Something barked in the jungle to the left. And Joao suddenly thought he heard a nerve beat of log drums. Distant … very distant: a still-vibration more felt than heard. It was gone before he could be sure.
The Indians were all cleared out of the Red, he thought. Who could be using drums? I must’ve imagined it; my own pulse, that’s what I heard.
He held himself still, listening, but there was only Chen-Lhu’s breathing, deep and even, and a small sigh from Rhin.
The river widened and its current slowed.
An hour passed … another. Time seemed dragged out by the current. A weary loneliness filled Joao. The pod around them felt fragile, inadequate: a corrupt and impermanent thing. He wondered how he had trusted his life to this machine high above the jungle when it was so vulnerable.
We’ll never make it! he thought.
Chen-Lhu’s voice, a low rumble, broke the silence: “This river, it is the Itacoasa, for sure, Johnny?”
“I’m reasonably certain of that,” Joao whispered.
“What is the nearest civilization?”
“The bandeirante staging area at Santa Maria de Grao Cuyaba.”
“Seven or eight hundred kilometers, eh?”
“More or less.”
Rhin stirred in Joao’s arms, and he felt himself responding to her femininity. He forced his mind to veer away from such thoughts, concentrated instead on the river ahead of them: a winding, twisting course with rapids and sunken limbs. It was a track menaced for its full length by that deadly presence which he sensed all around them. And there was one more peril he had not mentioned to the others: these waters abounded with cannibal fish, piranha.
“How many rapids ahead of us?” Chen-Lhu asked.
“I’m not sure,” Joao said. “Eight or nine—maybe more. It depends on the season and height of water.”
“We will have to use the fuel, fly across the rapids.”
“This thing won’t stand many takeoffs and landings,” Joao said. “That right hand float …”
“Vierho did a good job; it’ll suffice.”
“We hope.”
“You have sad thoughts, Johnny. That is no way to face this venture. How long to this Santa Maria?”
“Six weeks, with luck. Are you thirsty?”
“Yes. How much water do we have?”
“Ten liters … and we have the little pot still if we need more.”
Joao accepted a canteen from Chen-Lhu, drank deeply. The water was warm and flat. He returned the canteen.
Far off, a night bird called, “Tuta! Tuta!” with a fluting voice.
“What was that?” Chen-Lhu hissed.
“A bird … nothing but a bird.”
Joao sighed. The bird cry had filled him with foreboding, like an evil omen out of his superstitious past. A flux of night sounds pulsed in his temples. He stared out into darkness, saw a sudden witch light of fireflies along the right shore, smelled the wind from the jungle like an exhalation of evil breath.
The near hopelessness of their position pressed in upon him. They stood at the edge of the rainy season, separated from any sanctuary by hundreds of kilometers of whirlpools and chasms. And they were the target of a cruel intelligence which used the jungle as a weapon.
A musk perfume lifted into his nostrils from Rhin. It left him with a profound awareness that she was female … and desirable.
The river tugged at the pod.
Joao felt then their alliance with the current dragging itself down to the sea like a black chord.
Another hour passed … and another.
Joao grew conscious of a red fireglow off to the right—dawn. The hoots and cries of howler monkeys greeted the light. Their uproar aroused birds to morning talk in the sheltered blackness of the forest: stacatto peepings, chirrings up and down the scale, intermittent screeches.
Pearl luster crept across the sky, became milk-silver light that gave definition to the world around the drifting pod. Joao looked out to the west, seeing foothills—one after another, piled waves of hills pounding against the Andean escarpment. He realized then that they had come down out of the first steep descent of the river to the high plateau.
The pod floated quietly like a great water bug against a backdrop of trees laced with the dancing flames of forest flowers. A sluggish current twisted into whorls against the floats. Curls of mist hung on the water like puffs of gauze.
Rhin awoke, straightened out of Joao’s arms, stared downstream. The river was like a cathedral aisle between the tall trees.
Joao massaged his arm where Rhin’s head had slowed the circulation. All the while, he studied the woman beside him. There was a small-child look about her: the red hair disarrayed, an unlined expression of innocence on her face.
She yawned, smiled at him … and abruptly frowned, coming fully awake to their situation. She shook her head, turned to look at Chen-Lhu.
The Chinese slept with his head thrown back into the corner. She had the sudden feeling that Chen-Lhu embodied fallen greatness, as though he were an idol out of his country’s past. He breathed with a low, burred rasp. Heavy pores indented his skin and there was a burnt leather harshness to his complexion that she had never before noticed. A graying wheat stubble of hair stood out along his upper lip. She realized suddenly that Chen-Lhu dyed his hair. It was a touch of vanity that she had not suspected.
“There’s not a breath of wind,” Joao said.
“But it’s cooler,” she said.
She looked out the window on her side, saw wisps of reedy grass trailing from the float. The pod was twisting at the the push of every random current. The movement carried a certain majesty: slow sweeping turns like a formal dance to the river’s rhythm.
“What do I smell?” she asked.
Joao sniffed: rocket fuel … very faint, the musk of human sweat … mildew. He knew without exploring it that mildew was the odor that had aroused her question.
“It’s mildew,” he said.
“Mildew?”
She looked around her at the interior of the cabin, seeing the smooth tan fabric of the ceiling edges, chrome on the instrument panel. She put her hands on the dual wheel of her side, moved it.
Mildew, she thought.
The jungle already had a beachhead inside here.
“We’re almost into the rainy season, aren’t we?” she said. “What’ll that mean?”
“Trouble,” he said. “High water … rapids.”
Chen-Lhu’s voice intruded: “Why look at the worst side?”
“Because we have to,” she said.
Hunger awoke suddenly in Joao. His hands trembled; his mouth burned with thirst.
“Let’s have a canteen,” he said.
Chen-Lhu passed a canteen forward. It sloshed as Joao took it. He offered it to Rhin, but she shook her head, overcome by a strange sensation of nausea.
Poison in water conditioned me to a temporary rejection pattern, she thought. The sound of Joao drinking made her feel ill. How greedily he drank! She turned away, unable to look at him.
Joao returned the canteen to Chen-Lhu, thinking how secretively the man awoke. The first you knew about it was his voice, alert and intrusive. Chen-Lhu probably lay there pretending sleep, but awake and listening.
“I … I think I’m hungry,” Rhin said.
Chen-Lhu produced ration packets and they ate in silence.
Now she felt thirst … and was surprised to have Chen-Lhu produce the canteen before she asked. He handed it to her. She knew then that he studied her and was aware of her emotions, saw many of her thoughts. It was a disquieting discovery. She drank in anger, thrust the canteen back at Chen-Lhu.
He smiled.
“Unless they’re on the roof where we can’t see them, or under the wings, our friends have left us,” Joao said.
“So I’ve noticed,” Chen-Lhu said.
Joao allowed his gaze to traverse both shores as far as he could see.
Not a movement of life.
Not
a sound.
The sun had mounted high enough now to burn the mist off the river.
“It’s going to be a hellish hot day in here,” Rhin said.
Joao nodded.
The warmth had a definite moment of beginning, he thought. One instant it wasn’t there, then it forced itself upon the senses. He released his safety harness, tipped his seat aside and slid into the rear of the cabin, put his hands on the dogs that sealed the rear hatch.
“Where’re you going?” Rhin demanded. She blushed as she heard her own question.
Chen-Lhu chuckled.
She felt herself hating Chen-Lhu’s callousness then, even when he tried to soften the effect of his reaction by saying, “We must learn certain blind spots of western conventionality, Rhin.”
The derision was still there in his voice, and she heard it, whirled away.
Joao cracked open the hatch, examined the edges of it, inside and out. No obvious sign of insects. He looked down at the flat surface of the float extending to the rear beside the rocket motors—two and a half meters of low platform almost a meter wide. No sign of insects there.
He dropped down, closed the hatch.
As soon as the hatch closed, Rhin turned on Chen-Lhu.
“You are insufferable!” she blazed.
“Now, Doctor Kelly.”
“Don’t pull that we-professionals-together bit,” she said. “You’re still insufferable.”
Chen-Lhu lowered his voice, said, “Before he comes back, we’ve a few things to discuss. There’s no time for personalities. This is IEO business.”
“The only IEO business we have is to carry your story to headquarters,” she said.
He stared at her. This reaction had been predictable, of course, but a way had to be found to move her. The Brazilians have a saying, he thought, and said, “When you talk of duty, speak also of money.”
“A conta foi paga por mim,” she said. “I paid that account.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that you pay anything,” he said.
“Are you offering to buy me?” she snapped.
“Others have,” he said.
She glared at him. Was he threatening to tell Joao about her past in the IEO’s investigative/espionage branch? Let him! But she’d learned a few things in the line of duty, and she assumed a look of uncertainty now. What did Chen-Lhu have in mind?
Chen-Lhu smiled. Westerners were always so susceptible to cupidity. “You wish to hear more?” he asked.
Her silence was acquiescence.
“For now,” Chen-Lhu said, “you will ply your wiles upon Johnny Martinho, make him a slave of love. He must be reduced to a creature who’ll do anything for you. For you, that should be fairly easy.”
I’ve done it before, eh? she thought.
She turned away. Well … I have done it before: in the name of duty.
Chen-Lhu nodded to himself behind her. The patterns of life were unshakable. She’d come around—almost out of habit. The hatch beside him opened and Joao climbed up into the cabin.
“Not a sign of anything,” he said, slipping back into his seat. “I left the hatch on half-lock in case anyone else wants to go out now.”
“Rhin?” Chen-Lhu said.
She shook her head, took a shivering breath. “No.”
“Then I’ll avail myself of this opportunity,” Chen-Lhu said. He opened the hatch, climbed down to the float closed the hatch.
Without turning, Rhin knew the hatch only appeared to be closed, that Chen-Lhu had left open a crack and had his ear to the opening. She stared straight ahead at the river’s quicksilver track. The pod lay suspended in a blue vault of motionless air that slowly inflated with heat until she knew it must explode.
Joao looked at her. “You all right?”
There’s a laugh! she thought.
A minute passed in silence.
“Something’s wrong,” Joao said. “You and Travis were whispering while I was out there. I couldn’t make out what you said, but there was anger in your tone.”
She tried to swallow in a dry throat. Chen-Lhu was listening to this, sure as hell. “I … he was teasing me.”
“Teasing you?”
“Yes.”
“About what?”
She turned away, studied the feathered softness of hills lifting to the right, and glimpsed far away there the snow cone of a mountain with a black tonsure of volcanic ash. Some of the mountain’s serenity invaded her senses.
“About you,” she said.
Joao looked at his hands, wondering why her admission embarrassed him.
In this silence, Rhin began to hum. She had a good voice and knew it: throaty, intimate. The voice was one of her best tools.
But Joao recognized the song and wondered at her choice. Even after she fell silent, the melody hung around him like a vapor. It was a native lament, a Lorca tragedy arranged for guitar:
“Stay your whip, Old Death—
It is not I who seeks your dark sea.
I would not whine, nor beg—
But ask it as one who has done your work.
This river which is my life,
Let it flow yet awhile in tranquility;
For my love has gray smoke in her eyes …
And farewells are difficult.”
She’d only hummed the song, but the words were there, all the same.
Joao looked out to the left.
The river was lined here with mango trees, dense green foliage broken by the lighter sage of tropical mistletoe and occasional fur-coated chonta palms. Above the jungle’s near reaches hovered two black and white urubu vultures. They hung in the burned-out steel blue sky as though painted there on a false backdrop.
The apparent tranquility of the scene held no illusions for Joao. And he wondered if this were the tranquility referred to in the song.
A flock of tanagers caught his attention. They swept overhead, glistening turquoise, dived into the jungle wall and were swallowed by it as though they’d never been.
The mango shore on the left gave way to a narrow strip of grass on a medium embankment, red-brown earth pitted with holes.
The hatch opened, and Joao heard Chen-Lhu clamber into the cabin. There came the sound of the hatch being closed and dogged.
“Johnny, do I see something moving in the trees behind that grass?” Chen-Lhu asked.
Joao focused his attention on the scene. Yes! Something just inside the tree shadows—many figures that moved like a flitting current to keep pace with the pod.
Joao lifted the sprayrifle which he had wedged to the left of his seat.
“That’s a long shot,” Rhin said.
“I know. I just want to put them on notice—keep them at a distance.”
He fumbled with the seal on the gunport, but before he could open it, the figures stepped out of the shadows into the full sunlight of the grassy beach.
Joao gasped.
“Mother of God, Mother of God … .” Rhin whispered.
It was a mixed group standing as though on review along the shore. They were mostly human in shape, although there were a few giant copies of insect forms—mantidae, beetles, something with a whiplike proboscis. The humans were mainly in the form of Indians and most of those like the ones who’d kidnapped Joao and his father.
Interspersed along the line, though, stood single editions, individuals: there, one identical in appearance to the Prefect, Joao’s father; beside him … Vierho! and all the men from the camp.
Joao pushed the sprayriflle through the port.
“No!” Rhin said. “Wait. See their eyes, how glassy they look. Those could be our friends … drugged or …” She broke off.
Or worse, Joao thought.
“It’s possible they’re hostages,” Chen-Lhu said, “One sure way to find out—shoot one of them.” He stood up, opened the gig-box. “Here’s a hard-pellet …”
“Stuff that!” Joao snarled. He withdrew his sprayrifle, sealed the port.
Chen-Lhu pursed his lips
in thought. These Latins! So unrealistic. He returned the hard-pellet rifle to the box, sat down. One of the lesser individuals could have been chosen as target. Valuable information could have been gained. Pressing the issue now would gain nothing, though. Not now.
“I don’t know about you two,” Rhin said, “but in my school we were taught not to kill our friends.”
“Of course, Rhin, of course,” Chen-Lhu said. “But are those our friends?”
She said, “Until I know for sure …”
“Exactly!” Chen-Lhu said. “And how will you know for sure?” He pointed toward the figures standing now behind them as the shore once more drifted into a line of overhanging trees and vines. “That is a school, too, Rhin—that jungle over there. You should learn its lesson, too.”
Double meaning, double meaning, she thought.
“The jungle is a school of pragmatism,” Chen-Lhu said. “Absolute judgments. Ask it about good and evil? The jungle has one answer: ‘That which succeeds is good. ’”
He’s telling me to get on with the seduction of Senhor Johnny Martinho while the poor fool’s still wide open from shock, she thought. True enough—danger, shock and horror, they all create their own rebound.
She nodded to herself. But where do I bounce?
“If those were Indians, I’d know why they put on that show,” Joao said. “But those are not really Indians. We cannot tell how these creatures think. Indians would do that sort of thing to taunt us, saying: ‘You’re next.’ But these creatures …” He shook his head.
Silence invaded the pod: an impressive solitude magnified by heat and the hypnotic flow of shoreline.
Chen-Lhu lay back, drowsing, thought: I will let the heat and idleness do my work for me.
Joao stared at his hands.
He’d never before been trapped in a situation where both fear and idleness forced him to look inward. The experience terrified and fascinated him.
Fear is the penalty of consciousness forced to stare at itself, Joao thought. I should be busy with something. With what? Sleep, then.
But he feared sleep because he sensed dreams poised there.
Emptiness … what a prize that would be: emptiness, he thought.