“Are... are you a Christian?” she asked in something that was half a sigh, half a whimper.
His only reply was a kiss.
* * *
“Peri told, Peri would not eat him.”
They were lying side by side on the flat rock by the pool, her head on his chest, the fingers of her right hand playing with him—he, half smiling, but somewhat worried: the girl had a lot of stamina, but Gribardsun wasn’t sure that she could take any more of the kind of thing she was provoking. But the strokes were gentle and pleasurable, so he let her.
“Eat?” She screwed her nose in disgust.
“Eat enemy flesh sign of respect. Body not eaten is body of coward to the gods. Spirit of coward goes to hell.”
“So you are not a Christian.” The idea seemed to worry her in a vague kind of way. “But you have a hell just like us. So, you told him you wouldn’t eat him. If you killed him, he would be like a coward in the eyes of the gods, his corpse left for the vultures and the like, and he would go to hell. It made him afraid. Hell.”
This girl was sharp, thought Gribardsun. He’d have to keep his eyes open around her. Not that it wouldn’t be a pleasure.
“Álvaro is a Christian,” she said, tauntingly.
“Who Álvaro?”
“My fiancé, silly.”
“Ceci has a Man Promised?” Gribardsun did his best to sound dumbfounded. Bon Sauvages are always monogamous, after all, and quite punctilious on points of honor.
She laughed.
“He is not a man, hardly more than a boy. He still thinks I’m a virgin. Now, come.”
She was on her feet, collecting her clothes.
“Come?”
“You saved my life. I must introduce you to my father. Dom Antônio. The master of the castle.” She made a gesture in the direction of the fortress.
The “castle,” as she called it, was upriver, and Gribardsun had reasons to believe that part of the Paquequer flowed through a cave just behind the natural rock wall that buttressed the rear of the structure. It would be useful to take a look inside. Or was he just rationalizing his desire to stay close to the girl?
“Peri go with Ceci,” he said. “But not now.”
“Why not...?” She turned from her clothes to look at him. As he was still naked, she saw his motive. And smiled. “Okay,” she complied. “We go in a little while.”
“Not so little. While.”
Afterward, as he was collecting his stuff, Gribardsun noted something.
The cloak of jaguar skin was missing.
He was quite sure he had had it on his shoulders when he dropped from the tree and smashed the first Indian’s head. It must have fallen then, or a little afterward. Perhaps during the big guy’s attempted feint. If one of the fleeing warriors had taken it, the tribe would soon have proof positive that Gribardsun was the perpetrator of a sacrilege.
So, the threat of non-cannibalism might not be enough after all.
He knelt by the body of the skull-crunched Aymoré. The curious blue ring had snapped out of the nose and rolled a few inches away, but Gribardsun had no difficulty in finding it. He took it, feeling that it might be useful in the future.
* * *
Dom Antônio, father of Cecilia, was a strong man. And a shrewd one, too. He knew, for instance, that the tale of the “Last of the Guaranys,” a noble, strong Indian who protected the oppressed and the innocent from the cannibalistic fury of the Aymorés, was a fantasy. Bunkum. He knew because he’d invented it himself, a white lie, a myth to keep Cecilia calm.
But he also knew that the giant his daughter had brought home was a potential ally, and he needed one. Badly. His fortress in the hills was highly coveted by smugglers and slavers. The only thing that prevented the criminals and outcasts from slicing his throat and raping Cecilia to death was the fear of a common enemy, the fierce Aymorés. White men, he thought wryly, are only to be trusted to band together when men of a different color come killing.
But even this solidarity in the face of dire straits might fail him. He’d used Cecilia’s wiles to seduce a silver smuggler named Álvaro to his side. As far as smuggling goes, silver was a benign merchandise, certainly better than Indian women or slave labor. And Álvaro commanded a strong party of thugs.
Not any longer, however. Shortly before Cecilia’s arrival with the supposed Guarany, Álvaro’s second in command, a hideously bearded Italian expatriate called Loredano, had brought the “sad news” of his leader’s demise. Dom Antônio could almost see, in his mind’s eye, Loredano’s bullet piercing Álvaro’s heart—coming from the back, obviously.
The development meant two things: first, that Loredano had finally found where the map to the silver mines was kept. Second, that after a decent period of mourning, Dom Antônio would have to use Cecilia to find himself a new rascal who could provide men and swords to defend the fortress.
But now it seemed that his daughter was a step ahead of him. This faux Guarany had no posse with him, but he was so large and strong—and radiated so much confidence—that by his side a bunch of warriors would look almost superfluous.
They were alone in the Dom’s library—study would be a better word, since there were not very many books there, besides a huge Bible and some books in degenerate Latin, cheap romances and the like. There was an Ovid and a copy of the Aeneid, but nothing in Greek. By 1600s standards, Dom Antônio was a barbarian, almost an illiterate. But then, most of the aristocracy fell in the same category.
Gribardsun had his eyes firmly locked on his host’s. What he saw was a man of wealth, strength, and stubbornness—much too stubborn for his own good, and for the good of his own family. If his memory of world history served him right, the time traveler believed that in this specific year Portugal was no more, the country and its New World colonies absorbed into the Spanish Empire. But the fortress was decorated with Portuguese flags and symbols, and there were no Spanish signs to be seen anywhere.
So, Dom Antônio was a patriot. Which explained why he was here up in the hills, and not by the more civilized shores. And which explained his predicament and his weaknesses.
Gribardsun was only marginally interested in the old man, however. His main interest was in the fact that his dosimeter, which he kept tied around his neck, had blackened, a sure sign of the presence of radiation.
As a matter of fact, it was as if the whole fortress was flooded with ionizing rays. Not enough to cause the common symptoms of radioactive poisoning, like nausea or hair loss, but sufficient to abbreviate the lives of everyone present by one or two decades. Philosophically, the time traveler considered that most of them would die of tetanus, sepsis, diarrhea, childbirth, or an eventual Indian arrow in the eye long before the cancers they were nursing had a chance to show up anyway. No need to spread warnings that would not be heard.
One other thing that caught Gribardsun’s attention was the fact that the blue nose ring he had taken from the dead Aymoré was strongly magnetic: it had stuck to his Spanish knife, and he could feel it being pulled by the steel swords that decorated the study. The traveler recalled that strong magnetic fields could deflect some kinds of radiation.
It opened some interesting avenues of thought: could the Indians have evolved a culture that allowed them to tolerate, perhaps even to live together with the reactor? And the dosimeter suggested that the burning uranium had to be in the same mountain that contained the fortress. Gribardsun formed the decision to inspect the back of the property, where it was buttressed by the slope. There might be a cave entrance somewhere.
The time traveler was, of course, also worried about the Europeans. It would be inhumane of him not to be. Even if the Aymorés had some cultural scheme that inadvertently protected them from the radiation, the magnetic rings would be only part of it, and Dom Antônio’s family had nothing of the sort. But he coldly saw that there could be no hurry in removing them, not with the Indians going down the warpath, which they would almost certainly do, after finding out that Gribardsu
n had skinned the sacred jaguar.
Now, if he could find a cave through the mountain, with an opening at the back of the fortress, there might be a chance of escaping from the Indians. The selfsame cave would probably take them close to the heart of the reactor, so they’d have to move fast, very fast.
Cecilia was now in her room, weeping for her dead fiancé. She seemed to have been really fond of him, even if more like a sister than anything else.
Before getting the news from her father, she’d been exultant, introducing Gribardsun to Dom Antônio with beaming happiness.
“Father, this is Peri,” said Cecilia with a smile that shone amidst the candlelight. “He is the last Guarany you talked so much about! And he saved me from the dirty hands of those ominous Aymorés and pledged alliance to our family. Could we have him with us? Please?”
Anyone listening to her could think she was talking about some pet tapir she found in the woods, thought Gribardsun. But maybe this is for the best. Or for the beast.
Dom Antônio then broke the news to her in a tone that was subdued, but firm. She had paled, and ran away, leaving the two men alone. The old nobleman was no fool, and he knew that Gribardsun had as much Guarany blood as himself. The man was a Saxon, he surmised, perhaps a Scot. A very large and a very tanned one, but that’s what he was.
But he also knew that the British hated the Spanish as much as he did. He knew he needed help and, more importantly, he knew to what lengths men of a virile disposition would go to wipe the tears from Cecilia’s eyes.
“Be welcome, then, brave Peri,” he said, giving his verdict. “I just hope you were baptized.”
Religion was the least of Gribardsun’s worries. Nonetheless, despite all his layers of Western education, down there, in his so-called soul, he still believed that somewhere lived a horrifying entity that would eventually eat the Moon and the Sun in a day of rage. That was the belief and the primal fear of the beast: an all-powerful, blood-crazed hunter God that devours everything at the end. The only baptism the ancient Thing asked for was a baptism of blood. On an ocean of red blood.
“Yes, Peri baptized.”
“Fine,” said the Portuguese landlord. “Then we are friends.”
For “friend,” Dom Antônio meant something like “special agent with a license to kill anything or anyone who meant a threat, even slightly,” and, after a substantial meal, and a mute but wet promise from Cecilia’s blue eyes, Gribardsun received his first official mission as Dom Antônio’s aide: to stalk Loredano.
Dom Antônio’s property was composed of a front wall, a main building and, behind that, an open area dotted with stables, barns and lodgings for the smugglers’ rabble (the leaders used guest rooms in the castle proper). From there, if one looked up, it would be possible to see the cataract of the Paquequer crashing down to the side. The sound of the waterfall was part of the fortress environment, and it was loud. There was no chance of silence there.
Passing this area, one would find three squat stone buildings, seemingly cut directly into the mountain’s slope. Closed with hardwood doors reinforced with bronze and iron padlocks, two of them were quite close to each other. Of these, one contained some of the crude guns of the period, a few spare pieces, plus a little ammunition, oil, tools, and some ten leather bags with small amounts of gunpowder. The other one contained the main reserve of gunpowder of the castle, kegs and kegs of it.
The third stone hut, also with a reinforced, padlocked door, was Dom Antônio’s dungeon, complete with a small cell and the implements necessary for branding human flesh with metal and fire. For the present, unused and unoccupied, but if Gribardsun did a good job, soon to receive Loredano in its embrace.
The dawn was still three or four hours in the future when Gribardsun tied on a loincloth, got his leather bag, and silently left Cecilia’s chamber. She was sleeping a satiated sleep. She’d used the night activities to exorcise her sorrow and her anger for Álvaro’s death. Having Peri in her bed that night had been a bittersweet, almost physically painful experience, but a liberating one.
Now, she slept.
The corridor was dark and empty. There was only a distant torch on the wall, giving light. Gribardsun noted how the flame moved—there was a draft. He went quickly there, and found the cause. Loredano’s door was only half closed. Without hesitation, he pushed it fully open and entered.
Empty. The place was saturated by the man’s foul smell, but he was nowhere to be seen. Gribardsun knew the stench from his meeting with the smuggler’s group in the forest. He remembered the one who had called him “chief.”
It was a very distinctive smell. Not hard to track at all.
After leaving the main building, Gribardsun—Peri, he thought. Peri. I must keep this name fresh on my mind and stop thinking of myself as Gribardsun or even John. I must believe that I am Peri, the last of the Guaranys—Peri melted with the night shadows and became invisible to the civilized men.
After a while, in complete silence, the trail led him to the powder deposit. Peri climbed to the roof of the closest hut, and watched.
Loredano’s men were taking the powder kegs and putting them on a group of horses that waited, silently, near the door. There was a smell of fresh blood in the air.
“There’s a tunnel hidden in here, all right,” said a voice, nothing more than a whisper, coming from the shadows between the two huts, the one with the powder and the one with the guns. “The old man was smart in concealing it. The door is almost seamless. If it wasn’t for the map...”
“The old man must have known you would take the map from Álvaro’s body,” interjected another voice. “How come he didn’t place any extra security around here?”
“Who said he didn’t?” Now it was Loredano talking. Peri recognized both the tone and the bad breath. “He used the best two guards money could buy. My money, that is.”
“Your gold bought only one of us.” A new voice.
“Your colleague preferred a price paid in steel. It’s all the same for me.”
The laughter was subdued, but cruel. For Peri, it explained the aroma of recently shed blood. He now had a decision to make: it would be easy to fall among the bandits, surprise them, kill some, demoralize the others, and have the thing done.
But he was also curious. What map were they talking about? Dom Antônio had told him that he believed that Loredano had killed Álvaro out of envy and sheer malevolence. Those might very well be real motives, but now it seemed there were other motivations the old man had kept to himself.
And, of course, Peri wanted to explore the entrails of the mountain. If he sounded the alarm now, it was possible that Dom Antônio would act to preserve whatever secret he thought worth preserving and to deny him the opportunity.
So, he decided to keep quiet for the time being.
The tunnel was tall, broad and irregular, a natural fissure in the rock. It had slanted walls, with a narrow ledge near the top. Peri was able to follow Loredano’s men and horses by silently climbing and then crawling on this ledge. It was almost like crawling in a ventilator shaft, something he had done a few times before.
It was also short, ending abruptly behind a screen of trees and bushes, in a patch of forest that hugged the mountainside. There they took a trail among the trees. Peri jumped to the canopy and followed them from there.
After thirty minutes trailing those clumsy men, Peri surmised their intention. They were taking the powder to Álvaro’s silver mine—he recalled Cecilia saying something about her fiancé being a silver entrepreneur, and the mention of a “map” made sense in this light—probably to blow another vein.
It didn’t take long for Peri to notice that, as stupid as all white people were when trying to negotiate the jungle, map or no map, they were as lost as blind birds in a death trap. He noticed the jaguar following them as soon as they went into the foliage, but saw that the animal was pregnant and decided to let fate take its course. He wouldn’t help one side or the other and when it attacked the la
st of Loredano’s men—a fat, slow one, who smelled of molasses—Peri felt nothing but admiration for the fast and lethal feline. The man died without a sound, his neck broken as a result of a precise slap, the powder keg lost in the jungle.
When Loredano called for the dead man and, after some confusion, decided to turn around and try to find him, the maneuver sealed their destiny. They would never be able to return to their original path, walking in circles and making more and more noise, alerting all the beasts nearby.
It will be a miracle if they survive this night, thought Peri, forgetting that, as his own life bore witness, miracles sometimes happen. That was one of those unlikely moments. The party—without any help from its pursuer—found another path in the woods, one that led them into another cave. A more dangerous, deadlier hole in the mountain. It wasn’t a miracle after all, just another bad joke from that treacherous God of the Beasts.
* * *
The two things Peri noticed as soon as he managed to get down from the trees and enter the second cave were the sound of flowing water—a stretch of the Paquequer river ran inside this hole, which meant they were somewhere above the Europeans’ fortress—and the warmth of the stone walls.
The heat in the walls meant energy. And energy meant...
Again, there was an inward slanting of the walls, giving the tunnel the appearance of a prolonged triangle. There was also a ledge close to the ceiling, convenient for crawling. This cave, he deduced, must be part of the same system as the one behind the castle. It was highly probable that the whole mountain was interconnected by a labyrinth of tunnels.
He quickly remembered all he knew about natural fission reactors. There ought to be the right isotopes of uranium, the proper mass, and a neutron-slowing medium. The slowing was necessary to regulate the reaction. If not, the neutrons issued by the naturally radioactive element would be moving too fast to be assimilated into other atomic nuclei, forcing them to decay and to issue more neutrons, and so on.
The slowing medium usually took the form of water. So, the presence of the river checked. There was also the question of criticality: if a too-large mass of radioactive material is brought together, it may cause a sudden blue glow and a lethal spike of radiation and heat. If the critical mass is formed too quickly, it may result in an explosion—an atomic blast.