Lucas was even less thrilled about waking earlier than early.
He stumbled to the spook tent with all the enthusiasm of a snail approaching salt.
It took what would otherwise have been a comically epochal span of time to realize the gravity of the situation.
“Wait….what…what the fuck…” He muttered as his eyes narrowed on the bichromal display.
Slowly, ever so slowly, his face turned ashen white. An effect rendered all the more impressive by his deep Amazonian sunshine induced bronzing.
“Pai Nosso que estás no céu Santificado seja o vosso nome…” Cook muttered under his breath.
“I didn’t know you were religious.” I said.
“I am not but sometimes one must…Ai meu Deus!”
“Nah…god damn is more like it.” Lucas interjected.
“Perhaps…” Cook said looking as wistful as the cramped quarters could afford.
Lucas tugged at my shoulder.
I instantly recognized it as a prompt for private conversation.
“Excuse us Doctor Cook.” I said.
The doctor simply waved us away as he played and replayed the grim little video.
Lucas and I stepped into a thicket just outside the camp’s perimeter.
“Ok…what the hell is going on?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“He’s….killing people…?” The statement trailed off into the tonal quality of a question.
“Uh..yea..looks like it…”
“Why….”
“Fucked if I know…”
We both stared at our boots.
“Your theory…might be right…”
“What theory…”
“This is real Alan…”
“Yea…either that or he’s just gone mental…”
“Hoyt…old pussycat Hoyt with the soft gray eyes…the nerdy bent…he’s not even military for Christ’s sake…and since when in all fucks name does he hunt…”
“Since when does he hunt people…” I added.
“No something happened….” Lucas said. “Something far beyond the power of suggestion…”
Again we examined our boots as if they were the most interesting thing in the universe.
“No wonder the natives avoid him. But…the thing that’s got me most bothered is why Lobo allows it.”
“What if he’s commanding it…” Lucas began.
“I dunno…I kinda wanna go back…”
“I don’t think we can…”
“Sure…just call it quits….if Cook and what was once Grahamathy wanna find some abomination in this god forsaken hell they can do it without our help…”
“Yeah…but Baird…if they do…they’ll have ultimate say…over whatever…whatever it is…”
“Is that the way it works?”
“I dunno…but it’s too risky to just let it unfold.”
“Fuck!” I stamped my foot against the ground.
Then as if I’d unwittingly performed some summoning spell Graham Hoyt emerged from the treeline with a pair of wild pigs in tow.
Lucas and I must have stared the oddest stare. Yet he was unflinching as he had been since the Luckadoo incident.
“What?” He asked.
“Where the hell have you been…?”
He was silent for a moment as if considering something.
“The roots were thirsty.”
And with that he made his way past us into the camp.
‘As if we had a choice.’ I mused to myself as dawn tickled its way up my hammock pegs.
The haze of sleep dissipated slowly.
I wanted to lay there and sway forever in the sticky morn. My wish would not be granted.
Cooks boisterous tankroll of a gait disturbed my contented malaise.
“Senhor Baird! Senhor baird…come to the surveillance tent…come on…”
“Wuhh…” I shook my head.
I felt a strong hairy hand grip my wrist.
“Get up…get up! I have something to show you…”
I hung my feet over the edge of my suspended bunk.
“Dr. Cook…it’s too early to be this excited…”
I barely registered a look of incredulous rage.
“I would not risk your bitching for nothing….bichano…fucking Americans..”
I rolled my eyes and reached a hand down to examine my shoes.
“I already look. Comone on get dressed lez go!”
I groaned.
‘What the hell could be this important.’
I hardly saw any other fool stirring in the legion like camp.
My boot ensconced feet contacted a slightly sinking earth and I was off to our gizmo tent.
Cook had outpaced me by a country mile and was leaning over a console. As I stepped closer I noted Graham’s figure stooped over something in the black-white glow of night vision. It was HAG-I footage.
I leaned over Cooks shoulder to get a better look.
“So what…Hoyt is bein a freak again..what else is new…” I muttered in disgust.
Cook’s face wheeled about and faced me; so few inches distant that I could bite his nose. These tents were cramped.
“Look closer…”
I did. An action which caused me to get just as excited as Cook.
Graham was leaning over a body.
Not the body of a pig or a peccary or any kind of wildlife…but the body of man…a decidely non native man with an arrow protruding from his chest.
I gasped audibly.
“I told you…this explain everything…about why Commander Lobo let him go alone in the Jungle…”
It was still too early for me to understand.
“Don’t you see…we are so unmolested…”
“Well…I mean uncle Jethro ain’t here…”
“Ugh…you Americans with your jokes…look….Senhor Baird…the fact that we have not had to deal with anyone for a week is not absolutely outre…but given the current climate…it is unusual…and there…” he said tapping the screen…”there is the reason why…there are simply no one to bother us…”
Cook was really worked up. His English never slipped this bad.
“Do you get it…he is killing people..”
I got it. I got it loud and clear. This was highly illegal…on multiple levels…and Thornton would skin us alive…it would be worse than Court Martials…Thornton would..Thornton….
I wheeled round and headed off towards Schmidt’s hammock.
The satellite view was deceptive. Google maps reveals an impressive looking patchwork of highways in the Mato Grosso and all throughout Brazil. Labeled with such bureaucratically soporific appellations as MT 101. Yet, these thin lines stretching like gossamer serpents to overgrown pioneer towns were nothing but dust in a vast ocean of green.
So knowing that we could eventually break through to another highway should the need arise, wasn’t as comforting a thought as one might suppose.
These were the things I pondered as I watched Lucas shoo a stick bug the size of a forearm off of his pack.
“That thing is almost as scary as Graham.”
“You mean Jeeves?”
Schmidt chuckled. “Jeeves…?”
“Or maybe he’s more of a Bertie Wooster.”
“What the hell are you talkin bout man?”
“Guess you Krauts are just that uncultured.”
“I’m American man...U..S…A – U….S….A – U…S…A – U…S…A!”
“I wouldn’t be proud of ignoring the glory of Stephen Fry no matter my origin.”
“Can’t ignore what you don’t know.”
“That’s the definition of ignorance.”
“Whatever.”
We sat for a bit in the fold out chairs appreciating the familiarity of the fire rather than the warmth. The polyglot chatter of the voices mixed with twilight and the occasional cry of howler monkeys had a surreal effect. God, my legs ached. Even more so my feet. Even with the best gear the planet had to offer there was no way, no precaution, no circumspection that would allow you to adequately address the damp. I had athletes foot. I had it bad.
“Fuck.” I cursed.
“I’m not into dudes.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, if I go gay I’m goin for old bedroom eyes over there,” I said flicking a thumb in the direction of one of the Brazilians with especially large liquid brown eyes that seemed to ever be on the verge of weeping.
“Pffft….my ass is better.”
“I thought you weren’t gay.” I laughed.
“Just cause I’m straight doesn’t mean I’m not vain.”
“Glam rock kid?”
“Yep.”
Our banter was a silent pact to balm the weirdness. Graham had become eerily good at hunting. I’d never known him to hunt. In all the years I’d spent with him…I’d never heard him mention hunting. Nor did I know that he could carve out, string, and pull a long bow.
What was stranger was that no one stopped him. Brancos were not supposed to hunt on tribal lands. Yet no one stopped him. The Kuikuros and other tribes among us were terrified of him. The Brazilians disliked his taciturn nature, and the terseness of his replies. As for Lobo and his mercenaries they were far too busy keeping watch on the brush. The latin spec-ops guy also seemed to have gained a deep respect for old Hoyt.
Which is why he made no attempt to stay the silent stride that carried the lanky predator beyond the perimeter.
“What I don’t understand is how he’s able to get close to anything with that reek.” Sam remarked.
“Yeah…”
Hoyt had continued smoking like a chimney throughout the week. I could always smell him before I could hear him.
“So, I guess we have to talk about it…” I said after yet another prolonged silence.
“Let’s not and say we did.” Lucas said.
“Yeah…you tasted that Finnish pussy…you should appreciate Suomi wisdom…silence is sacred.”
“Fancy yourself an ascetic now motormouth?”
Sam flicked his tongue between a piece sign. “Motormouth is what your mom calls me.”
“O yea…score that postmenopousal tang…ya tiger!” Schmidt rolled his eyes.
“Jesus Christ guys…I’m serious what do you think is going on here…”
Lucas sighed.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you can’t tell me that this is actually real…”
“Well it is…we’re here, wet and miserable as fuck, likely to die of dysentery or oversaturation at any given tickby of a god damn second.”
“No I mean…I don’t think Thornton is a Gman at all…I don’t think we’re really propogandists…or shrinks…or drug manufacturers…”
Each of us eyed our boots uncomfortably.
“I think he’s the arch-druid and we’re bringing him the vestal virgins on a silver fucking platter.”
Ah, the rain…it was after all a rain-forest. Though we were careful to embark during a season that was dry relatively speaking…the problem was that we were speaking relatively.
We were coping… swimmingly.
That is we were in essence swimming. Though everything was waterproofed in a spectacular fashion…I kept waiting for something to give out. It was of course a relief from the heat…but hardly that either. The decrease of hell was but a scant degree and a half if that.
There were times that we’d have to cut through bush, and times that we could walk freely between massive trunks, shrouded in a dark misty shower.
No wonder the Indians walked about nude. Hey…maybe they were the first people to evolve…hairlessness would certainly be an advantage here…
“What’s got you so perplexed?” Dr. Cook inquired as he fell into step beside me.
“Oh just thinking about ultimate origins. This place sort of makes it inevitable. That and what a spectacle we must be. We are an utter invasion.”
Cook laughed.
“We are but a germ’s germ here. Even if we took the whole population of Brazil. Even with the deforestation…”
This was not a comforting thought.
“So do you believe what that anthropologist at Kuikuros village told us?”
Cook stared at his footfalls for a bit.
“Believe him in what way?”
“That the cities were simply a larger scale version of those massive grass huts? That the conquistadors were being too European in their imaginings. That cultural nearsightedness was the cause of their failures. They were looking for stones, causeways, roads – and this was wrong…”
“Oh well certainly yes as regards the Kuikoros. You yourself saw the ditches and depressions for the palisades the remananats of the plaza. However…our friend is a bit too enthralled with a certain glib neosketpticism. It’s an odd thing common in academics my age…they want to reform ‘Western Conceptions’ so much that once something fit for that purpose is found…they cease inquiring.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean they’re in love with the noble savage myth. I am too…to an extent….but there is a reason the Kuikuros and many others are fascinated and frightened by their own myths about the ‘people of the cloud’ that live somewhere beyond their borders. There were ample reasons for the early explorers to lie. Grants…glory…etc…but that does not mean that they lied. Nor does it mean that they lied to themselves mistaking boulders for bricks.”
“What makes you so certain? Is it Hoyt’s map?”
“Pffft…well, it certainly buttresses the case for alternative history. But, that history frankly stands well enough on its own.”
“O?” I said as I smacked the billionth demon from my cheek. It was remarkable how they braved the rain for blood.
“Well, yes…I have shown you Gobekli Tepe…you yourself saw the ‘Brazilian Stonehenge,’ and Stonehenge itself. Certainly certain clever physics may have been applied…and perhaps many a thing has the accustomed mundane explanation…but when one takes all these things together…and when one see the explosions of high culture…the surprising spread and syncretism.”
“Syncretism….So what you’re telling me is that if someone was seeking to create a new faith…a global faith…it would in fact be an old faith?”
Cook and I trudged along in silence for a great long while before he spoke again.
“Yes.”
I began to see Thornton’s prodding in a different light. He was not a G-man who wished to use psychological and chemical tricks for martial purposes. He did not simply want to gain compliance through memetic warfare. He was a sorcerer…a high priest in some mystery religion I was only beginning to understand. And we were all his unwitting altar boys…o good.
And I began to feel a very strong urge to deny the doctor.
“Yea…but come on…what could be out here…that we haven’t seen…you yourself have been studying the area for forty years you say…and you have not yet found a single thing resembling El Dorado or whatever…”
Cook laughed again.
“I have already told you…we are a germ’s germ here…much there is unseen beneath the canopy…and much more beneath…the soil beneath the canopy…and you and I hold a clue to original elevations, to a four hundred year old topography in the map of your strange friend there…” he said as he pointed to Graham hiking a few bodies ahead. “You yourself have seen the strange stones that we’ve been passing the odd dispersal of trees where they should be thick…no my friend…you are going to see something far more ancient and impressive than a thatched roof New York.”
We were again silent for a great length.
“Babylon ex nihilo?” I inquired incredulously.
Cook simply shook his head.
“Babylon is simply a fragment…and nothing arises ex nihilo…all physic things have a metaphysic origin.”
“You’re beginning to sound like Thornton.”
“So be it.”
“So you are basically proposing the stoned ape theory?”
Cook smiled broadly. “That’s an oversimplified version of an aspect of what I’m saying but what I’m saying can’t really be said. It like theoretical physics or any complex systems can only be understood through rigorous study. But…it can also be seen. And I aim on seeing it.”
In an era when Brooklyn dentists go on Safari, I suppose that even our mad expedition was doomed to be tainted with training wheels. I lost my coffee buzz at the same moment that I watched a bright glint arc its way over our heads through my binoculars. The big high tech daddy in the sky was always just a few steps behind to catch his little man in case he happened to run the risk of scraping up against reality.
There were dangers, and plenty of them, chiefly the heat and the monsters the humidity bred.Provided that this manuscript made its way across the web and the handful of copies we were able to get into print weren’t destroyed I’m sure that readers are pretty fed up with my incessant bitching about the heat.
If it helps, I’m doing it on purpose.The thick sticky air is a constant preoccupation. A preoccupation as constant as hum of every kind of arthropod deploying billions of years of evolutionary strategy to wage war on my homeostasis.
You really shouldn’t come here if accidental death by exotic critter or heat exhaustion isn’t your thing. It really is pervasive. I sit down to write and can think of no other thing to describe. Though I prefer a pen and paper I’ve switched to a rather bulky waterproof laptop due to sweat and damp making it impossible to maintain the integrity of my notebooks.
I suppose that what I’m getting at is yes there were dangers here but really they were theme park dangers. You can get decapitated on roller coasters. Here in the jungle there was a chance that you’d get shot by nickelante revolutionaries or mauled by a jaguar but the chances of that were about as high as a loose bolt on Thunder Mountain. That’s the impression I had.
Night Vision, air conditioned tents, anda small platoon armed with automatic rifles didn’t bode well for feelings of vulnerability. As I’ve mused before there are plenty of reasons to be worried even despite this but I still got this boxed in feeling. I mean at the moment I could pull up a porno on this little 13 inch screen. My phone talked to satellites in geosynchronous orbit.
Space might hold some fascination some thrill of the unknown but I know for a fact, I feel it in my bones, that the wonder of Magellan…or even Patton is no longer possible.
I’m happy to inform you that this dreary notion was soon to be dispelled. Brazil is a volatile place and the construction of the Belo Monte dam far to the north sent shock waves from the city of Altamira throughout the basin, even as far as Mato Grosso.
“What is the number one problem in the Amazon?” Lobo quired as he fell into step beside me.
“Bugs that crawl up your pecker?”
Lobo smiled wryly. “Expand your scope.”
“Deforestation.”
“That’s a surprising answer for a military man.”
“I’m a martial scarecrow,” I laughed. “Sure, I have rank and file but really I’m what the limeys call a boffin.”
“I’m aware of the term. But now that you know that I am speaking from a soldier’s view what is the biggest problem in the Amazon? I will give a hint: deforestation is but a symptom.”
“Corruption?”
“Close, but again that is merely a symptom.”
“Well, deforestation can be a crime, corruption is basically another term for crime, so law enforcement.”
“So close, in fact close enough to where I’ll take it. But, I have to expand it…you see the problem is very simple…power projection.”
I turned my head and raised an eyebrow.
Lobo pointed up.
“You see the canopy? Does that lend itself to air support?”
I shook my head.
“Did you see the savanna, the wetland, this dry forest? How easily do you think that adequate force can be projected on the ground?”
“Not very.”
“Yes! What we do here now…” he said sweeping his hand over the expedition trailing in front and behind. “…is only possible because of your American money…”
“I see.”
“Ah, that you may…but seeing is not realizing…there is other money besides American money and there are people who do not in the slightest motivated by that impulse…”
“You are talking about social unrest?”
“That and much much more…those are the things…not just these trees, this mud, this river…that make projecting the power to enforce what we call civilization.”
“Ok…and…”
“I’m Worried…this is really complicated…this project…the area…the time…we are a tangle of knots…”
He fell silent.
We strode on in a thick air of contemplative apprehension.
There it was. The dissolution of my modern ennui. The wild was still wild. I gazed at the canopy whose shade was a shield for anarchy.
” I didn’t know you spoke French. ” Fabres voice was muffled by the fog of sleep.
” Huh… ”
” You were just humming an old French tune. In near perfect French. ”
“I wouldn’t speak Frog if you paid me in gold bullion and Claudia Shiffers pussy. ”
” Are you always this charming when you wake up ? ”
“Are you always an unbearable asshole ?”
” A question with a question with an attitude…you’re sure you’re not French. ”
It was one of those naps that really disoriented you. I mean I knew where I was…slowly. But, everything came in as incomplete jigsaw pieces.
“Are ya ready for the first big hike?”
I wasn’t. I watched the porters stowing the tents and gear with growing horror. The humidity was nauseating and physical exertion was an unwelcome suggestion.
“Cheer up! What…you’d rather play with chemicals in Kentucky?”
“Much.”
I dangled my legs over the side of the hammock. These poor feet would soon be ensconced in boots. And these poor legs would soon be a trekking for a mystic puzzle piece.
Two porters approached the sleeping tent and began working to remove the outermost tarp.
“Looks like you’d better get moving.”
“If you were going to be my reveille you could’ve at least brought some coffee.”
“I’m a cop not a maid.”
“Nah, what you are is an asshole.” I muttered as I checked my boots for bugs.
All that was left of the mess tent was a fold out table with what remained of some pork and eggs and a coupla big thermoses of coffee.
I dumped two huge ladel fulls onto a metal plate and went to town.
“Hungry much?” Lucas voice rang out behind me as he approached.
“Hell yea…I’d suggest ya pig out too…” I said between chomps. “I mean ya shoulda already…you remember how many calories we’re about to burn?”
“That’s why the pot is nearly empty. Your lazy ass was the last to wake up. You got Lobo to thank for us leavin ya as much as we did.”
I chuckled. “Aww…what a sweetie.”
“Sweetie nothin…I think he’s gonna drive us to near breaking. He wants to get this over with as soon as possible. You can almost cut the tension in the air around that dude with a knife.”
“Yea…I figured…he’s worried about revolutionaries or drug runners or both.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s worried about everything.”
“Can ya blame him…” I said motioning a circle around the perimeter with my fork. “Look at the size of all this…ya could see this expedition from space.”
“They say there’s safety in numbers.”
“There’s also mutiny and intrigue and broken gear.”
“Yea…I’m not really sure about this but then again this is one hell of a trip…one hell of an everything…I mean this whole fucking project. I mean I still don’t believe that crazy bullshit we saw in the Pacific. If we’re looking for ultimate origins…I mean hell just show the public one glimpse of that…”
“I think old Thornton is looking more for a way of life. But before that…someone’s gotta live it…I guess we’re the guinea pigs. I kinda think of it like the end of that Doors song…but sorta like the opposite…we must try to find a new answer instead of a way…”
“Yea…” Lucas agreed. “Makes sense I suppose…now that we found the new answer the problem becomes clearing the way.”
“You really think he’s gonna put Mescaline in the water supply?”
“Wouldn’t put it past him.”
“You know…” I said as I gazed at the villagers going about their business despite the high-tech alien bullshit that was going on around them. “This isn’t going to work…it isn’t going to work…there’s just too many different ways to live.”
“…hmmm…but… maybe that’s exactly how it’s gonna work.”
“Maybe.”
I heard muttering in Portuguese. A couple of porters were approaching.
“Are you finish the coffee?” One of them inquired in halting English.
“Hell no!” I said snatching up one of the thermoses.
The porter laughed.
“We got order to pack up…”
I was done with the food an indicated as much. As for the coffee…there was still a good half hour before we were going to take off.
I wandered over to an overturned canoe. Lucas decided not to follow suit as he was already full of caffeine and opted to buzz with overstimulation over the various affairs that surrounded us like a mad pointillist painting.
As I poured another cup of coffee I heard the sound of approaching rotor blades. It was the bird coming by to pick up the HAG I and our other high-tech toys.
‘Pizzaro could never have imagined this kind of bullshit.’ I chuckled to myself.
To think that we’d be followed by a helicopter full of silicon valley took some of the romance out of it. But, as my eye danced from lapping river to canopy I regained a sense of mystic thrill. As the caffeine began to work its way through my system I became cautiously excited again.
Dispensing with any sort of quackery I’d simply shouted, “Get out of here. This is my home. I am an Englishman and this is England!”
After all the noise had settled and Betty had ceased whimpering I winked at Jones. He was still holding the ceremonial dagger and chalk.
“You see my man…you have to tell these things off properly…don’t treat them like bloody royalty. We are higher than the angels…do you not recall…”
The towering bundle of nerves simply extend a thin white finger.
There it was. A perfect azure sphere sitting atop a cold carpet that itself sat atop a yet colder floor.
I promptly hauled it up. Jones leapt back.
“Ah! Careful Roderick…are you mad…”
I laughed. “Perfectly so my friend. Glad for it too seeing as to the effects sanity has upon you.”
“The house was shaking Rod…shaking and humming…” Betty muttered. “You should maybe be more…”
“Ooo uhhh were it now..shaking like the perfect pair of autumn shrivelled leaves I see stand before me?” I laughed.
In all honesty I’d lost all mirth. I’d just received word from France that my bastard daughter hadn’t survived the tuberculosis. Yet, in its place, in the place of levity a certain ecstatic freedom took hold. This made me quiet jolly but with a sort of thrilling chill rather than happiness.
Everything felt liquid, fluid, cool and malleable.
It is an odd thing to see yourself in the daughter of a whore. She’d called me Papa. Six years old…moving onto the seventh…I did not have the courage to take her with me…to avoid that harsh little apartment in Tours.
It is odd to see yourself in the daughter of a whore. To see your self-same hazel fire and jetty locks to see a twist of the lips so familiar….so peculiar.
“Are you afraid of eternity?” I bellowed tossing the sphere onto an armchair.
My two tenants stood dumbstruck as I unfastened my trousers.
I urinated on the pretty thing. My offal running in gold rivulets off its perfect geometry and staining the mahogany fabric of its throne.
“It is a holy thing Hamilton…have you no shame…”
“I don’t care if its God’s own eye!” I laughed again dancing a jig.
“He’s mad…” Betty murmured.
“Oh,” I said. “No, no darling I am perfectly beautifully sane. You see I did nothing wrong not one thing wrong. Was it I who bargained with the colonials? Was it I that shot Ferdinand? What was I to do with my loneliness in France….what was I to do with that shrieking image…that homage to the great god pain. Did I invent the trench or fashion the bullet that rained upon it?
…NO!…
And neither did I fashion angels, or hells, or Gods, or magick, or its implements. Why should I give fealty to that which is not my own! There is nothing holy Jones. Not a thing upon the Earth, nor below, nor above!”
Jones simply shook his head sadly wiping away the urine with a kerchief. He moved past a weeping Betty to secret the thing…perhaps make obeisance to it.
I didn’t care one wan iotalated damn.
“Eh ! Pantruchar ! C’est y qu’ tu s’rais malade
Ou que l’ cafard te rendrait tout transi ?
Ce soir, t’as pas l’ cœur à la rigolade”
Lobo was heading over. I’d long ago grown weary of his perpetually critical outlook. There was only one cunt in this camp that had the divine sanction to be cynic sovereign.
“You are taking these with us?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Why?”
“Is this your first encounter with NATO?”
“Huh?”
“What do we do every day Pinky?”
Lobo laughed. The one endearing quality about him was his near encyclopedic knowledge of cartoons.
“You do know that this will slow us down?”
“Us Carolina boys might be barefoot and bucktooth but we ain’t stoopid .”
“Huh.”
“We don’t have a choice, and yes I’m well aware that a high-tech toy chest is gonna kill speed faster than when Aunt Bertha hopped onboard the carpool.”
“They will break…or be broken…”
“Yea..well I ain’t too attached.”
Lobo appeared to be lost in thought.
“We are only taking them fifty miles in.” I intruded into his reverie confident that I’d guessed where his mind was going.
“So you’re saying that if they’re damaged…”
‘Well…fuck.’
It was true that I’d relished the chance to get a couple of good licks in even if it meant getting twisted into a pretzel. But now that the opportunity presented itself I wasn’t happy. If he succeeded in sabotaging the equipment we’d have to go back. I wanted to go back but I didn’t…I’d gone too far on this weird ride.
“Bad idea, bub.” I said placing myself in his path. At 6’ 2” I’m not exactly short but I found myself staring at his nipples.
Lobo laughed. “I am doing you a favor.”
“I appreciate that…but you are also doing yourself a disservice.”
“How?”
“You think Uncle Sam likes having his toys broken?”
He laughed again. “So you are saying they will come to Brazil…to Cuiaba…find me…”
“They’re already here.”
Lobo glanced around.
I shook my head. “Don’t you think that a lot of the tourists cityside seemed a little too fit. That their size and haircuts didn’t exactly fit the profile of bored dentist?”
Again Lobo laughed. “Yeah…I guess you have a point…but I have a suggestion…American soldiers should stay in America…”
He was holding an apple in his right hand. An apple that instantly exploded and oozed out in between his clenched fingers.
Guess he knew I was angling for a fight. I was glad that I had backup. Not because I minded having my ass kicked. The thought of bruises on his face gave me a near sexual thrill… even if it cost me a fracture. No I was glad because the shit storm of paperwork and bitching that would have come as a result of sabotage would have cost more careers than my fingers could count.
He walked off leaving me in the small clearing between our tents.
Briefly, for a few blessed moment I was alone with my thoughts. I gave myself permission to assess how I was feeling about all this. Unfortunately my introspection didn’t go past base instincts.
I was tired. I was horny. The native girls who I’d at first had difficulty seeing as sexual creatures despite their near constant nudity began to look more and more appealing. They weren’t ugly just very primitive and removed from my world. The longer I stayed here though the further away seemed that world and I began to experience an erotic dimension in the busy rhythms of the village women. I liked watching them tend to their homes, to their families, I liked their soft dark eyes and the feminine tone of their musculature.
I chuckled internally at the fantasy of going native. Yes, I Alan Baird would become ‘Karakiki’ and along with my comely village bride raise a clan of strong clever lads that stood head and shoulders over their more compact brethren. I would learn the rhythms of the wood and forget the poison of asphalt and plastic.
Despite this amusing distraction I couldn’t in good conscience go around getting my dick wet. Horny wasn’t a problem I could solve. But I could and should take a nap.
The hammocks were in a tent thirty or so paces from the high-tech igloo.
O yeah! This felt fantastic. There was air conditioning and a fan to soothe my nerves and lull me to sleep with the gentle sway of the unorthodox bed.
7.5 Should be ready by tomorrow evening EST. Cheers and thanks for stopping by.
Contact and Shill!
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It was cold in the spook tent. I was in a cryogenic womb made from space age canvas, fiberglass, and fans.
It was dark save for the glow of monitors and the Christmas light array of blinking LEDs.
There in cramped quarters we traced the paths of several drones. It was a microcosm of full spectrum dominance. Sea, air, and land were at our fingertips. Yes, I said land.
I sat below the image of a grinning witch. The toy at my disposal was the HAG – I . High Agility Ground Intelligence or the Hag Eye.
These were devices as experimental as PLATO itself. I’d played with early iterations in a highly controlled environment. This was the wet test, Thornton wanted deployment data, and so here we were putting her through her paces.
Despite being glad for the feel of cool air I soon grew to hate it. The jungle outside was bad but this cramped, sterile, ice box was built for the comfort of machines, not men.
“Cut me a sample.” Cooks voice crackled in my headset.
The robotic spider never ceased to amaze me. My horizontal trajectory became vertical. Some of the multijointed legs flashed briefly in my field of vision. Then I behold the uppermost branches of the Kapok tree.
Ascending to the impressive height of a hundred and seventy some feet I paused before a patch of leaves. Briefly striking a hotkey combination engaged an automatic process. The reason for this tent was manifold. We were transmitting data back to a neural net in Langley. HAG – I was not only being tested but trained.
I watched in fascination as the little abomination adjusted itself and a slight mechanical whirring informed me that its tiny mechanical arms were coming online. A clamp and some sharp calipers emerged. The little circle of dots that appeared on my monitor informed me that calculations were under way.
Then slowly methodically the clamp extend and closed around a branch bearing the lance shaped leaves, and several pepper/nut like seed pods. It then proceeded to cut with the calipers just above initial grip. The branch came loose and Laura adjusted herself. I’d decided to call this particular HAG machine Laura after my exes mother.
A-Seq; Complete, the green font at the bottom of my screen informed me, I was pilot again. Slowly I made my way back down the trunk of the tree. Branch in hand mind you. Laura was primarily a surveillance device. There was no storage container. The only reason she’d been equipped with arms, and other tools, was in case there was a need for quick conversion for bomb diffusion.
We weren’t about to insect scuttle our way back across two and a half miles of jungle though. A few feet from the base of the Kapok sat a gaping mouth. The mouth was open and a little metal ramp led to the depths of the beasts bowels. Laura scuttled her way inside.
I switched to night vision. There was a darkened pad in the corner. I placed the branch on the pad. It opened and swallowed the sample. I pressed another hot key combination and watched as Laura took her place in the pen next to her sisters.
Though I couldn’t see it I knew that the gaping mouth monster closed its jaws and wheeled its way to the most open patch of canopy it could find. Schmidt’s aerial machine descended and attached itself to the calipers atop the mobile garage.
Our toys were homeward bound.
Unfortunately another short abomination. I work the AM shifts and have been waking up at eight/nine PM the past couple of days. Really hoping to resolve this bullshit soon. Probably going to post more than twice this week to make up for my constant cock ups. Cheers and thanks for reading.
I never got those Cubans. I felt better as predicted. There was also a fresh distraction to take my mind off physical woes.
It was the oddest thing. Watching the natives avoid Hoyt.
Apparently there wasn’t a medicine strong enough to purge whatever demon he had.
He never stopped smiling that same unpleasant Sphinx lip smile. His demand and tolerance for tobacco was disturbing. I swore he went through a pack and a half a day. None of our protests meant anything and not even Lobo was able to stop him from using some unknown connection supplying him with a crate of Pall Malls.
‘Wherever particular cacodemons congregate.’ I mused.
His accent was now 100% British but unlike any variation I’d heard before. I don’t know why he’d decided to pull a Madonna. But it was certainly creepy. And made creepier by the fact that he seemed to be trying to mask it.
Otherworldly influence certainly seemed the correct position. Given our line of work it wasn’t unlikely. But, given our line of work skepticism was in order. Martial grade psychedelic research for the express purpose of fashioning a new religion to nudge the herd from the cliff edge required scientific precision.
He did suffer a psychotic break at the lodge. Who knows what sorts of novel neural connections our various disciplines and chemical regimens produced. Who knows what sort of subliminals Thornton was implementing.
I chuckled briefly as I was transported back in time to my introductory philosophy course. I’d just reconsidered the brain in the vat hypothesis. What if our experience is merely a fantasy and we are all just brains in vats fed memories and experiences by some alien? I think this was a variation on something Descartes had theorized in a similar vein involving a demon.
What if we weren’t in the jungle at all but strapped to gurneys at some black site? Or catatonically entranced by some new electromagnetic gizmo at the lodge.
Well…I guess I didn’t feel entirely better. I’d downed a bottle of honey jack to allay the monotony of preparing for the first leg of the journey. The hangover certainly felt real.
The old man that the kid had gotten the planty tasting thing from shook his head as I passed to fetch a coffee from the mess tent.
It was going to be a long trek east towards some half guessed location. It had to be made on foot. Cook wasn’t about to toss away his opportunity to document jungle depths on Uncle Sam’s prodigious war dime. Furthermore there were preestablished, roads, circles, and ruins that had to be ugh…I think the word they used was activated…Thornton was definitely taking vision inducement seriously. The honeyjack was warranted.
What if I didn’t want to converse with my holy guardian angel? Angels are boring. The most boring concept of all an angel, a demon, really it is…it’s just a clerk with fancy keys. They can’t do anything outside of a certain determination…unlesss…anyway…
I felt water hit my face.
“AH!” … “Hey! Watch it fella…”
The elder was grinning. His fingers half-submerged in some other earthen bowl full of god knows what. Part of that whatness was now drops rolling down my cheek. Had he flicked it at me?
“What the hell are ya doin you goof…” I said trying to hide my annoyance. But I didn’t have to try for long. My hangover was gone.
I cocked back my head. The old man laughed, teetered, and mumbled.
“Uh…thank you.” I said.
He just stared at me. I remembered that Portuguese was probably a better choice. Though I wasn’t sure he spoke it either.
“Obrigado.”
The wizened head nodded in acknowledgement. His hand waved me on.
The healthy sized Professor was spreading a nice thick schmear on his breakfast bagel.
“Uh, who’s the geezer with all the potions?” I inquired.
“Not sure.” Cook said stirring his coffee.
“Well, he’s the Shaman right?”
Cook shook his head.
“Old man, weird, healing potions, talks about spirits…not a shaman?”
“Well, I suppose he probably is a shaman but he is not their shaman.”
“Come again?”
“They say that he’d emerged from the jungle in the middle of broad daylight. Nobody had seen him coming. He was alone and seemed harmless so they let him stay. They were glad they did.”
“How long ago was this?”
“About a month.”
“Doesn’t speak a word of Bakairi…or any related dialect…but seems to understand some Portuguese…weirdest damned thing….”
“Bakairi?”
“Yes, that’s the language here…these are the Bakairi.”
“Not Kuikuros?”
“You really ought to stop drinking Mr. Baird.”
“Not to be a bigot but…all these tribes look pretty similar to me.”
Cook laughed. “Really?”
“What?”
“I thought CIA was supposed to be observant.”
It was my turn to laugh… “I’m not CIA…and…hah…he..CIA is not observant.”
“That is hard to believe.”
“Donut dippers love to mythologize.”
“Well, the cultures around here also love to mythologize and though there is a common thread, the clothing, ritual, and customs vary greatly from tribe to tribe.”
“All I see are feathers, bowl cuts, and body paint.”
“Sure, but you wouldn’t call yourself Moldovan.”
“What?”
“Think about it, Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, even some parts of Central Asia all share the business suit. Generally eye and hair color stay within the same range. Social organization also has a very similar culture. Drop one of the Bakairi man in any of the aforementioned places and he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”
“Yeah, I get that, but I mean this is more like the difference between a Welshman and a Scott…if that…hell this is more like…”
Cook sighed.
“I don’t blame you for neglecting one of my favorite disciplines. But really you did not note the thatched dress and the masks?”
“On occasion but again…doc…that ain’t my field.”
“Well, you’d better start taking an interest. We’re going to need many pairs of sharp eyes out there.”
“I’m not against it. You’re just going to have to help me put on the old anthropologist goggles.”
“Well, let’s start with something interesting then.”
“O?”
“Have you noticed how no one talks to Senhor Hoyt, how they disperse at his presence?”
“You bet.”
“Have you seen how all the Shamans the stranger included draw shapes in the ground in front of Senhor Hoyt?”
“No.”
“So you have not seen Senhor Hoyt invariably step around them?”
“Well, it would be rude to trample some recent graffiti.”
“Hmm.. I don’t know…but I do know what the Bakairi here call him…”
“O?”
“Kurâmã.”
“And that means…”
“It is hard to translate exactly…but…it means roughly…conceptually…demigod…”
I laughed so hard I shot coffee from my nose.
Well, I didn’t quite make my marathon as epic as I’d intended. But to be fair to my poor bones I did intend for five hours and completed four. In the update post I said I’d be awake till 3 AM. That would be seven hours. Woulda been badass but too much content reaching to make for a good read. Gonna catch some ZZZ’s, as concerns this story, see ya’ll Tuesday.
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