The Mammoth Book of 20th Century SF II (69 page)

“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?

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 São 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 gray 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,” said the creature behind him, and the multipart hand came forward to point toward a black scarp visible ahead in the gray 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 back 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-gray shirt and trousers were torn, but insects already were repairing it, spinning out fibers that
meshed and sealed on contact. There was a yellow-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 the rear corner, but its eyes were in place in their brown sockets, staring at him. The mouth was
re-forming.

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 tent. 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 insect bites 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 air-truck 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.

“
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.”