Read Online In the Mouth of the Whale by Paul McAuley - Free Book Online
Authors: Paul McAuley
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tinkering with their biological destiny.
‘If you want to meet one, your best chance is to go to Brasília,’ Father Caetano said. ‘That’s where the ambassadorial missions are. They are tall and mostly pale, I hear. And must wear skeletons of metal and carbon fibre, because they grew up in places where the gravity is very weak. So they are weak too. Unable to move around by themselves. If they are gods, they must be very poor gods, I think.’
Father Caetano enjoyed his conversations with the eager young girl. He believed that her challenging mixture of naivety and sharp and original insights helped him to examine and renew his faith, and he also believed that he was doing good, that he was saving her soul from being indelibly marked by the sin of pride. We, who created him and set him in motion, believed it too. He was our agent, after all.
The Child had been so cooperative during her talks with Father Caetano that her mother decided that she should be rewarded. Once a month, Maria and a nurse from the hospital travelled upriver with Father Caetano, to visit those of his parishioners who had refused to move to São Gabriel da Cachoeira when the trouble with the wildsiders had spread from the mountains to the west. The Child could go with them on the next trip. She would help Father Caetano at the service, assist her mother at the field clinic, and be allowed to do a little botanising amongst the ruins.
Picture the Child, then, sitting in the shade of the canvas awning of a skiff making its way upriver. The nurse in front with two soldiers; Maria at the stern with Father Caetano, who was dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt instead of his soutane, his eyes masked with sunglasses, the tiller of the skiff’s outboard motor tucked under his arm.
Trees pressed along both sides of the river, standing above sandbanks and stretches of crazed mud and shoals of rocks exposed by the drought. It was seven in the morning, and already hot. The sun had levered itself above the horizon an hour ago and now it glared at eye level. Unblinking, tireless. And it had only just begun its work for the day.
The Child soon grew tired of watching the black water for any sign of the River Folk. A few small birds picking along the water margin. Once a flock of parrots rose up, disturbed by the noise of the motor, flying away through green shadows like a shower of red and gold. Caymans lying on a sandbar like logs clad in armour. Otherwise, only the river and the trees and the hot sky.
At last, the river narrowed and cliffs rose up on either side, casting everything into deep shadow, and the skiff was thrusting up a ladder of muscular currents pouring between big wet rocks. Pausing in pools of water stilled by backwash as if to gather itself, pushing on. The Child held on to her bench as the little craft juddered and bounced and slewed; the nurse, a woman barely twice the Child’s age, squeaked and flung her arms around one of the soldiers. At last the skiff breasted the last of the rapids and unzipped a creamy wake along the middle of the river. The cliffs fell back and the skiff rounded a wide bend and the ruins of Santo João do Rio Negro spread across the far shore.
The town had been built two hundred years ago, funded by a Chinese corporation that had planted huge tracts of genetically modified hardwood trees. Felled trees had been rafted downriver to the town’s sawmills, and timber had been transported east along a broad highway driven straight through the forest. All that had ended in the great upheaval of the Overturn. The R&R Corps had demolished the sawmills and warehouse sheds along the waterfront, but had left the rest of the town alone. Much of it had long since returned to nature. Avenues and squares and parks choked with scrub and weeds. Apartment blocks and houses empty shells, every window broken, roofs collapsed, concrete crumbling from rusting rebar. Most had fallen into mounds of rubble overgrown by bushes and
‘If you want to meet one, your best chance is to go to Brasília,’ Father Caetano said. ‘That’s where the ambassadorial missions are. They are tall and mostly pale, I hear. And must wear skeletons of metal and carbon fibre, because they grew up in places where the gravity is very weak. So they are weak too. Unable to move around by themselves. If they are gods, they must be very poor gods, I think.’
Father Caetano enjoyed his conversations with the eager young girl. He believed that her challenging mixture of naivety and sharp and original insights helped him to examine and renew his faith, and he also believed that he was doing good, that he was saving her soul from being indelibly marked by the sin of pride. We, who created him and set him in motion, believed it too. He was our agent, after all.
The Child had been so cooperative during her talks with Father Caetano that her mother decided that she should be rewarded. Once a month, Maria and a nurse from the hospital travelled upriver with Father Caetano, to visit those of his parishioners who had refused to move to São Gabriel da Cachoeira when the trouble with the wildsiders had spread from the mountains to the west. The Child could go with them on the next trip. She would help Father Caetano at the service, assist her mother at the field clinic, and be allowed to do a little botanising amongst the ruins.
Picture the Child, then, sitting in the shade of the canvas awning of a skiff making its way upriver. The nurse in front with two soldiers; Maria at the stern with Father Caetano, who was dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt instead of his soutane, his eyes masked with sunglasses, the tiller of the skiff’s outboard motor tucked under his arm.
Trees pressed along both sides of the river, standing above sandbanks and stretches of crazed mud and shoals of rocks exposed by the drought. It was seven in the morning, and already hot. The sun had levered itself above the horizon an hour ago and now it glared at eye level. Unblinking, tireless. And it had only just begun its work for the day.
The Child soon grew tired of watching the black water for any sign of the River Folk. A few small birds picking along the water margin. Once a flock of parrots rose up, disturbed by the noise of the motor, flying away through green shadows like a shower of red and gold. Caymans lying on a sandbar like logs clad in armour. Otherwise, only the river and the trees and the hot sky.
At last, the river narrowed and cliffs rose up on either side, casting everything into deep shadow, and the skiff was thrusting up a ladder of muscular currents pouring between big wet rocks. Pausing in pools of water stilled by backwash as if to gather itself, pushing on. The Child held on to her bench as the little craft juddered and bounced and slewed; the nurse, a woman barely twice the Child’s age, squeaked and flung her arms around one of the soldiers. At last the skiff breasted the last of the rapids and unzipped a creamy wake along the middle of the river. The cliffs fell back and the skiff rounded a wide bend and the ruins of Santo João do Rio Negro spread across the far shore.
The town had been built two hundred years ago, funded by a Chinese corporation that had planted huge tracts of genetically modified hardwood trees. Felled trees had been rafted downriver to the town’s sawmills, and timber had been transported east along a broad highway driven straight through the forest. All that had ended in the great upheaval of the Overturn. The R&R Corps had demolished the sawmills and warehouse sheds along the waterfront, but had left the rest of the town alone. Much of it had long since returned to nature. Avenues and squares and parks choked with scrub and weeds. Apartment blocks and houses empty shells, every window broken, roofs collapsed, concrete crumbling from rusting rebar. Most had fallen into mounds of rubble overgrown by bushes and
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