All Joao could think of then was escape. He stared out frantically at the earth beneath, glimpsing a blotch of white in a savannah off to his right and in the same instant recognizing another airtruck banking beside him, the insignia of his own Irmandades bright on its side.
The white blotch in the savannah resolved itself into a cluster of tents with an IEO orange and green banner flying beside them. Beyond the flat grass could be seen the curve of a river.
Joao dove for the tents.
Something stung his cheek. Crawling things were in his hair—biting, stinging. He kicked on the braking rockets, aimed for open ground beside the tents. Insects were all over the inside of the pod’s glass now, blocking his vision. Joao said a silent prayer, hauled back on the control arm, felt the pod mush out, touch ground, skidding and slewing. He kicked the canopy release before the motion stopped, broke the seal on his safety harness and launched himself up and out to land sprawling on hard ground.
He rolled over and over, eyes tightly closed, feeling the insect bites like fire needles over every exposed part of his body. Hands grabbed him and he felt a jelly hood splash across his face to protect it. Hard spray slammed against him from all sides.
Somewhere in a hood-blurred distance he heard a voice that sounded like Vierho’s shout, “Run! This way—run!”
He heard a spraygun fire: Whoosh!
And again.
And again.
Hands rolled him over. Spray hit his back. A wash that smelled like neutralizer splashed over him.
An odd thudding sound shook the ground and a voice said, “Mother of God! Would you look at that!”
Chapter V
JOAO SAT up, clawed the jelly hood from his face, stared across the savannah. The grass there seethed and boiled with insects around an Irmandades airtruck.
A voice said, “Did you kill everything inside the pod?”
“Everything that moved.” The reply was husky, halting, as though overcoming pain.
“Is there anything in it we can use?”
“The radio’s destroyed.”
“Of course. That’s the first thing they go for.”
Joao looked around him, counted seven of his Irmandades—Vierho, Thome, Ramon, Pietr, Lon…
His eye was caught by the group clustered beyond his men—Rhin Kelly among them. Her red hair was awry. Dirt streaked her face. There was a wild, glazed look in her green eyes. She was glaring at him.
He saw his pod then, to the right, on its side and just within what appeared to be a perimeter ditch. Foam and spray residue were all over it. His eye traversed the line of the ditch, saw that it ringed a hard-packed dirt area with the tents in the center and savannah beyond. Two men in green IEO uniforms stood beside him holding sprayer handtanks.
Joao returned his attention to Rhin, remembering her as he’d seen her in Bahia’s A’Chigua. Now she wore a plain IEO field uniform, its green blotched by red-brown dirt. Her eyes held no invitation at all.
“I see poetic justice in this—traitors,” she said.
Her hysterical tone of voice caught Joao’s ear and it took a second for her words to filter through. Traitors?
He grew aware of the bedraggled, worn look of the IEO people.
Vierho approached, helped Joao to his feet, proffered a cloth to wipe off the jelly.
“Jefe, what is happening?” Vierho asked. “We picked up your signal, but you didn’t answer.”
“Later,” Joao rasped as he recognized the anger in Rhin and her companions. Rhin appeared feverish and ill.
Hands brushed Joao, clearing dead insects off him. The pain from the stings and bites receded under the medicant neutralizer.
“Whose skeleton is that in your pod?” one of the IEO people asked.
Before Joao could answer, Rhin said, “Death and skeletons should be nothing new for Joao Martinho, traitor of the Piratininga!”
“They are crazy, that is the only thing, I think,” Vierho said.
“Your pets turned on you, didn’t they?” Rhin demanded. “The skeleton, that’s all that’s left of one of you, eh?”
“What is this talk of skeletons?” Vierho asked.
“Your jefe knows,” Rhin said.
“Would you be so kind as to explain?” Joao asked.
“I don’t need to explain,” she said. “Let your friends out there explain.” She pointed toward the rim of jungle beyond the savannah.
Joao looked there, saw a line of men in bandeirante white standing untouched amidst the leaping, boiling insects in the jungle shadow. He took a pair of binoculars from around the neck of one of his men, focused on the figures.
Knowing what to look for made the identification easy.
“Padre,” Joao said.
Vierho bent close, rubbing at an insect sting beneath the acid scar on his cheek.
In a low voice, Joao explained about the figures at the jungle edge, handed over the glasses so that Vierho could see for himself the fine lines in the skin, the facet-glitter of the eyes.
“Aiee,” Vierho said.
“Do you recognize your friends?” Rhin demanded.
Joao ignored her.
Vierho passed along the glasses with an explanation to another of the Irmandades. The two IEO men who had sprayed Joao came close, listening, turned their attention to the figures in the jungle shadows.
One of the IEO men crossed himself.
“That perimeter ditch,” Joao said. “What’s in it?”
“Couroq jelly,” said the IEO man who’d crossed himself. “It’s all we had left for an insect barrier.”
“That won’t stop them,” Joao said.
“But it has stopped them,” the man said.
Joao nodded. He was having unpleasant suspicions about their position here. He looked at Rhin. “Dr. Kelly, where are the rest of your people?” Joao passed his gaze around the IEO personnel, counting. “Surely there’re more than six in an IEO field crew.”
Her lips compressed, but she remained silent.
The more Joao looked at her, the more ill she appeared.
“So?” Joao said. He glanced around at the tents, seeing their weathered condition. “And where is your equipment, your trucks, lab hut, jitneys?”
“Funny thing you should ask,” she said, but there was uncertainty in the sneering quality of her voice—and that definite hysterical undertone. “About a kilometer into the trees over there”—she nodded to her left—“is a wrecked jungle truck containing most of our… equipment, as you call it. The track spools of our truck were eaten away by acid before we knew anything was wrong. The lift rotors were destroyed the same way—everything.”
“Acid?”
“It smelled like oxalic, but acted more like hydrochloric,” said one of her companions, a blond Nordic with a recent acid burn beneath his right eye.
“Start from the beginning,” Joao said.
“We were cut off here…” He broke off, glanced around.
“Eight days ago,” Rhin said.
“Yes,” the blond man said. “They got our radio, our truck—they looked like giant chiggers. They can shoot an acid spray about fifteen meters.”
“Like the one we saw in the Bahia Plaza?” Joao asked.
“There’re three dead specimens in containers in my lab tent,” Rhin said. “They’re cooperative organization, hive-clusters. See for yourself.”
Joao pursed his lips, thinking.
“I heard part of what you told your men there,” she said. “Do you expect us to believe that?”
“It’s of no importance to me what you believe,” Joao said. “How’d you get here?”
“We fought our way in here from the truck using caramuru cold-fire spray,” said the blond man. “That stalled them a bit. We dragged along what supplies we could, dug a trench around our perimeter, poured in the couroq powder, added the jell and topped it off with all our copahu oil… and here we sat.”