Supplies for the bandeirante assault would come by way of Sao Paulo, by air and by transport on the multi-decked highways, then on antique diesel trains to Ita-pira, by aviadores river runners to Bahus and by airtruck to Registo and Leopoldina on the Araguaya.
And when it was done—the people would return, coming back from the Resettlement Plan areas and the metropolitan shanty towns.
A passage of turbulent air shook the truck, breaking Joao from his reverie, forcing him into an acute consciousness of his situation.
A glance at his guard showed the creature still crouched there, watchful … as patient as the Indio it mimicked. The presence of the thing behind him had become cumulative, and Joao found himself required to combat a growing sense of revulsion.
The gleaming mechanical pragmatism of the truck pod around him felt as though it were at war with the insect creature. It had no business here in this cabin flying smoothly above the area where its kind ruled supreme.
Joao looked out and down at the green flow of forest, the zona da mata. He knew the area beneath him crawled with insects: wire worms in the roots of savannahs, grubs digging in the moist black earth, hopping beetles, dart-like angita wasps, chalcis flies sacred to the still thriving backwoods Xango cult, chiggers, sphecidae, braconidae, fierce hornets, white termites, hemipteric crawlers, blood roaches, thrips, ants, lice, mosquitoes, mites, moths, exotic butterflies, mantidae—and countless unnatural mutations of them all.
That, for sure.
This would be an expensive fight—unless it had already been lost.
I mustn’t think that way, Joao told himself. Out of respect for my father. I mustn’t think that way … not yet.
IEO maps showed this region in varied intensities of red. Around the red ran a ring of gray with pink shading where one or two persistent forms of insect life resisted man’s poisons, jelly flames, astringents, sonitoxics—the combination of flamant couroq and supersonics that drove insects from their hiding places into waiting death—and all the mechanical traps and luring baits in the bandeirante arsenal.
A grid map would be placed over this area and each thousand-hectare square offered for bid to the independent bands to deinfest.
We bandeirantes are a kind of ultimate predator, Joao thought. It’s no wonder these creatures mimic us.
But how good, really, was this mimicry? he asked himself. And how deadly to the predators? How far had this gone?
“There,” said the creature behind him. The multi-part hand came forward to point toward a black scarp visible ahead of them in the gray light of morning. Heavy mist against the scarp told of a river nearby hidden by the jungle.
This is all I need, Joao thought. I can find this place again easily.
His foot kicked the trigger on the floor, releasing a great cloud of orange dye-fog beneath the truck to mark the ground and forest for more than a kilometer around. As he kicked the trigger, Joao began counting down silently the five-second delay to the automatic firing of the separation charge.
It came in a roaring blast that Joao knew would smear the creature behind against the rear bulkhead. He sent the stub wings out, fed power to the rocket motors and banked hard left. Now he could see the detached rear compartment settling slowly earthward above the dye cloud, its fall cushioned as the pumps of the hydrostatic drive automatically compensated.
I will come back, Father, Joao thought. You will be buried among family and friends.
He locked his pod controls, turned to deal with his guard.
A gasp escaped Joao’s lips.
The rear bulkhead crawled with insects clustered around something yellow-white and pulsing. The mud-gray shirt and trousers were torn, but insects already were repairing it, spinning out fibers that meshed and sealed on contact. There was a dark yellow sac-like object extruding near the pulsing surface—and glimpses through the insects of a brown skeleton with familiar articulation.
It looked like a human skeleton—but dark and chitinous.
Before his eyes, the thing was reassembling itself—long furry antennae burrowing inward and interlocking, one insect to another, claw fringes weaving together.
The flute weapon wasn’t visible, and the thing’s leather pouch had been hurled into a rear corner by the blast, but its eyes were in place in their brown sockets, staring at him. The mouth was reforming.
The dark yellow sac contracted, and a voice issued from the half-formed mouth.
“You must listen,” it rasped.
Joao gulped, whirled back to the controls, unlocked them and sent the pod into a wild, spinning turn.
A high-pitched rattling buzz sounded behind him. The noise seemed to pick up every bone in his body and shake it. Something crawled on his neck. He slapped it, felt it squash.
All Joao could think of then was escape. He stared out frantically at the earth beneath, glimpsing a blotch of white in a savannah off to his right and in the same instant recognizing another airtruck banking beside him, the insignia of his own Irmandades bright on its side.
The white blotch in the savannah resolved itself into a cluster of tents with an IEO orange and green banner flying beside them. Beyond the flat grass could be seen the curve of a river.
Joao dove for the tents.
Something stung his cheek. Crawling things were in his hair—biting, stinging. He kicked on the braking rockets, aimed for open ground beside the tents. Insects were all over the inside of the pod’s glass now, blocking his vision. Joao said a silent prayer, hauled back on the control arm, felt the pod mush out, touch ground, skidding and slewing. He kicked the canopy release before the motion stopped, broke the seal on his safety harness and launched himself up and out to land sprawling on hard ground.
He rolled over and over, eyes tightly closed, feeling the insect bites like fire needles over every exposed part of his body. Hands grabbed him and he felt a jelly hood splash across his face to protect it. Hard spray slammed against him from all sides.
Somewhere in a hood-blurred distance he heard a voice that sounded like Vierho’s shout, “Run! This way—run!”
He heard a spraygun fire: Whoosh!
And again.
And again.
Hands rolled him over. Spray hit his back. A wash that smelled like neutralizer splashed over him.
An odd thudding sound shook the ground and a voice said, “Mother of God! Would you look at that!”
5
Joao sat up, clawed the jelly hood from his face, stared across the savannah. The grass there seethed and boiled with insects around an Irmandades airtruck.
A voice said, “Did you kill everything inside the pod?”
“Everything that moved.” The reply was husky, halting, as though overcoming pain.
“Is there anything in it we can use?”
“The radio’s destroyed.”
“Of course. That’s the first thing they go for.”
Joao looked around him, counted seven of his Irmandades—Vierho, Thome, Ramon, Pietr, Lon …
His eye was caught by the group clustered beyond his men—Rhin Kelly among them. Her red hair was awry. Dirt streaked her face. There was a wild, glazed look in her green eyes. She was glaring at him.
He saw his pod then, to the right, on its side and just within what appeared to be a perimeter ditch. Foam and spray residue were all over it. His eye traversed the line of the ditch, saw that it ringed a hard-packed dirt area with the tents in the center and savannah beyond. Two men in green IEO uniforms stood beside him holding sprayer handtanks.
Joao returned his attention to Rhin, remembering her as he’d seen her in Bahia’s A’Chigua. Now she wore a plain IEO field uniform, its green blotched by red-brown dirt. Her eyes held no invitation at all.
“I see poetic justice in this—traitors,” she said.
Her hysterical tone of voice caught Joao’s ear and it took a second for her words to filter through. Traitors?
He grew aware of the bedraggled, worn look of the IEO people.
Vierho approached, helped Joao to his feet, proffered a cloth to wipe off the jelly.
“Jefe, what is happening?” Vierho asked. “We picked up your signal, but you didn’t answer.”
“Later,” Joao rasped as he recognized the anger in Rhin and her companions. Rhin appeared feverish and ill.
Hands brushed Joao, clearing dead insects off him. The pain from the stings and bites receded under the medicant neutralizer.
“Whose skeleton is that in your pod?” one of the IEO people asked.
Before Joao could answer, Rhin said, “Death and skeletons should be nothing new for Joao Martinho, traitor of the Piratininga!”
“They are crazy, that is the only thing, I think,” Vierho said.
“Your pets turned on you, didn’t they?” Rhin demanded. “The skeleton, that’s all that’s left of one of you, eh?”
“What is this talk of skeletons?” Vierho asked.
“Your jefe knows,” Rhin said.
“Would you be so kind as to explain?” Joao asked.
“I don’t need to explain,” she said. “Let your friends out there explain.” She pointed toward the rim of jungle beyond the savannah.
Joao looked there, saw a line of men in bandeirante white standing untouched amidst the leaping, boiling insects in the jungle shadow. He took a pair of binoculars from around the neck of one of his men, focused on the figures.
Knowing what to look for made the identification easy.
“Padre,” Joao said.
Vierho bent close, rubbing at an insect sting beneath the acid scar on his cheek.
In a low voice, Joao explained about the figures at the jungle edge, handed over the glasses so that Vierho could see for himself the fine lines in the skin, the facet-glitter of the eyes.
“Aiee,” Vierho said.
“Do you recognize your friends?” Rhin demanded.
Joao ignored her.
Vierho passed along the glasses with an explanation to another of the Irmandades. The two IEO men who had sprayed Joao came close, listening, turned their attention to the figures in the jungle shadows.
One of the IEO men crossed himself.
“That perimeter ditch,” Joao said. “What’s in it?”
“Couroq jelly,” said the IEO man who’d crossed himself. “It’s all we had left for an insect barrier.”
“That won’t stop them,” Joao said.
“But it has stopped them,” the man said.
Joao nodded. He was having unpleasant suspicions about their position here. He looked at Rhin. “Dr. Kelly, where are the rest of your people?” Joao passed his gaze around the IEO personnel, counting. “Surely there’re more than six in an IEO field crew.”
Her lips compressed, but she remained silent.
The more Joao looked at her, the more ill she appeared.
“So?” Joao said. He glanced around at the tents, seeing their weathered condition. “And where is your equipment, your trucks, lab hut, jitneys?”
“Funny thing you should ask,” she said, but there was uncertainty in the sneering quality of her voice—and that definite hysterical undertone. “About a kilometer into the trees over there”—she nodded to her left—“is a wrecked jungle truck containing most of our … equipment, as you call it. The track spools of our truck were eaten away by acid before we knew anything was wrong. The lift rotors were destroyed the same way—everything.”
“Acid?”
“It smelled like oxalic, but acted more like hydrochloric,” said one of her companions, a blond Nordic with a recent acid burn beneath his right eye.
“Start from the beginning,” Joao said.
“We were cut off here …” He broke off, glanced around.
“Eight days ago,” Rhin said.
“Yes,” the blond man said. “They got our radio, our truck—they looked like giant chiggers. They can shoot an acid spray about fifteen meters.”
“Like the one we saw in the Bahia Plaza?” Joao asked.
“There’re three dead specimens in containers in my lab tent,” Rhin said. “They’re cooperative organization, hive-clusters. See for yourself.”
Joao pursed his lips, thinking.
“I heard part of what you told your men there,” she said. “D’you expect us to believe that?”
“It’s of no importance to me what you believe,” Joao said. “How’d you get here?”
“We fought our way in here from the truck using caramuru cold-fire spray,” said the blond man. “That stalled them a bit. We dragged along what supplies we could, dug a trench around our perimeter, poured in the couroq powder, added the jell and topped it off with all our copahu oil … and here we sat.”
“How many of you?” Joao asked.
“There were fourteen of us in the truck,” Rhin said. She stared at Joao, studying him. His manner, his questions—everything consistent with innocence. She tried to reason from this assumption, but her mind bogged down. She wasn’t thinking clearly and knew it. Ever since the first attack; there’ d been something, a drug very likely, in the stings of the insects that had got through the caramuru. But her lab wasn’t equipped to determine what the drug was.
Joao rubbed the back of his neck where the insect stings were beginning to burn. He glanced around at his men, assessing their condition and equipment, counted four sprayrifles, saw that the men carried spare charge cylinders on slings around their necks.
And there was his truck pod safe inside the perimeter. The spray they’d poured into it probably had played hob with the control circuits, though. But there still remained the big truck out in the savannah.
“We’d better try to fight our way out to the truck,” he said.
“Your truck?” Rhin asked. She looked out to the savannah. “I think it’s been too late for that since a few seconds after it landed, bandeirante.” She laughed, and the hysteria was close to the surface. “I think in a day or so there’ll be a few less traitors. You’re caught in your own trap.”
Joao whirled to stare at the Irmandade airtruck. It was beginning to tip crazily over onto its left side. “Padre!” he barked. “Tommy! Vince! Get …” He broke off as the truck sagged over even farther.
“It’s only fair to warn you,” Rhin said, “to stay away from the edge of the ditch unless you first spray the opposite side. They can shoot that acid stream at least fifteen meters … and as you can see”—she nodded toward the airtruck—“the acid eats metal and even plastic.”
“You’re insane,” Joao said. “Why didn’t you warn us immediately? We could’ve …”
“Warn you?”
Her blond companion said, “Dr. Kelly, perhaps we’d …”
“Be quiet, Hogar,” she said. She glared at the man. “Isn’t it time you looked in on Doctor Chen-Lhu?”
“Travis? Is he here?” Joao asked.
“He arrived yesterday with one companion, since deceased,” she said. “They were searching for us. Unluckily, they found us. Dr. Chen-Lhu probably will not live through this night.” She glared at her Nordic companion. “Hogar!”
“Yes, ma’am,” the man said. He shrugged, headed for the tents.
“We lost eight men to your playmates, bandeirante,” Rhin said. She looked at the small group of Irmandades. “Our lives are little enough to pay now for the extinction of eight of you … traitors!”
“You are insane,” Joao said, and he felt the beginnings of a crazy anger in himself. Chen-Lhu here … dying? That could wait. First there was work to do.
“Stop playing innocent, bandeirante,” Rhin said. “We’ve seen your companions out there. We’ve seen the new playmates you bred … and we understand that you were too greedy; your game has gotten out of hand.”
“You’ve not seen my Irmaos doing these things,” Joao said. He looked at Thome. “Tommy, keep an eye on these insane ones. Don’t permit them to interfere with us.” He lifted a sprayrifle and spare charges from one of his men, indicated the other three armed men. “You—come with me.”
/> “Jefe, what do you do?” Vierho asked.
“Salvage what we can from the truck,” Joao said.
Vierho sighed, took one of the sprayrifles and charges, motioned their owner to stay with Thome.
“Sure, go get yourselves killed,” Rhin said. “Don’t think we’ll interfere with that!”
Joao stopped himself from turning on her with a burst of outraged curses. His head ached with the anger and the need to suppress it. Presently he walked toward the ditch nearest the stranded airtruck, laid down a hard mist of foamal in the grass beyond, beckoned the others to follow and leaped the ditch.
Later, Joao did not like to think about that time in the savannah. They were out little more than twenty minutes before retreating to the island of tents. Joao and his three companions were acid burned, Vierho and Lon seriously. And they’d salvaged less than an eighth of the material in the truck—mostly food. The salvage did not include a transmitter.
The attack came from all sides, from creatures hidden in the tall grass. Foamal immobilized them temporarily. None of the sprayrifle poisons seemed to do more than slow the creatures. The attack stopped only when the men were safely back behind the ditch.
“It’s evident the devils went first for our communications equipment,” Vierho gasped. “How could they know?”
“I don’t want to guess,” Joao said. “Stand still while I treat those burns.” Vierho’s cheek and shoulder were badly splashed with acid, his clothing peeling away in smoking tatters.
Joao spread neutralizer salve over the area, turned to Lon. The man already was losing flesh off his back, but he stood there panting, waiting.
Rhin came up to help with the treatment and bandaging, but refused to speak, even to answering the simplest questions.
“Do you have any more of this salve?”
Silence.
“Have you taken any samples of the acids?” Silence.
“How was Chen-Lhu injured?”