Frank Herbert - The Green Brain

Rhin sat with arms folded, face forward. A red blush of anger colored her neck.

Joao wedged the pump into the corner beside the hatch, looked at Chen-Lhu.

“There was water in the float,” Chen-Lhu said, his voice smooth. “I heard it.”

Yes, I’ll bet you did , Joao thought. What’s your game, Dr. Travis Huntington Chen-Lhu? Is it idle sport? Do you goad people for your own amusement, or is it something deeper?

Joao slipped into his seat.

The pod danced across a pattern of eddy ripples, turned and faced downstream toward a shaft of sunlight that stabbed through the clouds. Slowly, great patches of blue opened in the clouds.

“There’s the sun, the good old sun,” Rhin said, “now that we don’t need it.”

A need for male protection came over Rhin, and she leaned her head against Joao’s shoulder. “It’s going to be sticky hot,” she whispered.

“If you’d like to be alone, I could step out on the float,” Chen-Lhu mocked.

“Ignore the bastard,” Rhin said.

Do I dare ignore him? Joao wondered. Is that her purpose—to make me ignore him? Do I dare?

Her hair gave off a scent of musk that threatened to clog Joao’s reason. He took a deep breath, shook his head. What is it with this woman… this changeable, mercuric… female?

“You’ve had lots of girls, haven’t you?” Rhin asked.

Her words elicited memory images that flashed through Joao’s mind—doe-brown eyes with a distant look of cunning: eyes, eyes, eyes… all alike. And lush figures in tight bodices or mounding white sheets… warm beneath his hands.

“Any special girl?” Rhin asked.

And Chen-Lhu wondered: Why does she do this? Is she seeking self-justification, reasons to treat him as I wish her to treat him?

“I’ve been very busy,” Joao said.

“I’ll bet you have,” she said.

“What’s that mean?”

“There’s some girl back there in the Green… ripe as a mango. What’s she like?”

He shrugged, moving her head, but she remained pressed close to him, looking up at his jawline where no beard grew. He has Indian blood , she thought. No beard: Indian blood .

“Is she beautiful?” Rhin persisted.

“Many women are beautiful,” he said.

“One of those dark, full-breasted types, I’ll bet,” she said. “Have you had her to bed?”

And Joao thought: What does this mean? That we’re all bohemian types together?

“A gentleman,” Rhin said. “He refused to answer.”

She pushed herself up, sat back in her own corner, angry and wondering why she had done that. Do I torture myself? Do I want this Joao Martinho for my own, to have and to hold? To hell with it!

“Many families are strict with their women down here,” Chen-Lhu said. “Very Victorian.”

“Weren’t you ever human, Travis?” Rhin asked. “Even for just a day or so?”

“Shut up!” Chen-Lhu barked, and he sat back, astonished at himself. The bitch! How did she get through to me like that?

Ahhh , Joao thought, she touched a nerve .

“What made an animal out of you, Travis?” Rhin asked.

He had himself under control, though, and all he said was, “You have a sharp tongue, my dear. Too bad your mind doesn’t match it.”

“That’s not up to your usual standards, Travis,” she said, and she smiled at Joao.

But Joao had heard the crying-out in their voices and he remembered Vierho, the Padre, so solemn, saying, “ A person cries out against life because it’s lonely, and because life’s broken off from whatever created it. But no matter how much you hate life, you love it, too. It’s like a caldron boiling with everything you have to have—but very painful to the lips .”

Abruptly Joao reached out, pulled Rhin to him and kissed her, pressing her against him, digging his hands into her back. Her lips responded after only the briefest hesitation—warm, tingling.

Presently he pulled away, pressed her firmly into her seat and leaned back on his own side.

When she could catch her breath, Rhin said, “Now, what was that all about?”

“There’s a little animal in all of us,” Joao said.

Does he defend me? Chen-Lhu asked himself, sitting bolt upright. I don’t need defense from such as that!

But Rhin laughed, shattering his anger, and reached out to caress Joao’s cheek. “Isn’t there just,” she said.

And Chen-Lhu thought: She is only doing her job. How beautifully she works. Such consummate artistry. It would be a shame to have to kill her .

They have such a talent for occupying themselves with inconsequentials, these humans , the Brain thought. Even in the face of terrible pressures, they argue and make love and throw trivialities into the air .

Messenger relays came and went through the rain and sunshine that alternated outside the cave mouth. There was little hesitation over commands now; the essential decision had been made: “Capture or kill the three humans at the chasm; save their heads in vivo if you can.”

Still, the reports came because the Brain had ordered: “Report to me everything they say.”

So much talk of God , the Brain thought. Is it possible such a Being exists?

And the Brain reflected that certainly the humans’ accomplishments carried an air of grandeur that belied the triviality of their reported actions.

Is it possible this triviality is a code of some sort? the Brain wondered. But how could it be… unless there’s more to these emotional inconsequentials and this talk of a God than appears on the surface?

The Brain had begun its career in logics as a pragmatic atheist. Now doubts began to creep into its computations, and it classified doubt as an emotion.

Still, they must be stopped , the Brain thought. No matter the cost, they must be stopped. The issue is too important… even for this fascinating trio. If they are lost, I shall try to mourn them .

Rhin felt that they floated in a bowl of burning sunlight with the crippled pod at its center. The cabin was a moist hell pressing in upon her. The drip-drip feeling of perspiration and the smell of bodily closeness, the omnipresent tang of mildew, all of it gnawed at her awareness. Not an animal stirred or cried from either passing shore.

Only an occasional insect flitting across their path reminded her of the watchers in the jungle shadows.

If it wasn’t for the bugs , she thought. The goddamn bugs! And the heat—the goddamn heat .

An abrupt hysteria seized her and she cried out, “Can’t we do anything?”

She began to laugh crazily.

Joao grabbed her shoulders, shook her until she subsided into dry sobs.

“Oh, please, please do something,” she begged.

Joao forced all pity out of his voice in the effort to calm her. “Get hold of yourself, Rhin.”

“Those goddamn bugs,” she said.

Chen-Lhu’s voice rumbled at her from the rear of the cabin: “You will please keep in mind, Doctor Kelly, that you’re an entomologist.”

“And I’m going bugs,” she said. This struck her as amusing and again she started to laugh. One shake from Joao’s arms stopped her. She reached up, took his hands, said, “I’m all right; really I am. It’s the heat.”

Joao looked into her eyes. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

She disengaged herself, sat back in her corner, stared out the window. The sweeping passage of shoreline caught her eyes hypnotically: fused movement. It was like time—the immediate past never quite discarded, no fixed starting point for the future—all one, all melted into one gliding, stretched-out forever…