Frank Herbert - The Green Brain

Searchers could come over us at any minute now .

Her gaze wavered, went to the mountains along the western horizon. Mountains grew and diminished there as the river carried her through its blue furrow.

It’s the things we must not think about because they’d overpower us with emotion , she thought. These things are the terrible burden . Her hand crept out, clasped Joao’s. He didn’t look at her, but the pressure of his response was more than a hand enfolding hers.

Chen-Lhu saw the motion and smiled.

Joao stared out at the passing shore. The pod drifted on an enchanted current between drooping curtains of lianas. The current carried them around a bend, exposing the towered brilliance of three Fernan Sanchez trees: imperative red against the green. But Joao’s eye went to the water where the river was at work, slowly undercutting clawed roots in the muddy bank.

Her hand in mine , he thought. Her hand in mine .

Her palm was moist, intimate, possessive.

Rising waves of heat encased the pod in dead air. The sun grew to a throbbing inferno that drifted over them… slowly, slowly settling toward the western peaks.

Hands together… hands together , Joao thought.

He began to pray for the night.

Evening shadows began to quilt the river’s edges. Night swept upward from the trench of slow current towards the blazing peaks.

Chen-Lhu stirred, sat up as the sun dipped behind the mountains. Amethyst vapors from the sunset produced a space of polished ruby water ahead of the pod—like flowing blood. There came a moment at the dark when the river appeared to cease all movement. Then they entered the damply cushioned night.

This is the time of the timid and the terrible , Chen-Lhu thought. The night is my time—and I am not timid .

And he smiled at the way the two shadows in the front seats had become one shadow.

The animal with two backs , he thought. It was such an amusing thought that he put a hand to his mouth to suppress laughter.

Presently, Chen-Lhu spoke: “I will sleep now, Johnny. You take the first watch. Wake me at midnight.”

The small stirring noises from the front of the cabin ceased momentarily, then resumed.

“Right,” Joao said, and his voice was husky.

Ahh, that Rhin , Chen-Lhu thought. Such a good tool even when she does not want to be .

THE REPORT, although interesting for its variations, added little to the Brain’s general information about humans. They reacted with shock and fear to the display along the river bank. That was to be expected. The Chinese had demonstrated practicality not shared by the other two. This fact, added to the apparent attempts of the Chinese to get the other two to mate—that might be significant. Time would tell.

Meanwhile, the Brain experienced something akin to another human emotion—worry.

The trio in the vehicle were drifting farther and farther away from the chamber above the river chasm. A significant delay factor was entering the system of report-computation-decision-action.

The Brain’s sensors reviewed once more the messenger pattern being repeated on the cavern ceiling.

The vehicle was approaching a series of rapids. Its occupants could be killed there and irrevocably lost. Or they might renew their efforts to fly away in the craft. There lay a worry-element requiring a heavy weighing factor.

The vehicle had flown once.

Computation-decision.

“You report to the action groups,” the Brain commanded. “Tell them to capture the vehicle and occupants before they reach the rapids. Capture the humans alive, if possible. Order of importance if some of them must be sacrificed: first the Chinese is to be taken, then the dormant queen, and finally the other male.”

The insects on the ceiling danced their message pattern and hummed the modulation elements to fix them, then took off into the dawn light at the cave mouth.

Action.

Chen-Lhu stared downriver across the front seats, watching the moon-path crawl beneath the pod. The path rippled with spider lines in the eddies, flowed like painted silk in the broad reaches.

The breathing sounds of deep, satiated sleep came from the front of the cabin.

Now I probably will not have to kill that fool, Johnny , Chen-Lhu thought.

He looked out the side windows at the moon, low and near to setting. Bronze earthlight filled out the middle circle. Within this darker area there appeared the likeness of a face: Vierho.

He is dead, Johnny’s companion , Chen-Lhu thought. That was a simulacrum we saw beside the river. Nothing could’ve survived that attack on the camp. Our friends out there have copied dear Padre .

Chen-Lhu asked himself then: I wonder how Vierho encountered death—as an illusion or as a cataclysm?

A bootless question .

Rhin turned in her sleep, pressed close to Joao. “Mmmmm,” she murmured.

Our friends will not hold off the attack much longer , Chen-Lhu thought. It’s obvious they’ve just been awaiting the proper time and place. Where will it come—in a rock-filled gorge, at a narrow place? Where?

The thought turned every shadow outside into a source of peril, and Chen-Lhu wondered at himself that he could have allowed his mind to play such a fear-inspiring trick.

Still, he strained his senses against the night.

There was a waiting-silence outside, a feeling of presence in the jungle.

This is nonsense! Chen-Lhu told himself.

He cleared his throat.

Joao turned against the seat, felt Rhin’s head cradled against him. How quietly she breathed.

“Travis,” he whispered.

“Yes?”

“Time’s it?”

“Go back to sleep, Johnny. You’ve a couple more hours.”

Joao closed his eyes, lay back into his seat, but deep sleep evaded him. Something about the cabin… something. There was something here demanding his recognition. His awareness came farther and farther out of sleep.

Mildew .

It was stronger in the cabin than it had been—and there was the acrid tang of rust.

The smells filled Joao with melancholy. He could feel the pod deteriorating around him, and the pod was a symbol of civilization. These imperative odors represented all human decay and mortality.

He stroked Rhin’s hair, thought: Why shouldn’t we grab a little happiness here, now? Tomorrow we could be dead… or worse .

Slowly, he sank back into sleep.

A flock of parakeets announced the dawn. They chattered and gossiped in the jungle beside the river. Smaller birds joined the chorus—flutterings, chirps, twitters.

Joao heard the birds as though from an enormous distance pulling him upward to wakefulness. He awoke, sweating, feeling oddly weak.

Rhin had moved away from him in the night. She slept curled against her side of the cabin.

Joao stared out at blue-white light. Smoky mist hid the river upstream and downstream. There was a feeling of moist, unhealthy warmth in the closed cabin’s air. His mouth tasted dry and bitter.

He sat up straight, leaned forward to look through the overhead curve of windshield. His back ached from sleeping in a cramped position.

“Don’t look up for searchers, Johnny,” Chen-Lhu said.

Joao coughed, said, “I was just looking at the weather. We’re going to get rain soon.”

“Perhaps.”

So gray, that sky , Joao thought. It was an empty slate prepared as a setting for one vulture that sailed into view across the treetops, wings motionless. The vulture tipped majestically, beat its wings once… twice… and flew upstream.