Sole caught his look and smiled his best Iago smile.
“You can’t do anything about it stuck here in the jungle, Pierre—you’d better come along with us.”
Sole was conscious, as he said it, that he sounded like a policeman advising the criminal to come quietly.
Pierre hung back, reluctant—and excited.
Even this small measure of delay worried the newcomers.
“Would you people hurry up? The Frenchman can do what he pleases, but my instructions are to fly you three out of here as soon as can be. You’re a hell of a security risk, supposing the Brazilians locate you. Weren’t for this you might have been left here. Things are that touchy.” Sole had to laugh.
“We’re a security risk? My God! Things have turned on their heads.”
Pierre was glancing about the village shiftily again—planning his escape.
“The Frenchman ought to be a security risk, too,” grinned Chester. He raised the dart gun and casually fired a needle into Pierre’s bare shoulder. “Sorry, Pee-áir,” he laughed, mimicking Kayapi’s pronunciation.
Pierre stumbled away with a dazed expression on his face. He hadn’t gone more than five or six paces when he sprawled face down in the mud and lay limp.
Chester handed the gun to Tom Zwingler and walked over to Pierre’s body leisurely; hauled him upright with one hand then bore him back to the helicopter in a fireman’s lift.
Presumably it was all for the best, thought Sole.
Obviously Pierre was in no condition to stay in the jungle. His body had taken a terrible beating from flies and leeches and general strain over the past few days.
As Sole helped Chester hump Pierre’s light frame on board the helicopter, he found himself shivering with a numb guilty thrill. Chester was happy too—he had fired his harpoon at last.
They flew over flat green jungle through thin rainmists and zones of rainbow sunlight. And that man in a hurry, whose name was Amory Hirsch, filled in the details of the missing days. The three men, so abruptly snatched from the timeless village of the Indians, heard with a shiver of fear of the changes in the outside world that had sprung so absurdly from their actions. They had searched for a needle in a haystack—and set the haystack on fire.
They heard of the disaster at Santarém. Of the tens of thousands drowned. The ocean-going ships washed deep into jungle, where they toppled over and their boilers burst. Assassinations of American engineers before the assassins themselves were washed away like so much jetsam. Tidal waves of anger and hatred washing over the Brazilian cities. And how in all the confusion one fact stood out. One lunatic, unaccountable fact. That fearful use of nuclear weapons by the Americans to sabotage their own Amazon Project.
They heard how the pinprick explosions were detected by the Chinese transpacific satellite, the primary role of which was now clear to everyone, a spotter guideline for the ICBM system of the People’s Republic. “Two lousy kilotons!” cried Amory Hirsch, distraught at the pettiness of it—but it had been the straw that broke the camel’s back, in two senses: ecological—and political. As soon as the Chinese found out, be damned to the pretence of earth sciences research. Be damned to the Chinese game of musical satellites—of soaring to the top of the charts with their latest hitsong, Red Chairman of the Board. With what relish they leaked this news, no matter if it blew their own cover. Leaked it? No—avalanched the world with it. Meanwhile the Soviets were lying low—suspiciously low. Then fear and suspicion rode the globe at this first fearful use of nuclear weapons since Nagasaki. American property in Rio and São Paulo was burnt and looted. One part of the Brazilian army and air force defected. The other part was paralysed and reluctant to intervene. The régime’s taut control abruptly snapped. Lunatic, anarchistic episodes followed—the napalming of the US Ambassador’s residence in Brasilia was one. A wave of anarchy flushed through the country from town to town. From mind to mind. The guerrilla underground proclaimed its provisional government from the liberated city of Belo Horizonte. And this wild free violent mood lapped over, in far ripples from that flash flood on the Amazon, into neighbouring countries, infecting and contaminating.
“In nineteen hundred and seventy-five all the people rose from the countryside,” murmured Sole.
Amory Hirsch glared at him stonily.
“You might at least get the year right, whatever your sympathies.”
“Sorry, I was thinking about something else.”
“You were thinking about something else I Jesus Christ!”
“Yes, I see this situation’s bad,” said Tom Zwingler anxiously. “But what about the other business? Have we missed our chance of the stars then? Have the Aliens packed up and gone home? Is that why we have to go back with empty hands?”
Amory Hirsch sneered.
“There’s a big announcement upcoming on that one—and it’s not at all what you think.”
Helplessly, Zwingler gnawed at a fingernail.
“What are you talking about, Hirsch? What else is there to think except that it’s the greatest chance Mankind has ever been handed on a plate!”
“On a flying saucer, you mean,” laughed Hirsch.
“But we found what we came to find, I tell you. Why should this mess down here stop us taking some Indians back to the States?”
Hirsch shook his head.
“Don’t worry, friend. You’ll hear all about the reality scene once we get on board that airplane out of Franklin. This sickness in South America may be adjustable. Essentially it all depends what you’re prepared to throw into the other pan of the scales. History—politics—mass moods—it’s all a question of balances. Finding the right pressure points. The Chinese were ready enough to blow the cover on their satellite, to brew this mess up for us. We only have to up the ante in the most effective way. Amusingly, we can have the Soviets on our side in quashing this revolution.”
It was several hours later that Sole and Zwingler listened disbelievingly to Canal Zone Radio, as the anti-hysteria package was launched. Archimedes had said he could move the world, if only he had a place outside of the world to stand, and a long enough lever. It seemed that the Aliens had been elected to provide that place outside of the world.
But what lever would be used?
“… Big news at this nine o’clock nightly newstime. The joint US—USSR declaration one half-hour ago that hostile extraterrestials from another star system are operating in Earth’s near vicinity. It is now reported that the giant satellite visible over the Pacific Ocean and Siberia and Iceland, reported to have been launched last week by the Soviets—was a cover story agreed between the two major space powers to avoid world alarm.”
“Unbelievable,” muttered Zwingler, fumbling at his throat.
“…Hostility is now certain since the destruction of a joint US-Soviet spacecraft with the loss of three astronauts’ lives, and the destruction of unmanned satellites crossing the path of the alien ship. The flooding of the Amazon basin caused by the destruction of a key dam by a nuclear weapon, reported by a Chinese satellite, is now definitely established in the joint communiqué as tallying with reported sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects in the area—”
“Damnable!”
“Take it easy, Zwingler,” shrugged Hirsch. “You’re a passenger now. Just along for the ride. It was naïve to put your trust in unhumans, when you can’t trust human beings. Wouldn’t you say, naïve?” He thrust a polished marble face bluntly at his fellow passengers. “Unhumans sounds pretty much like inhumans to me, eh?”