The capitan was clear in his sight.
Cut the command off at the
head
. Falcon squeezed the trigger. The lock closed; the flint
flared. Falcon saw the hat fly from the officer's head into the
stream; then glowing slow-matches met touch-holes.
"Down! All down!"
The river flew up around Falcon as if shattered like glass; splinters
flew up from the raked gunwales, but the hull held, by Jesus and
Mary; the shot bounced from that adamant forest trunk. A sigh;
Juripari, endlessly surprised to find the side of his head shot away,
slid gently into the river.
"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
annihilated the crews; those who leaped into the river to save their
souls were run down by bowmen loping along the shore. The soldiers'
thighboots filled with water and dragged them under the black water.
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 Quinn stood in the center of the frail skiff; black on darkness,
an occlusion. To the boy he seemed to float over the drowned forest.
Fragments of voice carried across the water, heated and impatient;
the lights of the observatory passed in and our of view as the boy
steered among the root buttresses and strangler figs. A fish leaped,
splashed, its belly pale.
"Here," Luis Quinn said softly. The pirogue halted without
a ripple.
Quinn stepped into the knee-deep water and waded toward the light and
the voices. The observatory had been built on a high point to give an
uninterrupted window onto the sky; now it was the only building of
any conseequence above water in Cidade Maravilhosa and therefore the
natutal conclave for the aîuri. Worlds flickered across Quinn's
vision as he slogged from the water, leaves clinging to his black
robe; worlds so close he could touch them, worlds of water. The
voices were clear now.
"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. Quinn kicked off his saturated leather
slippers and took his place among them. The hem of his black robe
dripped on to the foot-polished wood. The aldermen crossed
themselves.
"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. Quinn noticed Caixa squatting on her hams in the
deeper shadow at the edge of the hut. The waiting woman. "If my
expedition had been permitted to continue its planned course, I am in
no doubt that we would have encountered a ... a ... " He gave
the word in French.
"A dam," Quinn said in the lingua.
"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 Quinn "Did you see, Mair? Were you there when the
Portuguese maggots burned our crops? I had thought we might see you,
leading us to battle with the high cross. But I did not see you. Did
anyone see the Mair? Anyone here?" Zemba's young cocks crowed
behind him. Quinn hung his head. He had expected the admonition; it
was meet and right, but his pride, his damnable, Satanic pride wanted
to crow back. He saw a pewter mug in his hand as he had seen it in so
many worlds, in those worlds stopped himself from murder and yet in
this world nothing could be changed.
"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
cannot encompass it."
"Troubles. Ah, that explains it, then."
Flames flickered across worlds.
"I cannot explain it to you; I barely apprehend it myself.
Nothing is as it seems. Our existence is a veil of illusion, and yet
in a thousand worlds, I see the quilombo between fire and water, the
torch and the flood."
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 Quinn the
swordsman,
when our pride is broken before our friends.
"For
if I understand this rightly, the Portuguese capitan's great guns and
Father Diego Gonçalves's men can sail right over our defenses
and annihilate us to the last infant."
"I do not need to go out among the worlds to find the answer to
that," Quinn said. "Dr. Falcon."
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."
"All our powder."
"That is what I have calculated."
"Our artillery, our musketry ... " Falcon had helped the
quilombistas haul the massive mahogany cannon up the greasy,
mud-slick hill called Hope of the Saints. Now he was telling Zemba
they were useless, worse than useeless; they squatted on valuable
strategic positions. "And if it is not sufficient, we would be
defenseless."
"That is not my calculation to make."
Zemba laughed, a deep, house-shaking chuckle. "Aîuba, you
offer me some chance and no chance, which is better than damnation by
a hair. How would this charge be delivered?"
"Our magazine could be transported in six large war canoes."
"You shall have the best navigators," Zemba said, gesturing
to his lieutenant, who at once loped from the observatory.
"They would of necessity travel by night-without doubt, our
enemy has moved his basilica and war-fleet upstream. At the dam ... "
Falcon shook his head. "Once I see it I believe I could quickly
calculate the weakest point of the structure."
"Of course, Father Gonçalves would not fail to have
posted guards against just such an eventuality," Luis Quinn
said. "There will be a fight while you make your calculations,
Doctor. No, what is needed is someone who can in an instant know
where to set the explosive."
Cries of dismay and protest rang out around the circle of the aîuri.
"Silence!" Zemba roared again. He beat the heel of his
staff of office on the floor planks. "The Mair is correct."
"I will know where best to site the powder; I will know where
Gonçalves should set his guards. And, though I have forsworn
the way of the sword, there must be a time for the setting aside of
oaths. Would God hold me in greater contempt if I renounced my word
or failed to protect His people?" Then he murmured in Irish,
"I
should wish for a task most difficult."
"It's decided," Zemba said. "The Mair will lead the
attack on the dam. The powder will be ready with canoes and good
fighting men, with what steel we can spare. I will prepare for the
defense of the Kingdom of God. Christ and Our Lady bless us."
The aîuri broke up, old men stiff from the floor.
"Luis." Falcon held out a short, thick bamboo tube with a
plaited lanyard to Quinn. "Take this for me, would you?"
"What is it?"
"The history of the quilombo of Cidade Maravilhosa; partial and
poorly styled, overly emotional and lacking in any academic
objectivity, yet true nonetheless. If the dam cannot be breached; if
the charge is insufficient; if you, God between us and evil, should
fail, surrender this to the waters downnstream and pray to whatever
God is left to us that it will find a safe landfall."
The glow of early light leaked through the woven walls. Quinn lit a
cigar. "The last I shall enjoy for some time," he quipped.
Falcon felt a touch on his arm; Caixa, her golden face telling him he
had done right for her and that was all this woman wanted. He
wondered if she might be with child. A distant cry, like a bird but
no bird of the varzea, came across the lightening sky. A second voice
picked it up, a third until the canopy rang as if to the roars of the
howler monkeys. Zemba rushed to the railing, snapped out his glass,
but Falcon had already swiveled the great observatory telescope in
its mount and was scanning the skyline beyond the eyries of the
Cidade Maravillhosa's lookouts. He let out a cry. In the objective,
distant yet kindling in the rising sun, angels-vast angels in red and
green and heaven's blue, the instruments of divine warfare in their
hands-advanced over the distant treetops.
The burned skeletons of construction machines still smoked, the
orange paint blackened and bleached down to bare metal. The
pichaçeiros had already been at work with their busy little
rollers. Me me me. A shout out to the world from Rocinha. The slab
concrete of the wall resisted fire, resisted even sledgehammers,
chipped down to the reinforcing rods but still adamant. So it had
been colonized. Every dozen paces the black tag of the ADA, Amigos
dos Amigos, laid claim to the territory within. The red CV stamp of
the Comando Vermelho challenged it: graffitis struggled to overtag
each other. Lord wars: the great favela was one of the last surviving
medieval city-states. One hundred and twenty-five thousand people
lived draped over this saddle between the two great morros; the
apartment blocks rose eleven floors high, balconies flying with
laundry, looking down from their mountainside on the lesser towers of
comfortable São Conrado and Gávea. The alleys and
ladeiras were busy as rats with white plastic waterpipes, the black
power cables festooning the sagging poles dipped so low children in
their smart school T-shirts and track-suit bottoms ducked under them.
The police barely glanced at Marcelina Hoffman as she joined the
throng moving up toward the street market. White was no less rare
within the new favela wall than without. Anyone could go in—the
São Conradeiros had to buy their cheap meat and cocaine
somewhere. The walls were only there to protect passing drivers from
ricochets and stray bullets. No other reason but the gunplay, the
stray bullets. Anyone could leave, any time, during working hours.
Surf boys with great muscles strolled, boards under arms, down to the
beach at the Barra da Tijuca. Their Havaianas crunched broken glass
and empty cartridge cases. The police looked them over more in envy
then enmity. The sun was hot the sky was blue the surf was up and
there was peace, of its Rocinha kind.