The Embedding

by Ian Watson

  So, perhaps, did Pierre.

  Both boats were soon guided under the foliage.

  The woman tossed her head fretfully.

  “Who are you? What are you doing here? Looking for wealth? Prospector?”

  “No, senhora. But I'm in a hurry. I've something to do.”

  “You're American?” Her eyes hardened. “Your accent sounds strange. You have something to do with the dam?”

  Pierre laughed bitterly.

  “Something to do with the dam? Oh that's a joke! Yes, I should indeed like to do something with the dam. Blow it sky-high, to begin with!”

  The thin feverish woman watched him contemptuously.

  “I suppose you mean to do that with your bare hands.”

  “He's some crazy priest, Iza,” one of her companions said.

  “I'm no bloody parasite priest — nor prospector — nor a policeman either!”

  These people didn't look anything like those in the Amazon area who might predictably be armed the way they were. Nothing like the private thugs or prospectors or adventurers. Nor anything like the paramilitary types whom the helicopter had brought to the village. Suddenly, Pierre realized who they might be — and who the men in that helicopter had been searching for. Yet it seemed incredible, so deep in this wet chaos of the Amazon.

  “Why do you say policeman? You think we are police?”

  Pierre laughed.

  “No, my friends. It's clear what you are. A helicopter landed in the village I was in some days ago. Armed men searched it. They were looking for you. You're guerrillas. That's obvious to me. You look like the hunted, not the hunters! They had an easy insolence about them. Particularly their officer. Though they were cowards, too.”

  “Paixao . . .” muttered one of the men, nervously.

  “And what did you tell this officer?”

  “I told him nothing. I hid in the jungle. Or rather this Indian here pushed me into the jungle to hide me. I thought it was the priests coming back with their nonsense about saving the Indians. Maybe they thought a helicopter would make an impressive Noah's Ark! You realize the dam is responsible for all this flooding?”

  Pierre got a sarcastic look in reply.

  “Joam, search him and the boat.”

  As the man called Joam made a move to step into their dugout Pierre noticed Kayapi furtively sliding a hand for his knife; and caught his wrist.

  “All right Kayapi — they're friends.”

  He told Joam:

  “You'll find I'm a Frenchman. A social anthropologist. I'm studying the Indians they are about to destroy so blindly with their dam.”

  Joam pulled the plastic sheeting aside and rummaged through the dried food, medicines, clothing, pulling out the bag containing Pierre's carbine and tape recorder and his papers.

  The dance-chant of the Xemahoa rang out abruptly among the branches, as he touched the playback switch. The other man and the woman hadn't seen what he was going to do. They brought their guns up.

  “Good machine,” Joam grunted, flipping it off.

  From the bag he took Pierre's passport, field notes, and diary.

  He handed the passport over to Iza. She read through it carefully.

  “So you only entered Brazil a few months ago — but you speak excellent Portuguese. Where did you learn it, Portugal?”

  “No, Mozambique.”

  “There's no visa for Mozambique.”

  “There's a visa for Tanzania. I went over the border into the free zone with your comrades in arms, the Frelimo guerrillas.”

  “So you say,” muttered the woman, doubtfully. “It may be true. We'll find out.”

  Meanwhile Joam flipped through the pages of Pierre's notes and diary, reading random passages. Pierre leaned towards him, urgently. “These notes are written about a people who are going to be destroyed. Who know it. Who fight back in the only way they can. In terms of their own culture.”

  “There are other ways of fighting,” snapped Iza.

  “Precisely!” sighed Pierre. “There is the way that you and I can fight. There is the political fight. But for these Indians to adopt a political stance would be meaningless. Ah, it was so different in Africa with the Makonde people!”

  “Come along then, Monsieur — tell us about Mozambique and Frelimo. In detail.”

  Pierre smiled wryly. “To establish an alibi for myself?”

  “You have nothing to fear if you're a man of good will.” So Pierre told about the Makonde people who straddle the frontier of Tanzania and Mozambique — of the independent African republic, and the colony which the government in Lisbon insisted year after year was an integral part of metropolitan Portugal, using, as powerful arguments in their favour, Huey Cobra gunships, Fiat jet bombers, Agent Orange crop defoliants, and napalm raids. In the towns and cities posters of particoloured white soldiers holding particoloured black babies in their arms proclaimed ‘WE ARE ALL PORTUGUESE’. Yet three-fifths of the land had been out of effective Portuguese control for a decade and more. Pierre told how he crossed the river Ruvuma by dugout into Cabo Delgado province on what was by now a guerrilla milkrun, so far from Portuguese control was this free zone of villages and dispensaries and schools. It was guarded by Chinese ground-to-air missiles that made low-level helicopter sorties or jet attacks virtually impossible. The main danger came from high-level bombing raids — spasmodic, meaningless raids that blasted holes in the wild bush and occasionally filled the dispensaries up with broken bodies and the bomas with gutted bellowing cattle. Pierre told them, joyfully, of attacks on the Cabora Bassa dam on the Zambezi which had delayed that project of exploitation for so many years, upping the ante intolerably for that tiny peasant empire Portugal. Told them how he had gone on one such raid.

  Finally, they believed Pierre and relaxed and handed his papers and even his carbine back to him.

  “Your Indian friend did you a good turn, Monsieur,” Iza said. “That Captain you saw may have been Flores Paixao. That one is a vicious swine — well-trained by the Americans in counter-insurgency techniques. A torturer. A professional sadistic beast. Keep out of his way.”

  “Does the fact that you're here mean you are strong enough to carry the struggle into the whole of Brazil?” Pierre asked her eagerly.

  “The whole of Brazil!” Iza echoed his words, sounding sick and sad. “Who can deal with the whole of Brazil? Don't be foolish. All that our puppet government can do to govern this Amazon is to flood the whole area, so that the problem disappears! We are here to destroy such an illusion. Our government has mortgaged the whole Amazon basin to America. Built roads for Bethlehem Steel and King Ranch of Texas. These ‘Great Lakes’ will split our country in two parts. One part, an American colony looted of its minerals to maintain U.S. technology. The other, a Vichy-style regime for us Brazilians — the passive consumer market.”

  Pierre thought sadly: these people are as near to the end of their tether as I am myself. Yet their enemy is my enemy.

  “We shall let the world know what real Brazilians think of this ‘civilizing’ venture!” Iza cried passionately. “The tricks are endless. To impoverish us. Drain our resources. Stop us from using our own wealth ourselves. North America needs it desperately. Such are the ironies of so-called aid that in fact Latin America is aiding North America to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars annually! The cash flow is always one way. North! These Amazon dams are the greatest conspiracy and perversion yet. So we strike at them.”

  She fell silent, sick and tired. Her energy supply snapped abruptly. Her eyes burnt with fever — not the fever of a sickness, but a terrible exhaustion, mixed up with a fervent despair.

  “I know,” said Pierre gently. “The dam has to be destroyed. It is destroying . . . wonders, in the jungle here. Wonderful people. Washing them away into the concentration camps of priests. Their language is . . . a wonderful cultural discovery for me. I'm sorry, this might seem like a minor problem to you people. But I assure you it isn't. And yet — I'm torn two di
fferent ways, meeting you.”

  “Why were you going North?”

  Pierre shivered.

  “I don't know rightly. I had no fixed idea. It frightens me, now I've met you, my aimlessness. My instinctiveness. This obsessed journey. Talking to you reminds me of such a different world — one that means nothing here among the Indians. I feel with you, I think with you. But what can be done? Can the dam be destroyed so easily? Surely it must take lorry loads of explosive to destroy such a thing?”

  “There'll be explosives there,” Iza promised. “And the flood pressure will assist us. We shall also kill the American engineers and their lackeys.”

  “Other dams will be under attack too!” the second man — Raimundo — added hotly. “Even at Santarem itself. Whatever happens, the lie of this Amazon development will be shown up before the whole world.”

  “What sort of weapons have you got?”

  Iza hesitated.

  “You think of this as suicide in your hearts, don't you?” Pierre asked flatly.

  Joam shrugged.

  “The terrain is not so favourable.”

  “These attacks are tactically vital!” Iza burned with an end of the tether passion that broke through the crust of her weariness every time that the obsessive pressures built up in her afresh. “We have to make our presence known, in a shocking and symbolic way. Back in the early days of our struggle Carlos Marighella wrote that there was no timetable for us and no deadlines to meet. But the situation has changed. This yanqui scheme for the Amazon is a monstrous distraction from reality. A fire extinguisher that may quench the realities of revolution for years! The Amazon is the pressure point of imperialism, today. It is our job to panic the Americans. Here where they believe themselves safely protected by their flood. Hidden away from the violence of the cities and the coast.”

  Kayapi had been sitting idly all this time. Now Pierre turned to him.

  “Kayapi?”

  “Yes, Pee-air.”

  “These people are going to attack the dam. Shall we go along with them?” he asked in Portuguese.

  “If they go, no need for you to go yourself,” replied Kayapi in Xemahoa. “They are your shadows. You, the substance. Maka-i is being born soon. You must be present. These men will work for you.”

  “Why is the opinion of this Indian so important?” demanded Joam angrily. “Is this savage to decide what you do, for you?”

  Pierre stared at Joam in revulsion. ‘This savage!’ Pierre could have wept — to swell the flood.

  “I'm sorry,” Joam apologized. “Naturally Socialism is for all. What I mean is, the Indian isn't yet qualified to decide.”

  You pay your money and you take your choice. Of Marx or Christ. What did the choice matter to the Xemahoa! Whichever gained control over them, they would be destroyed. The birds of their thoughts scattered. Trapped with birdlime in tin huts.

  “I'll wish you luck,” said Pierre, making up his mind abruptly, arriving at the impossible choice. “I love you as comrades, as deeply as I hate the dam. I want you to destroy it. So much. I want you to empty out that yanqui fire extinguisher.”

  “Besides,” interrupted Kayapi, “you never hit anything with your gun, Pee-air. You are the listener and learner, not the warrior. Bruxo knows. Why do you think he let you meet maka-i the other night? Why do you think the girl comes to your hammock? Why do you think I show you how to eat the earth? Your box-that-speaks is your weapon, Pee-air, not the gun. I do not say you lack courage. You met maka-i. But you are a different man. Your life has a different shape. Consider wisely. Do not let the birds of your thought fly the wrong way.”

  “You let me come this far towards the dam, Kayapi!”

  “Your birds had to fly this way. Now they need to return. These people will do your work.”

  “Why do you talk two different languages to each other?” demanded Iza. “He understands your Portuguese perfectly well. Can't he reply in Portuguese?”

  “It's important that he speaks in his native language. A great thing is happening in the minds of the tribe. He wishes to belong.”

  Kayapi looked sullen.

  “Maka-i will be born, Pee-air. Hurry up.”

  “You said there was time!”

  “I was wrong. There's no time. It happens soon.”

  “He says we have to go back,” Pierre told the guerrillas.

  The woman gazed disbelievingly at Pierre.

  “Why?”

  Pierre chose his words carefully.

  “What is happening in his village is very important, as a human event. If I'm not present to see what happens, something amazing might be lost. I can't risk it. Not just on my own account. But, well — for Man.”

  “How can you say so, when you have been with Frelimo and seen what they do for Mankind?”

  “This tears me apart. Half of me wants to go on with you. Half has to return. I need to be two people at once.”

  “An amoeba,” Raimundo sneered. “A shapeless amoeba wants to split in half.”

  “When you meet maka-i,” Kayapi whispered, “you are TWO men, three men, many men. Your mind is great with words. You speak the full language of man.” But was Kayapi his evil genius or true guide?

  “Dear people. Comrades. Iza, Joam, Raimundo. I'm going back with him to the village.”

  “What made your mind up?” Raimundo jibed. “The sight of guns? The reality of a point-four-five INA submachinegun? The thought of it going bang bang? You despicable bourgeois intellectual. No doubt Ford or Rockefeller is paying you to visit this jungle to dredge up this mystification. Who knows who is paying?”

  “Shadow and substance, Pee-air,” hissed Kayapi. “Is it not strange to meet your shadows in the jungle? They meet you to show you how they will go on for you. Do you imagine it is an accident we meet them?”

  “I'll do what you say, Kayapi. You've been right before. In my own terms, it's wrong. But they can't be my terms if I'm to understand Xemahoa. If I'm wrong then I shall let everyone know it. I promise.”

  “Fair promises,” snapped the woman. “We've wasted time and energy on you. I suppose we should shoot you both, for security. But we're not going to. You can have the opportunity to feel like a worm. Perhaps then you may keep your promise! Such as it is. I guess that is public relations if not exactly revolution. Fuck off then, Frenchman.”

  • • •

  Pierre and Kayapi set off southwards again through the flooded creeks and lagoons. To Pierre's eyes the water already seemed centimetres higher than on their journey north, and it still rained.

  As evening fell, Pierre finally asked the Indian.

  “Which of the Xemahoa was your father, Kayapi? Is he still alive?”

  “Can't you guess that, Pee-air?”

  “The Bruxo?”

  Kayapi nodded.

  “He visited my mother's village. They said they wanted to honour him because of his power and his knowledge. Wanted to steal some of it maybe. But my father was cunning. He insisted on a bleeding girl. The same as for you, Pee-air. So that there will be no baby from him, and the Xemahoa can stay together. But something happened anyway, he was so powerful a man. The girl made a baby. I am his halfson. It is my grief — and my glory. You know about being half, Pee-air. Half of you went north with those men.”

  “True, Kayapi.”

  Kayapi abruptly swung the dugout towards the bank, drove it deep into the branches, killed the engine . . .

  “You hear?”

  Pierre strained against the rainfall of water on leaves. At last he caught the deepening beat of a motor. Kayapi was pointing upwards through the branches at the sky.

  Some minutes later, a helicopter passed through the rainmist, following the line of the watercourse — a dark ugly whale lumbering through the wet air.

  It shone a spotlight on the waters below. Kayapi pressed Pierre down into the bottom of the dugout, so that his white face and arms wouldn't show.

  NINE

  THE JET BEGAN its landing approach
over mountains which moonlight cut out harsh and rutted with shadows. These rapidly dipped into foothills as the plane fell keeping pace with the falling ground. Hard to be sure they were descending except for the gut sense of changing inertia. Then the jet touched and was rolling along a level barren valley between landing lights towards a bright-lit cluster of buildings. A droop-nosed SST with Cyrillic letters on its side dwarfed the other jets parked there.

  Despite the presence of these brightly lit buildings and jets, the whole area struck Sole as empty and meaningless. These artefacts existed in a limbo like a flat concrete zone hidden away in the subconscious of a catatonic. They represented wealth, surely. Investment. Expertise. But investment in nothing; expertise for no apparent motive; a bankrupt wealth. This meeting place between Man and Alien might have been set down prepacked in this desert valley, clipped off the back of a cereal carton.

  An armed military policeman in a white helmet met them outside the terminal, checked their names off a clipboard and waved them upstairs.

  Here they found forty or fifty people gathered in a long room, one wall of which was glass, giving a view of the airstrip illuminated by its landing lights and the dark moon-silhouetted hills.

  The crowd formed local eddies of three or four people each. Zwingler acknowledged a few nods, but made no move to join any of the sub-groups. He stood with Sole looking out at the night while the last few arrivals filtered into the room. Sole heard Russian voices as well as American. After ten minutes the soldier stepped inside and flashed a brief, subdued salute at a man in his late forties with short-cropped wiry black hair highlighted by a few grey strands, lending him a certain maestro-like presence.

  “They're all here now. Dr Sciavoni—”

  Sciavoni looked as though he could be holding a conductor's baton — he had something of the poise and personal electricity. But maybe not for a symphony orchestra, maybe for a night club band. Sciavoni wasn't quite impressive enough for the occasion he was now called upon to supervise.

  He had a habit of opening his eyes imperceptibly while he was speaking to someone. The extra white made the eyes seem to gleam from his sallow face with an inner light. But it was a mechanical trick rather than real charisma.