The Embedding
Page 19
14. The exchange of six live brains, competent in six human languages, should thus seem to go ahead, with the overt aim of obtaining an improved form of planetary travel technology (together with some other data of primarily academic interest).
15. However, it must be strongly emphasized that although the donkey allows himself to be lured by a carrot, yet the human being is painfully aware (however tasty the carrot may be) that there is a field full of such carrots, elsewhere, in the control of a farmer. Were the human being in the place of the donkey, he would be well advised to remember how hard his kick is, and how unexpected, and to what good effect it can be delivered; and how essential to his psyche this act might be.
16. Attached are detailed action recommendations code-named 'MULEKICK'; together with a summary of the key psychological features thought to underpin the Unidentified Flying Object phenomenon, codenamed 'WELLES FARRAGO'.
'WELLES FARRAGO' also includes a summary of ways to manipulate religious and social hysteria as (a) Diversion from Undesirable Goals; (b) Shoring-up of Fragmenting Societies; together with a tie-in to the action recommendations detailed in 'MULEKICK'. Adjustments have been graphed for a wide spread of cultural norms ranging from the Post-Industrial, late sensate culture of the United States, through the various Chaos, Crisis and Charisma cultures of underdeveloped nations (with special emphasis on Brazil and its neighbours).
17. In view of the exceptional sensitivity of both 'MULEKICK' and 'WELLES FARRAGO', access must be limited on a strict need-to-know basis.
NINETEEN
ROUSED FROM SLEEP, Sciavoni gulped down a benzedrine tablet and a glass of milk then pulled on his clothes and stumbled from the room with the military policeman who wakened him.
Silverson was waiting for him on the ground floor.
“Before you talk to the alien, Mr Sciavoni — Franklin has had to send out a search and rescue mission to look for Zwingler and his Indians.”
Sciavoni, who had been dreaming an Italian spaghetti Western till just a couple of minutes before, found this information faintly confusing and shook his head sleepily, hoping the pill would hurry up and take effect.
“The thing is,” Silverson whispered, as they headed for the door to outside, “guerrilla activity's getting worse down there. We just heard the bastards dynamited Project Headquarters in Santarem. Apparently the whole situation has been much worse than the Brazilian authorities realized. In a sense, this exonerates us for blowing that dam. Let's say it confuses the issue nicely. But we still don't know where Zwingler and that man Sole are, even if they're still alive—”
“So, have to stall Ph'theri?”
“Yes, that's no joke,” sympathized Silverson. “But that ain't all. I fear our friends made too good a job of blowing the dam. The really worrying thing is reports of the sheer volume of water emptying down that river. We're afraid the lower dam is going to be overtopped. If that happens and the weight of both lakes gets down to the primary dam upstream of Santarem — well, that's that. I wouldn't like to be in Santarem.”
Sciavoni passed a hand over his tousled wiry hair agitatedly. NASA spent billions of dollars to safeguard the lives of a trio of human beings a quarter million miles from home — the idea of protecting life sank in after a while.
“Still,” Silverson consoled, “I hear the guerrillas blew up a barge-load of gelignite inside one of the locks at Santarem. So when the structure fails, it can always be blamed on them. It'll make it seem more plausible they sabotaged the upper dam too.”
“Bad. It's bad. Look Silverson, I can't concentrate on that aspect right now. All I want to know about is Sole and Zwingler and those blessed Indians.”
“Well, like I said. Franklin has a search mounted now. They know roughly where to look.”
However, Ph'theri wasn't to be stalled, out there under the stars which were his stars.
“Forty-eight hours,” the alien said sharply, raising his hand. “The time bonus lapses—”
“It's the terrain, Ph'theri. Dense jungle, it's terribly difficult . . .”
“Is there any real evidence for the existence of this Self-Embedding Brain? We have traded with species who thought themselves wily, before.”
“I resent that, Ph'theri. We're going to a lot of trouble to get that brain for you.”
“Where are the ordinary brain units?”
“They're all here now, Mr Sciavoni,” Silverson said brightly. “The Soviets came through with theirs about half an hour ago. I guess their SST landing was what alerted Ph'theri.”
“Good,” said Ph'theri. “Let us get on with that transfer, at least. We have dissected the corpse. We will perform brain excision together with eyes and elements of the spinal column. Subsequent testing procedures should occupy another twenty-four hours, which will allow you time to establish the intelligibility of the data we transfer to you. If there is no sign of the Self-Embedding Brain by then, we will wait another twenty-four hours, then we shall have to leave—”
Two other Sp'thra, who must have been monitoring the conversation, appeared in the doorway of the scoutship. They carried a display screen with a small control panel down the ramp and set it on the concrete before Sciavoni.
“This is programmed with the relevant information. And now, the brain-units please,” Ph'theri insisted.
Reluctantly, Sciavoni called out instructions; and shortly after that the first of six mobile stretchers with a sedated human form on it was wheeled through the glass doors.
Sciavoni hurriedly bent to inspect the data screen.
TWENTY
THE WOMAN IN the hut died, and her maka-i laden brain with her, about midday, in spite of Chester's efforts.
Yet the deformed baby still lived on after a fashion. Its ruptured organs continued to function. Its exposed brain remained conscious. Its blind head shuffled after sounds like a worm. It squealed.
The Xemahoa all went back to the village shortly after dawn, Kayapi leading the sick, confused Bruxo by the hand like a child. No one bothered to look into the taboo hut. For the baby it was plainly a case of ordeal by exposure — and Caraiba. Perhaps it didn't matter to Kayapi whether the baby was alive or dead, from the point of view of interpretation.
The Indian men retired to their hammocks to sleep their racing headaches off. Only Pierre seemed to be trying to come down from his drug trip by racing it to death — splashing back and forth along the jungle corridor between village and hut, obsessively. His behaviour reminded Sole of a shellshocked ex-submariner who used to run up and down the road outside his house when he was a boy, performing endless trivial errands.
After the mother died, they confronted the Frenchman, to see whether his exertions had induced a more lucid frame of mind yet.
But Chester was in a sour mood at his failure to preserve the Indian woman's life and Tom Zwingler was feeling sick at heart at the delay to their mission, so that the confrontation did not start off sympathetically or happily.
“Did you tell this Kayapi guy the Bruxo has to go away?” demanded Chester.
“The birds of his thought have flown off,” Pierre sighed. “All lost in the forest since he saw that baby. But Kayapi will call them back — Kayapi knows how.”
This faithful trust in someone who had done nothing whatever for the woman or her child was the last straw to Chester.
“Smart guy. Your Kayapi'll eat shit with the best of them — and know exactly why he's doin' it. Like us, hey? Only, more effective, hey? He'll get what he wants. Look how he manipulated you — drugs and girls and I dunno what else!”
For a moment Pierre was utterly taken aback.
“But Kayapi is a man of knowledge,” he stammered. “The Xemahoa have an amazing comprehension of the world—”
“Don't give me that crap. Kayapi couldn't care a blue damn about ‘the world’. He's seen where he's best off. He wouldn't cut much ice in the outside world away from this shit-heap, is all.”
Pierre stared at the Negro in worried disgust.
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br /> “He is my teacher—”
“A fine baby their ‘amazing comprehension’ produced! They're lucky it had a mouth and a nose on its face.”
Pierre fluttered his hands in agitation.
“Kayapi has suffered and learnt in exile. Now he comes home. He is the true hero figure.”
“It's all so bloody accidental!” Tom Zwingler exploded. “It isn't as if he knew the water was going to go down. We blew the dam. He couldn't have known things were going to happen this way.”
Pierre shook his head stubbornly.
“No. He knew — he promised me.”
“Believe what you like, damn you! But to me, this monster is the real climax of the maka-i business. The one and only conclusion it would have come to without our intervention. Kayapi is just a plain lucky opportunist.”
They might handle Pierre more tactfully, Sole reckoned. It was stupid putting his back up like this. He tried to shift the tenor of the conversation away from recrimination and bickering.
“That's as may be, Tom. But mightn't we still be right about these Indians? To put it in Ph'theri's words, about their high trade value? It still seems to me the Indians are tackling the same sort of problem as the aliens are tackling with their thirteen thousand years of technology. The Sp'thra found themselves confronted by something abnormal — something from outside of Nature. They built a universal thought machine to answer the challenge. The Xemahoa were faced by this unnatural flood and fought back in their own terms — not technological terms this time, but biological and conceptual ones—”
Pierre stared at Sole in bewilderment, wondering, perhaps, whether another wave of the drug-reality had just washed over him. Of course, Pierre knew nothing whatever about the Sp'thra Signal-Traders. Taking part in a discussion with him on these terms was rather like inviting an ancient Roman priest of Jupiter to discuss salvation with a couple of Jesuits!
“For crying out loud, Chris, you're not trying to suggest that that monster is any sort of answer?”
“It's alive. Let's keep it that way, is all I suggest. Maybe there's a reason why it has no eyes.”
“Sure! Its DNA is so fucked up by that fungus!”
“Maybe it will see another reality outside of this. Who knows what language it may be capable of generating? What it may be able to describe? Can't we find something to feed it? It breathes. It can eat.”
“They're not marching out to the manger bearing any gifts, I notice,” observed Zwingler sarcastically. “They can't think much of it.”
“Oh, that is explained,” Pierre said briskly. “Kayapi has told them, he employs you as Caraiba Bruxos — so they keep away.”
“Why the hell didn't you tell us! Let's see about gettin' some milk for that brat. Show me where, Frenchman.”
Chester seized hold of his arm and marched him away towards the village.
• • •
Sole went into the hut to take another look at the maka-i child.
What flight of fancy had made him come out with that remark about an ‘answer’? He was grasping at straws. This whole business of the ecology and chemistry and linguistics of the Xemahoa culture would take a couple of years' patient research to disentangle. Maybe in the end all they would find out was that these people had discovered some naturally-occurring stimulator like the one that Haddon had already synthesized, but with particularly undesirable hallucinatory and teratogenic side-effects — producing fantasies and monsters instead of more efficient thought.
The baby let out a kitten's squeal as Sole's shadow fell across its exposed brain. He experimented moving backwards and forwards. Could it sense light and shade after all?
What the hell! It would die. And be better off dead — like the mangled mother by its side, whose nine months of taboo imprisonment only led to this sorry mess.
Chester returned from the village, pulling a woman along brusquely by the hand. Her breasts were swollen with milk, their nipples fat pepper pots, Pierre splashed alongside, speaking to her in Xemahoa consolingly.
The sight of the dead mother and the freak baby made her moan with fear, but Chester kept a firm hold on her, goosed her nipples and shoved his long black finger at the baby's mouth.
“Tell her not to pick the baby up, Frenchman — she'll harm it.”
The woman finally understood what was expected, bent over the baby, guided a swollen nipple to its lips. The lips closed on her and sucked her lustily.
“Christ only knows if there's any way through that thing from its top end to its bottom. Maybe it's all tied up in knots inside. That's the story, ain't it — clever snake tied himself up in knots?” Still, Chester watched the woman carefully in case she damaged any of the ruptures.
“Sorcerer's apprentice is wandering round the village looking half-demented — realized he ain't heir apparent to this shit-heap any more—”
“It isn't a shit-heap, you white Negro,” growled Pierre.
Chester laughed scornfully.
• • •
The woman fled back to the village after half an hour. But Pierre had told her to come again, and she said she would.
Since no one else seemed prepared to do anything about the dead mother's body — and it couldn't stay lying beside the baby — Chester finally carried it out of the hut and away into the jungle. He left it wedged in the crook of a tree. It could be buried when the water had all gone. Or the Xemahoa could burn it — whatever the local custom was. He came back to the hut and lay down on the pallet beside the monster, with a shrug of disgust, to get some rest. Nowhere else was dry.
Late on in the afternoon Pierre reappeared with some dry fish and some kind of pasty soft-boiled taproot which he handed to Sole.
Sole shared the meal with his two companions — and discovered how hungry he was. Even dry fish and boiled root seemed delicious.
When they finished eating, Pierre demanded:
“What's it all about then, Chris?” He was cold sober now. “Am I supposed to understand that the American Government has wrecked its own dam for the sake of a few Indians? That's a pretty tall story.”
Sole gathered up his courage and told him.
• • •
The subsequent confessional episode left Sole feeling limp and exhausted. He felt swarmed-over, sensitized, eroticized, and guilty — very vulnerable — as though he had become emotionally dependent on the Frenchman once again, in some dark corner of himself. As though Pierre had been reinstated in his position as Sole's conscience and superego. Which simply wasn't the case. He was clear of that hang-up now. He was free. It was just a question of proceeding by the most effective route to gain Pierre's acceptance of what was going to happen — since Pierre was the person who had influence with Kayapi. So he had to confess — to gain the right emotional leverage. Or so he reckoned, at any rate. Cold facts would not he sufficient for Pierre.
Tom Zwingler could see none of this. He regarded Sole's confessional performance with open hostility and contempt — though he was none too sure of himself, by this stage. His ruby-nudity was showing — his armour had been missing for too long.
For Sole it was excessively disturbing — this vulnerable, touchy explanation to his former friend and the one-time lover of Eileen. The man who had given life to his son.
Pierre went away to think, or to get some sleep.
Sole hunted for somewhere to lay his own tired body. His nerves felt raw with over-stimulation. Chester woke up when he wandered into the hut a second time; and Sole took his place on the straw bed. He fell asleep beside the baby.
• • •
No helicopter came.
The woman returned from the village to feed the baby when the stars came out.
Pierre held himself aloof, except for providing some more dried fish and root for them to eat. They tasted less delicious this time. He refused to talk about the Sp'thra or the brain trade. Anyway, these seemed ever more remote as the next day dragged on dampfooted into yet another dusk. And another wet dawn.
Sole began going down to the village and looking round, watching the reviving life of the jungle people with increasing fascination. The women wove fish traps, winding the long strands of leaf fibre in and out according to traditional patterns that Pierre said were derived from the shape of the constellations — stars swam in the sky, a harvest of light trapped in imaginary lines, and so fishes were supposed to swim into the traps, attracted by these mimic lines, entangling their fins in them. Women smoke-dried the fish which the men scrupulously gutted — the dragging out of entrails being a male preserve, though as the men were untidier than the women a perpetual heap of stinking guts lay not far away from the huts, host to droves of flies — on the other hand, maybe this kept the flies away from the huts themselves.
The male children played games of marbles with small round stones and gourds with holes in the end as jackpots, the winner dancing round rattling the full gourds like maracas — and the girls tried to slip in and steal any of the stones that popped out of the hole during the boy's gyrations. Inevitably the boy lost some of his winnings, had to chase and trap the girls who snatched them up while their friends ran interference for them. This could be guaranteed to lead on to the Laughing Contest, a slap and tickle routine of sexplay and an endurance test carried on with huge high spirits.
• • •
Kayapi and the Bruxo stayed secluded till late on the third day after the birth in the hut with the mat over the door. Then the young Indian reappeared, looking tired but supremely confident, a long distance runner on his winning stretch. He called a crowd together — from the fringe of which the sorcerer's apprentice looked on, face stubbornly blank, the new mental leper.