Was it self-defense, or something more like revenge?
He imagined Escalas talking to him, in his old reassuring tones.
Have you considered the benefits of war? the old man asked in Aracai’s mind. It sweeps away toxic societies.
Aracai exercised his imagination, tried to find a rebuttal. What if the toxic society wins? he asked. For if he started a war with the humans, he knew that he personally would surely die.
Indeed, it seemed that too often the most toxic society would win the battle and thus spread.
And yet we must try, the old mer replied. We are not just trying to save ourselves, we are hoping to save uncounted billions of people in the future.
Aracai recalled the children out skipping and playing jump rope in the streets beside the river and pictured what would happen to them when the bomb blew. Even if he did manage to set it off, he would lose his soul.
Our species is dying, he thought. Soon we will all be as dead as the whales.
Does it really matter? Extinction? Every man must face his own personal extinction.
After long hours, Dulce said, “I’m hungry.”
He could feel pangs in his own belly.
But the river was dead.
Aracai had once hunted briefly in freshwater, in crystalline streams that tumbled from the Andes. Cold as ice and clearer than raindrops, thick with trout.
An idea struck, and he took Dulce’s hand and led her along the riverbank until they found a tributary, a small river that twisted through the jungle.
They swam upstream for a mile until the river came alive. Overhead, huge ferns and trees shadowed the water. Pollywogs wiggled among rushes, while frogs whistled in the trees. Water beetles buzzed in whirligig patterns and fish began to sing.
A mile up, Aracai met schools of fish—silver perch that darted in front of him like a moving screen. Huge red-tailed catfish plied the muddy bottom, using whiskers to taste for food. A parrot bass, half as long as him, hid in the shadows of a pool, the yellows and greens around its gills muted as it emitted a sonorous snoring sound.
Here, Aracai watched freshwater crabs of deep mossy green march among some stones, then he gathered water lettuce and taro roots. Dulce offered a blessing on the meal.
As they ate, Aracai tried to speak delicately. “This will be a long journey, and hard.”
Dulce peered at him with exhaustion in her dark eyes. “And you wonder if there is honor in killing humans?”
“No,” he said. “I know there is no honor in it.”
She bit her lip, and a lightning flash made her eyes glow startlingly green.
“It is not about honor,” he said. “I just wonder if it even makes sense. I do not want to hurt anyone. What good can come of it? Our species…is doomed.” Dulce remained pensive. Aracai continued, “We could leave the bomb, hide it in the mud.”
Anger flared in Dulce’s eyes. “Don’t even think of it.” Her tone brooked no argument. She held his gaze, her dainty nose beguiling him. She drew close and kissed his lips, pressing hard and long. “Promise me. Promise you won’t turn back.”
“If we do this, the humans will hunt us down.”
“Everyone dies,” she said.
So they ate and for a while they slept in the forest shadows, cradled in one another’s arms.
The journey stretched long after that. After their nap, Aracai felt a sharp pain in his urethra. He recognized from the rhythmic motions that it was a fish. It had swum up an inch or more into him, and so he tried to pee it out.
But the tiny fish had barbs and could not be extricated, so he suffered the pain.
For four days they continued swimming along the shore of the Amazon, sometimes stopping to rest in an estuary. He saw the promised anacondas overhead and fell afoul of an electric eel. He saw colorful birds flashing over languid pools and swam unharmed through schools of piranha. There were giant arapaima longer than he and his wife, and alligator longer than any mer. The trees overhead, dripping with bright blossoms, were a marvel.
As they swam, he grew sicker. On the third day, he could no longer pee, nor could his wife. It was not the fish that had done it. Their kidneys were failing.
His body began to ache as uric acid built inside, so that every muscle felt beaten and bruised. His scales took on a milky coating. With each passing hour, he felt more certain that this journey would kill them. Freshwater was deadly. On the fifth day, he could no longer eat. His gut had given up digesting, and it felt better to starve than to take nourishment.
As sick as he felt, Dulce was worse. She wept as she fought her way upstream, and each day she grew slower and slower. She held to his back often as they swam, and he pushed for both, so that sometimes he blanked out and swam blind from fatigue.
He judged that they had come a thousand kilometers when they reached the junction to Rio Negro, full of its poisons.
Wearily, they stopped and tried to get a breath in a small lagoon upstream from the Rio Negro. The place was magical, pristine, the water far cleaner than any that they had encountered. It was as if they were entering a lost world, the great green jungles rising above the water, vast trees streaming epiphytes. A pair of dolphins swam along the river briskly, laughing as dolphins will, their coral-colored hides a delight.
He felt as if he had found some primal place that man had never touched and marveled that such jungles still existed.
They swam into a flooded creek. Blue crayfish scuttled among tree roots and clung to floating duckweed. The day was windy, and Aracai could hear roots groaning as the trees swayed and stretched. The waters in the lagoon were golden, and huge red-bellied pacu as long as his arm swam about.
As the trees stirred, dark, round nuts fell, and the pacu would bite the nuts, crunching them with powerful teeth, so that though the fish looked like enormous piranhas, they seemed like gentle giants.
Here, Aracai gazed into Dulce’s eyes and said goodbye. “I want you to go back downstream,” he begged. “You won’t have to fight the current, and you can swim swiftly. Once you hit the saltwater, you will begin to heal.” He did not know if it were true, but hoped that it was.
To his astonishment, she did not fight him. She peered deep into his eyes, reached out and stroked his beard, and apologized. “I don’t have the strength to go on.”
He nodded, knowing she was right.
He glanced up at the surface of the water, which rippled with waves, and listened to the plop of falling nuts, the groan of straining roots, the crunching of pacu.
Aracai considered swimming home to the sea, giving up this sad quest. He could leave the bomb in the mud. He looked up. Swarms of dragonflies were hovering above the lagoon—electric blue, fiery red, leafy green.
Dulce grabbed his bicep and peered into his face. “Promise you will go on,” she said. “Do it for your daughter, for all the mer yet to be born.”
Aracai imagined their child again, that sad thing thrashing about after birth as she drowned. He imagined her growing cold and stiff, her blue eyes turning to white. She’d died without a name.
He nodded.
He did not want to kill. He had argued for and against it in his mind time and time again, until nothing made sense anymore. His wife wanted him to fight, as had Escalas. That was all that mattered.
Aracai kissed Dulce goodbye, hugged her tightly, and she swam back, as if the idea of swimming downstream invigorated her.
She rose near the surface so that the sun caught her hair. But there was a flash from the surface, a violent disturbance.
Dulce gave a blood-curdling shriek and jerked hard, swimming first to the left in a wide arc, then diving, but there was a metal rod stuck in her back, with a heavy cord tied to it. No matter how hard she swam, the cord pulled her upward.
Terror and grief coursed through Aracai. Time slowed. He realized that his wife had been struck by a spear fisherman, and the harpoon had taken her in the back. She burst up toward the surface, becoming airborne, and he heard a man shout in
delight, “Ela é uma grande!” She’s a big one!
He dropped the bomb and swam toward her fast. The harpoon had hit near her right lung. He doubted she could survive long.
Blood stained the water. Aracai could taste it. The giant pacu suddenly seemed to spasm, instantly turning their interest from nuts to flesh. They sped up and swam toward Dulce, who spun onto her back and grabbed the line that held the harpoon. Desperately, she jerked. “Help!” she sang.
Aracai raced to her, realizing that this must be some mistake. He’d seen monster fish in other lagoons, and though no humans had been fishing near the poison water, up here where things were more pristine, someone must have mistaken his wife for a meal.
The spear fisherman was pulling the line, trying to drag Dulce to shore. Aracai raced up and grabbed the line, tugged violently, and felt the human go off balance. A man cried out in fear.
Aracai rose to the surface, whistled a shrill warning. He could not speak the human tongue, but he could make his anger known.
He peered up into a sandbox palm, where three young men hunted from a tree fort. One held the fishing line. Another held a spear gun. A third bore an ancient rifle.
“Há outro!” the spearman called. He raised his spear gun and fired hastily. The bolt tore past Aracai’s head.
“You’ve made a mistake,” Aracai sang in his own tongue.
But the gunman peered at him with deadly intent, an eager smile playing over his face. He raised his rifle and fired. Heat tore through Aracai’s shoulder and he dove for cover, down into the inky darkness beneath the tree roots.
A second shot burst through the water and at first Aracai thought it was aimed at him, but the humans had dragged his wife close to the surface and that bullet took her in the back.
She went limp, arms falling wide.
The pacu lunged at her and nipped her flesh.
The humans yanked her into the air. As Aracai gazed up, a pacu hit him hard in the back, testing for a response.
Dulce was hauled out of the water, and he could not get to her. He could not even retrieve her body. So he turned and lunged away as fast as he could, and grabbed the bomb.
He wanted to rescue his wife, worried that she was still alive, that the men were torturing her. He swam to some ferns that hung over the water and rose, using them for cover.
The three men were young, hardly more than boys. They had pulled Dulce up onto their hunting platform and were admiring her, as if she were a prize catch.
One knelt and fondled her breast while another laughed. The gunman peered into the water, still hunting.
Dulce did not move. She was as dead as their daughter.
Aracai called out in grief, an involuntary wail that echoed over the water. The young man with the spear gun called, “Get out! This is our river.”
Feral humans. Aracai had always used the term to refer to those without genetic upgrades. Now he saw the truth.
He dove, swimming near the bottom as fast as he could. He realized that he might not have much time. His wound was not bad, but the bleeding would draw predators. So he swam to the Rio Negro and became lost in its black waters.
Now the poisons and pollution worked in his favor. He did not have to face piranhas as he swam. The river was black with soot, as if ash had mixed into the water, and the riverbed was a wasteland.
So he swam, wasting himself, surging upstream, mind numb.
Until the mindlink finally meshed with the nerves in his spinal column and suddenly he understood more than he had thought possible.
He knew the names of the trees that he had seen, the weeds and the frogs. The fish inside his penis was called a candiru, and if he had known of its existence, he could have tied a band around his organ to protect it.
He realized that the bomb could not be nuclear. He had been holding it close and no boils had formed from radiation. So he considered Escalas’s last words. Always the old mer had spoken with double entendre, always hiding his meaning, trying to force Aracai to think.
The neogods would never have lent their efforts to killing others.
But the old mer had begged a boon from them. A bomb. A heavy bomb, heavier than gold. As he guessed at the bomb’s intent, his energy redoubled, and he swam forward with excitement, brimming with wonder.
Escalas had urged him to take responsibility for his own evolution.
So he asked the Heavenly Hosts: If a bomb were packed with retroviruses, how heavy would it be?
The AIs answered: The viruses would be pure DNA, and have no cell membranes or empty plasma around them. They would weigh more than a kilo per cubic centimeter.
Heavier than gold.
I am carrying a viral weapon, he realized. But what will it do?
He knew Escalas. The old mer had not had a cruel bone in his body. He had always urged Aracai to ponder. Even his last gift had been his greatest possession, the mindlink.
But viruses could be more than weapons. A retrovirus could insert itself among a person’s DNA to repair damage, or even to upgrade a person.
Viruses to make us wise, he thought. That is what Escalas would have wanted. And through his mindlink he asked the AIs of Heavenly Host if retroviruses might be used to do that. The answers amazed him. There were viruses that could quadruple the number of neural connections in the human brain, while others could increase the numbers of neurons alone. Those two viruses in and of themselves could quadruple a person’s thinking power.
But there were more; the AIs showed him, viruses that could make a man live longer, eradicate diseases, love one another more. Over a hundred thousand upgrades had been developed, and dozen more were coming every day.
As Aracai studied the lists, he saw that Escalas had tagged thousands of such viruses.
Escalas would have wanted all of them. Aracai thought he understood. The bomb would rid the world of feral humans once and for all.
But how valuable would such upgrades be? Human doctors charged huge sums to administer such things. After all, any upgrade could give a man huge advantages.
To his surprise, the AIs already knew: The bomb you carry is probably worth more than the sum total of all the earth’s wealth for the next thousand years.
Aracai gasped at the thought and wondered what the old mer could have traded for such a boon. But there was nothing in this world that he could have given.
His life, Aracai suspected.
Had the bargain amused the neogods? One amoeba trading its life to help all others?
Perhaps it had amused them. Or perhaps they had recognized the nobility behind the request.
It all made a bit of sense to Aracai now. The GPS on the bomb, its red light. It could only be set off in one location, at Dos Brujas.
But why? He asked the Heavenly Host, but it went silent. Even it did not know all of the answers.
His blood did not call predators, but as Aracai swam he grew weaker. Many times he considered turning around, heading out to sea.
But it is too late to go home, he realized. He was too weak to swim that far. The ache in his muscles multiplied.
I will die no matter what I do.
So Aracai chose to die for a cause, just as a billion other martyrs had chosen to die for their causes over the millennia.
Huzzah! Huzzah for the martyrs, he thought.
If he had lived, the old mer would have revealed his plans to Aracai, he believed. He might even have begged the younger mers to help him. But Escalas had failed.
Eventually Aracai found the place. The full moon was setting in the west, glistening on the water and tinged red from the smoke of distant fires.
He spotted Dos Brujas, with its dark tower rising from the black waters. A red light at its top was probably meant to warn away aircraft, but it seemed to glare out over the river like a red eye.
There, on either bank, were the factories with their sewage pipes spewing poison.
Aracai felt beyond weary, numb beyond thinking. Adrenaline seemed to carry him this far, bu
t now it was gone and he fumbled to fulfill his mission. He lay gasping, gills flaring, and rose to the surface, floating on his stomach.
Aracai found the button, saw that it now emitted a soft green light. He pressed it for what seemed minutes.
The disk twisted in his hand, began spinning rapidly in the water, then rose above the surface, whirling faster and faster until it began to rise into the air.
He watched it ascend into the night sky. Tiny white LEDs on its bottom became a blurring ring, so that as it rose, it brightened and seemed to take its place among the blazing stars.
It ascended above the city of Dos Brujas.
Aracai feared a flash of light more blinding than the midday sun and a ball of fire to end his life, but instead, at perhaps three thousand feet, the bomb suddenly exploded with a shrieking whistle, sending its contents spinning and streaming in every direction.
It looked as if a watery shield suddenly spread over the city—as if a mist raced for miles in every direction. The viruses spread wide, a plague of wisdom.
He wondered how many people they would infect, and Heavenly Host answered: The infection will start here, among the poorest people of South America, and then the viruses will be carried by the winds across Africa and India, until the plagues encompass the earth, putting an end to stupidity and avarice, waging war against war itself.
There was no thunder, no rumbling of the earth. In wonder Aracai faded from consciousness, now sure of what he had unleashed. Change, he thought. Change for the better. A new world, where men can take responsibility for their own evolution. I am so lucky to have witnessed this. Our children will inherit the stars.
For a while he floated downstream, gasping, floundering. His eyes dimmed, he struggled to breathe, soot and poisons choking him.
A buzz rang in his ears, and suddenly he heard old Escalas’s voice one last time: Come swim with me.
He looked up and saw the Milky Way, stars shining like a river of light in the heavens. Escalas was swimming down toward him, with Dulce smiling at his side, and holding her hand was their tiny daughter.
He reached up, and with a firm grip around his wrist, Dulce pulled him free of his wasted flesh.
Relics, Wrecks and Ruins Page 31
