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.