The Mammoth Book of 20th Century SF II

by David G. Hartwell

  “Tommy,” Joao said.

  His chief sprayman, Thome, bent close, rubbing at an insect sting on his swarthy cheek.

  In a low voice, Joao explained what the figures at the jungle edge were.

  “Aieeee,” Thome said.

  An Irmandade on Joao’s left crossed himself.

  “What was it we leaped across coming in here?” Joao asked.

  “A ditch,” Thome said. “It seems to be filled with couroq jelly . . . an insect barrier of some kind.”

  Joao nodded. He began to have unpleasant suspicions about their position here. He looked at Rhin Kelly. “Dr. Kelly, where are the rest of your people? Surely there are more than five in an IEO field crew.”

  Her lips compressed, but she remained silent.

  “So?” Joao glanced around at the tents, seeing their weathered condition. “And where is your equipment, your trucks and lab huts and jitneys?”

  “Funny thing you should ask,” she said, but there was uncertainty atop the sneering quality of her voice. “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.”

  “Acid?”

  “It smelled like oxalic,” said one of her companions, a blond Nordic with a scar beneath his right eye.

  “Start from the beginning,” Joao said.

  “We were cut off here almost six weeks ago,” said the blond man. “Something got our radio, our truck – they looked like giant chiggers and they can shoot an acid spray about fifteen meters.”

  “There’s a glass case containing three dead specimens in my lab tent,” said Dr. Kelly.

  Joao pursued his lips, thinking. “So?”

  “I heard part of what you were telling your men there,” she said. “Do you expect us to believe that?”

  “It is of no importance to me what you believe,” Joao said. “How did you get here?”

  “We fought our way in here from the truck using caramuru cold-fire spray,” said the blond man. “We dragged along what supplies we could, dug a trench around our perimeter, poured in the couroq powder, added the jell compound and topped it off with our copahu oil . . . and here we sat.”

  “How many of you?” Joao asked.

  “There were fourteen of us,” said the man.

  Joao rubbed the back of his neck where the insect stings were again beginning to burn. He glanced around at his men, assessing their condition and equipment, counted four spray rifles, saw the men carried spare charge cylinders on slings around their necks.

  “The airtruck will take us,” he said. “We had better get out of here.”

  Dr. Kelly looked out to the savannah, said: “I think it has been too late for that since a few seconds after you landed, bandeirante. I think in a day or so there’ll be a few less traitors around. You’re caught in your own trap.”

  Joao whirled to stare at the airtruck, barked: “Tommy! Vince! Get . . .” He broke off as the airtruck sagged to its left.

  “It’s only fair to warn you,” said Dr. Kelly, “to stay away from the edge of the ditch unless you first spray the opposite side. They can shoot a stream of acid at least fifteen meters . . . and as you can see . . .” She nodded toward the air- truck. “. . . the acid eats metal.”

  “You’re insane,” Joao said. “Why didn’t you warn us immediately?”

  “Warn you?”

  Her blond companion said: “Rhin, perhaps we . . .”

  “Be quiet, Hogar,” she said, and turned back to Joao. “We lost nine men to your playmates.” She looked at the small band of Irmandades. “Our lives are little enough to pay now for the extinction of eight of you . . . traitors.”

  “You are insane,” Joao said.

  “Stop playing innocent, bandeirante” she said. “We have seen your companions out there. We have seen the new playmates you bred . . . and we understand that you were too greedy, now 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.” He lifted the spray rifle from one of his men, took the man’s spare charges, indicated the other three armed men. “You – come with me.”

  “Johnny, what do you do?” Thome asked.

  “Salvage the supplies from the truck,” Joao said. He walked toward the ditch nearest the airtruck, laid down a hard mist of foamal beyond the ditch, beckoned the others to follow and leaped the ditch.

  Little more than an hour later, with all of them acid-burned – two seriously – the Irmandades retreated back across the ditch. They had salvaged less than a fourth of the equipment in the truck, and this did not include a transmitter.

  “It is evident the little devils went first for the communications equipment,” Thome said. “How could they tell?”

  Joao said: “I do not want to guess.” He broke open a first aid box, began treating his men. One had a cheek and shoulder badly splashed with acid. Another was losing flesh off his back.

  Dr. Kelly came up, helped him treat the men, but refused to speak, even to answering the simplest question.

  Finally, Joao touched up a spot on his own arm, neutralizing the acid and covering the burn with flesh-tape. He gritted his teeth against the pain, stared at Rhin Kelly. “Where are these chigua you found?”

  “Go find them yourself!” she snapped.

  “You are a blind, unprincipled megalomaniac,” Joao said, speaking in an even voice. “Do not push me too far.”

  Her face went pale and the green eyes blazed.

  Joao grabbed her arm, hauled her roughly toward the tents. “Show me these chigua!”

  She jerked free of him, threw back her red hair, stared at him defiantly. Joao faced her, looked her up and down with a calculating slowness.

  “Go ahead, do violence to me,” she said, “I’m sure I couldn’t stop you.”

  “You act like a woman who wants . . . needs violence,” Joao said. “Would you like me to turn you over to my men? They’re a little tired of your raving.”

  Her face flamed. “You would not dare!”

  “Don’t be so melodramatic,” he said, “I wouldn’t give you the pleasure.”

  “You insolent . . . you . . .”

  Joao showed her a wolfish grin, said: “Nothing you say will make me turn you over to my men!”

  “Johnny.”

  It was Thome calling.

  Joao turned, saw Thome talking to the Nordic IEO man who had volunteered information. What had she called him? Hogar.

  Thome beckoned.

  Joao crossed to the pair, bent close as Thome signaled secrecy.

  “The gentleman here says the female doctor was bitten by an insect that got past their barrier’s fumes.”

  “Two weeks ago,” Hogar whispered.

  “She has not been the same since,” Thome said. “We humor her, jefe, no?”

  Joao wet his lips with his tongue. He felt suddenly dizzy and too warm.

  “The insect that bit her was similar to the ones that were on you,” Hogar said, and his voice sounded apologetic.

  They are making fun of me! Joao thought.

  “I give the orders here!” he snapped.

  “Yes, jefe,” Thome said. “But you . . .”

  “What difference does it make who gives the orders?”

  It was Dr. Kelly close behind him.

  Joao turned, glared at her. How hateful she looked . . . in spite of her beauty.

  “What’s the difference?” she demanded. “We’ll all be dead in a few days anyway.” She stared out across the savannah. “More of your friends have arrived.”

  Joao looked to the forest shadow, saw more human-like figures arriving. They appeared familiar and he wondered what it was – something at the edge of his mind, but his head hurt. Then he realized they looked like sertao Indians, like the pair who had lured him here. There were at least a hundred of th
em, apparently identical in every visible respect.

  More were arriving by the second.

  Each of them carried a qena flute.

  There was something about the flutes that Joao felt he should remember.

  Another figure came advancing through the Indians, a thin man in a black suit, his hair shiny silver in the sunlight.

  “Father!” Joao gasped.

  I’m sick, he thought. I must be delirious.

  “That looks like the Prefect,” Thome said. “Is it not so, Ramon?”

  The Irmandade he addressed said: “If it is not the Prefect, it is his twin. Here, Johnny. Look with the glasses.”

  Joao took the glasses, focused on the figure advancing toward them through the grass. The glasses felt so heavy. They trembled in his hands and the figure coming toward them was blurred.

  “I cannot see!” Joao muttered and he almost dropped the glasses.

  A hand steadied him, and he realized he was reeling.

  In an instant of clarity, he saw that the line of Indians had raised their flutes, pointing at the IEO camp. That buzzing-rasping that had shaken his bones in the airtruck cab filled the universe around him. He saw his companions begin to fall.

  In the instant before his world went blank, Joao heard his father’s voice calling strongly: “Joao! Do not resist! Put down your weapons!”

  The trampled grassy earth of the campsite, Joao saw, was coming up to meet his face.

  It cannot be my father, Joao thought. My father is dead and they’ve copied him . . . mimicry, nothing more.

  Darkness.

  There was a dream of being carried, a dream of tears and shouting, a dream of violent protests and defiance and rejection.

  He awoke to yellow-orange light and the figure who could not be his father bending over him, thrusting a hand out, saying: “Then examine my hand if you don’t believe!”

  But Joao’s attention was on the face behind his father. It was a giant face, baleful in the strange light, its eyes brilliant and glaring with pupils within pupils. The face turned, and Joao saw it was no more than two centimeters thick. Again, it turned, and the eyes focused on Joao’s feet.

  Joao forced himself to look down, began trembling violently as he saw he was half enveloped in a foaming green cocoon, that his skin shared some of the same tone.

  “Examine my hand!” ordered the old-man figure beside him.

  “He has been dreaming.” It was a resonant voice that boomed all around him, seemingly coming from beneath the giant face. “He has been dreaming,” the voice repeated. “He is not quite awake.”

  With an abrupt, violent motion, Joao reached out, clutched the proffered hand.

  It felt warm . . . human.

  For no reason he could explain, tears came to Joao’s eyes.

  “Am I dreaming?” he whispered. He shook his head to clear away the tears.

  “Joao, my son,” said his father’s voice.

  Joao looked up at the familiar face. It was his father and no mistake. “But . . . your heart,” Joao said.

  “My pump,” the old man said. “Look.” And he pulled his hand away, turned to display where the back of his black suit had been cut away, its edges held by some gummy substance, and a pulsing surface of oily yellow between those cut edges.

  Joao saw the hair-fine scale lines, the multiple shapes, and he recoiled.

  So it was a copy, another of their tricks.

  The old man turned back to face him. “The old pump failed and they gave me a new one,” he said. “It shares my blood and lives off me and it’ll give me a few more years. What do you think our bright IEO specialists will say about the usefulness of that?”

  “Is it really you?” Joao demanded.

  “All except the pump,” said the old man. “They had to give you and some of the others a whole new blood system because of all the corrosive poison that got into you.”

  Joao lifted his hands, stared at them.

  “They know medical tricks we haven’t even dreamed about,” the old man said. “I haven’t been this excited since I was a boy. I can hardly wait to get back and . . . Joao! What is it?”

  Joao was thrusting himself up, glaring at the old man. “We’re not human anymore if . . . We’re not human!”

  “Be still, son!” the old man ordered.

  “If this is true,” Joao protested, “they’re in control.” He nodded toward the giant face behind his father. “They’ll rule us!”

  He sank back, gasping. “We’ll be their slaves.”

  “Foolishness,” rumbled the drum voice.

  Joao looked at the giant face, growing aware of the fluorescent insects above it, seeing that the insects clung to the ceiling of a cave, noting finally a patch of night sky and stars where the fluorescent insects ended.

  “What is a slave?” rumbled the voice.

  Joao looked beneath the face where the voice originated, saw a white mass about four meters across, a pulsing yellow sac protruding from it, insects crawling over it, into fissures along its surface, back to the ground beneath. The face appeared to be held up from that white mass by a dozen of round stalks, their scaled surfaces betraying their nature.

  “Your attention is drawn to our way of answering your threat to us,” rumbled the voice, and Joao saw that the sound issued from the pulsing yellow sac. “This is our brain. It is vulnerable, very vulnerable, weak, yet strong . . . just as your brain. Now, tell me what is a slave?”

  Joao fought down a shiver of revulsion, said: “I’m a slave now; I’m in bondage to you.”

  “Not true,” rumbled the voice. “A slave is one who must produce wealth for another, and there is only one true wealth in all the universe – living time. Are we slaves because we have given your father more time to live?”

  Joao looked up to the giant, glittering eyes, thought he detected amusement there.

  “The lives of all those with you have been spared or extended as well,” drummed the voice. “That makes us your slaves, does it not?”

  “What do you take in return?”

  “Ah hah!” the voice fairly barked. “Quid pro quo! You are, indeed, our slaves as well. We are tied to each other by a bond of mutual slavery that cannot be broken – never could be.”

  “It is very simple once you understand it,” Joao’s father said.

  “Understand what?”

  “Some of our kind once lived in greenhouses and their cells remembered the experience,” rumbled the voice. “You know about greenhouses, of course?” It turned to look out at the cave mouth where dawn was beginning to touch the world with gray. “That out there, that is a greenhouse, too.” Again, it looked down at Joao, the giant eyes glaring. “To sustain life, a greenhouse must achieve a delicate balance – enough of this chemical, enough of that one, another substance available when needed. What is poison one day can be sweet food the next.”

  “What’s all this to do with slavery?” Joao demanded.

  “Life has developed over millions of years in this greenhouse we call Earth,” the voice rumbled. “Sometimes it developed in the poison excrement of other life . . . and then that poison became necessary to it. Without a substance produced by the wire worm, that savannah grass out there would die . . . in time. Without substances produced by . . . insects, your kind of life would die. Sometimes, just a faint trace of the substance is needed, such as the special copper compound produced by the arachnids. Sometimes, the substance must subtly change each time before it can be used by a life-form at the end of the chain. The more different forms of life there are, the more life the greenhouse can support. This is the lesson of the greenhouse. The successful greenhouse must grow many times many forms of life. The more forms of life it has, the healthier it is.”

  “You’re saying we have to stop killing insects,” Joao said. “You’re saying we have to let you take over.”

  “We say you must stop killing yourselves,” rumbled the voice. “Already, the Chinese are . . . I believe you would call it: rei
nfesting their land. Perhaps they will be in time, perhaps not. Here, it is not too late. There . . . they were fast and thorough . . . and they may need help.”

  “You . . . give us no proof,” Joao said.

  “There will be time for proof, later,” said the voice. “Now, join your woman friend outside; let the sun work on your skin and the chlorophyll in your blood, and when you come back, tell me if the sun is your slave.”

  He Who Shapes

  ROGER ZELAZNY

  Roger Zelazny (1937–95) was among the leading SF writers to emerge in the 1960s. His body of work in that decade was enormously influential, particularly his twelve novellas, of which this is one. With the way paved by the impact of his early stories, his first novel, This Immortal (1966) shared the Hugo Award with Frank Herbert’s Dune. Zelazny became one of the most popular and respected writers of that decade, with five more novels and a collection of novellas by 1970.

  At the beginning of the 1970s he launched what was to become his most popular series of books with Nine Princes in Amber (1970). With the enormous popularity and financial success of the Amber books, Zelazny lost interest in experimentation with the novel form and limited his most intense aesthetic efforts to occasional short stories and novellas for most of the following twenty-five years. Novels such as Doorways in the Sand (1976), Eye of Cat (1982), and A Night in the Lonesome October (1993) stand out as exceptions. This novella, one of the works upon which his initial fame rests, is a powerful fusion of technology, psychology, and myths of godlike power.

  ———————————

  I

  Lovely as it was, with the blood and all, Render could sense that it was about to end.

  Therefore, each microsecond would be better off as a minute, he decided – and perhaps the temperature should be increased . . . Somewhere, just at the periphery of everything, the darkness halted its constriction.

  Something, like a crescendo of subliminal thunders, was arrested at one raging note. That note was a distillate of shame and pain and fear.