Brasyl

“Lighten, lighten!” Caixa commanded in lingua geral. Supplies, water, the second musket, all cartridge and shot but for a sniper’s handful, followed Juriipari. Falcon watched with leaden heart the black water close over his beamiful, precise, civilized instruments. He rolled his journal into a tight cylinder and pushed it into the bamboo tube he had designed for just such a pass: so closely capped as to be watertight, in extremis it might be thrown into the river in the vain hope that it might someday, some year be found and returned to the French Academy of Sciences. The canoe surged forward. Pirogues broke through the drifting bank of powder-smoke and gave chase. Falcon lay prone in the stern, sighting over the gunwale, dissuading the musketeers from incautious fire. Alone in the canoe Caixa’s head was up as she read the varzea for a landmark.

“Cover me!” Caixa shouted. Falcon wiped the spray from his green glasses and let crack at the lead musketeer. The weapon flew from the soldier’s hands, shattered in the lock. Caixa touched a fuse from Falcon’s smolldering pan; with a shriek and rush the signal rocket went up beside his head and burst in brief bright raining stars. Its detonation rolled across the roof of the forest; startled hoatzins plunged clumsily from their roost. The soldiers exchanged hand signals; the two hindmost canoes backed water and turned.

Then two gleaming bolts stabbed out like lightning from either bank and pierced the disengaging canoes through and again. A wavering shriek rose from the canoe on the left bank; a ballista bolt had run an indio paddler through the thigh, a terrible, mortal wound. The water rippled and parted, lines appeared from beneath the surface. Invisible defenders hauled the happless canoes in to shore. The soldiers tried to hack the lines with bayonets, but they were already within the short range of the repeating crossbows. A storm of bolts a

The chase had become a rout, the entrapped canoes circling, firing into the varzea as they tried to withdraw. Twice again Zemba’s ballistas struck, once capsizing an entire canoe. Soldiers and indios alike cried pitifully as the Iguapá hunters waded thigh-deep into the water, shooting them like fish with their poisoned darts. Falcon found his body trembling from the exciteement and the pure, dispassionate efficiency with which Cidade Maravilhosa’s defenders set about destroying their enemies to the last man. Yet Falcon’s exultation was partial, and brief. Even as Zemba’s defenders had repulsed tbe attack by water, raiding parties of indios and caboclo mercenaries had attacked and set torch to the manioc plantations.

The boy poled the pirogue through the trees. An oil lamp, a wick in a clay pot set on the prow, struck reflections from the night-black water. Cayman eyes shone red then sank beneath the surface. Father Luis Qui

“Here,” Luis Qui

Qui

“The revetments will be overtopped by morning,” he heard Zemba’s musical voice say as he entered the observatory.

“God and Mary be with all here.” The aîuri of Cidade Maravilhosa were seated in a democratic circle on the floor of the gteat room, Falcon’s calculations and theorems crawling around them like regiments of ants. Qui

“This is clearly an artificial phenomenon,” Falcon said in his halting lingua geral Even in the half-light of palm-oil lamps he wore his glasses. Qui

“A dam,” Qui

“Yes, a dam. It is cleat that the Rio do Ouro has been dammed with the intention of flooding the quilombo and rendering us helpless,” Falcon said. “To construct such an artifact — I have made some calculations as to the size and strength required — requires an army of labor. There is only one person in this vicinity who can set whole populations to work.”

“And set whole populations to war,” Zemba said. He turned to Luis Qui

“I was… away.” He caught Falcon’s look of surprise. Murmurs sped from mouth to mouth; the aîuri rolled and swayed on their thin kapok-stuffed cushions. Oil flames bent on their wicks as a sudden warm gust possessed the observatory. “You must trust me when I tell you that our troubles here are only part of a greater conflict, a war waged across all worlds and times, so vast that I ca

“Troubles. Ah, that explains it, then.”

Flames flickered across worlds.

“I ca

Consternation among the old men, muttered aggressions among the young.

“And among these thousand worlds, did you find an answer?” For all his feathers and finery Zemba seemed diminished, dismissed, desperate to regain some degree of stature before his men. This is when we are our most dangerous , thought Luis Qui

“I do not need to go out among the worlds to find the answer to that,” Qui

The Frenchman pushed his glasses up his nose. “It is very simple. The dam must be destroyed.”

The young, aggressive men all started to bellow questions.

“Silence,” Zemba shouted. “How may this be achieved?”

“This also is quite simple. A sufficient charge of powder, placed in proximity to that part of the dam under greatest hydrostatic pressure, would effect a breach that would swiftly carry all away.”

Zemba squatted on his hams, supporting himself with his stick. “How much powder would be required?”

“I have done calculations on this as well. It is a simple linear analysis; every hour the pressure on the dam increases, thus decreasing the amount of explosive we require. However, every hour we wait makes an attack more likely; if we attack within the next day, I believe our magazine of powder would suffice to breach the dam.”