_Currupira_ is their name for it.
"When I remembered those stories they fell into place alongside a lotof others from different countries and times--the Sirens, forinstance, and the Lorelei. Those legends are ancient. But perhaps herein the Amazon basin, in the forests that have never been cut and theswamps that have never been drained, the _currupira_ is still real andalive. I _hope_ so!"
"Why?"
"I want to meet it. I want to show it that men can destroy it with allits unholy power." Thwaite bore down viciously on the file and thebright flakes of lead glittered to the floor beside his feet.
Dalton watched him with eyes of compassion. He heard the frog musicswelling outside, a harrowing reminder of ultimate blasphemous insult,and he felt the futility of argument.
"Remember, I heard it too," Dalton said. "And I sensed what you did.That voice or some combination of frequencies or overtones within it,is resonant to the essence of evil--the fundamental life-hatingself-destroying evil in man--even to have glimpsed it, to have heardthe brainless beast mocking, was an outrage to humanity that a manmust...."
Dalton paused, got a grip on himself. "But, consider--the outrage waswiped out, humanity won its victory over the monster a long time ago.What if it isn't quite extinct? That record was fifty thousand yearsold."
"What did you do with the record?" Thwaite looked up sharply.
"I obliterated that--the voice and the pictures that went with it fromthe film before I returned it to the Museum."
Thwaite sighed deeply. "Good. I was damning myself for not doing thatbefore I left."
The linguist said, "I think it answered my question as much as I wantit answered. The origin of speech--lies in the will to power, the lustto dominate other men by preying on the weakness or evil in them.
"Those first men didn't just guess that such power existed--they_knew_ because the beast had taught them and they tried to imitateit--the mystagogues and tyrants through the ages, with voices, withtomtoms and bull-roarers and trumpets. What makes the memory of thatvoice so hard to live with is just knowing that what it called to is apart of man--isn't that it?"
Thwaite didn't answer. He had taken the heavy rifle across his kneesand was methodically testing the movement of the well-oiled breechmechanism.
Dalton stood up wearily and picked up his suitcase. "I'll check intothe hotel. Suppose we talk this over some more in the morning. Maybethings'll look different by daylight."
But in the morning Thwaite was gone--upriver with a hired boatman,said the natives. The note he had left said only, _Sorry. But it's nouse talking about humanity--this is personal._
Dalton crushed the note angrily, muttering under his breath, "Thefool! Didn't he realize I'd go with him?" He hurled the crumpled paperaside and stalked out to look for a guide.
* * * * *
They chugged slowly westward up the forest-walled river, an obscuretributary that flowed somewhere into the Xingu. After four days, theyhad hopes of being close on the others' track. The brown-faced guide,Joao, who held the tiller now, was a magician. He had conjured up anancient outboard motor for the scow-like boat Dalton had bought from afisherman.
The sun was setting murkily and the sluggish swell of the water aheadwas the color of witch's blood. Under its opaque surface _a maedagua_, the Mother of Water, ruled over creatures slimy andrazor-toothed. In the blackness beneath the great trees, where it wasdark even at noon, other beings had their kingdom.
Out of the forest came the crying grunting hooting voices of its lifethat woke at nightfall, fiercer and more feverish than that of thedaytime. To the man from the north there seemed something indecent inthe fertile febrile swarming of life here. Compared to a temperatewoodland the _mato_ was like a metropolis against a sleepy village.
"What's that?" Dalton demanded sharply as a particularly hideoussquawk floated across the water.
"_Nao e nada. A bicharia agitase._" Joao shrugged. "The menagerieagitates itself." His manner indicated that some _bichinho_ beneathnotice had made the noise.
But moments later the little brown man became rigid. He half rose tohis feet in the boat's stern, then stooped and shut off the poppingmotor. In the relative silence the other heard what he had--far offand indistinct, muttering deep in the black _mato_, a voice thatcroaked of ravenous hunger in accents abominably known to him.
"_Currupira_," said Joao tensely. "_Currupira sai a cacada da noite._"He watched the foreigner with eyes that gleamed in the fading lightlike polished onyx.
"_Avante!_" snapped Dalton. "See if it comes closer to the river thistime."
It was not the first time they had heard that voice calling since theyhad ventured deep into the unpeopled swampland about which thedownriver settlements had fearful stories to whisper.
Silently the guide spun the engine. The boat sputtered on. Daltonstrained his eyes, watching the darkening shore as he had watchedfruitlessly for so many miles.
But now, as they rounded a gentle bend, he glimpsed a small reddishspark near the bank. Then, by the last glimmer of the swiftly fadingtwilight, he made out a boat pulled up under gnarled tree-roots. Thatwas all he could see but the movement of the red spark told him a manwas sitting in the boat, smoking a cigarette.
"In there," he ordered in a low voice but Joao had seen already andwas steering toward the shore.
The cigarette arched into the water and hissed out and they heard ascuffling and lap of water as the other boat swayed, which meant thatthe man in it had stood up.
He sprang into visibility as a flashlight in Dalton's hand went on. Asquat, swarthy man with rugged features, a _caboclo_, of white andIndian blood. He blinked expressionlessly at the light.
"Where is the American scientist?" demanded Dalton in Portuguese.
"_Quem sabe? Foi-se._"
"Which way did he go?"
"_Nao importa. O doutor e doido; nao ha-de-voltar_," said the mansuddenly. "It doesn't matter. The doctor is crazy--he won't comeback."
"Answer me, damn it! Which way?"
The _caboclo_ jerked his shoulders nervously and pointed.
"Come on!" said Dalton and scrambled ashore even as Joao was stoppingthe motor and making the boat fast beside the other. "He's gone inafter it!"
The forest was a black labyrinth. Its tangled darkness seemed to drinkup the beam of the powerful flashlight Dalton had brought, its uneasyrustlings and animal-noises pressed in to swallow the sound of humanmovements for which he strained his ears, fearing to call out. Hepushed forward recklessly, carried on by a sort of inertia ofdetermination; behind him Joao followed, though he moved woodenly andmuttered prayers under his breath.
Then somewhere very near a great voice croaked briefly and wassilent--so close that it poured a wave of faintness over the hearer,seemed to send numbing electricity tingling along his motor nerves.
Joao dropped to his knees and flung both arms about a tree-bole. Hisbrown face when the light fell on it was shiny with sweat, his eyesdilated and blind-looking. Dalton slammed the heel of his hand againstthe man's shoulder and got no response save for a tightening of thegrip on the treetrunk, and a pitiful whimper, "_Assombra-me_--itovershadows me!"
Dalton swung the flashlight beam ahead and saw nothing. Then all atonce, not fifty yards away, a single glowing eye sprang out of thedarkness, arched through the air and hit the ground to blaze intosearing brilliance and white smoke. The clearing in which it burnedgrew bright as day, and Dalton saw a silhouetted figure clutching arifle and turning its head from side to side.
He plunged headlong toward the light of the flare, shouting, "Thwaite,you idiot! You can't--"
And then the _currupira_ spoke.
Its bellowing seemed to come from all around, from the ground, thetrees, the air. It smote like a blow in the stomach that drives outwind and fight. And it roared on, lashing at the wills of those whoheard it, beating and stamping them out like sparks of a scatteredfire.
Dalton groped with one hand for his pocket but his hand kept slippingaway
into a matterless void as his vision threatened to slip intoblindness. Dimly he saw Thwaite, a stone's throw ahead of him, startto lift his weapon and then stand frozen, swaying a little on his feetas if buffeted by waves of sound.
Already the second theme was coming in--the insidious obbligato ofinvitation to death, wheedling that _this way ... this way ..._ wasthe path from the torment and terror that the monstrous voice floodedover them.
Thwaite took a stiff step, then another and another, toward the blackwall of the _mato_ that rose beyond the clearing. With anindescribable shudder Dalton realized that he too had moved aninvoluntary step forward. The _currupira's_ voice rose triumphantly.
With a mighty effort of will Dalton closed fingers he could not feelon the object in his pocket. Like a man lifting a