Before he even knew it, Chim'bor was running. He was halfway to the Sky Forest when Sor'acha looked his way.
His brother was still stretching determinedly for the blue fruit. But on his dark brown face was a look of deep confusion. His cheeks bulged as if he was holding his breath.
When Sor'acha finally plucked a single piece of fruit from the rest of the cluster, he held it in triumph for only a second. The breath exploded from his lungs, and he let go of the trunk.
He dropped twenty feet from the treetop, hitting the hard-packed ground below with a bone-crushing thud. Chim'bor ran through the pack of screeching monkeys. The animals parted in fear, scattering as he kicked at them with his bare feet. When he slid to his knees next to his brother's lifeless body, a lone monkey was plucking the blue fruit which Chim'bor now saw was a small cluster of several seeds-from Sor'acha's dead hand.
The other monkeys immediately attacked the one with the seeds, clawing and biting at it. Shrieking, the monkey raced down the hill and across the plain. The other animals chased it back into the jungle.
Chim'bor didn't care about the monkeys. Sor'acha lay flat on his back, his dead eyes staring glassily up at the cluster of blue seeds in the tree high above. He had taunted the demons of the Sky Forest, and they had exacted the ultimate price.
Had he only listened to Chim'bor. Had he only left the blue seeds to the demons of the Sky Forest.
As the tears burned hot in his eyes, Chim'bor looked up. The instant he did, his anguish turned to terror. For, as he knelt over the body of his dead brother, a demon appeared in the Sky Forest.
The screeching monkeys might have drawn it out. More likely it was Sor'acha's theft. Either way, he saw a white shape slowly coming toward him.
It vanished amid the blue tree trunks. Frozen in fear, Chim'bor heard a ragged, heavy breathing coming from among the trees.
The demon reappeared. Closer now.
Chim'bor's heart pounded. He couldn't breathe, couldn't move.
The demon emerged into the light.
It was taller than a Rsual native. It had the limbs and body of a man but no face. The demon was wrapped from head to toe in a strange white garment.
The faceless demon loomed above Chim'bor. It struggled to breathe through an invisible mouth. When it spoke, the demon's language sound almost like that of the whites, who had summoned it to Rsual land.
"Sweet Georgia Brown," the demon rasped, "what do you termite eaters think you're doing here?"
With the words, Chim'bor finally found his feet. More demons were coming out from the depths of the Sky Forest. Some had faces. Tanks were strapped to their backs, clear plastic covering their mouths. It no longer mattered. Sor'acha's body was nothing. The whites and their demons could have the jungle. As more of the creatures emerged from the Sky Forest, Chim'bor ran screaming from them. When the Amazon jungle swallowed him and the Sky Forest and the faceless demons were long behind him, he still ran. He ran all the way back to his village.
After that day, he couldn't stay in the land of the Rsual. Chim'bor left his tribe. He fled the forest to the white man's city, hoping distance would extinguish the flame of constant fear.
He stayed there for five years, working at a boat-rental shop at the mouth of the Amazon. Sometimes he would pilot a charter boat himself.
Every now and then he would hear stories out of the jungle. How the Sky Forest had claimed a few other Rsual lives. How the valley became choked with smoke for a full year, so that no one could see for miles around. And how it had been decreed that the entire region was to be avoided by all future generations of Rsual for the dark magic that had been performed there.
Chim' bor heard it all. And stayed away.
For a long time he and his fears lived a life of self-imposed exile. Then one day the Sky Forest came to him.
A group of whites arrived at the docks in Macapa. They brought with them many provisions stored in bags and crates.
He assumed they were tourists, since these were the only ones still fascinated by the Amazon jungle. If they were tourists, they were part of some strange white adventurers' club, for all the men wore the same strange outfit. They perspired heavily in their corduroy jackets.
Brazilian natives struggled to load their cargo into three rented boats. The last items aboard were three dozen large burlap sacks.
Chim'bor was carrying the last of the sacks to the final boat when it slipped off his shoulder and dropped to the rotted wharf. When it hit, one stitch in a corner seam popped open and a single small object launched free. It rolled across the dock, tapping against the side of a big crate.
The skipper of one of the Amazon tour ships had a small squirrel monkey as a pet. Before Chim'bor had even seen what came out of the sack, the monkey had scooped it up. After devouring it, the animal scurried up to the bag Chim'bor had dropped.
Chim'bor was hefting the bag back into the air when the monkey reached out and clawed at the corner seam of the sack. The bag split open, and dozens of seeds spilled onto the warped dock.
Blue seeds.
When he saw them, Chim'bor dropped the sack in shock. The seam split wider. Hundreds of small seeds scattered across the ancient dock.
"What are you doing!" one of the whites yelled. The monkey threw itself into the pile of seeds. As Chim'bor backed away, the animal was shoveling them into its mouth. It took the boot of a sailor to get the animal to stop.
"Sweet Georgia Brown, what's wrong with you?" the leader of the whites demanded.
He and the others began desperately shoving the seeds back into the torn burlap sack.
That voice. Chim'bor knew that voice. Although he hadn't been able to see a face at the time, the man on the Macapa dock had the same voice as the demon from the Sky Forest.
"I know we're supposed to embrace the simplicity of the native, but I just don't see it," the demon said to his companions as they picked up every last seed. "Give them half a chance, and they'd be just like everyone else on this planet. With air conditioners and chlorofluorocarbon fridges in their mud huts. They're not fooling anyone. You're not fooling anyone," he repeated to Chim'bor.
Chim'bor just stood there as the demons-who now resembled ordinary men-finished gathering up the seeds into the torn sack: Pinching the corner, they pulled it carefully off the dock. They put it in the last boat, balancing it on some of the other sacks.
Through it all, Chim'bor said nothing.
The boats were all loaded. The head demon put the others dressed like him onto the boats. He then returned to a waiting car and drove off into the city.
The monkey had been in hiding until now. It joined Chim'bor on the dock, jumping and screeching as the three boats pulled away into the river.
As they chugged out into the current to begin the journey that would take them into the dark heart of the rain forest, Chim' bor looked numbly at all the provisions lashed to their decks. Tools and supplies. Food, medicine. Enough for a long, long time.
And in the rear of each boat, burlap sacks filled with enough blue seeds to remove breath from the land of the Rsual forever. Perhaps even all of Brazil.
Despite the oppressive heat, as he stood on the Macapa dock, alone save the company of a single shrieking monkey, Chim'bor of the Rsual could not stop himself from shivering.
Chapter 12
In the privacy of his office, Dr. Harold Smith was reading the latest news reports out of Geneva. A mug of chicken broth from the Folcroft cafeteria sat on a tray at his elbow, along with a plastic-wrapped packet of four small crackers. Smith was frowning at his monitor when the contact phone rang.
He quickly put down the spoon with which he'd been stirring the hot broth and scooped up the phone. "Report," he ordered.
"St. Clair flew the coop," Remo announced. "And if you thought his last method of attempted murder was kinky, you'll love what he had for an encore."
"I have just seen a report about some kind of explosion that leveled his home," Smith said cautiously. "Authorities are saying it's some sort of gas line, although there are none in the region."
"Not gas-oil," Remo said. "By the sounds of it, this gaggle of mad scientists buried tanks in the mountain to force-feed the fire. I'd say it was crazy, but everything about this cracker factory is nuts. Did you know the guys here are all running around dressed up like Sage Carlin?"
Smith's face grew disturbed. "I had uncovered that in my research of the CCS," he said seriously. "Apparently, since his death a cult of personality has developed around Dr. Carlin."