The Green Brain (v4.0) Page 15

  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 windless, 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 spraybursts 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-green -- 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 ACTH 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 moonpath 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 ATP, the calcium and acetylcholine, the ACTH 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 earth-lighted 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 citie
s 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."