

Rhin’s mind focused now on the weapon in Joao’s pocket, and she said, “Joao, don’t let them capture me alive.”

“Ahh, melodrama,” Chen-Lhu said.

“Leave her alone!” Joao snapped. He patted Rhin’s hand, looked out and around the pod on all sides. “Why do they leave us alone like this?”

“They’ve found a new place to wait,” Rhin said.

“Always look on the black side,” Chen-Lhu said. “What is the worst that could happen, eh? Perhaps they want our heads in the fashion of the aborigines who lived here once.”

“You’re a great help,” Joao said. “Hand me the sprayhead off one of those hand units.”

“At once, Jefe,” Chen-Lhu said, his voice mocking.

Joao accepted the metal and plastic hand pump unit, slipped back to the rear hatch and down to the float. He paused there a moment to study their surroundings. Not a sign of the creatures he knew were watching them. Downstream at a bend in the river, a rock escarpment loomed high over the trees—distance perhaps five or six kilometers.

Lava rock, Joao thought. And the river may have to get through that rock some way.

He bent to the float, unlocked the inspection plate and probed with the pump. A hollow sloshing echoed from the interior of the pontoon. He braced the pump against the side of the inspection hole, worked the toggle handle. A thin stream of water arched into the river, smelling of poisons from the sprayhead.

The yelping cry of a toucan sounded from the jungle on his right and he could hear the murmur of Chen-Lhu’s voice from the cabin.

What is it he talks about when I’m not there? Joao wondered.

He looked up in time to see that the bend in the river was wider than he’d expected. The current carried the pod now away from the rock escarpment. The fact gave Joao no elation. The river could meander a hundred kilometers through here in this season and return to within a kilometer of where we are now, he thought.

Rhin’s voice lifted suddenly, her words distinct in the damp air: “You son of a bitch!”

And Chen-Lhu answered, “Ancestry is no longer important in my land, Rhin.”

The pump sucked air with a wet gurgling, the sound drowning Rhin’s reply. Joao replaced the cap on the inspection hole, returned to the cabin.

Rhin sat with arms folded, face forward. A red blush of anger colored her neck.

Joao wedged the pump into the corner beside the hatch, looked at Chen-Lhu.

“There was water in the float,” Chen-Lhu said, his voice smooth. “I heard it.”

Yes, I’ll bet you did, Joao thought. What’s your game, Dr. Travis Huntington Chen-Lhu? Is it idle sport? Do you goad people for your own amusement, or is it something deeper?

Joao slipped into his seat.

The pod danced across a pattern of eddy ripples, turned and faced downstream toward a shaft of sunlight that stabbed through the clouds. Slowly, great patches of blue opened in the clouds.

“There’s the sun, the good old sun,” Rhin said, “now that we don’t need it.”

A need for male protection came over Rhin, and she leaned her head against Joao’s shoulder. “It’s going to be sticky hot,” she whispered.

“If you’d like to be alone, I could step out on the float,” Chen-Lhu mocked.

“Ignore the bastard,” Rhin said.

Do I dare ignore him? Joao wondered. Is that her purpose—to make me ignore him? Do I dare?

Her hair gave off a scent of musk that threatened to clog Joao’s reason. He took a deep breath, shook his head. What is it with this woman… this changeable, mercuric… female?

“You’ve had lots of girls, haven’t you?” Rhin asked.

Her words elicited memory images that flashed through Joao’s mind—doe-brown eyes with a distant look of cunning: eyes, eyes, eyes… all alike. And lush figures in tight bodices or mounding white sheets… warm beneath his hands.

“Any special girl?” Rhin asked.

And Chen-Lhu wondered: Why does she do this? Is she seeking self-justification, reasons to treat him as I wish her to treat him?

“I’ve been very busy,” Joao said.

“I’ll bet you have,” she said.

“What’s that mean?”

“There’s some girl back there in the Green… ripe as a mango. What’s she like?”

He shrugged, moving her head, but she remained pressed close to him, looking up at his jawline where no beard grew. He has Indian blood, she thought. No beard: Indian blood.

“Is she beautiful?” Rhin persisted.

“Many women are beautiful,” he said.

“One of those dark, full-breasted types, I’ll bet,” she said. “Have you had her to bed?”

And Joao thought: What does this mean? That we’re all bohemian types together?

“A gentleman,” Rhin said. “He refused to answer.”

She pushed herself up, sat back in her own corner, angry and wondering why she had done that. Do I torture myself? Do I want this Joao Martinho for my own, to have and to hold? To hell with it!

“Many families are strict with their women down here,” Chen-Lhu said. “Very Victorian.”

“Weren’t you ever human, Travis?” Rhin asked. “Even for just a day or so?”

“Shut up!” Chen-Lhu barked, and he sat back, astonished at himself. The bitch! How did she get through to me like that?

Ahhh, Joao thought, she touched a nerve.

“What made an animal out of you, Travis?” Rhin asked.

He had himself under control, though, and all he said was, “You have a sharp tongue, my dear. Too bad your mind doesn’t match it.”

“That’s not up to your usual standards, Travis,” she said, and she smiled at Joao.

But Joao had heard the crying-out in their voices and he remembered Vierho, the Padre, so solemn, saying, “A person cries out against life because it’s lonely, and because life’s broken off from whatever created it. But no matter how much you hate life, you love it, too. It’s like a caldron boiling with everything you have to have—but very painful to the lips.”

Abruptly Joao reached out, pulled Rhin to him and kissed her, pressing her against him, digging his hands into her back. Her lips responded after only the briefest hesitation—warm, tingling.

Presently he pulled away, pressed her firmly into her seat and leaned back on his own side.

When she could catch her breath, Rhin said, “Now, what was that all about?”

“There’s a little animal in all of us,” Joao said.

Does he defend me? Chen-Lhu asked himself, sitting bolt upright. I don’t need defense from such as that!

But Rhin laughed, shattering his anger, and reached out to caress Joao’s cheek. “Isn’t there just,” she said.

And Chen-Lhu thought: She is only doing her job. How beautifully she works. Such consummate artistry. It would be a shame to have to kill her.