Frank Herbert
No species in existence today is totally lacking in defenses, of which adaptability must certainly be the most important (Ask any virus) Generally speaking, the larger the creature the more specialized the defenses it will have evolved, while the smaller ones rely on adapting to change But every year humanity produces new ways of killing insect pests, in order to survive, their ultimate adaptation may be something like the one described in this story
Frank Herbert's concern with ecological problems goes well beyond having written Dune the most famous of ecological science fiction novels He is an active campaigner for environmental awareness, and his own home is powered by windmills
HE LOOKED PRETTY MUCH LIKE the bastard offspring of a Guarani Indio and some backwoods farmer's daughter, some sertanista who had tried to forget her enslavement to the encomendero system by "eating the iron"— which is what they call lovemaking through the grill of a consel gate
The type-look was almost perfect except when he forgot himself while passing through one of the deeper jungle glades
His skin tended to shade down to green then, fading him into the background of leaves and vines, giving a strange disembodiment to the mud-grey shirt and ragged trousers, the inevitable frayed straw hat and rawhide sandals soled with pieces cut from worn tires.
Such lapses became less and less frequent the farther he got from the Parana headwaters, the sertao hinterland of Goyaz where men with his bang-cut black hair and glittering eyes were common
By the time he reached bandeirantes country, he had achieved almost perfect control over the chameleon effect.
But now he was out of the jungle growth and into the brown dirt tracks that separated the parceled farms of the resettlement plan. In his own way, he knew he was approaching the bandeirante checkpoints, and with an almost human gesture, he fingered the cedula de gracias al sacar, the certificate of white blood, tucked safely beneath his shirt. Now and again, when humans were not near, he practiced speaking aloud the name that had been chosen for him—"Antonio Raposo Tavares."
The sound was a bit stridulant, harsh on the edges, but he knew it would pass. It already had. Goyaz Indies were notorious for the strange inflection of their speech. The farm folk who had given him a roof and fed him the previous night had said as much.
When their questions had become pressing, he had squatted on the doorstep and played his flute, the qena of the Andes Indian that he carried in a leather purse hung from his shoulder. He had kept the sound to a conventional, non-dangerous pitch. The gesture of the flute was a symbol of the region. When a Guarani put flute to nose and began playing, that was a sign words were ended.
The farm folk had shrugged and retired.
Now, he could see red-brown rooftops ahead and the white crystal shimmering of a bandeirante tower with its aircars alighting and departing. The scene held an odd hive-look He stopped, finding himself momentarily overcome by the touch of instincts that he knew he had to master or fail in the ordeal to come.
He united his mental identity then, thinking, We are greenslaves subservient to the greater whole The thought lent him an air of servility that was like a shield against the stares of the humans trudging past all around him. His kind knew many mannerisms and had learned early that servility was a form of concealment.
Presently, he resumed his plodding course toward the town and the tower.
The dirt track gave way to a two-lane paved market road with its footpaths in the ditches on both sides. This, in turn, curved alongside a four-deck commercial transport highway where even the footpaths were paved. And now there were groundcars and aircars in greater number, and he noted that the flow of people on foot was increasing.
Thus far, he had attracted no dangerous attention The occasional snickering side-glance from natives of the area could be safely ignored, he knew. Probing stares held peril, and he had detected none. The servility shielded him.
The sun was well along toward mid-morning and the day's heat was beginning to press down on the earth, raising a moist hothouse sunk from the dirt beside the pathway, mingling the perspiration odors of humanity around him.
And they were around him now, close and pressing, moving slower and slower as they approached the checkpoint bottleneck. Presently, the forward motion stopped. Progress resolved itself into shuffle and stop, shuffle and stop.
This was the critical test now and there was no avoiding it. He waited with something like an Indian's stoic patience. His breathing had grown deeper to compensate for the heat, and he adjusted it to match that of the people around him, suffering the temperature rise for the sake of blending into his surroundings.
Andes Indians didn't breathe deeply here in the lowlands.
Shuffle and stop.
Shuffle and stop.
He could see the checkpoint now.
Fastidious bandeirantes in sealed white cloaks with plastic helmets, gloves, and boots stood in a double row within a shaded brick corridor leading into the town. He could see sunlight hot on the street beyond the corridor and people hurrying away there after passing the gantlet.
The sight of that free area beyond the corridor sent an ache of longing through all the parts of him. The suppression warning flashed out instantly on the heels of that instinctive reaching emotion.
No distraction could be permitted now; he was into the hands of the first bandeirante, a hulking blonde fellow with pink skin and blue eyes.
"Step along now! Lively now!" the fellow said.
A gloved hand propelled him toward two bandeirantes standing on the right side of the line.
"Give this one an extra treatment," the blonde giant called. "He's from the upcountry by the look of him."
The other two bandeirantes had him now, one jamming a breather mask over his face, the other fitting a plastic bag over him. A tube trailed from the bag out to machinery somewhere in the street beyond the corridor.
"Double shot!" one of the bandeirantes called.
Fuming blue gas puffed out the bag around him, and he took a sharp, gasping breath through the mask.
Agony!
The gas drove through every multiple linkage of his being with needles of pain.
We must not weaken, he thought.
But it was a deadly pain, killing. The linkages were beginning to weaken.
"Okay on this one," the bag handler called.
The mask was pulled away. The bag was slipped off. Hands propelled him down the corridor toward the sunlight.
"Lively now! Don't hold up the line."
The stink of the poison gas was all around him. It was a new one—a dissembler. They hadn't prepared him for this poison!
Now, he was into the sunlight and turning down a street lined with fruit stalls, merchants bartering with customers or standing fat and watchful behind their displays.
In his extremity, the fruit beckoned to him with the promise of life-saving sanctuary for a few parts of him, but the integrating totality fought off the lure. He shuffled as fast as he dared, dodging past the customers, through the knots of idlers.
"You like to buy some fresh oranges?"
An oily dark hand thrust two oranges toward his face.
"Fresh oranges from the green country. Never been a bug anywhere near these."
He avoided the hand, although the odor of the oranges came near overpowering him.
Now, he was clear of the stalls, around a corner down a narrow side street. Another corner and he saw far away to his left the lure of greenery in open country, the free area beyond the town.
He turned toward the green, increasing his speed, measuring out the time still available to him. There was still a chance. Poison clung to his clothing, but free air was filtering through the fabric—and the thought of victory was like an antidote.
We can make it yet!
The green drew closer and closer—trees and ferns beside a river bank. He heard the running water. There was a bridge thronging with foot traffic from converging streets.
No help for it; he joined the throng, avoided contact as much as possible. The linkages of his legs and back were beginning to go, and he knew the wrong kind of blow could dislodge whole segments. He was over the bridge without disaster. A dirt track led off the path and down toward the river.
He turned toward it, stumbled against one of two men carrying a pig in a net slung between them. Part of the shell on his right upper leg gave way and he could feel it begin to slip down inside his pants.
The man he had hit took two backward steps, almost dropped the end of the burden.
"Careful!" the man shouted.
The man at the other end of the net said: "Damn drunks."
The pig set up a squirming, squealing distraction.
In this moment, he slipped past them onto the dirt track leading down toward the river. He could see the water down there now, boiling with aeration from the barrier filters.
Behind him, one of the pig carriers said: "I don't think he was drunk, Carlos. His skin felt dry and hot. Maybe he was sick."
The track turned around an embankment of raw dirt dark brown with dampness and dipped toward a tunnel through ferns and bushes. The men with the pig could no longer see him, he knew, and he grabbed at his pants where the part of his leg was slipping, scurried into the green tunnel.
Now, he caught sight of his first mutated bee. It was dead, having entered the barrier vibration area here without any protection against that deadliness. The bee was one of the butterfly type with iridescent yellow and orange wings. It lay in the cup of a green leaf at the center of a shaft of sunlight.
He shuffled past, having recorded the bee's shape and color. They had considered the bees as a possible answer, but there were serious drawbacks to this course. A bee could not reason with humans, that was the key fact. And humans had to listen to reason soon, else all life would end.
There came the sound of someone hurrying down the path behind him, heavy footsteps thudding on the earth.
Pursuit?…
He was reduced to a slow shuffling now and soon it would be only crawling progress, he knew. Eyes searched the greenery around him for a place of concealment. A thin break in the fern wall on his left caught his attention. Tiny human footprints led into it—children. He forced his way through the ferns, found himself on a low narrow path along the embankment. Two toy aircars, red and blue, had been abandoned on the path. His staggering foot pressed them into the dirt.
The path led close to a wall of black dirt festooned with creepers, around a sharp turn, and onto the lip of a shallow cave. More toys lay in the green gloom at the cave's mouth.
He knelt, crawled over the toys into the blessed dankness, lay there a moment, waiting.
The pounding footsteps hurried past a few feet below.
Voices reached up to him.
"He was headed toward the river. Think he was going to jump in?"
"Who knows? But I think me for sure he was sick."
"Here; down this way. Somebody's been down this way."
The voices grew indistinct, blended with the babbling sound of the river.
The men were going on down the path. They had missed his hiding place. But why had they pursued him? He had not seriously injured the one by stumbling against him. Surely they did not suspect.
Slowly, he steeled himself for what had to be done, brought his specialized parts into play, and began burrowing into the earth at the end of the cave. Deeper and deeper he burrowed, thrusting the excess dirt behind and out to make it appear the cave had collapsed.
Ten meters in he went before stopping. His store of energy contained just enough reserve for the next stage. He turned on his back, scattering the dead parts of his legs and back, exposing the queen and her guard cluster to the dirt beneath his chitinous spine. Orifices opened at his thighs, exuded the cocoon foam, the soothing green cover that would harden into a protective shell.
This was victory; the essential parts had survived.
Time was the thing now—ten and one-half days to gather new energy, go through the metamorphosis, and disperse. Soon, there would be thousands of him—each with its carefully mimicked clothing and identification papers and appearance of humanity.
Identical—each of them.
There would be other checkpoints, but not as severe; other barriers, lesser ones.
This human copy had proved a good one. They had learned many things from study of their scattered captives and from the odd crew directed by the red-haired human female they'd trapped in the sertao. How strange she was: like a queen and not like a queen. It was so difficult to understand human creatures, even when you permitted them limited freedom… almost impossible to reason with them. Their slavery to the planet would have to be proved dramatically, perhaps.
The queen stirred near the cool dirt. They had learned new things this time about escaping notice. All of the subsequent colony clusters would share that knowledge. One of them—at least—would get through to the city by the Amazon "River Sea" where the death-for-all originated. One had to get through.
Senhor Gabriel Martinho, prefect of the Mato Grosso Barrier Company, paced his study, muttering to himself as he passed the tall, narrow window that admitted the evening sunlight. Occasionally, he paused to glare down at his son, Joao, who sat on a tapir-leather sofa beneath one of the tall bookcases that lined the room.
The elder Martinho was a dark wisp of a man, limb-thin, with grey hair and cavernous brown eyes above an eagle nose, slit mouth, and boot-toe chin. He wore old-style black clothing as befitted his position, his linen white against the black, and with golden cuffstuds glittering as he waved his arms.
"I am an object of ridicule!" he snarled.
Joao, a younger copy of the father, his hair still black and wavy, absorbed the statement in silence. He wore a bandeirante's white coverall suit sealed into plastic boots at the calf.
"An object of ridicule!" the elder Martinho repeated.
It began to grow dark in the room, the quick tropic darkness hurried by thunderheads piled along the horizon. The waning daylight carried a hazel blue cast. Heat lightning spattered the patch of sky visible through the tall window, sent dazzling electric radiance into the study. Drumming thunder followed. As though that were the signal, the house sensors turned on lights wherever there were humans. Yellow illumination filled the study.
The Prefect stopped in front of his son. "Why does my own son, a bandeirante, a jefe of the Irmandades, spout these Carsonite stupidities?"
Joao looked at the floor between his boots. He felt both resentment and shame. To disturb his father this way, that was a hurtful thing, with the elder Martinho's delicate heart. But the old man was so blind!
"Those rabble farmers laughed at me," the elder Martinho said. "I told them we'd increase the green area by ten thousand hectares this month, and they laughed. 'Your own son does not even believe this!' they said. And they told me some of the things you had been saying."
"I am sorry I have caused you distress, father," Joao said. "The fact that I'm a bandeirante…"He shrugged. "How else could I have learned the truth about this extermination program?"
His father quivered.
"Joao! Do you sit there and tell me you took a false oath when you formed your Irmandades band?"
"That's not the way it was, father."
Joao pulled a sprayman's emblem from his breast pocket, fingered it. "I believed it… then. We could shape mutated bees to fill every gap in the insect ecology. This I believed. Like the Chinese, I said: 'Only the useful shall live!' But that was several years ago, father, and since then I have come to realize we don't have a complete understanding of what usefulness means."
"It was a mistake to have you educated in North America," his father said. "That's where you absorbed this Carsonite heresy. It's all well and good for them to refuse to join the rest of the world in the Ecological Realignment; they do not have as many million mouths to feed. But my own son!"
Joao spoke defensively: "Out in the red areas you see things, father. These things are difficult to explain. Plants look healthier out there and the fruit is…"
"A purely temporary thing," his father said. "We will shape bees to meet whatever need we find. The destroyers take food from our mouths. It is very simple. They must die and be replaced by creatures which serve a function useful to mankind."
"The birds are dying, father," Joao said.
"We are saving the birds! We have specimens of every kind in our sanctuaries. We will provide new foods for them to…"
"But what happens if our barriers are breached… before we can replace the population of natural predators? What happens then?"
The elder Martinho shook a thin finger under his son's nose. "This is nonsense! I will hear no more of it! Do you know what else those mameluco farmers said? They said they have seen bandeirantes reinfesting the green areas to prolong their jobs! That is what they said. This, too, is nonsense—but it is a natural consequence of defeatist talk just such as I have heard from you tonight. And every setback we suffer adds strength to such charges!"
"Setbacks, father?"
"I have said it: setbacks!"
Senhor Prefect Martinho turned, paced to his desk and back. Again, he stopped in front of his son, placed hands on hips. "You refer to the Piratininga, of course?"
"You accuse me, father?"
"Your Irmandades were on that line."
"Not so much as a flea got through us!"
"Yet, a week ago the Piratininga was green. Now, it is crawling. Crawling!"
"I cannot watch every bandeirante in the Mato Grosso," Joao protested. "If they…"
"The IEO gives us only six months to clean up," the elder Martinho said. He raised his hands, palms up; his face was flushed. "Six months! Then they throw an embargo around all Brazil—the way they have done with North America." He lowered his hands. "Can you imagine the pressures on me? Can you imagine the things I must listen to about the bandeirantes and especially about my own son?"
Joao scratched his chin with the sprayman's emblem. The reference to the International Ecological Organization made him think of Dr. Rhin Kelly, the IEO's lovely field director. His mind pictured her as he had last seen her in the A' Chigua nightclub at Bahia—red-haired, green-eyed… so lovely and strange. But she had been missing almost six weeks now—somewhere in the sertao, and there were those who said she must be dead.
Joao looked at his father. If only the old man weren't so excitable. "You excite yourself needlessly, father," he said. "The Piratininga was not a full barrier, just a…"
"Excite myself!"
The Prefect's nostrils dilated; he bent toward his son. "Already we have gone past two deadlines. We gained an extension when I announced you and the bandeirantes of Diogo Alvarez had cleared the Piratininga. How do I explain now that it is reinfested, that we have the work to do over?"
Joao returned the sprayman's emblem to his pocket. It was obvious he'd not be able to reason with his father this night. Frustration sent a nerve quivering along Joao's jaw. The old man had to be told, though; someone had to tell him. And someone of his father's stature had to get back to the Bureau, shake them up there, and make them listen.
The Prefect returned to his desk, sat down. He picked up an antique crucifix, one that the great Aleihadinho had carved in ivory. He lifted it, obviously seeking to restore his serenity, but his eyes went wide and glaring. Slowly, he returned the crucifix to its position on the desk, keeping his attention on it.
"Joao," he whispered.
It's his heart! Joao thought.
He leaped to his feet, rushed to his father's side. "Father! What is it?"
The elder Martinho pointed, hand trembling.
Through the spiked crown of thorns, across the agonized ivory face, over the straining muscles of the Christ figure crawled an insect. It was the color of the ivory, faintly reminiscent of a beetle in shape, but with a multi-clawed fringe along its wings and thorax, and with furry edging to its abnormally long antennae.
The elder Martinho reached for a roll of papers to smash the insect, but Joao put out a hand restraining him. "Wait. This is a new one. I've never seen anything like it. Give me a handlight. We must follow it, find where it nests."
Senhor Prefect Martinho muttered under his breath, withdrew a small permalight from a drawer of the desk, handed the light to his son.
Joao peered at the insect, still not using the light. "How strange it is," he said. "See how it exactly matches the tone of the ivory."
The insect stopped, pointed its antennae toward the men.
"Things have been seen," Joao said. "There are stories. Something like this was found near one of the barrier villages last month. It was inside the green area, on a path beside a river. Two fanners found it while searching for a sick man." Joao looked at his father. "They are very watchful of sickness in the newly green regions, you know. There have been epidemics… and that is another thing."
"There is no relationship," his father snapped. "Without insects to carry disease, we will have less illness."
"Perhaps," Joao said, and his tone said he did not believe it.
Joao returned his attention to the insect. "I do not think our ecologists know all they say they do. And I mistrust our Chinese advisors. They speak in such flowery terms of the benefits from eliminating useless insects, but they will not let us go into their green areas and inspect. Excuses. Always excuses. I think they are having troubles they do not wish us to know."
"That's foolishness," the elder Martinho growled, but his tone said this was not a position he cared to defend. "They are honorable men. Their way of life is closer to our socialism than it is to the decadent capitalism of North America. Your trouble is you see them too much through the eyes of those who educated you."
"I'll wager this insect is one of the spontaneous mutations," Joao said. "It is almost as though they appeared according to some plan. Find me something in which I may capture this creature and take it to the laboratory."
The elder Martinho remained standing by his chair. "Where will you say it was found?"
"Right here," Joao said.
"You will not hesitate to expose me to more ridicule?"
"But father…"
"Can't you hear what they will say? In his own home this insect is found. It is a strange new kind. Perhaps he breeds them there to reinfest the green."
"Now you are talking nonsense, father. Mutations are common in a threatened species. And we cannot deny there is a threat to insect species—the poisons, the barrier vibrations, the traps. Get me a container, father. I cannot leave this creature, or I'd get a container myself."
"And you will tell where it was found?"
"I can do nothing else. We must cordon off this area, search it out. This could be… an accident…"
"Or a deliberate attempt to embarrass me."
Joao took his attention from the insect, studied his father. That was a possibility, of course. The Carsonites had friends in many places… and some were fanatics who would stoop to any scheme. Still…
Decision came to Joao. He returned his attention to the motionless insect. His father had to be told, had to be reasoned with at any cost. Someone whose voice carried authority had to get down to the Capitol and make them listen.
"Our earliest poisons killed off the weak and selected out those insects immune to this threat," Joao said. "Only the immune remained to breed. The poisons we use now… some of them, do not leave such loopholes, and the deadly vibrations at the barriers…"He shrugged. "This is a form of beetle, father. I will show you a thing."
Joao drew a long, thin whistle of shiny metal from his pocket. "There was a time when this called countless beetles to their deaths. I had merely to tune it across their attraction spectrum." He put the whistle to his lips, blew while turning the end of it.
No sound audible to human ears came from the instrument, but the beetle's antennae writhed.
Joao removed the whistle from his mouth.
The antennae stopped writhing.
"It stayed put, you see," Joao said. "And there are indications of malignant intelligence among them. The insects are far from extinction, father… and they are beginning to strike back."
"Malignant intelligence, pah!"
"You must believe me, father," Joao said. "No one else will listen. They laugh and say we are too long in the jungle. And where is our evidence? And they say such stories could be expected from ignorant farmers but not from bandeirantes. You must listen, father, and believe. It is why I was chosen to come here… because you are my father and you might listen to your own son."
"Believe what?" the elder Martinho demanded, and he was the Prefect now, standing erect, glaring coldly at his son.
"In the sertao of Goyaz last week," Joao said, "Antonil Lisboa's bandeirante lost three men who…"
"Accidents."
"They were killed with formic acid and oil of copahu."
"They were careless with their poisons. Men grow careless when they…"
"Father! The formic acid was a particularly strong type, but still recognizable as having been… or being of a type manufactured by insects. And the men were drenched with it. While the oil of copahu
M
"You imply that insects such as this…" The Prefect pointed to the motionless creature on the crucifix. "… blind creatures such as this…"
"They're not blind, father."
"I did not mean literally blind, but without intelligence," the elder Martinho said. "You cannot be seriously implying that these creatures attacked humans and killed them."
"We have yet to discover precisely how the men were slain," Joao said. "We have only their bodies and the physical evidence at the scene. But there have been other deaths, father, and men missing, and we grow more and more certain that…"
He broke off as the beetle crawled off the crucifix onto the desk. Immediately, it darkened to brown, blending with the wood surface.
"Please, father. Get me a container."
The beetle reached the edge of the desk, hesitated. Its antennae curled back, then forward.
"I will get you a container only if you promise to use discretion in your story of where this creature was found," the Prefect said.
"Father, I…"
The beetle leaped off the desk far out into the middle of the room, scuttled to the wall, up the wall, into a crack beside a window.
Joao pressed the switch of the handlight, directed its beam into the hole which had swallowed the strange beetle.
"How long has this hole been here, father?"
"For years. It was a flaw in the masonry… an earthquake, I believe."
Joao turned, crossed to the door in three strides, went through an arched hallway, down a flight of stone steps, through another door and short hall, through a grillwork gate, and into the exterior garden. He set the handlight to full intensity, washed its blue glare over the wall beneath the study window.
"Joao, what are you doing?"
"My job, father," Joao said. He glanced back, saw that the elder Martinho had stopped just outside the gate.
Joao returned his attention to the exterior wall, washed the blue glare of light on the stones beneath the window. He crouched low, running the light along the ground, peering behind each clod, erasing all shadows.
His searching scrutiny passed over the raw earth, turned to the bushes, then the lawn.
Joao heard his father come up behind.
"Do you see it, son?"
"No, father."
"You should have allowed me to crush it."
From the outer garden that bordered the road and the stone fence, there came a piercing stridulation. It hung on the air in almost tangible waves, making Joao think of the hunting cry of jungle predators. A shiver moved up his spine. He turned toward the driveway where he had parked his airtruck, sent the blue glare of light stabbing there.
He broke off, staring at the lawn. "What is that?"
The ground appeared to be in motion, reaching out toward them like the curling of a wave on a beach. Already, they were cut off from the house. The wave was still some ten paces away, but moving in rapidly.
Joao stood up, clutched his father's arm. He spoke quietly, hoping not to alarm the old man further. "We must get to my truck, father. We must run across them."
"Them?"
"Those are like the insect we saw inside, father—millions of them. Perhaps they are not beetles, after all. Perhaps they are like army ants. We must make it to the truck. I have equipment and supplies there. We will be safe inside. It is a bandeirante truck, father. You must run with me. I will help you."
They began to run, Joao holding his father's arm, pointing the way with the light.
Let his heart be strong enough, Joao prayed.
They were into the creeping wave of insects then, but the creatures leaped aside, opening a pathway which closed behind the running men.
The white form of the airtruck loomed out of the shadows at the far curve of the driveway about fifteen meters ahead.
"Joao… my heart," the elder Martinho gasped.
"You can make it," Joao panted. "Faster!" He almost lifted his father from the ground for the last few paces.
They were at the wide rear door into the truck's lab compartment now. Joao yanked open the door, slapped the light switch, reached for a spray hood and poison gun. He stopped, stared into the yellow-lighted compartment.
Two men sat there—sertao Indians by the look of them, with bright glaring eyes and bang-cut black hair beneath straw hats. They looked to be identical twins—even to the mud-grey clothing and sandals, the leather shoulder bags. The beetle-like insects crawled around them, up the walls, over the instruments and vials.
"What the devil?" Joao blurted.
One of the pair held a qena flute. He gestured with it, spoke in a rasping, oddly inflected voice: "Enter. You will not be harmed if you obey."
Joao felt his father sag, caught the old man in his arms. How light he felt! Joao stepped up into the truck, carrying his father. The elder Martinho breathed in short, painful gasps. His face was a pale blue and sweat stood out on his forehead.
"Joao," he whispered. "Pain… my chest."
"Medicine, father," Joao said. "Where is your medicine?"
"House," the old man said.
"It appears to be dying," one of the Indians rasped.
Still holding his father in his arms, Joao whirled toward the pair, blazed: "I don't know who you are or why you loosed those bugs here, but my father's dying and needs help. Get out of my way!"
"Obey or both die," said the Indian with the flute.
"He needs his medicine and a doctor," Joao pleaded. He didn't like the way the Indian pointed that flute. The motion suggested the instrument was actually a weapon.
"What part has failed?" asked the other Indian. He stared curiously at Joao's father. The old man's breathing had become shallow and rapid.
"It's his heart," Joao said. "I know you farmers don't think he's acted fast enough for…"
"Not farmers," said the one with the flute. "Heart?"
"Pump, said the other.
"Pump." The Indian with the flute stood up from the bench at the front of the lab, gestured down. "Put… father here."
The other one got off the bench, stood aside.
In spite of fear for his father, Joao was caught by the strange look of this pair, the fine, scale-like lines in their skin, the glittering brilliance of their eyes.
"Put father here," repeated the one with the flute, pointing at the bench. "Help can be…"
"Attained," said the other one.
"Attained," said the one with the flute.
Joao focused now on the masses of insects around the walls, the waiting quietude in their ranks. They were like the one in the study.
The old man's breathing was now very shallow, very rapid.
He's dying, Joao thought in desperation.
"Help can be attained," repeated the one with the flute. "If you obey, we will not harm."
The Indian lifted his flute, pointed it at Joao like a weapon. "Obey."
There was no mistaking the gesture.
Slowly, Joao advanced, deposited his father gently on the bench.
The other Indian bent over the elder Martinho's head, raised an eyelid. There was a professional directness about the gesture. The Indian pushed gently on the dying man's diaphragm, removed the Prefect's belt, loosened his collar. A stubby brown finger was placed against the artery in the old man's neck.
"Very weak," the Indian rasped.
Joao took another, closer look at this Indian, wondering at a sertao backwoodsman who behaved like a doctor.
"We've got to get him to a hospital," Joao said. "And his medicine in…"
"Hospital," the Indian agreed.
"Hospital?" asked the one with the flute.
A low, stridulant hissing came from the other Indian.
"Hospital," said the one with the flute.
That stridulant hissing! Joao stared at the Indian beside the Prefect. The sound had been reminiscent of the weird call that had echoed across the lawn.
The one with the flute poked him, said: "You will go into front and maneuver this…"
"Vehicle," said the one beside Joao's father.
"Vehicle," said the one with the flute.
"Hospital?" Joao pleaded.
"Hospital," agreed the one with the flute.
Joao looked once more to his father. The other Indian already was strapping the elder Martinho to the bench in preparation for movement. How competent the man appeared in spite of his backwoods look
"Obey," said the one with the flute.
Joao opened the door into the front compartment, slipped through, feeling the other one follow A few drops of rain spattered darkly against the curved windshield Joao squeezed into the operator's seat, noted how the Indian crouched behind him, flute pointed and ready
A dart gun of some kind, Joao guessed.
He punched the igniter button on the dash, strapped himself in while waiting for the turbines to build up speed The Indian still crouched behind him, vulnerable now if the airtruck were spun sharply. Joao flicked the communications switch on the lower left corner of the dash, looked into the tiny screen there giving him a view of the lab compartment. The rear doors were open. He closed them by hydraulic remote. His father was securely strapped to the bench now, Joao noted, but the other Indian was equally secured.
The turbines reached their whining peak. Joao switched on the lights, engaged the hydrostatic drive. The truck lifted six inches, angled upward as Joao increased pump displacement. He turned left onto the street, lifted another two meters to increase speed, headed toward the lights of a boulevard.
The Indian spoke beside his ear: "You will turn toward the mountain over there." A hand came forward, pointing to the right.
The Alejandro Clime is there in the foothills, Joao thought.
He made the indicated turn down a cross street angling toward the boulevard.
Casually, he gave pump displacement another boost, lifted another meter, and increased speed once more In the same motion, he switched on the intercom to the rear compartment, tuned for the spare amplifier and pickup in the compartment beneath the bench where his father lay.
The pickup, capable of making a dropped pin sound like a cannon, gave forth only a distant hissing and rasping. Joao increased amplification. The instrument should have been transmitting the old man's heartbeats now, sending a noticeable drum-thump into the forward cabin.
There was nothing.
Tears blurred Joao's eyes, and he shook his head to clear them.
My father is dead, he thought. Killed by these crazy backwoodsmen
He noted in the dash screen that the Indian back there had a hand under the elder Martinho's back. The Indian appeared to be massaging the dead man's back, and a rhythmic rasping matched the motion.
Anger filled Joao. He felt like driving the airtruck into an abutment, dying himself to kill these crazy men.
They were approaching the outskirts of the city, and ring-girders circled off to the left giving access to the boulevard. This was an area of small gardens and cottages protected by over-fly canopies.
Joao lifted the airtruck above the canopies, headed toward the boulevard.
To the clinic, yes, he thought. But it is too late
In that instant, he realized there were no heartbeats at all coming from that rear compartment—only the slow, rhythmic grating, a faint susurration, and a cicada-like hum up and down scale.
"To the mountains, there," said the Indian behind him.
Again, the hand came forward to point off to the right.
Joao, with that hand close to his eyes and illuminated by the dash, saw the scale-like parts of a finger shift position slightly. In that shift, he recognized the scale-shapes by their claw fringes.
The beetles'
The finger was composed of linked beetles working in unison!
Joao turned, stared into the Indian's eyes, seeing now why they glistened so: they were composed of thousands of tiny facets.
"Hospital, there," the creature beside him said, pointing.
Joao turned back to the controls, fighting to keep from losing composure. They were not Indians… they weren't even human. They were insects—some kind of hive-cluster shaped and organized to mimic a man.
The implications of this discovery raced through his mind. How did they support their weight? How did they feed and breathe?
How did they speak?
Everything had to be subordinated to the urgency of getting this information and proof of it back to one of the big labs where the facts could be explored.
Even the death of his father could not be considered now. He had to capture one of these things, get out with it
He reached overhead, flicked on the command transmitter, set its beacon for a homing call Let some of my Irmaos be awake and monitoring their sets, he prayed
"More to the right," said the creature behind him.
Again, Joao corrected course
The moon was high overhead now, illuminating a line of bandeirante towers off to the left. The first barrier.
They would be out of the green area soon and into the grey—then, beyond that, another barrier and the great red that stretched out in reaching fingers through the Goyaz and the Mato Grosso Joao could see scattered lights of Resettlement Plan farms ahead, and darkness beyond.
The airtruck was going faster than he wanted, but Joao dared not slow it. They might become suspicious.
"You must go higher," said the creature behind him.
Joao increased pump displacement, raised the nose. He levelled off at three hundred meters.
More bandeirante towers loomed ahead, spaced at closer intervals. Joao picked up the barrier signals on his meters, looked back at the Indian The dissembler vibrations seemed not to affect the creature.
Joao looked out his side window and down. No one would challenge him, he knew This was a bandeirante airtruck headed into the red zone . . and with its transmitter sending out a homing call. The men down there would assume he was a band leader headed out on a contract after a successful bid—and calling his men to him for the job ahead.
He could see the moon-silvered snake of the Sao Francisco winding off to his left, and the lesser waterways like threads ravelled out of the foothills.
I must find the nest—where we're headed, Joao thought. He wondered if he dared turn on his receiver—but if his men started reporting in . . No. That could make the creatures suspect, they might take violent counter-action.
My men will realize something is wrong when I don't answer, he thought. They will follow.
If any of them hear my call.
Hours droned past.
Nothing but moonlighted jungle sped beneath them now, and the moon was low on the horizon, near setting. This was the deep red region where broadcast poisons had been used at first with disastrous results. This was where the wild mutations had originated It was here that Rhin Kelly had been reported missing.
This was the region being saved for the final assault, using a mobile barrier line when that line could be made short enough.
Joao armed the emergency charge that would separate the front and rear compartments of the truck where he fired it. The stub wings of the front compartment and its emergency rocket motors could get him back into bandeirante country.
With the specimen sitting behind him safely subdued, Joao hoped
He looked up through the canopy, scanned the horizon as far as he could. Was that moonlight glistening on a truck far back to the right? He couldn't be sure.
"How much farther?" Joao asked.
"Ahead," the creature rasped.
Now that he was alert for it, Joao heard the modulated stridulation beneath that voice.
"But how long?" Joao asked. "My father . ."
"Hospital for… the father… ahead," said the creature.
It would be dawn soon, Joao realized He could see the first false line of light along the horizon behind. This night had passed so swiftly. Joao wondered if these creatures had injected some time-distorting drug into him without his knowing. He thought not. He was maintaining himself in the necessities of the moment. There was no time for fatigue or boredom when he had to record every landmark half visible in the night, sense everything there was to sense about these creatures with him.
How did they coordinate all those separate parts?
They appeared conscious. Was that mimicry, too? What did they use for a brain?
Dawn came, revealing the plateau of the Mato Grosso. Joao looked out his windows. This region, he knew, stretched across five degrees of latitude and six degrees of longitude. Once, it had been a region of isolated fazendas farmed by independent blacks and by sertanistos chained to the encomendero plantation system. It was hardwood jungles, narrow rivers with banks overgrown by lush trees and ferns, savannahs, and tangled life.
Even in this age it remained primitive, a fact blamed largely on insects and disease. It was one of the last strongholds of teeming insect life, if the International Ecological Organization's reports could be believed.
Supplies for the bandeirantes making the assault on this insect stronghold would come by way of Sao Paulo, by air and by transport on the multi-decked highways, then on antique diesel trains to Itapira, on river runners to Bahus and by airtruck to Registo and Leopoldina on the Araguaya.
This area crawled with insects: wire worms in the roots of the savannahs, grubs digging in the moist black earth, hopping beetles, dart-like angita wasps, chalcis flies, chiggers, sphecidae, braconidae, fierce hornets, white termites, hemipteric crawlers, blood roaches, thrips, ants, lice, mosquitoes, mites; moths, exotic butterflies, mantidae—and countless unnatural mutations of them all.
This would be an expensive fight—unless it were stopped— because it already had been lost.
I mustn't think that way, Joao told himself. Out of respect for my father
Maps of the IEO showed this region in varied intensities of red. Around the red ran a ring of grey with pink shading where one or two persistent forms of insect life resisted man's poisons, jelly flames, astringents, sonitoxics—the combination of flamant couroq and supersonics that drove insects from their hiding places into waiting death— and all the mechanical traps and lures in the bandeirante arsenal.
A grid map would be placed over this area and each thousand-acre square offered for bid to the independent bands to deinfest.
We bandeirantes are a kind of ultimate predator, Joao thought. It's no wonder these creatures mimic us.
But how good, really, was the mimicry? he asked himself. And how deadly to the predators?
"There," sad the creature behind him, and the multi-part hand came forward to point toward a black scarp visible ahead in the grey light of morning.
Joao's foot kicked a trigger on the floor releasing a great cloud of orange dye-fog beneath the truck to mark the ground and forest for a mile around under this spot. As he kicked the trigger, Joao began counting down the five-second delay to the firing of the separation charge.
It came in a roaring blast that Joao knew would smear the creature behind him against the rear bulkhead. He sent the stub wings out, fed power to the rocket motors, and backed hard around. He saw the detached rear compartment settling slowly earthward above the dye cloud, its fall cushioned as the pumps of the hydrostatic drive automatically compensated.
I will come back, father, Joao thought. You will be buried among family and friends
He locked the controls, twisted in the seat to see what had happened to his captive.
A gasp escaped Joao's lips.
The rear bulkhead crawled with insects clustered around something white and pulsing. The mud-grey shirt and trousers were torn, but insects already were repairing it, spinning out fibers that meshed and sealed on contact. There was a yellow sac-like extrusion near the pulsing white, and a dark brown skeleton with familiar articulation.
It looked like a human skeleton—but chitinous.
Before his eyes, the thing was reassembling itself, the long, furry antennae burrowing into the structure and interlocking.
The flute-weapon was not visible, and the thing's leather pouch had been thrown into a rear corner, but its eyes were in place in their brown sockets, staring at him. The mouth was reforming.
The yellow sac contracted, and a voice issued from the half-formed mouth.
"You must listen," it rasped.
Joao gulped, whirled back to the controls, unlocked them, and sent the cab into a wild, spinning turn.
A high-pitched rattling buzz sounded behind him. The noise seemed to pick up every bone in his body and shake it. Something crawled on his neck. He slapped at it, felt it squash.
All Joao could think of was escape. He stared frantically out at the earth beneath, seeing a blotch of white in a savannah off to his right and, in the same instant, recognizing another airtruck banking beside him, the insignia of his own Irmandades band bright on its side.
The white blotch in the savannah was resolving itself into a cluster of tents with an IEO orange and green banner flying beside them.
Joao dove for the tents, praying the other airtruck would follow.
Something stung his cheek. They were in his hair—biting, stinging. He stabbed the braking rockets, aimed for open ground about fifty meters from the tents. Insects were all over the inside of the glass now, blocking his vision. Joao said a silent prayer, hauled back on the control arm, felt the cab mush out, touch ground, skidding and slewing across the savannah. He kicked the canopy release before the cab stopped, broke the seal on his safety harness, and launched himself up and out to land, sprawling in grass.
He rolled through the grass, feeling the insects bite like fire over every exposed part of his body. Hands grabbed him and he felt a jelly hood splash across his face to protect it. A voice he recognized as Thome of his own band said: "This way, Johnny! Run!" They ran.
He heard a spraygun fire: "Whooosh!"
And again.
And again.
Arms lifted him and he felt a leap.
They landed in a heap and a voice said, "Mother of God! Would you look at that!"
Joao clawed the jelly hood from his face, sat up to stare across the savannah. The grass seethed and boiled with insects around the uptilted cab and the airtruck that had landed beside it.
Joao looked around him, counted seven of his Irmaos with Thome, his chief sprayman, in command.
Beyond them clustered five other people, a red-haired woman slightly in front, half turned to look at the savannah and at him. He recognized the woman immediately: Dr. Rhin Kelly of the IEO. When they had met in the A' Chigua nightclub in Bahia, she had seemed exotic and desirable to Joao. Now, she wore a field uniform instead of gown and jewels, and her eyes held no invitation at all.
"I see a certain poetic justice in this… traitors," she said.
Joao lifted himself to his feet, took a cloth proffered by one of his men, wiped off the last of the jelly. He felt hands brushing him, clearing dead insects off his coveralls. The pain of his skin was receding under the medicant jelly, and now he found himself dominated by puzzled questioning as he recognized the mood of the IEO personnel.
They were furious and it was directed at him… and at his fellow Irmandades.
Joao studied the woman, noting how her green eyes glared at him, the pink flush to her skin.
"Dr. Kelly?" Joao said.
"If it isn't Joao Martinho, jefe of the Irmandades," she said, "the traitor of the Piratininga."
"They are crazy, that is the only thing, I think," said Thome.
"Your pets turned on you, didn't they?" she demanded. "And wasn't that inevitable?"
"Would you be so kind as to explain," Joao said.
"I don't need to explain," she said. "Let your friends out there explain." She pointed toward the rim of jungle beyond the savannah.
Joao looked where she pointed, saw a line of men in bandeirante white standing untouched amidst the leaping, boiling insects in the jungle shadow. He took a pair of binoculars from around the neck of one of his men, focused on the figures. Knowing what to look for made the identification easy.
"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.
"Aieee," Thome said.
An Irmandade on Joao's left crossed himself.
"What was it we leaped across corning 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 blonde 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 blonde 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 pursed 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 blonde man. "We dragged along what supplies we could, dug a trench around our perimeter, poured in the couroq powder, and topped it off with all 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 airtruck, "… the acid eats metal."
"You're insane," Joao said. "Why didn't you warn us immediately?"
"Warn you?"
Her blonde 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 fleshtape. 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 them, 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 to 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 a 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 dozens 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 grey. "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 reinfesting 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."