Frank Herbert - The Green Brain

“What…” he croaked.

“You had the same thing that hit me, but more of it,” she said. “A nerve drug in the insect venom. Don’t try to exert yourself.”

“Where?” he asked.

She looked at him, sensing the broader question. “We’re still in the same old trap,” she said, “but now we have a chance of getting out.”

His eyes spoke the question that his lips couldn’t form.

“Your truck pod,” she said. “Some of its circuits were badly damaged, but Vierho rigged substitutes. Now be quiet a moment.”

She checked his pulse, put a blood-gauge thermometer against his neck, read it. “Fever’s down,” she said. “Have you ever had heart trouble of any kind?”

Instantly he thought of his father; but this question wasn’t directed to his father.

“No,” he whispered.

“I have a very few energy packs,” she said. “Direct feed. I can give you one if you don’t have a weak heart.”

“Do it,” he said.

“I’ll use a vein in your leg,” she said. “They gave it to me on the left arm and I saw blue and red lights for an hour.” She bent to a case beside the cot, took a flat black cartridge from it, pulled the blanket off his feet and began applying the energy pack to his left leg.

He could feel her working there, but it was so far away and he was so drowsy.

“This is how we brought Dr. Chen-Lhu around,” she said, pulling the blanket back over his feet.

Travis didn’t die , he thought. He felt that this was an extremely important fact, but couldn’t place the reason.

“It was more than the nerve drug, of course,” she said. “With Dr. Chen-Lhu and with me, that is. Vierho spotted it in the water.”

“Water?”

She took the word as a request, dribbled more water down his throat from the canteen.

“Our second night here we dug a well in one of the tents,” she said. “River seepage, naturally. Water’s loaded with poisons, some of them ours. That’s what Vierho tasted: the bitterness. But my tests shows there’s something else in that water: a hallucinogenic that produces a reaction very like schizophrenia. It isn’t anything humans put there.”

Joao could feel energy pumping into him from the pack on his leg. A cramp like acute hunger knotted his stomach. When it passed, he said, “Something from… them .”

“Very likely,” she said. “We’ve rigged a crude still. There’s a variable resistance to this hallucinogenic. Hogar appears to be completely immune, but he didn’t get any of the venom drug. That seems to leave you wide open.” Again she checked his pulse. “Are you feeling stronger?”

“Yes.”

The cramps were in the muscles of his thighs now—rhythmic and painful. They receded.

“We’ve analyzed that skeleton in your pod,” she said. “An amazing thing. Remarkably like a human skeleton except for ridges and tiny holes—presumably where the insects attach themselves and articulate it. It’s bird-light but very strong. The kinship to chitin is quite apparent.”

Joao thought about this, letting the energy from the pack on his leg accumulate. He was feeling stronger by the second. So much seemed to have happened, though: the pod repaired, that skeleton analyzed.

“How long have I been here?” he asked.

“Four days,” she said. She glanced at her wristwatch. “Almost to the hour. It’s still fairly early.”

Joao grew aware then of the forced cheerfulness in her tone. What was she hiding? Before he could explore the question, a hiss of fabric and brief flash of sunlight told of someone entering the tent.

Chen-Lhu appeared behind Rhin. The Chinese seemed to have aged fifty years since Joao had last seen him. Skin sagged and wrinkled at his jawline. The cheeks were concave pockets. He walked with a fragile caution.

“I see the patient is awake,” he said.

The voice surprised Joao by its strength—as though all the man’s physical energy had been channeled into this one aspect of him.

“He’s under pack right now,” she said.

“Wise,” Chen-Lhu said. “There isn’t much time. Have you told him?”

“Only that we’ve repaired his truck pod.”

This must be phrased very delicately , Chen-Lhu thought. Very delicately. Latin honor can shoot off at strange tangents.

“We are going to attempt escaping in your pod,” Chen-Lhu said.

“How can we?” Joao asked. “That pod won’t lift more than three people at the most.”

“Three people is all it’ll carry, that is correct,” Chen-Lhu said. “But it won’t be required to lift them; in fact, it cannot lift them.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your landing was rather rough: one of your float-skids is damaged and you ruptured the belly tank. Most of the fuel was gone before we discovered the damage. There’s also the matter of controls: they’re not of the best, even after the Padre’s most ingenious ministrations.”

“That still means only three people in it,” Joao said.

“If we can’t transmit a message, we can carry it,” Rhin said.

Good girl , Chen-Lhu thought. He waited for Joao to absorb this.

“Who?” Joao asked.

“Myself,” Chen-Lhu said. “Only for the reason that I can testify to the debacle in my nation, warn your people before it’s too late.”

Chen-Lhu’s words brought an entire conversation flooding back into Joao’s awareness—in the tent: Hogar, Vierho… Chen-Lhu babbling about… about…

“Barren earth,” Joao said.

“Your people must learn before it’s too late,” Chen-Lhu said. “So I will be one of the passengers. And Rhin here because…” He managed a weak shrug. “…because of chivalry, I would say, but also because she’s resourceful.”

“That’s two,” Joao said.

“And you will make three,” Chen-Lhu said, and he waited for the outburst.

But Joao merely said, “That doesn’t make sense.” He lifted his head, stared down along the length of his body on the cot. “Four days here and…”

“But you’re the one with pistolao —political connections,” Rhin said. “You can make people listen.”

Joao dropped his head back onto the cot.

“My own father wouldn’t even listen to me!”

The statement evoked a surprising silence. Rhin looked up at Chen-Lhu, back to Joao.

“You have your own political pipelines, Travis,” Joao said. “Probably better than mine.”

“And perhaps not,” Chen-Lhu said. “Besides, you’re the one who saw this creature close up, the one whose skeleton we will take back with us. You are the eye-witness.”

“We’re all eye-witnesses.”

“It was put to a vote,” Rhin said. “Your men insist.”

Joao looked from Rhin to Chen-Lhu, back to Rhin. “That still leaves twelve men here. What happens to them?”

“Only eight now,” Rhin whispered.

“Who?” Joao managed.

“Hogar,” she said. “Thome of your crew; two of my field aides: Cardin and Lewis.”

“How?”

“There is a thing that looks like a qena flute,” Chen-Lhu said. “The creature in your truck pod carried one.”

“Dart gun,” Joao said.

“No,” Chen-Lhu said. “They mimic us better than that. It’s a generator of a sonic-disruption pattern. What it disrupts is human red blood cells. They must get fairly close with it, though, and we’ve been keeping them back since we discovered it.”

“You can see we have to get this information out,” Rhin said.

No doubt of that , Joao thought.

“Surely there must be someone stronger, better able to insure the success of this,” Joao said.

“You’ll be as strong as any of us in a couple of hours,” Rhin said. “We are not in the best condition, none of us.”