A dart gun of some kind, Joao guessed. Probably poison.
He punched the igniter button on the dash, strapped himself in while waiting for the turbines to build up speed. The Indian still crouched behind him without safety harness—vulnerable now if the airtruck were spun sharply.
Joao flicked the communications switch on the lower left corner of the dash, looked into the tiny screen there giving him a view of the lab compartment. The rear doors were open. He closed them by hydraulic remote. His father lay securely strapped to the bench, the other Indian seated at his head.
The turbines reached their whining peak.
Joao switched on the lights, engaged hydrostatic drive. The truck lifted about ten centimeters, angled upward as Joao increased pump displacement. He turned left onto the street, lifted another two meters to increase speed, headed toward the lights of a boulevard.
The Indian spoke beside his ear: “Turn toward the mountain over there.” A hand came forward, pointed to the right.
The Alejandro Clinic is in the foothills, Joao thought. Yes, that’s the correct direction.
Joao made the indicated turn down a cross street that angled toward the boulevard.
Casually, he gave pump displacement another boost, lifted another meter and increased speed once more. In the same motion, he switched on the intercom to the rear compartment, keyed it for the amplifier and pickup beneath the bench where his father lay.
The pickup, capable of making a dropped pin sound like a cannon, emitted only a distant hissing and rasping. Joao increased amplification. The instrument should have been transmitting the old man’s heartbeats now, sending a noticeable drum-thump into the forward cabin.
There was no sound but that hissing, rasping.
Tears blurred Joao’s eyes. He shook his head to clear them.
My father’s dead, he thought. Killed by these crazy backwoodsmen.
He noted in the dash screen that the Indian back there had a hand under the elder Martinho’s back. The Indian appeared to be massaging the dead man’s back. The rhythmic rasping matched the motion.
Anger filled Joao. He felt like diving the airtruck into an abutment, dying himself to kill these crazy men.
The truck was approaching the city’s outskirts. Ring-girders circled off to the left, giving access to the boulevard. This was an area of small gardens and cottages protected by overfly canopies.
Joao lifted the airtruck over the canopies, headed toward the boulevard. To the clinic, yes, he thought. But it’s too late.
In that instant, he realized there were no heartbeats at all coming from the rear compartment—only that slow, rhythmic grating plus, now that his ears searched for it, a cicada-like hum up and down the scale.
“To the mountains, there,” said the Indian behind him. Again that hand came forward to point off to the right.
Joao, with the hand close to his eyes illuminated by the dash lights, saw the scale-like parts of a finger shift position. In that shift, he recognized the scale shapes by their claw fringes.
The beetles!
The finger was composed of linked beetles working in unison!
Joao turned, stared into the Indian’s eyes, saw then why they glistened so brightly: they were composed of thousands of tiny facets.
“Hospital, there,” the creature beside him said, pointing.
Joao turned back to the controls, fought to keep from losing composure. They weren’t Indians… they weren’t even humans. They were insects—some kind of hive-cluster shaped and organized to mimic a man.
The implications of this discovery raced through his mind. How did they support their weight? How did they feed and breathe?
How did they speak?
Every personal concern had to be subordinated to the urgent need for getting this information and proof of it back to one of the big government labs where the facts could be explored.
Even the death of his father could not be considered now. Joao knew he had to capture one of these things, get out with it. He reached overhead, flicked on the command transmitter, set its beacon for a homing call. Let some of my Irmaos be awake and monitoring their sets, he prayed.
“More to the right,” rasped the creature behind him.
Again Joao corrected course.
The voice—that rasping, stridulant sound. Again, Joao asked himself how the creature could produce that simulation of human speech. The coordination required for that action had profound implications.
Joao looked out to his left. The moon was high overhead now, illuminating the line of bandeirante towers off there. The first barrier.
The truck would be out of the Green soon and into the Gray of the poorest Resettlement Plan farms—then, beyond that, another barrier and the Great Red that stretched in reaching fingers through the Goyaz and the inner Mato Grosso, far out to the Andes where teams were coming down from Ecuador. Joao could see scattered lights of Resettlement Plan farms ahead, darkness beyond.
The airtruck was going faster than he wanted, but Joao knew he dared not slow it. They might become suspicious.
“You must go higher,” said the creature behind him.
Joao increased pump displacement, raised the nose. He leveled off at three hundred meters.
More bandeirante towers loomed ahead, spaced at closer intervals. Joao picked up the barrier signals on his dash meters, looked back at his guard. The dissembler vibrations of the barrier seemed to have no effect on the creature.
Joao looked out his side window and down as they passed over the barrier. No one down there would challenge him, he knew. This was a bandeirante airtruck headed into the Red… and with its transmitter sending out a homing call. The men down there would assume he was a band leader headed out on contract after a successful bid, calling his men to him for the job. If the barrier guards recognized his call wave, that would only confirm the thought.
Joao Martinho had just completed a successful bid on the Serra dos Parecis. All the bandeirantes knew that.
Joao sighed. He could see the moon-silvered snake of the Sao Francisco winding off to his left, and the lesser waterways like threads raveled out of the foothills.
I must find the nest—wherever we’re headed, Joao thought.
He wondered if he dared turn on his receiver—but if his men started reporting in… No. That would make the creatures suspect; they might take violent counter-action.
My men will realize something’s wrong when I don’t answer, he thought. They’ll follow.
If any of them hear my call.
“How far are we going?” Joao asked.
“Very far,” the guard said.
Joao settled himself for a long trip. I must be patient, he thought. I must be as patient as a spider waiting beside her web.
Hours droned past: two, three… four.
Nothing but moonlighted jungle sped beneath the truck, and the moon lay low on the horizon, near setting. This was the deep Red where broadcast poisons had been used at first with near disastrous results. This was where the first wild mutations had been discovered.
The Goyaz.
This is where my father said Rhin Kelly went, Joao thought. Is she down there now?
The moon-frosted jungle told him nothing.
The Goyaz: this was the region being saved for the final assault, using mobile barrier lines when the circle was short enough.
“How much farther?” Joao asked.