Joao crossed to the door in four strides, went through an arched hallway, down a flight of stone steps, through another door and short hall, through a grillwork gate and into the outside garden. He set the handlight at full intensity, washed its blue glare over the wall beneath the study window.
“Joao, what are you doing?”
“My job, Father.” Joao glanced back, saw that the Prefect had followed and stopped just outside the garden gate.
Joao returned his attention to the study wall, washed the glare of light onto the stones beneath the window. He crouched low, running the light along the ground, peered behind each clod, erased all shadows.
The searching scrutiny passed over the raw earth, turned to the bushes, then the lawn.
Joao heard his father come up behind.
“Do you see it?”
“No.”
“You should’ve allowed me to crush it.”
Joao stood up, stared upward toward the tiled roof and the eaves. It was full dark all around now, with only the light from the study plus his handlight to reveal details.
A piercing stridulation, almost painful to the ears, filled the air all around them. It came from the outer garden that bordered the road and the stone fence. Even after it was gone, the sound seemed to hang all around them. It made Joao think of the hunting cry of jungle predators. A shiver moved up his spine. He turned toward the driveway where he had parked his airtruck, sent the handlight stabbing there.
“What a strange sound,” his father said. “I …” He broke off, stared at the lawn. “What is that?”
The lawn appeared to be in motion, reaching out toward them like a wave curling on a beach. Already the wave had cut them off from the entrance to the house. It still was some ten paces away, but moving in rapidly.
Joao clutched his father’s arm. He spoke quietly, hoping not to alarm the old man further, mindful of the weak heart. “We must get to my truck, Father. We must run across them.”
“Them?”
“Those are like the insect we saw inside, Father—millions of them. They are attacking. Perhaps they’re not beetles after all. Perhaps they’re like army ants. We must make it to the truck. I have equipment and supplies there to fight them off. We’ll be safe in the truck. It’s a bandeirante truck, Father. You must run with me, do you understand? I’ll help you, but you must not stumble and fall into them.”
“I understand.”
They began to run, Joao holding his father’s arm, pointing the way with the light.
Let his heart be strong enough, Joao prayed.
They were into the wave of insects then, but the creatures leaped aside, opening a path which closed behind the running men.
The white form of the airtruck loomed out of the shadows at the far curve of the driveway about fifteen meters ahead.
“Joao … my heart,” the elder Martinho gasped.
“You can make it,” Joao panted. “Faster!” He almost lifted his father from the ground for the last few paces.
They were at the wide rear doors into the truck’s lab compartment now. Joao yanked open the doors, slapped the light switch on the left wall, reached for a hood and sprayrifle. He stopped, stared into the yellow-lighted interior.
Two men sat there—sertao Indians, by the look of them, with bright glaring eyes and bang-cut black hair beneath straw hats. They looked to be identical twins, even to the same mud-gray clothing and sandals, leather shoulder bags. The beetle-like insects crawled around them, up the lab walls, over the instruments and vials.
“What the devil?” Joao blurted.
One of the pair lifted a qena flute, gestured with it. He spoke in a rasping, oddly inflected voice: “Enter. You will not be harmed if you obey.”
Joao felt his father sag, caught the old man in his arms. How light he felt. The old man breathed in short, painful gasps. His face was a pale blue. Sweat stood out on his forehead.
“Joao,” the Prefect whispered. “Pain … my chest.”
“The medicine,” Joao said. “Where is your medicine?”
“House,” the old man said. “Desk.”
“It appears to be dying,” one of the Indians rasped.
Still holding his father in his arms, Joao whirled toward the pair, blazed: “I don’t know who you are or why you loosed those bugs here, but my father’s dying and needs help. Get out of my way!”
“Obey or both die,” said the Indian with the flute. “Enter.”
“He needs his medicine and a doctor,” Joao pleaded. He didn’t like the way the Indian pointed that flute. The motion suggested the instrument was actually a weapon.
“What part has failed?” asked the other Indian. He stared curiously at Joao’s father. The old man’s breathing had become shallow and rapid.
“It’s his heart,” Joao said. “I know you farmers don’t think he’s acted fast enough for …”
“Not farmers,” said the one with the flute. “Heart?”
“Pump,” said the other.
“Pump,” said the Indian with the flute. He stood up from the bench at the front of the lab, gestured down. “Put … father here.”
The other one got off the bench, stood aside.
In spite of fear for his father, Joao was caught by the strange appearance of this pair, the fine, scale-like lines in their skin, the glittering brilliance of their eyes. Were they hopped up on some jungle narcotic?
“Put father here,” repeated the one with the flute. Again, he pointed at the bench. “Help can be …”
“Attained,” said the other one.
“Attained,” said the one with the flute.
Joao focused now the masses of insects around the walls, the waiting quietude in their ranks. They were like the one in the study. Identical.
The old man’s breathing now was very shallow, very rapid. Joao felt the fluttering of each breath in his arms and against his chest.
He’s dying, Joao thought in desperation.
“Help can be attained,” repeated the Indian with the flute. “If you obey, we will not harm.”
The Indian lifted his flute, pointed it at Joao. “Obey.”
There was no mistaking the gesture. The thing was a weapon.
Slowly, Joao stepped up into the truck, crossed to the bench, lowered his father gently onto the padded surface.
The Indian with the flute motioned him to step back and he obeyed.
The other Indian bent over the elder Martinho’s head, raised an eyelid. There was a professional directness about the gesture that startled Joao. The Indian pushed gently on the dying man’s diaphragm, removed the Prefect’s belt, loosened his collar. A stubby brown finger was placed against the artery in the old man’s neck.
“Very weak,” the Indian rasped.
Joao took another look at the Indian, wondering at a sertao backwoodsman who behaved like a doctor.
“Hospital,” the Indian agreed.
“Hospital?” asked the one with the flute.
A low, stridulant hissing came from the other Indian.
“Hospital,” said the one with the flute.
That stridulant hissing! Joao stared at the Indian beside the Prefect. That sound had been reminiscent of the call that had echoed across the lawn.
The one with the flute poked him, said, “You. Go into front and maneuver this …”
“Vehicle,” said the one beside Joao’s father.
“Vehicle,” said the one with the flute.
“Hospital?” Joao pleaded.
“Hospital,” agreed the one with the flute.
Once more, Joao looked at his father. The old man was so still. The other Indian already was strapping the elder Martinho to the bench in preparation for flight. How competent the man appeared in spite of his backwoods look.
“Obey,” said the one with the flute.
Joao opened the hatch into the front compartment, slipped through, felt the armed Indian follow. A few drops of rain spattered darkly against the curved windshield. Joao
squeezed into the operator’s seat. The compartment went dark as the hatch was closed. Solenoids threw the automatic hatch dogs with a dull thump. Joao turned on the dash standby lights, noted how the Indian crouched behind him, flute pointed and ready.
A dart gun of some kind, Joao guessed. Probably poison.
He punched the igniter button on the dash, strapped himself in while waiting for the turbines to build up speed. The Indian still crouched behind him without safety harness—vulnerable now if the airtruck were spun sharply.
Joao flicked the communications switch on the lower left corner of the dash, looked into the tiny screen there giving him a view of the lab compartment. The rear doors were open. He closed them by hydraulic remote. His father lay securely strapped to the bench, the other Indian seated at his head.
The turbines reached their whining peak.
Joao switched on the lights, engaged hydrostatic drive. The truck lifted about ten centimeters, angled upward as Joao increased pump displacement. He turned left onto the street, lifted another two meters to increase speed, headed toward the lights of a boulevard.
The Indian spoke beside his ear: “Turn toward the mountain over there.” A hand came forward, pointed to the right.
The Alejandro Clinic is in the foothills, Joao thought. Yes, that’s the correct direction.
Joao made the indicated turn down a cross street that angled toward the boulevard.
Casually, he gave pump displacement another boost, lifted another meter and increased speed once more. In the same motion, he switched on the intercom to the rear compartment, keyed it for the amplifier and pickup beneath the bench where his father lay.
The pickup, capable of making a dropped pin sound like cannon, emitted only a distant hissing and rasping. Joao increased amplification. The instrument should have been transmitting the old man’s heartbeats now, sending a noticeable drum-thump into the forward cabin.
There was no sound but that hissing, rasping.
Tears blurred Joao’s eyes. He shook his head to clear them.
My father’s dead, he thought. Killed by these crazy backwoodsmen.
He noted in the dash screen that the Indian back there had a hand under the elder Martinho’s back. The Indian appeared to be massaging the dead man’s back. The rhythmic rasping matched the motion.
Anger filled Joao. He felt like diving the airtruck into anabutment, dying himself to kill these crazy men.
The truck was approaching the city’s outskirts. Ring-girders circled off to the left, giving access to the boulevard. This was an area of small gardens and cottages protected by overfly canopies.
Joao lifted the airtruck over the canopies, headed toward the boulevard. To the clinic, yes, he thought. But it’s too late.
In that instant, he realized there were no heartbeats at all coming from the rear compartment—only that slow, rhythmic grating plus, now that his ears searched for it, a cicada-like hum up and down the scale.
“To the mountains, there,” said the Indian behind him. Again that hand came forward to point off to the right.
Joao, with the hand close to his eyes illuminated by the dash lights, saw the scale-like parts of a finger shift position. In that shift, he recognized the scale shapes by their claw fringes.
The beetles!
The finger was composed of linked beetles working in unison!
Joao turned; stared into the Indian’s eyes, saw then why they glistened so brightly: they were composed of thousands of tiny facets.
“Hospital, there,” the creature beside him said, pointing.
Joao turned back to the controls, fought to keep from losing composure. They weren’t Indians … they weren’t even humans. They were insects—some kind of hive-cluster shaped and organized to mimic a man.
The implications of this discovery raced through his mind. How did they support their weight? How did they feed and breathe?
How did they speak?
Every personal concern had to be subordinated to the urgent need for getting this information and proof of it back to one of the big government labs where the facts could be explored.
Even the death of his father could not be considered now. Joao knew he had to capture one of these things, get out with it. He reached overhead, flicked on the command transmitter, set its beacon for a homing call. Let some of my Irmaos be awake and monitoring their sets, he prayed.
“More to the right,” rasped the creature behind him.
Again Joao corrected course.
The voice—that rasping, stridulant sound. Again, Joao asked himself how the creature could produce that simulation of human speech. The coordination required for that action had profound implications.
Joao looked out to his left. The moon was high overhead now, illuminating a line of bandeirante towers off there. The first barrier.
The truck would be out of the Green soon and into the Gray of the poorest Resettlement Plan farms—then, beyond that, another barrier and the Great Red that stretched in reaching fingers through the Goyaz and the inner Mato Grosso, far out to the Andes where teams were coming down from Ecuador. Joao could see scattered lights of Resettlement Plan farms ahead, darkness beyond.
The airtruck was going faster than he wanted, but Joao knew he dared not slow it. They might become suspicious.
“You must go higher,” said the creature behind him.
Joao increased pump displacement, raised the nose. He leveled off at three hundred meters.
More bandeirante towers loomed ahead, spaced at closer intervals. Joao picked up the barrier signals on his dash meters, looked back at his guard. The dissembier vibrations of the barrier seemed to have no effect on the creature.
Joao looked out his side window and down as they passed over the barrier. No one down there would challenge him, he knew. This was a bandeirante airtruck headed into the Red … and with its transmitter sending out a homing call. The men down there would assume he was a band leader headed out on contract after a successful bid, calling his men to him for the job. If the barrier guards recognized his call wave, that would only confirm the thought.
Joao Martinho had just completed a successful bid on the serra dos Parecis. All the bandeirantes knew that.
Joao sighed. He could see the moon-silvered snake of the sao Francisco winding off to his left, and the lesser waterways like threads raveled out of the foothills.
I must find the nest—wherever we’re headed, Joao thought.
He wondered if he dared turn on his receiver—but if his men started reporting in … No. That would make the creatures suspect; they might take violent counteraction.
My men will realize something’s wrong when I don’t answer, he thought. They’ll follow.
If any of them hear my call.
“How far are we going?” Joao asked.
“Very far,” the guard said.
Joao settled himself for a long trip. I must be patient, he thought. I must be as patient as a spider waiting beside her web.
Hours droned past: two, three … four.
Nothing but moonlighted jungle sped beneath the truck, and the moon lay low on the horizon, near setting. This was the deep Red where broadcast poisons had been used at first with near disastrous results. This was where the first wild mutations had been discovered.
The Goyaz.
This is where my father said Rhin Kelly went, Joao thought. Is she down there now?
The moonfrosted jungle told him nothing.
The Goyaz: this was the region being saved for the final assault, using mobile barrier lines when the circle was short enough.
“How much farther?” Joao asked.
“Soon.”
Joao armed the emergency charge that would separate the front and rear compartments of the truck when he fired it. The stub wings of the front pod and its emergency rocket motors would get him back into bandeirante country.
With the specimen behind him safely subdued, Joao hoped.
He looked up through the canopy, s
canned the horizon as far as he could. Was that moonlight glistening on a truck far back to the right? He couldn’t be certain … but it seemed to be.
“Soon?” Joao asked.
“Ahead,” the creature rasped.
The modulated stridulation beneath that voice sent a shiver along Joao’s spine. Joao said, “My father …”
“Hospital for … the father … ahead,” the creature said.
It would be dawn soon, Joao realized. He could see the first false line of light along the horizon behind. This night had passed so swiftly. Joao wondered if his guard had injected some time-distorting drug into him without his knowledge. He thought not. He felt alert, maintaining himself in the necessities of each moment. There wasn’t time for fatigue or boredom when he had to record every landmark half-visible in the night, sense everything he could about these creatures around him. The bitter-clean smell of oxalic acid hinted at acid-to-oxygen chemistry.
But how did they coordinate all those separate insect units?
They appeared conscious. Was that more mimicry? What did they use for a brain?
Dawn came, revealing the plateau of the Mato Grosso: a caldron of liquid green boiling over the edge of the world. Joao looked out his side windows in time to see the truck’s long shadow bounce across a clearing: stark galvanized metal roofs against the green—a sitiante abandoned in the Resettlement, or perhaps the barracao of a fazenda on the coffee frontier. It had been a likely place for a warehouse, standing as it had beside a small stream with the land around it bearing signs of riverbank agriculture.
Joao knew this region; he could put the bandeirante grid map over it in his imagination—five degrees of latitude and six degrees of longitude it covered. Once it had been a place of isolated fazendas farmed by independent browns and blacks and branco sertanistos chained to the encomendero plantation system. The parents of Benito Alvarez had come from here. It was hardwood jungles, narrow rivers with banks overgrown by lush trees and ferns, savannahs and tangled life.
Here and there along the higher reaches of the rivers lay the remains of hydroelectric plants long since abandoned, like the one at Paulo Afonso Falls—all replaced by sun power and atomics.
This was it: the sertao of the Goyaz. Even in this age it remained primitive, a fact blamed on the insects and disease. It lay there, the last stronghold of teeming insect life in the Western Hemisphere, waiting for a modern tropical technology to lift it into the Twenty-first Century.