Silence.
Presently, Joao touched up three splash burns on his left arm, neutralized the acid and covered the injuries with flesh-tape. He gritted his teeth against the pain, stared at Rhin. “Where are these chigua specimens you killed?”
Silence.
“You are a blind, unprincipled megalomaniac,” Joao said, speaking in an even tone. “Don’t push me too far.”
Her face went pale, and the green eyes blazed, but her lips remained closed.
Joao’s arm throbbed, his head ached and he felt there was something vaguely wrong with every color he saw. The woman’s silence enraged him, but the rage was like something happening to another person. The odd feeling of detachment persisted even after he recognized it.
“You act like a woman who needs violence,” Joao said. “Would you like to be turned over to my men? They’re a little tired of you.”
He found the words strange even as he spoke them—as though he’d wanted to say something else and these words had forced themselves out.
Rhin’s face flamed. “You wouldn’t dare!” she grated.
“Ah, we can speak,” he said. “Don’t be melodramatic, though. I wouldn’t give you the pleasure.”
Joao shook his head; that wasn’t what he’d wanted to say at all.
Rhin glared at him. “You … insolent …”
Joao found himself producing a wolfish grin, saying, “Nothing you say will make me turn you over to my men.”
The silence that followed was filled with sense of drawing apart—farther, farther. Joao felt that Rhin actually was growing smaller. He grew aware of a distant roaring, wondered if it was a sound in his own ears.
“That roaring,” he said.
“Jefe?”
It was Vierho directly behind him.
“What is that roaring?” Joao asked.
“It’s the river, Jefe; a chasm.” Vierho pointed to a black rock escarpment rising distantly above the jungle. “When the wind is right we hear it. Jefe?”
“What is it?” Joao felt a surge of anger at Vierho. Why couldn’t the man speak right out?
“A word with you, Jefe.” Vierho drew him toward the blond Nordic who was standing outside one of the tents. The man’s face looked gray except around the acid burn on his cheek.
Joao looked back at Rhin. She had turned away from him, stood with her arms folded. The stiffness of her back, the pose, all of it struck Joao as almost humorous. He suppressed laughter, allowed himself to be led up to the blond fellow. What had she called him? Ahh, Hogar. Yes, Hogar.
“The gentleman here”—Vierho indicated Hogar—“says the female doctor was bitten by insects that got past their barriers.”
“The first night,” Hogar whispered.
“She has not been the same since,” Vierho said. “In the head, you understand? We humor her, Jefe, no?”
Joao wet his lips with his tongue. He felt dizzy and warm.
“The insects that bit her were similar to the ones that were on you,” Hogar said. His voice sounded apologetic.
He’s making fun of me! Joao thought.
“I wish to see Chen-Lhu,” Joao said. “At once.”
“He was very badly poisoned and burned,” Hogar said. “We think he’s dying.”
“Where is he?”
“In the tent here, but I …”
“Is he conscious?”
“Senhor Martinho, he is conscious but not in condition for any prolonged …”
“I give the orders here!” Joao snapped.
An odd look passed between Hogar and Vierho.
Vierho said, “Jefe, perhaps …”
“I will see Doctor Chen-Lhu now!” Joao said. He brushed past Hogar and into the tent.
The place was a gloomy hole after the morning sunlight outside. It took an instant for Joao’s eyes to adjust themselves. In that instant, Hogar and Vierho joined him in the tent.
“Please, Senhor Martinho,” Hogar said.
Vierho said, “Jefe, perhaps later.”
“Who is there?”
The voice was low, but controlled, and came from a cot at the far end of the tent. Joao made out the form of a human figure stretched on the cot, the white marks of bandages, recognized Chen-Lhu’s face in the half light.
“It is Joao Martinho,” Joao said.
“Ahh, Johnny,” Chen-Lhu said, and his voice sounded stronger.
Hogar passed Joao, knelt beside the cot, said, “Please, Doctor, do not excite yourself.”
The words held an odd ring of familiarity for Joao, but he couldn’t place the association. He crossed to the cot, looked down at Chen-Lhu. The man’s cheeks were sunken as though after a long famine. His eyes appeared immersed in two black pits.
“Johnny,” Chen-Lhu said, his voice a whisper. “We are rescued, then.”
“We are not rescued,” Joao said. And he wondered why the fool prattled so.
“Ahhh, too bad,” Chen-Lhu said. “Then we’ll all go together, eh?” Chen-Lhu asked. And he thought: What irony! My scapegoat caught in the same trap. What futility!
“There’s still hope,” Hogar said.
Joao saw Vierho cross himself, thought: Silly fool!
“While there’s life, eh?” Chen-Lhu asked. He stared up at Joao. “I’m dying, Johnny, but most of my past eludes me.” And he thought: We’ll all die here. And in my homeland—they’ll all die there, too. Starvation or poison, what’s the difference?
Hogar looked at Joao, said, “Senhor, please go.”
“No,” Chen-Lhu said. “Stay. I’ve things to tell you.”
“You mustn’t tire yourself, sir,” Hogar said.
“What difference?” Chen-Lhu asked. “We’ve marched to the West, eh, Johnny? I wish I could laugh!”
Joao shook his head. His back ached and tingling sensations ran along the skin of both arms. The interior of the tent seemed suddenly brighter.
“Laugh?” Vierho whispered. “Mother of God!”
“You want to know why my government won’t let in your observers?” Chen-Lhu asked. “Such a joke! The Great Crusade has backfired in my land. The earth goes barren. Nothing helps it—fertilizers, chemicals, nothing.”
Joao experienced difficulty assembling the words into meaningful form. Barren? Barren?
“We face such a famine as history has never seen,” Chen-Lhu rasped.
“Is it the lack of insects?” Vierho whispered.
“Of course!” Chen-Lhu said. “What else has changed? We’ve broken key links in the ecological chain. Of course. We even know what links … now that it’s too late.”
Barren earth, Joao thought. It was a very interesting idea, but his head felt too hot to explore the thought.
Vierho, dismayed by Joao’s silence, bent over Chen-Lhu, said, “Why don’t your people admit this thing and warn the rest of us before it’s too late?”
“Don’t be a fool!” Chen-Lhu said, and there was some of the old, harsh command in his voice. “We’d lose all before we’d lose that much face. I tell it here now because I’m dying and because none of you will survive me for long.”
Hogar stood up and stepped back from the cot as though fearful of contamination.
“We need a scapegoat, you see?” Chen-Lhu said. “That’s why I was sent here—to find us a scapegoat. We’re fighting for more than our lives.”
“You could always blame the Northamericans,” Hogar said, his tone bitter.
“I fear we’ve worn that one out, even with our peopie,” Chen-Lhu said. “We did the thing ourselves, you see? There’s no escaping that. No … all we could hope for was to find here a way of blaming someone else. The British and French provided some of our poisons. We explored that with no success. Some Russian teams helped us … but the Russians haven’t realigned their entire country—only to the Ural Line. They could show the same problems as we have and … you see? They’d make us appear foolish.”
“Why haven’t the Russians said anything?” Hogar asked.
Joao l
ooked at Hogar, thinking: Senseless words, senseless words.
“The Russians are quietly rolling back their Ural line into the Green,” Chen-Lhu said. “Re-infesting, you see? No … my last orders were to find a new insect, typically Brazilian, that would destroy many of our crops … and for whose presence we could blame … who? Perhaps some bandeirantes.”
Blame bandeirantes, Joao thought. Yes, everyone is blaming the bandeirantes.
“The really amusing thing,” Chen-Lhu said, “is what I see in your Green. Do you know what I see?”
“You’re a devil!” Vierho grated.
“No, just a patriot,” Chen-Lhu said. “Are you not curious as to what I see in your Green?”
“Speak and be damned!” Vierho said.
That’s telling him, Joao thought.
“I see the signs in your Green of the same blight that has struck my poor nation,” Chen-Lhu said. “Smaller fruit, smaller crops—smaller leaves, paler plants. It’s slow at first, but everyone will see it soon.”
“Then maybe they’ll stop before it’s too late,” Vierho said.
That’s foolishness, Joao thought. Who ever stops before it’s too late?
“Such a simple fellow you are,” Chen-Lhu said. “Your rulers are the same as mine: they see nothing but their own survival. They will see nothing else until it’s too late. This is always the way with governments.”
Joao wondered why the tent was growing so dark after being so bright. He felt hot and his head whirled as though he’d had too much alcohol. A hand touched his shoulder. He looked down at it, followed the hand up to an arm … a face: Rhin. There were tears in her eyes.
“Joao … Senhor Martinho, I’ve been such a fool,” she said.
“You heard?” Chen-Lhu asked.
“I heard,” she said.
“A pity,” Chen-Lhu said. “I’d hoped to preserve some of your illusions … for a little while, anyway.”
What an odd conversation, Joao thought. What an odd person, this Rhin. What an odd place, this tent with its ridge-pole coming around to face me.
Something thuded against his back and his head.
I’ve fallen, he thought. Isn’t that odd?
The last thing he heard before unconsciousness flooded his mind with black ink was Vierho’s startled voice:
“Jefe!”
There was a dream in which Rhin hovered over him saying, “What difference does it make who gives the orders?” And in the dream, he could only turn a baleful stare on her and think how hateful she looked—in spite of her beauty.
Someone said, “What’s the difference? We’ll all be dead soon anyway.”
And another voice said, “Look, there’s a new one. That one looks like Gabriel Martinho, the Prefect.”
Joao felt himself sinking into a void where his face was held by clamps that forced him to stare into the monitor screen on the dash of his airtruck’s pod. The screen showed a giant stag beetle with the face of his father. And the sound was a cicada hum up and down the scale with a voice inside the hum: “Don’t excite yourself. Don’t excite yourself …”
He awoke screaming to realize there was no sound in his throat—only the memory of screams. His body was bathed in perspiration. Rhin sat beside him wiping his forehead. She looked pale and thin, her eyes sunken. For a moment he wondered if this emaciated Rhin Kelly were part of a dream; she seemed to give no notice to the fact that his eyes were open although she looked right at him.
He tried to speak, but his throat was too dry.
The movement attracted Rhin, though. She bent over him, peered into his eyes. Presently she reached behind her, brought up a canteen, trickled a few drops of water down his throat.
“What …” he croaked.
“You had the same thing that hit me, but more of it,” she said. “A nerve drug in the insect venom. Don’t try to exert yourself.”
“Where?” he asked.
She looked at him, sensing the broader question. “We’re still in the same old trap,” she said, “but now we have a chance of getting out.”
His eyes spoke the question that his lips couldn’t form.
“Your truck pod,” she said. “Some of its circuits were badly damaged, but Vierho rigged substitutes. Now be quiet a moment.”
She checked his pulse, put a blood-gauge thermometer against his neck, read it. “Fever’s down,” she said. “Have you ever had heart trouble of any kind?”
Instantly he thought of his father; but this question wasn’t directed to his father.
“No,” he whispered.
“I have a very few energy packs,” she said. “Direct feed. I can give you one if you don’t have a weak heart.”
“Do it,” he said.
“I’ll use a vein in your leg,” she said. “They gave it to me on the left arm and I saw blue and red lights for an hour.” She bent to a case beside the cot, took a flat black cartridge from it, pulled the blanket off his feet and began applying the energy pack to his left leg.
He could feel her working there, but it was so far away and he was so drowsy.
“This is how we brought Dr. Chen-Lhu around,” she said, pulling the blanket back over his feet.
Travis didn’t die, he thought. He felt that this was an extremely important fact, but couldn’t place the reason.
“It was more than the nerve drug, of course,” she said. “With Dr. Chen-Lhu and with me, that is. Vierho spotted it in the water.”
“Water?”
She took the word as a request, dribbled more water down his throat from the canteen.
“Our second night here we dug a well in one of the tents,” she said. “River seepage, naturally. Water’s loaded with poisons, some of them ours. That’s what Vierho tasted: the bitterness. But my tests shows there’s something else in that water: a hallucinogenic that produces a reaction very like schizophrenia. It isn’t anything humans put there.”
Joao could feel energy pumping into him from the pack on his leg. A cramp like acute hunger knotted his stomach. When it passed, he said, “Something from … them.”
“Very likely,” she said. “We’ve rigged a crude still. There’s a variable resistance to this hallucinogenic. Hogar appears to be completely immune, but he didn’t get any of the venom drug. That seems to leave you wide open.”
Again she checked his pulse.
“Are you feeling stronger?”
“Yes.”
The cramps were in the muscles of his thighs now—rhythmic and painful. They receded.
“We’ve analyzed that skeleton in your pod,” she said. “An amazing thing. Remarkably like a human skeleton except for ridges and tiny holes—presumably where the insects attach themselves and articulate it. It’s bird-light but very strong. The kinship to chitin is quite apparent.”
Joao thought about this, letting the energy from the pack on his leg accumulate. He was feeling stronger by the second. So much seemed to have happened, though: the pod repaired, that skeleton analyzed.
“How long have I been here?” he asked.
“Four days,” she said. She glanced at her wristwatch. “Almost to the hour. It’s still fairly early.”
Joao grew aware then of the forced cheerfulness in her tone. What was she hiding? Before he could explore the question, a hiss of fabric and brief flash of sunlight told of someone entering the tent.
Chen-Lhu appeared behind Rhin. The Chinese seemed to have aged fifty years since Joao had last seen him. Skin sagged and wrinkled at his jawline. The cheeks were concave pockets. He walked with a fragile caution.
“I see the patient is awake,” he said.
The voice surprised Joao by its strength—as though all the man’s physical energy had been channeled into this one aspect of him.
“He’s under pack right now,” she said.
“Wise,” Chen-Lhu said. “There isn’t much time. Have you told him?”
“Only that we’ve repaired his truck pod.”
This must be phrased very delicately
, Chen-Lhu thought. Very delicately. Latin honor can shoot off at strange tangents.
“We are going to attempt escaping in your pod,” Chen-Lhu said.
“How can we?” Joao asked. “That pod won’t lift more than three people at the most.”
“Three people is all it’ll carry, that is correct,” Chen-Lhu said. “But it won’t be required to lift them; in fact, it cannot lift them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your landing was rather rough: one of your float-skids is damaged and you ruptured the belly tank. Most of the fuel was gone before we discovered the damage. There’s also the matter of controls: they’re not of the best, even after the Padre’s most ingenious ministrations.”
“That still means only three people in it,” Joao said.
“If we can’t transmit a message, we can carry it,” Rhin said.
Good girl, Chen-Lhu thought. He waited for Joao to absorb this.
“Who?” Joao asked.
“Myself,” Chen-Lhu said. “Only for the reason that I can testify to the debacle in my nation, warn your people before it’s too late.”
Chen-Lhu’s words brought an entire conversation flooding back into Joao’s awareness—in the tent: Hogar, Vierho … Chen-Lhu babbling about … about …
“Barren earth,” Joao said.
“Your people must learn before it’s too late,” Chen-Lhu said. “So I will be one of the passengers. And Rhin here because …” He managed a weak shrug. “ … because of chivalry, I would say, but also because she’s resourceful.”
“That’s two,” Joao said.
“And you will make three,” Chen-Lhu said, and he waited for the outburst.
But Joao merely said, “That doesn’t make sense.” He lifted his head, stared down along the length of his body on the cot. “Four days here and …”
“But you’re the one with pistolao—political connections,” Rhin said. “You can make people listen.”
Joao dropped his head back onto the cot.
“My own father wouldn’t even listen to me!”
The statement evoked a surprising silence. Rhin looked up at Chen-Lhu, back to Joao.
“You have your own political pipelines, Travis,” Joao said. “Probably better than mine.”
“And perhaps not,” Chen-Lhu said. “Besides, you’re the one who saw this creature close up, the one whose skeleton we will take back with us. You are the eyewitness.”