Frank Herbert - The Green Brain

Joao lowered his gaze, noted that the pod had become part of a drifting island of logs and brush during the night. He could see parasite moss on the logs. It was an old island—at least one season old… no, older . The moss was thick.

As he watched, an eddy came between the pod and the logs. They parted company.

“Where are we?” Rhin asked.

Joao turned to see her sitting up, awake. She avoided his eyes.

What the hell? he thought. Is she ashamed?

“We are where we’ve always been, my dear Rhin,” Chen-Lhu said. “We’re on the river. Are you hungry?”

She considered the question, found that she was ravenous.

“Yes, I’m hungry.”

They ate in quick silence with Joao growing more and more convinced that Rhin was avoiding him. She was first out the hatch to the float and stayed a long time. When she returned, she lay back in the seat, pretending sleep.

To hell with her , Joao thought. He went out the hatch, slammed it after him.

Chen-Lhu leaned forward, whispered close to Rhin’s ear, “You were very good last night, my dear.”

She spoke without opening her eyes: “To hell with you.”

“But I don’t believe in hell.”

“And I do?” She opened her eyes, stared at him.

“Of course.”

“Each in his own way,” she said, and she closed her eyes.

For some reason he couldn’t explain, her words and action angered him, and he tried to goad her with what he knew of her beliefs: “You are a terrible aboriginal calamity!”

Again, she spoke without opening her eyes: “That’s Cardinal Newman. Stuff Cardinal Newman.”

“You don’t believe in original sin?” he jeered.

“I only believe in certain kinds of hell,” she said, and again she was looking at him, the green eyes steady.

“To each his own, eh?”

“You said it; I didn’t.”

“But you did say it.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes! You said it!”

“You’re shouting,” she said.

He took a moment to calm himself, then, in a whisper: “And Johnny, was he good?”

“Better than you could ever be.”

Joao opened the hatch and entered the cabin before Chen-Lhu could answer, found Rhin staring up at him.

“Howdy, Jefe,” she said. And she smiled, a warm, intimate, sharing smile.

Joao answered the smile, slipped into his seat. “We’re going to hit rapids today,” he said. “I can feel it. What were you shouting about, Travis?”

“It was nothing,” Chen-Lhu said, but his voice still grated with anger.

“It was an ideological issue,” Rhin said. “Travis remains a militant atheist to the end. Me, I believe in heaven.” She stroked Joao’s cheek.

“Why do you think we are near rapids?” Chen-Lhu asked. And he thought: I must divert this conversation! This is a dangerous game you play with me, Rhin .

“Current’s faster, for one thing,” Joao said. He stared out the front windows. A new, surging character definitely had come over the river. Hills had drawn closer to the channel. More eddies trailed their lines from the shores.

A band of long-tailed monkeys began pacing the pod. They roared and chittered through the trees along the left bank, only to abandon the game at a river bend.

“Every creature I see out there, I have to ask myself: Is that really what it seems?” Rhin said.

“Those are really monkeys,” Joao said. “I think there are some things our friends cannot imitate.”

The river straightened now, and the hills pressed closer. Thick twistings of hardwood trees along both shores gave way to lines of sago palms backed by rising waves of the jungle’s omnipresent greens. Only infrequently was the green broken by smooth red-skinned trunks of guayavilla leaning over the water.

Around another bend, and they surprised a long-legged pink bird feeding in the shallows. It lifted on heavy pinions, flew downstream.

“Fasten your seatbelts,” Joao said.

“Are you that certain?” Chen-Lhu asked.

“Yes.”

Joao heard buckles snapping, fastened his own harness, looked at the dash to review Vierho’s changes in controls. Igniter… firing light… throttle. He moved the wheel; how sluggish it felt. One silent prayer for the patch on the right hand float, and he set himself in readiness.

The sound came as a faint roaring like wind through trees. They felt another quickening of the current that swept the pod around a wide bend, turning in an eddy until it faced directly downstream, and there, no more than a kilometer away, they saw the snarled boiling of white water. Foam and misting spume hurled itself into the air. The sound was a crashing drum roar growing louder by the second.

Joao weighed the circumstances—high walls of trees on both sides, narrowing channel, high black walls of wet rock on both sides of the rapids. There was only one way to go: through it.

Current and distance required careful judgment: the pod’s floats had to hit the crosscurrent waves above the rapids at just the right moment for those waves to help break the river’s grip on the floats.

This’ll be the place , Chen-Lhu thought. Our friends’ll be here… waiting for us . He gripped a sprayrifle, tried to see both shores at once.

Rhin gripped the sides of her seat, pressed herself backward against the cushions. She felt that they were hurtling without hope toward the maelstrom.

“Something in the trees on our right,” Chen-Lhu said. “Something overhead.”

A shadow darkened the water all around them. Fluttering white shapes began to obscure the view ahead.

Joao punched the igniter, counted—one, two, three. Light off—throttle.

The motors caught with a great banging, spitting roar that drowned the sound of the rapids. The pod surged through the screen of insects, out of the shadow. Joao swerved them to avoid a line of foaming rocks in the upper pool. He nursed the throttle by the feeling of G-pressure against his back.

Don’t blow, baby , he prayed. Don’t blow .

“A net!” Rhin screamed. “They have a net across the river!”

It lifted from the water above the rapids like a dripping snake.

Reflex moved Joao’s hand on the throttle, sent the knob slamming against the dash.

The pod leaped, skimmed across a glossy pool. Slithering current tugged them sideways toward smooth black walls of rock. The net stood out directly ahead when the pod lifted, floats breaking from the water.

Up… up.

Joao could see the river plunge off beyond the net, water leaping in crazy violence there as though trying to escape the glassy black walls of rock.

Something slapped the floats with a screech and sound of tearing. The pod’s nose dipped, bounced up as Joao hauled on the wheel. A staccato rattling shook the craft. Spray filled the air all around.

In one flickering moment, Joao saw motion along the chasm’s rim. A line of boulders thundered down there, fell behind.

Then they were out of it, airborne and climbing—lurching, twisting… but climbing. Joao eased the throttle back.

The pod thundered over a line of trees, back across the river. Another tree-spiked hill hot beneath them. A long straight avenue of water opened up ahead of them like turbulent brown grease.

Joao grew conscious of Rhin’s voice: “Look at us go! Look at us go!”

“That was inspired flying,” Chen-Lhu said.

Joao tried to swallow in a dry throat. The controls felt heavy under his hands. He saw downstream a great bend in the river, and beyond that a wide island-broken lake of flooded land.

Brown river… flooded land , he thought.

He fishtailed the pod, shot a look back to the west. Brown clouds were piled there, with black beneath them: thunderheads! Rain in the hills behind us , he thought. Flood here. It must’ve happened during the night .