Joao stood one step behind him, still feeling weak and plagued by occasional flash-cramps in his left leg above the energy pack. The direct feed and specialized hormones could only approximate the needs of a specific body, and Joao could feel himself half poised against strange tensions because of this treatment.
“I have put the food and other emergency supplies here under the seat,” Vierho said. “There’s more food in the gig-box there in the back. You have two sprayrifles with twenty spare charges, one hard-pellet carbine. I’m sorry we have so little ammo for it. There’re a dozen foamal bombs under the other seat, and I’ve tied a hand-spray rig into the corner back there. It’s fully charged.”
Vierho straightened, glanced back at the tents. His voice fell to a conspiratorial whisper. “Jefe, I do not trust the Doctor Chen-Lhu. I heard him when he thought he was dying. This new face is not like him.”
“It’s a chance we have to take,” Joao said. “I still think you or one of the others who weren’t as sick should go in place of me.”
“No more talk of that, Jefe, please.”
Again Vierho’s voice fell to the conspiratorial whisper: “Jefe, step close to me as though we are saying goodbye.”
Joao hesitated, then obeyed. He felt something metallic and heavy pushed into the belt pocket of his uniform. The pocket sagged with it. Joao pulled his jungle jacket around to cover the sag, whispered, “What’s that?”
“It belonged to my great grandfather,” Vierho said. “It is a pistol called the .475 Magnum. It has five bullets and here are two dozen more.” Another packet was slipped into the side pocket of Joao’s jacket. “It’s not much good except against men,” Vierho said.
Joao swallowed, felt tears dampen his eyes. All the Irmandades knew the Padre carried that old blunderbuss and wouldn’t part with it. The fact that he parted with it now meant he expected to die here—likely true.
“God go with you, Jefe,” Vierho said.
Joao turned, looked to the river about five hundred meters away across the savannah. He could just glimpse the beach of the opposite shore, the wild growth there illuminated by the afternoon sun. The jungle lifted there in steady waves of color, its bold lines standing out in the flat light. The growth was a deep blue-green at the bottom, a sun-bleached sage at the top, and with flecks of yellow, red and ochre between. Above the green towered a candello tree with bat-falcon nests cluttering the forks of its branches. A twisted screen of lianas partly obscured a wall of mata-polo trees to the left.
“Fifteen minutes of fuel in the pod and that’s all?” Joao asked.
“Maybe a minute more, Jefe.”
We’ll never make it with nothing but that river’s current to move us, Joao thought.
“Jefe, sometimes there’s a wind on the river,” Vierho said.
Christ, he doesn’t expect us to sail that thing, does he? Joao wondered. He looked at Vierho, saw the deep weariness in the man’s face, the scarecrow emaciation.
“That wind could cause trouble, Jefe,” Vierho said. “I have used one of the pod’s grapnel anchors to make a thing that will float just under the surface and provide some drag. It is called a sea anchor. It’ll keep the nose of the pod into the wind.”
“That’s a clever idea, Padre,” Joao said.
And he wondered: Why do we play out this farce? We’re going to die here, all of us… either here or somewhere down that river. There were seven or eight hundred kilometers of that river—rapids, chasms, waterfalls—and the rainy season was almost on them. The river would become a torrential hell. And if it didn’t get them, there were always the new insects, the creatures of acid and sophisticated poisons.
“You better inspect it one more time yourself, Jefe,” Vierho said. He gestured at the pod.
Yes, anything to keep busy, to keep from thinking, Joao thought. He’d already been over it once, but another look wouldn’t hurt anything. After all, their lives would depend on it… for awhile.
Our lives!
Joao allowed himself to wonder then if escape were possible, if there were any hope at all. This was, after all, the pod of a jungle airtruck. It could be sealed against most insects. It was designed to take abuse.
I mustn’t allow myself to hope, he thought.
But he set himself to another inspection of the pod… just in case.
The white bandeirante paint of its exterior had been washed away in patches, streaked and etched by acid. The float skids, normally long and faired extrusions of the pod’s bottom curve, had been cranked out manually and locked in position. They formed a flat step up to the stub wings and into the cabin. The entire pod was just short of five and a half meters long with two meters at the rear taken up by the rocket motors. The motor complex which had nested into the discarded rear truck section was cut off flat on both sides. The pod itself was roughly oval in cross section. This left two flat half-moon surfaces which opened into the rear bulkhead of the pod’s cabin. The left-side half-moon was a maze of male and female connectors which once had linked the pod to the truck section. The right side was sealed by a hatch which now opened from the cabin and down to one of the float skids.
Joao inspected the hatch, made certain the connectors had all been sealed off, looked at the right-side float skid. A jagged rent in the side of the float had been patched with butyl and fabric.
He could smell rocket fuel, and he knelt to peer up at the belly tank section. Vierho had siphoned out the fuel, applied a chemical hotpatch on the outside and spray-tank sealant inside, then replaced the fuel.
“It should hold all right if you don’t hit anything,” Vierho said.
Joao nodded, worked his way around, climbed up on the left stub wing and looked down into the cabin. Dual control seats forward and the padded gig-box in the rear. Spray stains were all over the interior. The interior formed a space about two meters square and two and a half meters deep. Windows in front looked down over the rounded nose. Side windows stopped at the wings forward, dipped deeper in the rear. A single transparent panel of polarizing plastic ran over the top to the rear bulkhead.
Joao let himself down into the command seat on the left, checked the manual controls. They felt loose and sluggish. New fuel-monitoring and firing controls had been installed with crude, hand-lettered labels. Vierho spoke at his shoulder.
“I had to use whatever was available, Jefe. There was not much. I’m glad these IEO people were such fools.”
“Hmmm?” Joao spoke absently as he continued his examination.
“When they left their truck, they took tents. I would’ve taken more weapons. But the tents gave me the new guy cables and fabric for patches.”
Joao finished tracing the fuel controls. “No automatic demand valves on the fuel lines,” he said.
“They couldn’t be repaired, Jefe—but you don’t have much fuel anyway.”
“Enough to blow us all to hell… or run away with us if it gets out of hand.”
“That’s why I put the big knob there, Jefe; I told you about that. On and off in short bursts—no problem.”
“Unless I accidentally give it too big a drink.”
“Underneath there, Jefe: the piece of wood, that’s the stop I put in. I tested it with containers under the fuel injectors. You won’t have a very fast ship… but it’s enough.”
“Fifteen minutes,” Joao mused.
“That’s just a guess, Jefe.”
“I know—maybe a hundred and fifty kilometers if everything works as it’s supposed to; a hundred and fifty meters with us spread all over if it doesn’t.”