Ian Watson - The Embedding

Zwingler nodded to Chester.

“Okay. I approve. We’ll go ahead with Niagara Falls.”

“You think so?”

“I damn well hope so! Everything in the Frenchman’s papers suggests it’s okay. Gil, would you call up Chase and Billy?”

“That’s good,” the Negro smiled. “I like things to go with a bang.”

“Chase,” Zwingler said carefully into the microphone, “why is the sky dark at night?”

“On account of the universe expanding,” crackled the reply.

“That’s right, Chase. Now listen to this. The word is Niagara. Niagara, confirm?”

“Niagara—that’s all?”

“For the moment. The Falls part to be delayed till the helicopter gets to you. I’m sending Gil to pick you up and bring you down here. Start Niagara Falls as soon as you pull out. We’ll evacuate onward to Franklin. Tell Manáus to send the jet down to Franklin to pull us out, will you? And pass the news to Stateside that the situation here is positive. We’re sending documents and tapes for analysis. Get them to Manáus by way of the spotter plane as soon as you can—have the documents telexed from the consulate there.”

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?”

“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?

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 be thrown into the equation. Fresh neural pathways fused open. The brain was blowing fuses—but the fuse wires sprouted across the gaps spontaneously, and rapidly—almost as a function of the fusing itself.