Read Online The Green Brain by Frank Herbert - Free Book Online Page A

exchanging power-promises, assembling political strength where it counted. Not once would he consider Joao’s suspicions and doubts. The Irmandades, Alvarez and his Her-mosillos—anyone who’d had anything to do with the Piratininga—were in bad odor right now. Fences must be mended.
    â€œStop the realignment?” the old man muttered. “Delay the Marcha para Oeste? Are you mad? How do you think I hold my office? Me! A descendant of fidalgoes whose ancestors ruled one of the original capitanias! We are not bugres whose ancestors were hidden by Rui Barbosa, yet the caboclos call me ‘Father of the Poor.’ I did not gain that name through stupidity.”
    â€œFather, if you’d only …”
    â€œBe silent! I have our panelinha , our little pot, boiling merrily. All will be well.”
    Joao sighed. He felt both resentment and shame at his position here. The Prefect had been semi-retired until this emergency—a very weak heart. Now, to disturb the old man this way … but he persisted in being so blind!
    â€œInvestigate, you say,” the old man mocked him. “Investigate what? Right now we don’t want investigation and suspicions. The government, thanks to a week of
work by my friends, takes the attitude that everything’s normal. They’re almost ready to blame the Carsonites for the Bahia tragedy.”
    â€œBut they have no evidence,” Joao said. “You admitted that yourself.”
    â€œEvidence is of no importance in such a time,” his father said. “All that counts is that we move suspicion far away from ourselves. We must gain time. Besides, this is the very sort of thing the Carsonites might’ve done.”
    â€œBut might not’ve done,” Joao said.
    It was as though the old man had not heard. “Just last week,” he said, gesturing with arm swinging wide, “the day before you arrived here like an insane whirlwind—that very day, I spoke to the Lacuia farmers at the request of my friend the Minister of Agriculture. And do you know that rabble laughed at me! I said we’d increase the Green by ten thousand hectares this month. They laughed. They said: ‘Your own son doesn’t even believe this!’ I see now why they say such things. Stop the march to the west, indeed.”
    â€œYou’ve seen the reports from Bahia,” Joao said. “The IEO’s own investigators …”
    â€œThe IEO! That sly Chinese whose face tells you nothing. He is more bahiano than the bahianos themselves, that sly one. And this new female Doutor he sends everywhere to snoop and pry. His mae de santo , his sidaga —the stories you hear about that one, I can tell you. Only yesterday, it was said …”
    â€œI don’t want to hear!”
    The old man fell silent, stared down at him. “Ahhhh?”
    â€œAhhhh!” Joao said. “What does that mean?”
    â€œThat means Ahhhh! ” the old man said.
    â€œShe’s a very beautiful woman,” Joao said.

    â€œSo I have heard it reported. And many men have sampled that beauty … so it is said.”
    â€œI don’t believe it!”
    â€œJoao,” the Prefect said, “listen to an old man whose experience has given him wisdom. That is a dangerous woman. She is owned body and soul by the IEO, which is an organization that often interferes with our business. You, you are an empreiteiro, a contractor of renown, whose abilities and successes are sure to have aroused envy in some quarters. That woman is supposed to be a Doutor of the insects, but her actions say she has a cabide de empregos. She has a hatstand of jobs. And some of those jobs, ahh, some of those jobs …”
    â€œThat’s enough, Father!”
    â€œAs you wish.”
    â€œShe is supposed to come here soon,” Joao said. “I don’t want your present attitude to …”
    â€œThere may be a delay in her visit,”