Martinho glanced at Vierho, saw the look of terrified relief in the man's face, returned his attention to Alvarez. "Your arm?"
"I still have one good arm. What more do I need?"
"Travis, you stay close behind us," Martinho said.
"My Security men have just arrived," Chen-Lhu said. "Delay a moment and we'll ring that place. I will tell them to bring shields."
"It is wise, Johnny," Alvarez said.
"We will go slowly," Martinho said. "Padre, return to the truck. Tell Ramon to bring it around the Plaza and up onto the edge of the lawn over there. Have the Hermosillo truck direct all its lights onto that place." He nodded ahead of him.
"At once, Jefe."
Vierho headed back for the truck.
"You will not disturb anything there?" Chen-Lhu asked.
"We're as anxious as you to find out what that is," Alvarez said.
"Let's go," Martinho said.
Chen-Lhu trotted off to the right where an IEO field truck could be seen making its way through a side street. The crowd appeared to be giving trouble there, resisting efforts to expel them from the Plaza area.
Alvarez turned the control handle and the shield began crawling across the lawn.
In a low voice, Alvarez said, "Johnny, why doesn't the doctor suspect the Carsonites?"
"He has a spy system as good as anything in the world," Martinho said. "He must know." He kept his gaze on the disturbed path of lawn ahead of them, that mysterious place beside the fountain.
"But what better way to sabotage us than to discredit the bandeirantes?"
"True, but I don't think Travis Huntington Chen-Lhu would make such a mistake." And he thought: It is strange how that patch of lawn both attracts and repels.
"You and I have been rivals at the bid many times, Johnny. Perhaps we forget sometimes that we have a common enemy."
"Do you name that enemy?"
"It's the enemy in the jungles, in the grass of the savannahs and under the ground. The Chinese took twenty-two years . . ."
"Do you suspect them?" Martinho glanced at his companion, noting the glower of concentration of Alvarez's face. "They will not let us inspect their results."
"The Chinese are paranoid. They leaned that way before they ever collided with the Western world and the Western world merely confirmed them in this sickness. Suspect the Chinese? I don't think so."
"I do," Martinho said. "I suspect everyone."
A feeling of gloom overtook him at the sound of his own words. It was true -- he suspected everyone, even Benito here, and Chen-Lhu . . . and the lovely Rhin Kelly. He said, "I think often of the ancient insecticides, how the insects grew ever stronger in spite of -- or because of -- the insect poisons."
A sound behind them caught Martinho's attention. He put a hand on Alvarez's arm, stopped the shield, turned.
It was Vierho followed by a slavecart piled with gear. Martinho identified a long pry bar there, a large body hood that must have been intended for Alvarez, packages of plastic explosive.
"Jefe . . . I thought you would need these things," Vierho said.
A feeling of affection for the Padre swept through Martinho and he spoke bruskly: "Stay close behind and out of the way, you hear?"
"Of course, Jefe. Don't I always?" He held the body hood toward Alvarez. "This I brought for you, Jefe Alvarez, that you might not suffer another hurt."
"I thank you, Padre," Alvarez said, "but I prefer freedom of movement. Besides, this old body has so many scars, one more will make little difference."
Martinho glanced around him, noted that other shields were advancing across the lawn. "Quickly," he said: "we must be the first there."
Alvarez rotated the control handle. Again their shield ground its way toward the fountain.
Vierho came up close beside his chief, spoke in a low voice: "Jefe, there are stories back there at the truck. It is said that some creature ate the pilings from under a warehouse at the waterfront. The warehouse collapsed. People were killed. There is much upset."
"Chen-Lhu hinted at this," Martinho said.
"Is this not the place?" Alvarez said.
"Stop the shield," Martinho said. He stared at the grass ahead of them, searching out the place -- the relationship to the fountain, the grass marked by the previous passage of their shield.
"This is the place," he said. He passed his carbine to Vierho, said, "Give me that prybar . . . and a stun charge."
Vierho handed him a small packet of plastic explosive with detonator, the kind of charge they used in the Red areas to break up an insect nest in the ground. Martinho pulled his head shield down tight, took the prybar. "Vierho, cover me from here. Benito -- can you use a hand-light?"
"Of course, Johnny."
"Jefe . . . you are not going to use the shield?"
"There isn't time." He stepped around the shield before Vierho could answer. The beam of a handlight stabbed down at the ground ahead of him. He crouched, slid the tip of the prybar along the grass, digging, pushing. The bar caught, then slipped down into emptiness. Something touched it down there, and an electric tingle shot all through Martinho.
"Padre, down here," he whispered.
Vierho leaned over him with the carbine. "Jefe?"
"Just ahead of the bar -- into the ground."
Vierho aimed, squeezed off two shots.
A violent scrabbling noise erupted under the lawn ahead of them. Something splashed there.
Again, Vierho fired. The blast pellets made a curious thumping sound as they exploded under the ground.
There came the liquid sound of furious activity down there -- as though there was a school of fish feeding at the surface.
Silence.
More headlights glared onto the lawn ahead of him. Martinho looked up to see a ring of shields around them -- IEO and bandeirante uniforms.
Again he focused on the patch of lawn.
"Padre, I'm going to pry it up. Be ready."
"Of course, Jefe."
Martinho put a foot under the bar as fulcrum, leaned on his end. The trapdoor lifted slowly. It appeared to be sealed with a gummy mixture that came up in trailing sheets. A whiff of sulphur and corrosive sublimate told Martinho what the sealant must be -- the butyl carrier he'd fired from the sprayrifle. With a sudden giving, the door swung up, flopped back onto the lawn.
Handlights were beside Martinho now, probing downward to reveal oily black water. It had the smell of the river.
"They came in from the river," Alvarez said.
Chen-Lhu came up beside Martinho, said, "The masqueraders appear to have escaped. How convenient." And he thought: I was correct to give Rhin her orders when I did. We must get a line into their organization. This is the enemy: this bandeirante leader who was educated among the Yankee imperialists. He is one of those who're trying to destroy us; there can be no other answer.
Martinho ignored Chen-Lhu's jibe; he was too weary even to be angry with the fool. He stood up, looked around the Plaza. The air held a stillness as though the entire sky awaited some calamity. A few watchers remained beyond the expanded ring of guards -- privileged officials, probably -- but the mob had been cleared back into adjoining streets.
A small red groundcar could be seen coming down an avenue from the left, its windows glittering under the slavelights as it scuttled toward the Plaza. Its three headlights, darted in and out as it skirted people and vehicles. Guards opened a way for it. Martinho recognized the IEO insignia on its toneau as it neared. The car jerked to a fast stop at the edge of the lawn and Rhin Kelly jumped out.
She had changed to coveralls of IEO working green. They looked almost like sunbleached grass under the yellow lights of the Plaza.
She strode across the lawn, her attention fixed on Martinho, thinking: He must be used and discarded. He's the enemy. That's obvious now.
Martinho watched her approach, admiring the grace and femininity which the simple uniform only accented.
She stopped in front of him, spoke i
n a husky, urgent voice: "Senhor Martinho, I've come to save your life."
He shook his head, not quite believing he'd heard her correctly. "What . . ."
"All hell is about to break loose," she said.
Martinho grew aware of distant shouting.
"A mob," she said. "Armed."
"What the devil's going on?" he demanded.
"There've been some deaths tonight," she said. "Women and children among them. A section of the hill collapsed behind Monte Ochoa. There're burrows all through that hill."
Vierho said, "The orphanage . . ."
"Yes," she said. "The orphanage and convent on Monte Ochoa were buried. Bandeirantes are blamed. You know what is being said about . . ."
"I'll talk to these people," Martinho said. He felt outrage at the thought of being threatened by those he served. "This is nonsense! We've done nothing to . . ."
"Jefe," Vierho said, "you do not reason with a mob."
"Two men of the Lifcado band already have been lynched," Rhin said. "You have a chance if you run now. Your trucks are here, enough for all of you."
Vierho took his arm. "Jefe, we must do as she says."
Martinho stood silently, hearing the information being passed among the bandeirantes around them -- "A mob . . . the blame on us . . . orphanage . . ."
"Where could we go?" he asked.
"This violence appears to be local," Chen-Lhu said. He paused, listening: the mob sounds had grown louder. "Go to your father's place in Cuiaba. Take your band with you. The others can go to your bases in the Red."
"Why must I. . ."
"I will send Rhin to you when we've devised a plan of action."
"I must know where to find you," Rhin said, picking up her cue. And she thought: The fathers place, yes. That must be the center of it . . . there or the Goyaz as Travis suspects.
"But we've done nothing," Martinho said.
"Please," she said.
Vierho tugged his arm.
Martinho took a deep breath. "Padre, go with the men. It'll be safer out there in the Red. I'll take the small truck and go to Cuiaba. I must discuss this with my father, the Prefect. Someone must get to the seat of government and make the people there listen."
"Listen to what?" Alvarez asked.
"The . . . work must be halted . . . temporarily," Martinho said. "There must be an investigation."
"That is foolish!" Alvarez barked. "Who will listen to such talk as that?"
Martinho tried to swallow in a dry throat. The night around him felt cold, oppressive . . . and the mob sounds had grown louder. Police and military guards wouldn't be able to hold back that angered, many-celled monster much longer.
"They cannot afford to listen," Alvarez muttered. "Even if you're right."
The mob sounds punctuated the truth in those words, Martinho knew. The men in power couldn't admit failure. They were in power because of certain promises. If those promises weren't kept, someone would have to be found to take the blame.
Perhaps someone's already been found, he thought.
He allowed Vierho to lead him then toward the trucks.
IV
It was a cave high above wet black rocks of a Goyaz river gorge. In the cave, thoughts pulsed through a brain as it listened to a radio on which a human announcer related the day's news: riots in Bahia, bandeirantes lynched, paratroopers landed to restore order. . . .
The radio a small battery-powered portable, made a tinny racket in the cave that irritated the brain's sensors, but human news had to be monitored . . . as long as the batteries held out. Perhaps biochemical cells could be used after that, but the brain's mechanical knowledge was limited. Theory it had in abundance from filmbook libraries abandoned in the Red, but practical knowledge was another matter.
There'd been a portable television for awhile, but its range had been limited and now it no longer worked.
News ended and music blared from the speaker. The brain signaled for the instrument to be silenced. The brain lay there then in the welcome silence, thinking, pulsing.
It was a mass about four meters in diameter and half a meter deep, knowing itself as a "Supreme Integration" filled with passive alertness, yet always more than a little irritated by the necessities which kept it anchored to this cave sanctuary.
A mobile sensory mask which it could shift and flex at will -- forming now a disc, then a membranous funnel, and even the simulation of a giant human face -- lay like a cap across the brain's surface, its sensors directed toward gray dawnlight at the cave mouth.
The rhythmic pulsing of a yellow sac at one side pumped a dark viscous fluid into the brain. Wingless insects crawled over its surface membranes -- inspecting, repairing, giving special foods where needed.
Specialist hives of winged insects clustered in fissures of the cave, some producing acids, some breaking down the acids for their oxygen, some digesting, some providing the muscles for pumping.
A bitter-clean acid smell permeated the cave.
Insects flew in and out of the dawnlight. Some paused to dance and sway and hum for the brain's sensors; some used modulated stridulations to report; some appeared in special groups aligned a special way; some formed complex patterns with changes in coloration; some waved antennae in intricate ways.
Now came the relay from Bahia: "Much rain -- wet ground; the burrows of our listening post collapsed. An observer was seen and attacked, but a monitor brought it to safety by tunneling from the river. The river tunnels brought collapse of a structure there. We left no evidence except what was seen of us by the humans. Those of us who could not escape were destroyed.
"There were deaths among the humans."
Deaths among the humans, the brain reflected. Then the radio reports were correct.
This was disaster.
The brain's oxygen, demand increased; attendant insects sped over it; the pumping rhythm increased its pace.
The humans will believe themselves attacked, the brain thought. The complex defense posture of humankind will be activated. To penetrate that posture with calm reasoning will be most difficult if not impossible.
Who can reason with unreason?
The humans were very difficult to understand with their gods and their accumulation patterns.
"Business" was what the books called their accumulation pattern, but the sense of it eluded the brain. Money could not be eaten, it stored no apparent energy, and was a poor building material. Wattle and daub taipa houses of the poorest humans had more substance.
Still, the humans grubbed for it. The stuff had to be important. It had to be every bit as important as their god-concept, which appeared to be something like a supreme integration whose substance and location could not be defined. Most disturbing.
Somewhere, the brain felt, there must be a thought-mode to make these matters understandable, but the pattern escaped it.
The brain thought then how strange it was, this thought-mode of existence, this transference of internal energy to create imaginary visions that were in fact plans and schemes and that sometimes must move for a way along non-survival paths. How curious, how subtle, yet how beautiful was this human discovery which had now been copied and adapted to the uses of other creatures. How admirable and elevated it was, this manipulation of the universe that existed only within the passive confines of imagination.
For a moment, the brain tested itself, attempting to simulate human emotions. Fear and the hive-oneness -- these it could understand. But the permutations, the variance of fear called hate, the blister-sided reflexes -- these were more difficult.
Never once did the brain consider that it once had been part of a human and subject to such emotions. Intrusion of those thoughts had been found irritating. They had been excised at its own direction. Now the brain was only vaguely like its human counterpart, larger, more complex. No human circulatory system could support its needs for nourishment. No merely human sensory system could supply its voracious appetite for information.
It was simp
ly Brain, a functional part of the superhive system -- more important now than even the queens.
"Which class of humans was killed?" it asked.
The answer came in low stridulations: "Workers, females, immature humans and some barren queens."
Female and immature humans, the brain thought. It formed on the screen of its awareness an Indian curse whose source had been excised. With such deaths, the human reaction would be most violent. Quick action was imperative.
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