orders being
obeyed, thinking of the messages being carried off across the distances. Vague frustrations stirred in the brain, needs for which it had no answers. It raised its sensory mask on supporting stalks, formed eyes and focused them upon the cave-mouth.
Full daylight.
Now it could only wait.
Waiting was the most difficult part of existence.
The brain began examining this thought, forming corollaries and interweavings of possible alternatives to the waiting process, imagining projections of physical growth that might obviate waiting.
The thoughts produced a form of intellectual indigestion that alarmed the supporting hives. They buzzed furiously around the brain, shielding it, feeding it, forming phalanxes of warriors in the cavemouth.
This action brought worry to the brain.
The brain knew what had set its cohorts into motion: guarding the precious-core of the hive was an instinct rooted in species survival. Primitive hive units could not change that pattern, the brain realized. They had to change, though. They had to learn mobility of need, mobility of judgment, taking each situation as a unique thing.
I must go on teaching and learning, the brain thought.
It wished then for reports from the tiny observers it had sent eastward, The need for information from that area was enormousâsomething to fill out the bits and scraps garnered from the listening posts. Vital proof might come from there to sway humankind from its headlong plunge into the death-for-all.
Slowly, the hive reduced its activity as the brain withdrew from the painful edges of thought.
Meanwhile, we wait, the brain told itself.
And it set itself the problem of a slight gene alteration
in a wingless wasp to improve on the oxygen generation system.
Â
Senhor Gabriel Martinho, prefect of the Mato Grosso Barrier Compact, paced his study, muttering to himself as he passed a tall, narrow window that admitted evening sunlight. Occasionally he paused to glare down at his son, Joao, who sat on a tapir-leather sofa beneath one of the bookcases that lined the room.
The elder Martinho was a dark wisp of a man, limb thin, with gray hair and cavernous brown eyes above an eagle nose, slit mouth and boot-toe chin. He wore old style black clothing as befitted his position. His linen gleamed white against the black. Golden cuffstuds glittered as he waved his arms.
âI am an object of ridicule,â he snarled.
Joao absorbed the statement in silence. After a full week of listening to his fatherâs outbursts, Joao had learned the value of silence. He looked down at his bandeirante dress whites, the trousers tucked into calf-high jungle bootsâeverything crisp and glistening and clean while his men sweated out the preliminary survey on the Serra dos Parcecis.
It began to grow dark in the room, quick tropic darkness hurried by thunderheads piled along the horizon. The waning daylight carried a hazed blue cast. Heat lightning spattered the patch of sky visible through the tall window, and sent dazzling electric radiance into the study. Drumming thunder followed. As though that were the signal, the house sensors turned on lights wherever there were humans. Yellow illumination filled the study.
The Prefect stopped in front of his son. âWhy does my own son, the renowned Jefe of the Irmandades, spout such Carsonite stupidities?â
Joao looked at the floor between his boots. The fight in the Bahia Plaza, the flight from the mobâall that just a week awayâseemed an eternity distant, part of someone elseâs past. This day had seen a succession of important political people through his fatherâs studyâpolite greetings for the renowned Joao Martinho and low-voiced conferences with his father.
The old man was fighting for his sonâJoao knew this. But the elder Martinho could only fight in the way he knew best: through the ritual kin system, with pistolao âpullââmaneuvering behind the scenes,
obeyed, thinking of the messages being carried off across the distances. Vague frustrations stirred in the brain, needs for which it had no answers. It raised its sensory mask on supporting stalks, formed eyes and focused them upon the cave-mouth.
Full daylight.
Now it could only wait.
Waiting was the most difficult part of existence.
The brain began examining this thought, forming corollaries and interweavings of possible alternatives to the waiting process, imagining projections of physical growth that might obviate waiting.
The thoughts produced a form of intellectual indigestion that alarmed the supporting hives. They buzzed furiously around the brain, shielding it, feeding it, forming phalanxes of warriors in the cavemouth.
This action brought worry to the brain.
The brain knew what had set its cohorts into motion: guarding the precious-core of the hive was an instinct rooted in species survival. Primitive hive units could not change that pattern, the brain realized. They had to change, though. They had to learn mobility of need, mobility of judgment, taking each situation as a unique thing.
I must go on teaching and learning, the brain thought.
It wished then for reports from the tiny observers it had sent eastward, The need for information from that area was enormousâsomething to fill out the bits and scraps garnered from the listening posts. Vital proof might come from there to sway humankind from its headlong plunge into the death-for-all.
Slowly, the hive reduced its activity as the brain withdrew from the painful edges of thought.
Meanwhile, we wait, the brain told itself.
And it set itself the problem of a slight gene alteration
in a wingless wasp to improve on the oxygen generation system.
Â
Senhor Gabriel Martinho, prefect of the Mato Grosso Barrier Compact, paced his study, muttering to himself as he passed a tall, narrow window that admitted evening sunlight. Occasionally he paused to glare down at his son, Joao, who sat on a tapir-leather sofa beneath one of the bookcases that lined the room.
The elder Martinho was a dark wisp of a man, limb thin, with gray hair and cavernous brown eyes above an eagle nose, slit mouth and boot-toe chin. He wore old style black clothing as befitted his position. His linen gleamed white against the black. Golden cuffstuds glittered as he waved his arms.
âI am an object of ridicule,â he snarled.
Joao absorbed the statement in silence. After a full week of listening to his fatherâs outbursts, Joao had learned the value of silence. He looked down at his bandeirante dress whites, the trousers tucked into calf-high jungle bootsâeverything crisp and glistening and clean while his men sweated out the preliminary survey on the Serra dos Parcecis.
It began to grow dark in the room, quick tropic darkness hurried by thunderheads piled along the horizon. The waning daylight carried a hazed blue cast. Heat lightning spattered the patch of sky visible through the tall window, and sent dazzling electric radiance into the study. Drumming thunder followed. As though that were the signal, the house sensors turned on lights wherever there were humans. Yellow illumination filled the study.
The Prefect stopped in front of his son. âWhy does my own son, the renowned Jefe of the Irmandades, spout such Carsonite stupidities?â
Joao looked at the floor between his boots. The fight in the Bahia Plaza, the flight from the mobâall that just a week awayâseemed an eternity distant, part of someone elseâs past. This day had seen a succession of important political people through his fatherâs studyâpolite greetings for the renowned Joao Martinho and low-voiced conferences with his father.
The old man was fighting for his sonâJoao knew this. But the elder Martinho could only fight in the way he knew best: through the ritual kin system, with pistolao âpullââmaneuvering behind the scenes,
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