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Ian Watson: The Embedding

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Ian Watson The Embedding

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The Embedding

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Was this character and his two thugs planning to roll him for his wad of dollars and cruzeiros? It hardly seemed to merit a special helicopter trip. Yet Charlie recalled that business of customs clearance for essential technical equipment at Santarém, when officials had rolled the whole outfit to the tune of several grand under the guise of customs fees. He hoped it wasn’t his turn.

Jorge reappeared with bottle and tumblers, slopped a few fingers of spirit into them and handed them round.

The Captain accepted the brandy from Jorge and sniffed it with a gesture of connoisseurship wasted on that particular juice. The Negro and Ratface drained theirs straight down then wandered about the room rifling through papers and looking into drawers and cupboards while the Captain talked.

“My name is Flores de Oliviera Paixao, Mr Faith. Captain in the Security Police. The Negro is Olimpio, the other one Orlando. Please remember their names, you may see a lot of them and need to ask their help.”

Olimpio glanced round and grinned at the mention of his name, but Orlando just carried on rummaging through Charlie’s things with quick furtive scrabbles of his free hand. Whenever the halfcaste’s bayonet caught the light, Charlie felt a cold squirming sensation in his guts that stopped him arguing about the cavalier way they were treating his room. His mind wandered back to the Nam and the same species of bayoneted rifle in his own hands as he rooted through a jungle hut. The blade had bathed in the guts of a dark-skinned rat of a youth very like Orlando, who went for Charlie with a knife thinking he was saving his sister. Ah, but the sister-cowering in a corner with big doe eyes, tiny cone-shaped breasts pushing at her shirt, the long black pigtails of a schoolgirl. Likely as not she’d never been near a school. She was beautiful. Orlando scrabbled vaguely and stupidly through Charlie’s equipment like a ghost of that thin boy, who had somehow seized the American soldier’s weapon from his hands in that hut a decade ago and lived on to threaten Charlie with it now, instead of dying.

“Mr Faith?”

Was it his imagination, or was the rain easing up? The outline of one of the slumbering bulldozers waiting on the cement apron outside was sharpening. Soon bulldozers and graders and rubber-rollers and tampers could all be floated downstream to Santarém; and he could be flown out of this hole…

“Yes, Captain?”

“You may be aware that not everyone in our fine cities is quite so hospitable to Americans nor so concerned with the values of civilization. There are alien beings loose in our society. You know who I mean?”

“I guess I do. The Reds. The Urban Guerrillas.”

“How should that affect us?” Jorge asked nervously. “That’s a thousand kilometres away from here, beyond the jungle. Terrorists operate along the coastal strip and in the cities—”

“How much you know, Almeida!”

Jorge emptied his own brandy and shrugged.

“It’s common knowledge.”

The Captain nodded.

“These people loot and assassinate and kidnap for ransom and plant bombs that kill and maim innocent people—under the banner of socialism. Of caring for the common man. How do they care about people by planting bombs in crowded shops? But that’s the Communist ideal—to break down civilization in blood and disorder. Then step in with the vain promise of a better world. You’ll understand this, Mr Faith-I hear you’re a Vietnam veteran? Happily Communists haven’t done so well lately. They cannot kidnap ambassadors so easily. Their leaders are in prison. Their exploits no longer claim world interest. Failed men is what they are. But vicious in failure, like rats in a trap. It is the acts they plan in their despair that bring me here, Mr Faith.”

Paixao took a thin cigar from an inside pocket, inspected it doubtfully before slipping it between his teeth. Ratface hurried to his side with a flickering lighter.

“Reliable information is in our hands that in their rage and despair, and to buy themselves some of the notoriety they hanker after, the terrorists intend attacking these wonderful dams. But we’re not sure exactly which dams, or when, or how, Mr Faith. Our informants weren’t sure. Or I assure you they would have told. Ilha das Flôres prison is persuasive that way.”

The rain was certainly slackening off-but its fingers still tapped out a rhythm on Charlie’s skull. “Yeah, I can believe they would have told,” sweated harlie.

It wasn’t so much the hints of torture which Paixao dropped with such a contemplative smile, as the spook boy with the bright bayonet that worried him, however.

“Some terrorists are certainly coming to harm the Project. But how? By damaging the lockgates at Santarém while some foreign-flag vessel is passing through? By killing some American engineers? I doubt they will try to kidnap anyone. Santarém isn’t the town to hide out in. Nor the jungle either-this isn’t the Sierra Maestra in Cuba. Those city men can’t hope to hide with the labourers or rubber tappers along the rivers. Too stupid and venal, those. Someone would betray. Nor do you melt away into the interior of the jungle without killing yourself-unless you happen to be an Indian, and I hear they’re so primitive they eat soil for supper. Indians want nothing to do with our urban terrorists. Maybe they put a few poison arrows in the backs of our road-builders-but for their own private reasons, to be left alone to eat dirt, not be inoculated with the filth of Mao or Marx.”

“I heard that gangs have been attacking towns up north. What d’you call ’em-flagelados?”

Charlie was aware that the Captain might find the remark annoying-he intended it to be. The man’s smoothly bullying tone irritated him.

Paixao nodded curtly. He blew out a cloud of smoke.

“Beaten Ones, yes. They attack villages for food with some degree of gang structure. That’s in the north-east.”

“Maybe these Beaten Ones have been organizing politically? I recollect your government didn’t realize for a whole damn year you had any urban guerrilla problem. You thought they were just gangsters. Aren’t I right?”

“Because they behaved like gangsters. Still do. Except that no gangster would indulge in such senseless violence. However, Amazonia is not the north-east, Mr Faith. There are no gangs here the guerrillas can infiltrate. Consider the size of the area. The lack of roads. Impenetrability of the jungle. Terrorists can’t operate in this region without giving themselves away. Paradoxical, in view of the size, but there it is. We must assume they’re ready to sacrifice themselves. But doing what? Murdering someone like yourself? You’re vulnerable so we’re here to protect you, you see. Is your dam as vulnerable as you are, in your professional opinion?”

Charlie glanced uncomfortably at Jorge. ‘His’ dam. The Brazilian stared back at him expressionlessly, tapping his finger on his empty glass slowly.

“It isn’t my dam, Captain. I’m just here till the floods have been and gone. It’s Jorge’s kingdom then.”

“You call this a kingdom? You must be joking. I’ve seen the miserable hovels clustering like flies round your construction camp.”

You interfering, contemptuous bastard. Relations were touchy enough with Jorge already.

“There are no lock gates to damage,” he said hastily. “A hovercraft ramp is all we’ve got here. Just a strip of concrete. Nothing could hurt the dam itself short of a nuclear explosion—”

Charlie could see Jorge suffering agonies of pride.

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