Ian Watson The Embedding

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the consulate there."
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Zwingler had the instructions read back to him before signing off.
"What, you're sending Pierre's records back to the States?"
"Sure. They're our only instruction manual for Xemahoa."
The three men climbed back into the muddy water, Chester carrying a long
canvas bag and Zwingler a TWA airline bag. They waded into Pierre's hut as the
helicopter took off. Zwingler dumped the airline bag beside him on the
hammock.
"How about some explanations, Tom? I'm all at sea."
"Okay, Chris."
"What's this Franklin place then?"
"It's a jungle airstrip used for surveys for the Amazon Project, south side.
It can also handle jets, incidentally. The other Roosevelt, Teddy, has a river
named after him hereabouts so we called it Franklin "
"And Niagara Falls?"
"Maybe it's a bad choice of a codename. Says too much about the operation."
"A waterfall? Pouring water?"
"Uh-huh. Billy and Chase are gonna pull the plug on the dam. What those
guerrillas couldn't manage in a month of
Sundays we can do in two minutes flat. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh
away "
"How do you pull the plug on all this, Tom? I thought the idea was just to fly
a couple of the Indians out."
Zwingler shook his head briskly.
"If there's anything in this drug business, we got to save the whole ecology,
Chris. That's the thinking at the top, back home. Your friend Pierre ought to
be pleased. Billy will be using two mines. One kiloton apiece. Water action
will finish the job. Strip the dam away like sealing tape."
"Christ, you're not thinking of using nuclear explosives?"
"Nuclear's just a word, Chris don't get all worked up about a word. They're
only one kiloton apiece. Together that's only a tenth of the Hiroshima bomb."
"But what about fallout and the flooding?"
"There'll be very little fallout. Barely detectable. Billy will mine the dam
over on the far side. Flooding? Well, I
guess a guy could as easily get killed crossing the street in New York or
London or Rio. Let's call it the automobile casualty factor that's all it is."
"They'll say the guerrillas did it," grinned Chester. "We'll let that word get
out, even if it does mean a prestige buck for them. Nobody'll know it was
nuclear, small blast like that."
"But downstream?"
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"That reception camp's on fairly high land, ain't it?"
Sole felt a sense of neutrality. Yet this neutral cool was invaded from within
by sparks of hot excitement and restlessness. Not anger, but excitement. It
was as though Pierre had all along been a political superego. And Pierre was
switched off now. Yes, it was like Nietzsche said about God being
dead anything was possible. Sole's mind pursued this idea obsessively, while
Zwingler talked on.
"This automobile casualty factor is a good concept to keep in your head
through all this. We're handling the future of man among the stars not to
mention on earth. An explosion might hurt some people. I'm not saying it will,
just might. Likewise it could upset these Indians when we take their Bruxo
away. But they'll easy get over that. With their
Messiah born. The flood vanishing. The fungus sprouting again. This man Kayapi
in the saddle, who knows ? Later on we'll be able to synthesize the drug. It
could be dynamite to your PSF, Chris."
How marvellous for the Xemahoa, this turn of fortune which happened to fulfil
their prophecies. How amazed
Pierre would be when he came to his senses.
Sole's fingers had located a loose end of fibre sticking out of the hut wall,
and been tugging it this way and that restlessly. He realized he'd cut one of
his fingers on the sharp edge and it was bleeding; popped the finger in his
mouth and sucked it gaily like a child. Now what was that concept he had to
keep in his mind? The automobile casualty factor. A nice bland phrase. Only
one thing was wrong with it. There weren't any cars driving round in the
jungle. Don't split hairs. Split dams.
Split them like you split the seal on a pack of cigarettes. Whatever is sealed
shall be unsealed, when the embedded child is born. He felt exhilarated and
euphoric. Yet cool, at the same time. A well-tempered shiver of excitement
filled his body and spirit.
He felt sure Pierre would understand. To understand all, is to forgive
all isn't that an old French proverb?
And to know all, is all that really counts. That was why the Bruxo had snorted
maka-i, till his nose ran red. That was why the Xemahoa men danced in a
trance, sucked by leeches.
To know the whole truth of life, as a direct experience. From his canvas bag
Chester was taking the components of an oddly-shaped gun which he now began
fitting together.
"What's that, Chester?"
"You know those Indian blowguns, fire curare darts. This baby fires
anaesthetic needles. Bring down a rhino before it reached you. That fast,
man."
Why of course. How merciful. How sensible. How well thought out. Pierre's
closeness elated Sole now rather than anything. His worries had gone. Had
there ever been any real worries?
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FOURTEEN
THE VIEW ON
the screen looked calm. But Rosson was well aware it was a deceptive calm.
There was violence in the children's minds now. Mostly it kept below the
surface. But every day some time it erupted.
They'd accomplished what it had taken hundreds of generations of Stone Age
children to accomplish and done it in a flash of days. They had invented
language. But what language was it they had invented?
Vidya, followed by the other children, had passed through the babbling phase.
It was now clear to Rosson that it hadn't been just a babbling of sounds but a
babbling of ideas and concepts. They had resumed whole speech.
However it was a whole speech that bore little relation to the whole speech
they had been learning before the crisis.
And it was interrupted by storms of violent, destructive activity that left
the children lying about the room exhausted, hunted nearly to death by the
pack of zombie words.
The computer programme to analyse their new language lay barely started on
Rosson's desk. He had no time.
Things were going too fast. He felt like a blind man staring at Madame Curie's
blob of radium seeing nothing, but getting his blind eyes burnt in the
process.
As he watched, Vidya rose with a savage snarl twisting his face. He began to
stalk an invisible prey. Picking up speed, he trotted off in a long ellipse
around the room.
Every time a crisis occurred, a fresh variable seemed to he thrown into the
equation. Fresh neural pathways fused
open. The brain was blowing fuses but the fuse wires sprouted across the gaps [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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