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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/31762-8.txt b/31762-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5837275 --- /dev/null +++ b/31762-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1058 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Record of Currupira, by Robert Abernathy + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Record of Currupira + +Author: Robert Abernathy + +Release Date: March 24, 2010 [EBook #31762] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RECORD OF CURRUPIRA *** + + + + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Barbara Tozier and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe, January 1954. + Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. + copyright on this publication was renewed. + + + + + _This story contains what is, to us, at any rate, a novel + idea--that when we of Earth finally reach Mars we may find + there records of prehistoric Earth far surpassing those of our + paleontologists. Or, in other words, that creatures of Mars + may have visited this planet tens of thousands of years ago + and returned home with specimens for their science. A nice + idea well told._ + + + + +THE RECORD OF CURRUPIRA + +_by ... Robert Abernathy_ + + + From ancient Martian records came the grim song of a creature + whose very existence was long forgotten. + + +James Dalton strode briskly through the main exhibit room of New +York's Martian Museum, hardly glancing to right or left though many +displays had been added since his last visit. The rockets were coming +home regularly now and their most valuable cargoes--at least from a +scientist's point of view--were the relics of an alien civilization +brought to light by the archeologists excavating the great dead +cities. + +One new exhibit did catch Dalton's eye. He paused to read the label +with interest-- + + MAN FROM MARS: + + _The body here preserved was found December 12, 2001, by an + exploring party from the spaceship NEVADA, in the Martian + city which we designate E-3. It rested in a case much like + this, in a building that had evidently been the municipal + museum. Around it, in other cases likewise undisturbed since a + period estimated at fifty thousand years ago, were a number of + Earthly artifacts. These finds prove beyond doubt that a + Martian scientific expedition visited Earth before the dawn of + our history._ + +On the label someone had painstakingly copied the Martian glyphs found +on the mummy's original case. Dalton's eyes traced the looping +ornamental script--he was one of the very few men who had put in the +years of work necessary to read inscriptional Martian--and he smiled +appreciation of a jest that had taken fifty thousand years to +ripen--the writing said simply, _Man From Earth_. + +The mummy lying on a sculptured catafalque beyond the glass was +amazingly well preserved--far more lifelike and immensely older than +anything Egypt had yielded. Long-dead Martian embalmers had done a +good job even on what to them was the corpse of an other-world +monster. + +He had been a small wiry man. His skin was dark though its color might +have been affected by mummification. His features suggested those of +the Forest Indian. Beside him lay his flaked-stone ax, his +bone-pointed spear and spear thrower, likewise preserved by a +marvelous chemistry. + +Looking down at that ancient nameless ancestor, Dalton was moved to +solemn thoughts. This creature had been first of all human-kind to +make the tremendous crossing to Mars--had seen its lost race in living +glory, had died there and became a museum exhibit for the multiple +eyes of wise grey spiderish aliens. + +"Interested in Oswald, sir?" + +Dalton glanced up and saw an attendant. "I was just thinking--if he +could only talk! He does have a name, then?" + +The guard grinned. "Well, we call him Oswald. Sort of inconvenient, +not having a name. When I worked at the Metropolitan we used to call +all the Pharaohs and Assyrian kings by their first names." + +Dalton mentally classified another example of the deep human need for +verbal handles to lift unwieldy chunks of environment. The +professional thought recalled him to business and he glanced at his +watch. + +"I'm supposed to meet Dr. Oliver Thwaite here this morning. Has he +come in yet?" + +"The archeologist? He's here early and late when he's on Earth. He'll +be up in the cataloguing department now. Want me to show you--" + +"I know the way," said Dalton. "Thanks all the same." He left the +elevator at the fourth floor and impatiently pushed open the main +cataloguing room's glazed door. + +Inside cabinets and broad tables bore a wilderness of strange +artifacts, many still crusted with red Martian sand. Alone in the room +a trim-mustached man in a rough open-throated shirt looked up from an +object he had been cleaning with a soft brush. + +"Dr. Thwaite? I'm Jim Dalton." + +"Glad to meet you, Professor." Thwaite carefully laid down his work, +then rose to grip the visitor's hand. "You didn't lose any time." + +"After you called last night I managed to get a seat on the +dawn-rocket out of Chicago. I hope I'm not interrupting?" + +"Not at all. I've got some assistants coming in around nine. I was +just going over some stuff I don't like to trust to their +thumb-fingered mercies." + +Dalton looked down at the thing the archeologist had been brushing. It +was a reed syrinx, the Pan's pipes of antiquity. "That's not a very +Martian-looking specimen," he commented. + +"The Martians, not having any lips, could hardly have had much use for +it," said Thwaite. "This is of Earthly manufacture--one of the +Martians' specimens from Earth, kept intact over all this time by a +preservative I wish we knew how to make. It's a nice find, man's +earliest known musical instrument--hardly as interesting as the record +though." + +Dalton's eyes brightened. "Have you listened to the record yet?" + +"No. We got the machine working last night and ran off some of the +Martian stuff. Clear as a bell. But I saved the main attraction for +when you got here." Thwaite turned to a side door, fishing a key from +his pocket. "The playback machine's in here." + +The apparatus, squatting on a sturdy table in the small room beyond, +had the slightly haywire look of an experimental model. But it was +little short of a miracle to those who knew how it had been built--on +the basis of radioed descriptions of the ruined device the excavators +had dug up on Mars. + +Even more intriguing, however, was the row of neatly labeled boxes on +a shelf. There in cushioned nests reposed little cylinders of +age-tarnished metal, on which a close observer could still trace the +faint engraved lines and whorls of Martian script. These were the +best-preserved specimens yet found of Martian record films. + +Sound and pictures were on them, impressed there by a triumphant +science so long ago that the code of Hammurabi or the hieroglyphs of +Khufu seemed by comparison like yesterday's newspaper. Men of Earth +were ready now to evoke these ancient voices--but to reproduce the +stereoscopic images was still beyond human technology. + +Dalton scrutinized one label intently. "Odd," he said. "I realize how +much the Martian archives may have to offer us when we master their +spoken language--but I still want most to hear _this_ record, the one +the Martians made right here on Earth." + +Thwaite nodded comprehendingly. "The human race is a good deal like an +amnesia patient that wakes up at the age of forty and finds himself +with a fairly prosperous business, a wife and children and a mortgage, +but no recollection of his youth or infancy--and nobody around to tell +him how he got where he is. + +"We invented writing so doggone late in the game. Now we get to Mars +and find the people there knew us before we knew ourselves--but they +died or maybe picked up and went, leaving just this behind." He used +both hands to lift the precious gray cylinder from its box. "And of +course you linguists in particular get a big charge out of this +discovery." + +"_If_ it's a record of human speech it'll be the oldest ever found. It +may do for comparative-historical linguistics what the Rosetta Stone +did for Egyptology." Dalton grinned boyishly. "Some of us even nurse +the hope it may do something for our old headache--the problem of the +origin of language. That was one of the most important, maybe _the_ +most important step in human progress--and we don't know how or when +or why!" + +"I've heard of the bowwow theory and the dingdong theory," said +Thwaite, his hands busy with the machine. + +"Pure speculations. The plain fact is we haven't even been able to +make an informed guess because the evidence, the written records, only +run back about six thousand years. That racial amnesia you spoke of. + +"Personally, I have a weakness for the magical theory--that man +invented language in the search for magic formulae, words of power. +Unlike the other theories, that one assumes as the motive force not +merely passive imitativeness but an outgoing will. + +"Even the speechless subman must have observed that he could affect +the behavior of animals of his own and other species by making +appropriate noises--a mating call or a terrifying shout, for instance. +Hence the perennial conviction you can get what you want if you just +hold your mouth right, _and_ you know the proper prayers or curses." + +"A logical conclusion from the animistic viewpoint," said Thwaite. He +frowned over the delicate task of starting the film, inquired +offhandedly, "You got the photostat of the label inscription? What did +you make of it?" + +"Not much more than Henderson did on Mars. There's the date of the +recording and the place--the longitude doesn't mean anything to us +because we still don't know where the Martians fixed their zero +meridian. But it was near the equator and, the text indicates, in a +tropical forest--probably in Africa or South America. + +"Then there's the sentence Henderson couldn't make out. It's obscure and +rather badly defaced, but it's evidently a comment--unfavorable--on +the subject-matter of the recording. In it appears twice a sort of +interjection-adverb that in other contexts implies revulsion--something +like _ugh_!" + +"Funny. Looks like the Martians saw something on Earth they didn't +like. Too bad we can't reproduce the visual record yet." + +Dalton said soberly, "The Martian's vocabulary indicates that for all +their physical difference from us they had emotions very much like +human beings'. Whatever they saw must have been something we wouldn't +have liked either." + +The reproducer hummed softly. Thwaite closed the motor switch and the +ancient film slid smoothly from its casing. Out of the speaker burst a +strange medley of whirrings, clicks, chirps, trills and modulated +drones and buzzings--a sound like the voice of grasshoppers in a +drought-stricken field of summer. + +Dalton listened raptly, as if by sheer concentration he might even now +be able to guess at connections between the sounds of spoken +Martian--heard now for the first time--and the written symbols that he +had been working over for years. But he couldn't, of course--that +would require a painstaking correlation analysis. + +"Evidently it's an introduction or commentary," said the archeologist. +"Our photocell examination showed the wave-patterns of the initial and +final portions of the film were typically Martian--but the middle part +isn't. The middle part is whatever they recorded here on Earth." + +"If only that last part is a translation...." said Dalton hopefully. +Then the alien susurration ceased coming from the reproducer and he +closed his mouth abruptly and leaned forward. + +For the space of a caught breath there was silence. Then another voice +came in, the voice of Earth hundreds of centuries dead. + +It was not human. No more than the first had been--but the Martian +sounds had been merely alien and these were horrible. + +It was like nothing so much as the croaking of some gigantic frog, +risen bellowing from a bottomless primeval swamp. It bayed of stinking +sunless pools and gurgled of black ooze. And its booming notes +descended to subsonic throbbings that gripped and wrung the nerves to +anguish. + +Dalton was involuntarily on his feet, clawing for the switch. But he +stopped, reeling. His head spun and he could not see. Through his +dizzy brain the great voice roared and the mighty tones below hearing +hammered at the inmost fortress of the man's will. + +On the heels of that deafening assault the voice began to change. The +numbing thunder rumbled back, repeating the pain and the threat--but +underneath something crooned and wheedled obscenely. It said, +"_Come ... come ... come...._" And the stunned prey came on stumbling +feet, shivering with a terror that could not break the spell. + +Where the squat black machine had been was something that was also +squat and black and huge. It crouched motionless and blind in the mud +and from its pulsing expanded throat vibrated the demonic croaking. As +the victim swayed helplessly nearer the mouth opened wide upon long +rows of frightful teeth.... + +The monstrous song stopped suddenly. Then still another voice cried +briefly, thinly in agony and despair. That voice was human. + +Each of the two men looked into a white strange face. They were +standing on opposite sides of the table and between them the playback +machine had fallen silent. Then it began to whir again in the locust +speech of the Martian commentator, explaining rapidly, unintelligibly. + +Thwaite found the switch with wooden fingers. As if with one accord +they retreated from the black machine. Neither of them even tried to +make a false show of self-possession. Each knew, from his first +glimpse of the other's dilated staring eyes, that both had experienced +and seen the same. + +Dalton sank shivering into a chair, the darkness still swirling +threateningly in his brain. Presently he said, "The expression of a +will--that much was true. But the will--was not of man." + + * * * * * + +James Dalton took a vacation. After a few days he went to a +psychiatrist, who observed the usual symptoms of overwork and worry +and recommended a change of scene--a rest in the country. + +On the first night at a friend's secluded farm Dalton awoke drenched +in cold sweat. Through the open window from not far away came a +hellish serenade, the noise of frogs--the high nervous voices of +peepers punctuating the deep leisured booming of bullfrogs. + +The linguist flung on his clothes and drove back at reckless speed to +where there were lights and the noises of men and their machines. He +spent the rest of his vacation burrowing under the clamor of the city +whose steel and pavements proclaimed man's victory over the very grass +that grew. + +After awhile he felt better and needed work again. He took up his +planned study of the Martian recordings, correlating the spoken words +with the written ones he had already arduously learned to read. + +The Martian Museum readily lent him the recordings he requested for +use in his work, including the one made on Earth. He studied the +Martian-language portion of this and succeeded in making a partial +translation--but carefully refrained from playing the middle section +of the film back again. + +Came a day, though, when it occurred to him that he had heard not a +word from Thwaite. He made inquiries through the Museum and learned +that the archeologist had applied for a leave of absence and left +before it was granted. Gone where? The Museum people didn't know--but +Thwaite had not been trying to cover his trail. A call to Global Air +Transport brought the desired information. + +A premonition ran up Dalton's spine--but he was surprised at how +calmly he thought and acted. He picked up the phone and called +Transport again--this time their booking department. + +"When's the earliest time I can get passage to Belem?" he asked. + +With no more than an hour to pack and catch the rocket he hurried to +the Museum. The place was more or less populated with sightseers, +which was annoying, because Dalton's plans now included larceny. + +He waited before the building till the coast was clear, then, with +handkerchief-wrapped knuckles, broke the glass and tripped the lever +on the fire alarm. In minutes a wail of sirens and roar of arriving +motors was satisfyingly loud in the main exhibit room. Police and fire +department helicopters buzzed overhead. A wave of mingled fright and +curiosity swept visitors and attendants alike to the doors. + +Dalton, lingering, found himself watched only by the millennially +sightless eyes of the man who lay in state in an airless glass tomb. +The stern face was inscrutable behind the silence of many thousand +years. + +"Excuse me, Oswald," murmured Dalton. "I'd like to borrow something of +yours but I'm sure you won't mind." + +The reed flute was in a long case devoted to Earthly specimens. +Unhesitatingly Dalton smashed the glass. + + * * * * * + +Brazil is a vast country, and it cost much trouble and time and +expense before Dalton caught up with Thwaite in a forlorn riverbank +town along the line where civilization hesitates on the shore of that +vast sea of vegetation called the _mato_. Night had just fallen when +Dalton arrived. He found Thwaite alone in a lighted room of the single +drab hotel--alone and very busy. + +The archeologist was shaggily unshaven. He looked up and said +something that might have been a greeting devoid of surprise. Dalton +grimaced apologetically, set down his suitcase and pried the wax plugs +out of his ears, explaining with a gesture that included the world +outside, where the tree frogs sang deafeningly in the hot stirring +darkness of the near forest. + +"How do you stand it?" he asked. + +Thwaite's lips drew back from his teeth. "I'm fighting it," he said +shortly, picking up his work again. On the bed where he sat were +scattered steel cartridge clips. He was going through them with a +small file, carefully cutting a deep cross in the soft nose of every +bullet. Nearby a heavy-caliber rifle leaned against a wardrobe. Other +things were in evidence--boots, canteens, knapsacks, the tough +clothing a man needs in the _mato_. + +"You're looking for _it_." + +Thwaite's eyes burned feverishly. "Yes. Do you think I'm crazy?" + + * * * * * + +Dalton pulled a rickety chair toward him and sat down straddling it. +"I don't know," he said slowly. "_It_ was very likely a creature of +the last interglacial period. The ice may have finished its kind." + +"The ice never touched these equatorial forests." Thwaite smiled +unpleasantly. "And the Indians and old settlers down here have +stories--about a thing that calls in the _mato_, that can paralyze a +man with fear. _Currupira_ is their name for it. + +"When I remembered those stories they fell into place alongside a lot +of others from different countries and times--the Sirens, for +instance, and the Lorelei. Those legends are ancient. But perhaps here +in the Amazon basin, in the forests that have never been cut and the +swamps that have never been drained, the _currupira_ is still real and +alive. I _hope_ so!" + +"Why?" + +"I want to meet it. I want to show it that men can destroy it with all +its unholy power." Thwaite bore down viciously on the file and the +bright flakes of lead glittered to the floor beside his feet. + +Dalton watched him with eyes of compassion. He heard the frog music +swelling outside, a harrowing reminder of ultimate blasphemous insult, +and he felt the futility of argument. + +"Remember, I heard it too," Dalton said. "And I sensed what you did. +That voice or some combination of frequencies or overtones within it, +is resonant to the essence of evil--the fundamental life-hating +self-destroying evil in man--even to have glimpsed it, to have heard +the brainless beast mocking, was an outrage to humanity that a man +must...." + +Dalton paused, got a grip on himself. "But, consider--the outrage was +wiped out, humanity won its victory over the monster a long time ago. +What if it isn't quite extinct? That record was fifty thousand years +old." + +"What did you do with the record?" Thwaite looked up sharply. + +"I obliterated that--the voice and the pictures that went with it from +the film before I returned it to the Museum." + +Thwaite sighed deeply. "Good. I was damning myself for not doing that +before I left." + +The linguist said, "I think it answered my question as much as I want +it answered. The origin of speech--lies in the will to power, the lust +to dominate other men by preying on the weakness or evil in them. + +"Those first men didn't just guess that such power existed--they +_knew_ because the beast had taught them and they tried to imitate +it--the mystagogues and tyrants through the ages, with voices, with +tomtoms and bull-roarers and trumpets. What makes the memory of that +voice so hard to live with is just knowing that what it called to is a +part of man--isn't that it?" + +Thwaite didn't answer. He had taken the heavy rifle across his knees +and was methodically testing the movement of the well-oiled breech +mechanism. + +Dalton stood up wearily and picked up his suitcase. "I'll check into +the hotel. Suppose we talk this over some more in the morning. Maybe +things'll look different by daylight." + +But in the morning Thwaite was gone--upriver with a hired boatman, +said the natives. The note he had left said only, _Sorry. But it's no +use talking about humanity--this is personal._ + +Dalton crushed the note angrily, muttering under his breath, "The +fool! Didn't he realize I'd go with him?" He hurled the crumpled paper +aside and stalked out to look for a guide. + + * * * * * + +They chugged slowly westward up the forest-walled river, an obscure +tributary that flowed somewhere into the Xingú. After four days, they +had hopes of being close on the others' track. The brown-faced guide, +Joao, who held the tiller now, was a magician. He had conjured up an +ancient outboard motor for the scow-like boat Dalton had bought from a +fisherman. + +The sun was setting murkily and the sluggish swell of the water ahead +was the color of witch's blood. Under its opaque surface _a mae +dágua_, the Mother of Water, ruled over creatures slimy and +razor-toothed. In the blackness beneath the great trees, where it was +dark even at noon, other beings had their kingdom. + +Out of the forest came the crying grunting hooting voices of its life +that woke at nightfall, fiercer and more feverish than that of the +daytime. To the man from the north there seemed something indecent in +the fertile febrile swarming of life here. Compared to a temperate +woodland the _mato_ was like a metropolis against a sleepy village. + +"What's that?" Dalton demanded sharply as a particularly hideous +squawk floated across the water. + +"_Nao é nada. A bicharia agitase._" Joao shrugged. "The menagerie +agitates itself." His manner indicated that some _bichinho_ beneath +notice had made the noise. + +But moments later the little brown man became rigid. He half rose to +his feet in the boat's stern, then stooped and shut off the popping +motor. In the relative silence the other heard what he had--far off +and indistinct, muttering deep in the black _mato_, a voice that +croaked of ravenous hunger in accents abominably known to him. + +"_Currupira_," said Joao tensely. "_Currupira sai á caçada da noite._" +He watched the foreigner with eyes that gleamed in the fading light +like polished onyx. + +"_Avante!_" snapped Dalton. "See if it comes closer to the river this +time." + +It was not the first time they had heard that voice calling since they +had ventured deep into the unpeopled swampland about which the +downriver settlements had fearful stories to whisper. + +Silently the guide spun the engine. The boat sputtered on. Dalton +strained his eyes, watching the darkening shore as he had watched +fruitlessly for so many miles. + +But now, as they rounded a gentle bend, he glimpsed a small reddish +spark near the bank. Then, by the last glimmer of the swiftly fading +twilight, he made out a boat pulled up under gnarled tree-roots. That +was all he could see but the movement of the red spark told him a man +was sitting in the boat, smoking a cigarette. + +"In there," he ordered in a low voice but Joao had seen already and +was steering toward the shore. + +The cigarette arched into the water and hissed out and they heard a +scuffling and lap of water as the other boat swayed, which meant that +the man in it had stood up. + +He sprang into visibility as a flashlight in Dalton's hand went on. A +squat, swarthy man with rugged features, a _caboclo_, of white and +Indian blood. He blinked expressionlessly at the light. + +"Where is the American scientist?" demanded Dalton in Portuguese. + +"_Quem sabe? Foi-se._" + +"Which way did he go?" + +"_Nao importa. O doutor é doido; nao ha-de-voltar_," said the man +suddenly. "It doesn't matter. The doctor is crazy--he won't come +back." + +"Answer me, damn it! Which way?" + +The _caboclo_ jerked his shoulders nervously and pointed. + +"Come on!" said Dalton and scrambled ashore even as Joao was stopping +the motor and making the boat fast beside the other. "He's gone in +after it!" + +The forest was a black labyrinth. Its tangled darkness seemed to drink +up the beam of the powerful flashlight Dalton had brought, its uneasy +rustlings and animal-noises pressed in to swallow the sound of human +movements for which he strained his ears, fearing to call out. He +pushed forward recklessly, carried on by a sort of inertia of +determination; behind him Joao followed, though he moved woodenly and +muttered prayers under his breath. + +Then somewhere very near a great voice croaked briefly and was +silent--so close that it poured a wave of faintness over the hearer, +seemed to send numbing electricity tingling along his motor nerves. + +Joao dropped to his knees and flung both arms about a tree-bole. His +brown face when the light fell on it was shiny with sweat, his eyes +dilated and blind-looking. Dalton slammed the heel of his hand against +the man's shoulder and got no response save for a tightening of the +grip on the treetrunk, and a pitiful whimper, "_Assombra-me_--it +overshadows me!" + +Dalton swung the flashlight beam ahead and saw nothing. Then all at +once, not fifty yards away, a single glowing eye sprang out of the +darkness, arched through the air and hit the ground to blaze into +searing brilliance and white smoke. The clearing in which it burned +grew bright as day, and Dalton saw a silhouetted figure clutching a +rifle and turning its head from side to side. + +He plunged headlong toward the light of the flare, shouting, "Thwaite, +you idiot! You can't--" + +And then the _currupira_ spoke. + +Its bellowing seemed to come from all around, from the ground, the +trees, the air. It smote like a blow in the stomach that drives out +wind and fight. And it roared on, lashing at the wills of those who +heard it, beating and stamping them out like sparks of a scattered +fire. + +Dalton groped with one hand for his pocket but his hand kept slipping +away into a matterless void as his vision threatened to slip into +blindness. Dimly he saw Thwaite, a stone's throw ahead of him, start +to lift his weapon and then stand frozen, swaying a little on his feet +as if buffeted by waves of sound. + +Already the second theme was coming in--the insidious obbligato of +invitation to death, wheedling that _this way ... this way ..._ was +the path from the torment and terror that the monstrous voice flooded +over them. + +Thwaite took a stiff step, then another and another, toward the black +wall of the _mato_ that rose beyond the clearing. With an +indescribable shudder Dalton realized that he too had moved an +involuntary step forward. The _currupira's_ voice rose triumphantly. + +With a mighty effort of will Dalton closed fingers he could not feel +on the object in his pocket. Like a man lifting a mountain he lifted +it to his lips. + +A high sweet note cut like a knife through the roll of nightmare +drums. With terrible concentration Dalton shifted his fingers and blew +and blew.... + +Piercing and lingering, the tones of the pipes flowed into his veins, +tingling, warring with the numbing poison of the _currupira's_ song. + +Dalton was no musician but it seemed to him then that an ancestral +instinct was with him, guiding his breath and his fingers. The powers +of the monster were darkness and cold and weariness of living, the +death-urge recoiling from life into nothingness. + +But the powers of the pipes were life and light and warmth, life +returning when the winter is gone, greenness and laughter and love. +Life was in them, life of men dead these thousand generations, life +even of the craftsmen on an alien planet who had preserved their form +and their meaning for this moment. + +Dalton advanced of his own will until he stood beside Thwaite--but the +other remained unstirring and Dalton did not dare pause for a moment, +while the monster yet bellowed in the blackness before them. The light +of the flare was reddening, dying.... + +After a seeming eternity he saw motion, saw the rifle muzzle swing up. +The shot was deafening in his ear, but it was an immeasurable relief. +As it echoed the _currupira's_ voice was abruptly silent. In the +bushes ahead there was a rending of branches, a frantic slithering +movement of a huge body. + +They followed the noises in a sort of frenzy, plunging toward them +heedless of thorns and whipping branches. The flashlight stabbed and +revealed nothing. Out of the shadows a bass croaking came again, and +Thwaite fired twice at the sound and there was silence save for a +renewed flurry of cracking twigs. + +Along the water's edge, obscured by the trees between, moved something +black and huge, that shone wetly. Thwaite dropped to one knee and +began firing at it, emptying the magazine. + +They pressed forward to the margin of the slough, feet squishing in +the deep muck. Dalton played his flashlight on the water's surface and +the still-moving ripples seemed to reflect redly. + +Thwaite was first to break the silence. He said grimly, "Damned lucky +for me you got here when you did. It--_had_ me." + +Dalton nodded without speaking. + +"But how did you know what to do?" Thwaite asked. + +"It wasn't my discovery," said the linguist soberly. "Our remote +ancestors met this threat and invented a weapon against it. Otherwise +man might not have survived. I learned the details from the Martian +records when I succeeded in translating them. Fortunately the Martians +also preserved a specimen of the weapon our ancestors invented." + +He held up the little reed flute and the archeologist's eyes widened +with recognition. + +Dalton looked out across the dark swamp-water, where the ripples were +fading out. "In the beginning there was the voice of evil--but there +was also the music of good, created to combat it. Thank God that in +mankind's makeup there's more than one fundamental note!" + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Record of Currupira, by Robert Abernathy + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RECORD OF CURRUPIRA *** + +***** This file should be named 31762-8.txt or 31762-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/7/6/31762/ + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Barbara Tozier and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Record of Currupira + +Author: Robert Abernathy + +Release Date: March 24, 2010 [EBook #31762] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RECORD OF CURRUPIRA *** + + + + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Barbara Tozier and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + +<div class="transcriber_note"> + <p>This etext was produced from <cite>Fantastic Universe</cite>, January 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.</p> +</div> +<div id="the_beginning"> </div> +<div><img src="images/cover.jpg" width="300" height="426" alt="Cover of magazine" /></div> +<div id="editorial_note"> + <p>This story contains what is, to us, at any rate, a novel idea—that when we + of Earth finally reach Mars we may find there records of prehistoric Earth + far surpassing those of our paleontologists. Or, in other words, that creatures + of Mars may have visited this planet tens of thousands of years ago and + returned home with specimens for their science. A nice idea well told.</p> +</div> +<div id="title_page"><a class="pagenum" id="page110" title="110"> </a> + <h1>THE + RECORD + OF + CURRUPIRA</h1> + <p id="author">by … Robert Abernathy</p> + <p id="prolog">From ancient Martian records came + the grim song of a creature whose + very existence was long forgotten.</p> +</div> +<div id="story"> + <p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">James Dalton</span> strode briskly + through the main exhibit room of + New York’s Martian Museum, + hardly glancing to right or left + though many displays had been + added since his last visit. The + rockets were coming home regularly + now and their most valuable + cargoes—at least from a scientist’s + point of view—were the relics of + an alien civilization brought to + light by the archeologists excavating + the great dead cities.</p> + + <p>One new exhibit did catch Dalton’s + eye. He paused to read the + label with interest—</p> + + <blockquote> + <p class="headline">MAN FROM MARS:</p> + + <p>The body here preserved was + found December 12, 2001, by an + exploring party from the spaceship + <em>NEVADA</em>, in the Martian city + which we designate E-3. It rested + in a case much like this, in a + building that had evidently been + the municipal museum. Around + it, in other cases likewise undisturbed + since a period estimated at + fifty thousand years ago, were a + number of Earthly artifacts. These + finds prove beyond doubt that a + Martian scientific expedition + visited Earth before the dawn of + our history.</p> + </blockquote> + + <p><a class="pagenum" id="page111" title="111"> </a> + On the label someone had + painstakingly copied the Martian + glyphs found on the mummy’s + original case. Dalton’s eyes traced + the looping ornamental script—he + was one of the very few men + who had put in the years of work + necessary to read inscriptional + Martian—and he smiled appreciation + of a jest that had taken fifty + thousand years to ripen—the + writing said simply, <em>Man From + Earth</em>.</p> + + <p>The mummy lying on a sculptured + catafalque beyond the glass + was amazingly well preserved—far + more lifelike and immensely + older than anything Egypt had + yielded. Long-dead Martian embalmers + had done a good job + even on what to them was the + corpse of an other-world monster.</p> + + <p>He had been a small wiry man. + His skin was dark though its + color might have been affected + by mummification. His features + suggested those of the Forest + Indian. Beside him lay his flaked-stone + ax, his bone-pointed spear + and spear thrower, likewise preserved + by a marvelous chemistry.</p> + + <p>Looking down at that ancient + nameless ancestor, Dalton was + moved to solemn thoughts. This + creature had been first of all human-kind + to make the tremendous + crossing to Mars—had seen its + lost race in living glory, had died + there and became a museum exhibit + for the multiple eyes of wise + grey spiderish aliens.</p> + + <p>“Interested in Oswald, sir?â€</p> + + <p>Dalton glanced up and saw an + attendant. “I was just thinking—if + he could only talk! He does + have a name, then?â€</p> + + <p>The guard grinned. “Well, we + call him Oswald. Sort of inconvenient, + not having a name. When + I worked at the Metropolitan we + used to call all the Pharaohs and + Assyrian kings by their first + names.â€</p> + + <p>Dalton mentally classified + another example of the deep human + need for verbal handles to + lift unwieldy chunks of environment. + The professional thought + recalled him to business and he + glanced at his watch.</p> + + <p>“I’m supposed to meet Dr. + Oliver Thwaite here this morning. + Has he come in yet?â€</p> + + <p>“The archeologist? He’s here + early and late when he’s on Earth. + He’ll be up in the cataloguing department + now. Want me to show + you—â€</p> + + <p>“I know the way,†said Dalton. + “Thanks all the same.†He left + the elevator at the fourth floor + and impatiently pushed open the + main cataloguing room’s glazed + door.</p> + + <p>Inside cabinets and broad tables + bore a wilderness of strange + artifacts, many still crusted with + red Martian sand. Alone in the + room a trim-mustached man in a + rough open-throated shirt looked + up from an object he had been + cleaning with a soft brush.</p> + + <p>“Dr. Thwaite? I’m Jim Dalton.â€</p> + + <p>“Glad to meet you, Professor.†+ Thwaite carefully laid down his + <a class="pagenum" id="page112" title="112"> </a>work, then rose to grip the + visitor’s hand. “You didn’t lose + any time.â€</p> + + <p>“After you called last night I + managed to get a seat on the + dawn-rocket out of Chicago. I + hope I’m not interrupting?â€</p> + + <p>“Not at all. I’ve got some assistants + coming in around nine. I + was just going over some stuff I + don’t like to trust to their thumb-fingered + mercies.â€</p> + + <p>Dalton looked down at the + thing the archeologist had been + brushing. It was a reed syrinx, + the Pan’s pipes of antiquity. + “That’s not a very Martian-looking + specimen,†he commented.</p> + + <p>“The Martians, not having any + lips, could hardly have had much + use for it,†said Thwaite. “This is + of Earthly manufacture—one of + the Martians’ specimens from + Earth, kept intact over all this + time by a preservative I wish we + knew how to make. It’s a nice + find, man’s earliest known musical + instrument—hardly as interesting + as the record though.â€</p> + + <p>Dalton’s eyes brightened. “Have + you listened to the record yet?â€</p> + + <p>“No. We got the machine + working last night and ran off + some of the Martian stuff. Clear + as a bell. But I saved the main + attraction for when you got here.†+ Thwaite turned to a side door, + fishing a key from his pocket. + “The playback machine’s in here.â€</p> + + <p>The apparatus, squatting on a + sturdy table in the small room + beyond, had the slightly haywire + look of an experimental model. + But it was little short of a miracle + to those who knew how it had + been built—on the basis of + radioed descriptions of the ruined + device the excavators had dug up + on Mars.</p> + + <p>Even more intriguing, however, + was the row of neatly labeled + boxes on a shelf. There in + cushioned nests reposed little + cylinders of age-tarnished metal, + on which a close observer could + still trace the faint engraved lines + and whorls of Martian script. + These were the best-preserved + specimens yet found of Martian + record films.</p> + + <p>Sound and pictures were on + them, impressed there by a triumphant + science so long ago that + the code of Hammurabi or the + hieroglyphs of Khufu seemed by + comparison like yesterday’s newspaper. + Men of Earth were ready + now to evoke these ancient voices—but + to reproduce the stereoscopic + images was still beyond + human technology.</p> + + <p>Dalton scrutinized one label + intently. “Odd,†he said. “I realize + how much the Martian archives + may have to offer us when we + master their spoken language—but + I still want most to hear <em>this</em> + record, the one the Martians made + right here on Earth.â€</p> + + <p>Thwaite nodded comprehendingly. + “The human race is a good + deal like an amnesia patient that + wakes up at the age of forty and + finds himself with a fairly prosperous + business, a wife and + children and a mortgage, but no + <a class="pagenum" id="page113" title="113"> </a>recollection of his youth or infancy—and + nobody around to tell + him how he got where he is.</p> + + <p>“We invented writing so doggone + late in the game. Now we + get to Mars and find the people + there knew us before we knew + ourselves—but they died or + maybe picked up and went, leaving + just this behind.†He used + both hands to lift the precious + gray cylinder from its box. “And + of course you linguists in particular + get a big charge out of + this discovery.â€</p> + + <p>“<em>If</em> it’s a record of human + speech it’ll be the oldest ever + found. It may do for comparative-historical + linguistics what the + Rosetta Stone did for Egyptology.†+ Dalton grinned boyishly. + “Some of us even nurse the hope + it may do something for our old + headache—the problem of the + origin of language. That was one + of the most important, maybe <em>the</em> + most important step in human + progress—and we don’t know + how or when or why!â€</p> + + <p>“I’ve heard of the bowwow + theory and the dingdong theory,†+ said Thwaite, his hands busy with + the machine.</p> + + <p>“Pure speculations. The plain + fact is we haven’t even been able + to make an informed guess because + the evidence, the written + records, only run back about six + thousand years. That racial amnesia + you spoke of.</p> + + <p>“Personally, I have a weakness + for the magical theory—that man + invented language in the search + for magic formulae, words of + power. Unlike the other theories, + that one assumes as the motive + force not merely passive imitativeness + but an outgoing will.</p> + + <p>“Even the speechless subman + must have observed that he could + affect the behavior of animals of + his own and other species by + making appropriate noises—a + mating call or a terrifying shout, + for instance. Hence the perennial + conviction you can get what you + want if you just hold your mouth + right, <em>and</em> you know the proper + prayers or curses.â€</p> + + <p>“A logical conclusion from + the animistic viewpoint,†said + Thwaite. He frowned over the + delicate task of starting the film, + inquired offhandedly, “You got + the photostat of the label inscription? + What did you make of + it?â€</p> + + <p>“Not much more than Henderson + did on Mars. There’s the date + of the recording and the place—the + longitude doesn’t mean anything + to us because we still don’t + know where the Martians fixed + their zero meridian. But it was + near the equator and, the text indicates, + in a tropical forest—probably + in Africa or South + America.</p> + + <p>“Then there’s the sentence Henderson + couldn’t make out. It’s + obscure and rather badly defaced, + but it’s evidently a comment—unfavorable—on + the subject-matter + of the recording. In it appears + twice a sort of interjection-adverb + that in other contexts implies + <a class="pagenum" id="page114" title="114"> </a>revulsion—something like <em>ugh!</em>â€</p> + + <p>“Funny. Looks like the Martians + saw something on Earth + they didn’t like. Too bad we + can’t reproduce the visual record + yet.â€</p> + + <p>Dalton said soberly, “The Martian’s + vocabulary indicates that + for all their physical difference + from us they had emotions very + much like human beings’. Whatever + they saw must have been + something we wouldn’t have liked + either.â€</p> + + <p>The reproducer hummed softly. + Thwaite closed the motor switch + and the ancient film slid smoothly + from its casing. Out of the speaker + burst a strange medley of whirrings, + clicks, chirps, trills and + modulated drones and buzzings—a + sound like the voice of grasshoppers + in a drought-stricken field + of summer.</p> + + <p>Dalton listened raptly, as if by + sheer concentration he might even + now be able to guess at connections + between the sounds of + spoken Martian—heard now for + the first time—and the written + symbols that he had been working + over for years. But he couldn’t, + of course—that would require a + painstaking correlation analysis.</p> + + <p>“Evidently it’s an introduction + or commentary,†said the archeologist. + “Our photocell examination + showed the wave-patterns of + the initial and final portions of the + film were typically Martian—but + the middle part isn’t. The middle + part is whatever they recorded + here on Earth.â€</p> + + <p>“If only that last part is a + translation….†said Dalton hopefully. + Then the alien susurration + ceased coming from the reproducer + and he closed his mouth + abruptly and leaned forward.</p> + + <p>For the space of a caught + breath there was silence. Then + another voice came in, the voice + of Earth hundreds of centuries + dead.</p> + + <p>It was not human. No more + than the first had been—but the + Martian sounds had been merely + alien and these were horrible.</p> + + <p>It was like nothing so much as + the croaking of some gigantic + frog, risen bellowing from a bottomless + primeval swamp. It bayed + of stinking sunless pools and + gurgled of black ooze. And its + booming notes descended to subsonic + throbbings that gripped and + wrung the nerves to anguish.</p> + + <p>Dalton was involuntarily on his + feet, clawing for the switch. But + he stopped, reeling. His head + spun and he could not see. + Through his dizzy brain the great + voice roared and the mighty tones + below hearing hammered at the + inmost fortress of the man’s will.</p> + + <p>On the heels of that deafening + assault the voice began to change. + The numbing thunder rumbled + back, repeating the pain and the + threat—but underneath something + crooned and wheedled obscenely. + It said, “<em>Come … come … come….</em>†+ And the stunned + prey came on stumbling feet, + shivering with a terror that could + not break the spell. + <a class="pagenum" id="page115" title="115"> </a> + Where the squat black machine + had been was something that was + also squat and black and huge. + It crouched motionless and blind + in the mud and from its pulsing + expanded throat vibrated the + demonic croaking. As the victim + swayed helplessly nearer the + mouth opened wide upon long + rows of frightful teeth….</p> + + <p>The monstrous song stopped + suddenly. Then still another voice + cried briefly, thinly in agony and + despair. That voice was human.</p> + + <p>Each of the two men looked + into a white strange face. They + were standing on opposite sides of + the table and between them the + playback machine had fallen + silent. Then it began to whir again + in the locust speech of the Martian + commentator, explaining + rapidly, unintelligibly.</p> + + <p>Thwaite found the switch with + wooden fingers. As if with one + accord they retreated from the + black machine. Neither of them + even tried to make a false show + of self-possession. Each knew, + from his first glimpse of the + other’s dilated staring eyes, that + both had experienced and seen + the same.</p> + + <p>Dalton sank shivering into a + chair, the darkness still swirling + threateningly in his brain. Presently + he said, “The expression of + a will—that much was true. But + the will—was not of man.â€</p> + + <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> + + <p class="post_thoughtbreak">James Dalton took a vacation. + After a few days he went to a + psychiatrist, who observed the + usual symptoms of overwork and + worry and recommended a change + of scene—a rest in the country.</p> + + <p>On the first night at a friend’s + secluded farm Dalton awoke + drenched in cold sweat. Through + the open window from not far + away came a hellish serenade, the + noise of frogs—the high nervous + voices of peepers punctuating the + deep leisured booming of bullfrogs.</p> + + <p>The linguist flung on his clothes + and drove back at reckless speed + to where there were lights and + the noises of men and their + machines. He spent the rest of + his vacation burrowing under the + clamor of the city whose steel and + pavements proclaimed man’s victory + over the very grass that grew.</p> + + <p>After awhile he felt better and + needed work again. He took up + his planned study of the Martian + recordings, correlating the spoken + words with the written ones he + had already arduously learned to + read.</p> + + <p>The Martian Museum readily + lent him the recordings he requested + for use in his work, including + the one made on Earth. + He studied the Martian-language + portion of this and succeeded in + making a partial translation—but + carefully refrained from playing + the middle section of the film + back again.</p> + + <p>Came a day, though, when it + occurred to him that he had + heard not a word from Thwaite. + He made inquiries through the + Museum and learned that the + <a class="pagenum" id="page116" title="116"> </a>archeologist had applied for a + leave of absence and left before + it was granted. Gone where? The + Museum people didn’t know—but + Thwaite had not been trying to + cover his trail. A call to Global + Air Transport brought the desired + information.</p> + + <p>A premonition ran up Dalton’s + spine—but he was surprised at + how calmly he thought and acted. + He picked up the phone and + called Transport again—this time + their booking department.</p> + + <p>“When’s the earliest time I can + get passage to Belem?†he asked.</p> + + <p>With no more than an hour to + pack and catch the rocket he hurried + to the Museum. The place + was more or less populated with + sightseers, which was annoying, + because Dalton’s plans now included larceny.</p> + + <p>He waited before the building + till the coast was clear, then, with + handkerchief-wrapped knuckles, + broke the glass and tripped the + lever on the fire alarm. In minutes + a wail of sirens and roar of arriving + motors was satisfyingly loud + in the main exhibit room. Police + and fire department helicopters + buzzed overhead. A wave of + mingled fright and curiosity swept + visitors and attendants alike to + the doors.</p> + + <p>Dalton, lingering, found himself + watched only by the millennially + sightless eyes of the man + who lay in state in an airless glass + tomb. The stern face was inscrutable + behind the silence of + many thousand years.</p> + + <p>“Excuse me, Oswald,†murmured + Dalton. “I’d like to borrow + something of yours but I’m + sure you won’t mind.â€</p> + + <p>The reed flute was in a long + case devoted to Earthly specimens. + Unhesitatingly Dalton smashed + the glass.</p> + + <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> + + <p class="post_thoughtbreak">Brazil is a vast country, and it + cost much trouble and time and + expense before Dalton caught up + with Thwaite in a forlorn riverbank + town along the line where + civilization hesitates on the shore + of that vast sea of vegetation + called the <em lang="pt" xml:lang="pt">mato</em>. Night had just + fallen when Dalton arrived. He + found Thwaite alone in a lighted + room of the single drab hotel—alone + and very busy.</p> + + <p>The archeologist was shaggily + unshaven. He looked up and said + something that might have been a + greeting devoid of surprise. Dalton + grimaced apologetically, set + down his suitcase and pried the + wax plugs out of his ears, explaining + with a gesture that included + the world outside, where + the tree frogs sang deafeningly in + the hot stirring darkness of the + near forest.</p> + + <p>“How do you stand it?†he + asked.</p> + + <p>Thwaite’s lips drew back from + his teeth. “I’m fighting it,†he + said shortly, picking up his work + again. On the bed where he sat + were scattered steel cartridge + clips. He was going through them + with a small file, carefully cutting + a deep cross in the soft nose of + <a class="pagenum" id="page117" title="117"> </a>every bullet. Nearby a heavy-caliber + rifle leaned against a wardrobe. + Other things were in evidence—boots, + canteens, knapsacks, + the tough clothing a man + needs in the <em lang="pt" xml:lang="pt">mato</em>.</p> + + <p>“You’re looking for <em>it</em>.â€</p> + + <p>Thwaite’s eyes burned feverishly. + “Yes. Do you think I’m + crazy?â€</p> + + <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> + + <p class="post_thoughtbreak">Dalton pulled a rickety chair + toward him and sat down straddling + it. “I don’t know,†he said + slowly. “<em>It</em> was very likely a + creature of the last interglacial + period. The ice may have finished + its kind.â€</p> + + <p>“The ice never touched these + equatorial forests.†Thwaite + smiled unpleasantly. “And the + Indians and old settlers down here + have stories—about a thing that + calls in the <em lang="pt" xml:lang="pt">mato</em>, that can paralyze + a man with fear. <em lang="pt" xml:lang="pt">Currupira</em> + is their name for it.</p> + + <p>“When I remembered those + stories they fell into place alongside + a lot of others from different + countries and times—the Sirens, + for instance, and the Lorelei. + Those legends are ancient. But + perhaps here in the Amazon basin, + in the forests that have never been + cut and the swamps that have + never been drained, the <em lang="pt" xml:lang="pt">currupira</em> + is still real and alive. I <em>hope</em> so!â€</p> + + <p>“Why?â€</p> + + <p>“I want to meet it. I want to + show it that men can destroy it + with all its unholy power.†+ Thwaite bore down viciously on + the file and the bright flakes of + lead glittered to the floor beside + his feet.</p> + + <p>Dalton watched him with eyes + of compassion. He heard the frog + music swelling outside, a harrowing + reminder of ultimate blasphemous + insult, and he felt the + futility of argument.</p> + + <p>“Remember, I heard it too,†+ Dalton said. “And I sensed what + you did. That voice or some combination + of frequencies or overtones + within it, is resonant to the + essence of evil—the fundamental + life-hating self-destroying evil in + man—even to have glimpsed it, + to have heard the brainless beast + mocking, was an outrage to humanity + that a man must….â€</p> + + <p>Dalton paused, got a grip on + himself. “But, consider—the outrage + was wiped out, humanity + won its victory over the monster + a long time ago. What if it isn’t + quite extinct? That record was + fifty thousand years old.â€</p> + + <p>“What did you do with the + record?†Thwaite looked up + sharply.</p> + + <p>“I obliterated that—the voice + and the pictures that went with + it from the film before I returned + it to the Museum.â€</p> + + <p>Thwaite sighed deeply. “Good. + I was damning myself for not + doing that before I left.â€</p> + + <p>The linguist said, “I think it + answered my question as much as + I want it answered. The origin + of speech—lies in the will to + power, the lust to dominate other + men by preying on the weakness + or evil in them. + <a class="pagenum" id="page118" title="118"> </a> + “Those first men didn’t just + guess that such power existed—they + <em>knew</em> because the beast had + taught them and they tried to + imitate it—the mystagogues and + tyrants through the ages, with + voices, with tomtoms and bull-roarers + and trumpets. What makes + the memory of that voice so hard + to live with is just knowing that + what it called to is a part of man—isn’t + that it?â€</p> + + <p>Thwaite didn’t answer. He had + taken the heavy rifle across his + knees and was methodically testing + the movement of the well-oiled + breech mechanism.</p> + + <p>Dalton stood up wearily and + picked up his suitcase. “I’ll check + into the hotel. Suppose we talk + this over some more in the morning. + Maybe things’ll look different + by daylight.â€</p> + + <p>But in the morning Thwaite + was gone—upriver with a hired + boatman, said the natives. The + note he had left said only, <em>Sorry. + But it’s no use talking about + humanity—this is personal.</em></p> + + <p>Dalton crushed the note angrily, + muttering under his breath, “The + fool! Didn’t he realize I’d go with + him?†He hurled the crumpled + paper aside and stalked out to + look for a guide.</p> + + <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> + + <p class="post_thoughtbreak">They chugged slowly westward + up the forest-walled river, an + obscure tributary that flowed + somewhere into the Xingú. After + four days, they had hopes of being + close on the others’ track. The + brown-faced guide, Joao, who + held the tiller now, was a magician. + He had conjured up an ancient + outboard motor for the scow-like + boat Dalton had bought from a + fisherman.</p> + + <p>The sun was setting murkily + and the sluggish swell of the + water ahead was the color of + witch’s blood. Under its opaque + surface <em lang="pt" xml:lang="pt">a mae dágua</em>, the Mother + of Water, ruled over creatures + slimy and razor-toothed. In the + blackness beneath the great trees, + where it was dark even at noon, + other beings had their kingdom.</p> + + <p>Out of the forest came the crying + grunting hooting voices of its + life that woke at nightfall, fiercer + and more feverish than that of the + daytime. To the man from the + north there seemed something indecent + in the fertile febrile swarming + of life here. Compared to a + temperate woodland the <em lang="pt" xml:lang="pt">mato</em> was + like a metropolis against a sleepy + village.</p> + + <p>“What’s that?†Dalton demanded + sharply as a particularly + hideous squawk floated across the + water.</p> + + <p>“<em lang="pt" xml:lang="pt">Nao é nada. A bicharia agitase.</em>†+ Joao shrugged. “The menagerie + agitates itself.†His manner + indicated that some <em lang="pt" xml:lang="pt">bichinho</em> + beneath notice had made the + noise.</p> + + <p>But moments later the little + brown man became rigid. He + half rose to his feet in the boat’s + stern, then stooped and shut off + the popping motor. In the relative + silence the other heard what he + had—far off and indistinct, muttering + <a class="pagenum" id="page119" title="119"> </a>deep in the black <em lang="pt" xml:lang="pt">mato</em>, a + voice that croaked of ravenous + hunger in accents abominably + known to him.</p> + + <p>“<em lang="pt" xml:lang="pt">Currupira</em>,†said Joao tensely. + “<em lang="pt" xml:lang="pt">Currupira sai á caçada da noite.</em>†+ He watched the foreigner with + eyes that gleamed in the fading + light like polished onyx.</p> + + <p>“<em lang="pt" xml:lang="pt">Avante!</em>†snapped Dalton. + “See if it comes closer to the river + this time.â€</p> + + <p>It was not the first time they + had heard that voice calling since + they had ventured deep into the + unpeopled swampland about + which the downriver settlements + had fearful stories to whisper.</p> + + <p>Silently the guide spun the + engine. The boat sputtered on. + Dalton strained his eyes, watching + the darkening shore as he had + watched fruitlessly for so many + miles.</p> + + <p>But now, as they rounded a + gentle bend, he glimpsed a small + reddish spark near the bank. + Then, by the last glimmer of the + swiftly fading twilight, he made + out a boat pulled up under gnarled + tree-roots. That was all he could + see but the movement of the red + spark told him a man was sitting + in the boat, smoking a cigarette.</p> + + <p>“In there,†he ordered in a low + voice but Joao had seen already + and was steering toward the shore.</p> + + <p>The cigarette arched into the + water and hissed out and they + heard a scuffling and lap of water + as the other boat swayed, which + meant that the man in it had + stood up.</p> + + <p>He sprang into visibility as a + flashlight in Dalton’s hand went + on. A squat, swarthy man with + rugged features, a <em lang="pt" xml:lang="pt">caboclo</em>, of + white and Indian blood. He + blinked expressionlessly at the + light.</p> + + <p>“Where is the American scientist?†+ demanded Dalton in Portuguese.</p> + + <p>“<em lang="pt" xml:lang="pt">Quem sabe? Foi-se.</em>â€</p> + + <p>“Which way did he go?â€</p> + + <p>“<em lang="pt" xml:lang="pt">Nao importa. O doutor é + doido; nao ha-de-voltar</em>,†said + the man suddenly. “It doesn’t + matter. The doctor is crazy—he + won’t come back.â€</p> + + <p>“Answer me, damn it! Which + way?â€</p> + + <p>The <em lang="pt" xml:lang="pt">caboclo</em> jerked his shoulders + nervously and pointed.</p> + + <p>“Come on!†said Dalton and + scrambled ashore even as Joao + was stopping the motor and + making the boat fast beside the + other. “He’s gone in after it!â€</p> + + <p>The forest was a black labyrinth. + Its tangled darkness seemed + to drink up the beam of the + powerful flashlight Dalton had + brought, its uneasy rustlings and + animal-noises pressed in to swallow + the sound of human movements + for which he strained his + ears, fearing to call out. He + pushed forward recklessly, carried + on by a sort of inertia of determination; + behind him Joao followed, + though he moved woodenly + and muttered prayers under his + breath.</p> + + <p>Then somewhere very near a + great voice croaked briefly and + <a class="pagenum" id="page120" title="120"> </a>was silent—so close that it poured + a wave of faintness over the + hearer, seemed to send numbing + electricity tingling along his motor + nerves.</p> + + <p>Joao dropped to his knees and + flung both arms about a tree-bole. + His brown face when the + light fell on it was shiny with + sweat, his eyes dilated and blind-looking. + Dalton slammed the heel + of his hand against the man’s + shoulder and got no response + save for a tightening of the grip + on the treetrunk, and a pitiful + whimper, “<em lang="pt" xml:lang="pt">Assombra-me</em>—it overshadows + me!â€</p> + + <p>Dalton swung the flashlight + beam ahead and saw nothing. + Then all at once, not fifty yards + away, a single glowing eye sprang + out of the darkness, arched + through the air and hit the ground + to blaze into searing brilliance and + white smoke. The clearing in + which it burned grew bright as + day, and Dalton saw a silhouetted + figure clutching a rifle and turning + its head from side to side.</p> + + <p>He plunged headlong toward + the light of the flare, shouting, + “Thwaite, you idiot! You can’t—â€</p> + + <p>And then the <em lang="pt" xml:lang="pt">currupira</em> spoke.</p> + + <p>Its bellowing seemed to come + from all around, from the ground, + the trees, the air. It smote like a + blow in the stomach that drives + out wind and fight. And it roared + on, lashing at the wills of those + who heard it, beating and stamping + them out like sparks of a + scattered fire.</p> + + <p>Dalton groped with one hand + for his pocket but his hand kept + slipping away into a matterless + void as his vision threatened to + slip into blindness. Dimly he saw + Thwaite, a stone’s throw ahead of + him, start to lift his weapon and + then stand frozen, swaying a little + on his feet as if buffeted by waves + of sound.</p> + + <p>Already the second theme was + coming in—the insidious obbligato + of invitation to death, + wheedling that <em>this way … this + way …</em> was the path from the + torment and terror that the monstrous + voice flooded over them.</p> + + <p>Thwaite took a stiff step, then + another and another, toward the + black wall of the <em lang="pt" xml:lang="pt">mato</em> that rose + beyond the clearing. With an indescribable + shudder Dalton realized + that he too had moved an + involuntary step forward. The + <em lang="pt" xml:lang="pt">currupira’s</em> voice rose triumphantly.</p> + + <p>With a mighty effort of will + Dalton closed fingers he could not + feel on the object in his pocket. + Like a man lifting a mountain he + lifted it to his lips.</p> + + <p>A high sweet note cut like a + knife through the roll of nightmare + drums. With terrible concentration + Dalton shifted his + fingers and blew and blew….</p> + + <p>Piercing and lingering, the + tones of the pipes flowed into his + veins, tingling, warring with the + numbing poison of the <em lang="pt" xml:lang="pt">currupira’s</em> + song.</p> + + <p>Dalton was no musician but it + seemed to him then that an ancestral + instinct was with him, guiding + <a class="pagenum" id="page121" title="121"> </a>his breath and his fingers. The + powers of the monster were darkness + and cold and weariness of + living, the death-urge recoiling + from life into nothingness.</p> + + <p>But the powers of the pipes + were life and light and warmth, + life returning when the winter is + gone, greenness and laughter and + love. Life was in them, life of + men dead these thousand generations, + life even of the craftsmen + on an alien planet who had preserved + their form and their meaning + for this moment.</p> + + <p>Dalton advanced of his own + will until he stood beside Thwaite—but + the other remained unstirring + and Dalton did not dare + pause for a moment, while the + monster yet bellowed in the blackness + before them. The light of the + flare was reddening, dying….</p> + + <p>After a seeming eternity he + saw motion, saw the rifle muzzle + swing up. The shot was deafening + in his ear, but it was an immeasurable + relief. As it echoed + the <em lang="pt" xml:lang="pt">currupira’s</em> voice was abruptly + silent. In the bushes ahead there + was a rending of branches, a + frantic slithering movement of a + huge body.</p> + + <p>They followed the noises in a + sort of frenzy, plunging toward + them heedless of thorns and whipping + branches. The flashlight + stabbed and revealed nothing. Out + of the shadows a bass croaking + came again, and Thwaite fired + twice at the sound and there was + silence save for a renewed flurry + of cracking twigs.</p> + + <p>Along the water’s edge, obscured + by the trees between, + moved something black and huge, + that shone wetly. Thwaite dropped + to one knee and began firing at it, + emptying the magazine.</p> + + <p>They pressed forward to the + margin of the slough, feet squishing + in the deep muck. Dalton + played his flashlight on the water’s + surface and the still-moving + ripples seemed to reflect redly.</p> + + <p>Thwaite was first to break the + silence. He said grimly, “Damned + lucky for me you got here when + you did. It—<em>had</em> me.â€</p> + + <p>Dalton nodded without speaking.</p> + + <p>“But how did you know what + to do?†Thwaite asked.</p> + + <p>“It wasn’t my discovery,†said + the linguist soberly. “Our remote + ancestors met this threat and invented + a weapon against it. Otherwise + man might not have survived. + I learned the details from the + Martian records when I succeeded + in translating them. Fortunately + the Martians also preserved a + specimen of the weapon our ancestors + invented.â€</p> + + <p>He held up the little reed flute + and the archeologist’s eyes + widened with recognition.</p> + + <p>Dalton looked out across the + dark swamp-water, where the + ripples were fading out. “In the + beginning there was the voice of + evil—but there was also the + music of good, created to combat + it. Thank God that in mankind’s + makeup there’s more than one + fundamental note!â€</p> +</div> +<div id="the_end"> </div> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Record of Currupira, by Robert Abernathy + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RECORD OF CURRUPIRA *** + +***** This file should be named 31762-h.htm or 31762-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/7/6/31762/ + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Barbara Tozier and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Record of Currupira + +Author: Robert Abernathy + +Release Date: March 24, 2010 [EBook #31762] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RECORD OF CURRUPIRA *** + + + + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Barbara Tozier and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe, January 1954. + Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. + copyright on this publication was renewed. + + + + + _This story contains what is, to us, at any rate, a novel + idea--that when we of Earth finally reach Mars we may find + there records of prehistoric Earth far surpassing those of our + paleontologists. Or, in other words, that creatures of Mars + may have visited this planet tens of thousands of years ago + and returned home with specimens for their science. A nice + idea well told._ + + + + +THE RECORD OF CURRUPIRA + +_by ... Robert Abernathy_ + + + From ancient Martian records came the grim song of a creature + whose very existence was long forgotten. + + +James Dalton strode briskly through the main exhibit room of New +York's Martian Museum, hardly glancing to right or left though many +displays had been added since his last visit. The rockets were coming +home regularly now and their most valuable cargoes--at least from a +scientist's point of view--were the relics of an alien civilization +brought to light by the archeologists excavating the great dead +cities. + +One new exhibit did catch Dalton's eye. He paused to read the label +with interest-- + + MAN FROM MARS: + + _The body here preserved was found December 12, 2001, by an + exploring party from the spaceship NEVADA, in the Martian + city which we designate E-3. It rested in a case much like + this, in a building that had evidently been the municipal + museum. Around it, in other cases likewise undisturbed since a + period estimated at fifty thousand years ago, were a number of + Earthly artifacts. These finds prove beyond doubt that a + Martian scientific expedition visited Earth before the dawn of + our history._ + +On the label someone had painstakingly copied the Martian glyphs found +on the mummy's original case. Dalton's eyes traced the looping +ornamental script--he was one of the very few men who had put in the +years of work necessary to read inscriptional Martian--and he smiled +appreciation of a jest that had taken fifty thousand years to +ripen--the writing said simply, _Man From Earth_. + +The mummy lying on a sculptured catafalque beyond the glass was +amazingly well preserved--far more lifelike and immensely older than +anything Egypt had yielded. Long-dead Martian embalmers had done a +good job even on what to them was the corpse of an other-world +monster. + +He had been a small wiry man. His skin was dark though its color might +have been affected by mummification. His features suggested those of +the Forest Indian. Beside him lay his flaked-stone ax, his +bone-pointed spear and spear thrower, likewise preserved by a +marvelous chemistry. + +Looking down at that ancient nameless ancestor, Dalton was moved to +solemn thoughts. This creature had been first of all human-kind to +make the tremendous crossing to Mars--had seen its lost race in living +glory, had died there and became a museum exhibit for the multiple +eyes of wise grey spiderish aliens. + +"Interested in Oswald, sir?" + +Dalton glanced up and saw an attendant. "I was just thinking--if he +could only talk! He does have a name, then?" + +The guard grinned. "Well, we call him Oswald. Sort of inconvenient, +not having a name. When I worked at the Metropolitan we used to call +all the Pharaohs and Assyrian kings by their first names." + +Dalton mentally classified another example of the deep human need for +verbal handles to lift unwieldy chunks of environment. The +professional thought recalled him to business and he glanced at his +watch. + +"I'm supposed to meet Dr. Oliver Thwaite here this morning. Has he +come in yet?" + +"The archeologist? He's here early and late when he's on Earth. He'll +be up in the cataloguing department now. Want me to show you--" + +"I know the way," said Dalton. "Thanks all the same." He left the +elevator at the fourth floor and impatiently pushed open the main +cataloguing room's glazed door. + +Inside cabinets and broad tables bore a wilderness of strange +artifacts, many still crusted with red Martian sand. Alone in the room +a trim-mustached man in a rough open-throated shirt looked up from an +object he had been cleaning with a soft brush. + +"Dr. Thwaite? I'm Jim Dalton." + +"Glad to meet you, Professor." Thwaite carefully laid down his work, +then rose to grip the visitor's hand. "You didn't lose any time." + +"After you called last night I managed to get a seat on the +dawn-rocket out of Chicago. I hope I'm not interrupting?" + +"Not at all. I've got some assistants coming in around nine. I was +just going over some stuff I don't like to trust to their +thumb-fingered mercies." + +Dalton looked down at the thing the archeologist had been brushing. It +was a reed syrinx, the Pan's pipes of antiquity. "That's not a very +Martian-looking specimen," he commented. + +"The Martians, not having any lips, could hardly have had much use for +it," said Thwaite. "This is of Earthly manufacture--one of the +Martians' specimens from Earth, kept intact over all this time by a +preservative I wish we knew how to make. It's a nice find, man's +earliest known musical instrument--hardly as interesting as the record +though." + +Dalton's eyes brightened. "Have you listened to the record yet?" + +"No. We got the machine working last night and ran off some of the +Martian stuff. Clear as a bell. But I saved the main attraction for +when you got here." Thwaite turned to a side door, fishing a key from +his pocket. "The playback machine's in here." + +The apparatus, squatting on a sturdy table in the small room beyond, +had the slightly haywire look of an experimental model. But it was +little short of a miracle to those who knew how it had been built--on +the basis of radioed descriptions of the ruined device the excavators +had dug up on Mars. + +Even more intriguing, however, was the row of neatly labeled boxes on +a shelf. There in cushioned nests reposed little cylinders of +age-tarnished metal, on which a close observer could still trace the +faint engraved lines and whorls of Martian script. These were the +best-preserved specimens yet found of Martian record films. + +Sound and pictures were on them, impressed there by a triumphant +science so long ago that the code of Hammurabi or the hieroglyphs of +Khufu seemed by comparison like yesterday's newspaper. Men of Earth +were ready now to evoke these ancient voices--but to reproduce the +stereoscopic images was still beyond human technology. + +Dalton scrutinized one label intently. "Odd," he said. "I realize how +much the Martian archives may have to offer us when we master their +spoken language--but I still want most to hear _this_ record, the one +the Martians made right here on Earth." + +Thwaite nodded comprehendingly. "The human race is a good deal like an +amnesia patient that wakes up at the age of forty and finds himself +with a fairly prosperous business, a wife and children and a mortgage, +but no recollection of his youth or infancy--and nobody around to tell +him how he got where he is. + +"We invented writing so doggone late in the game. Now we get to Mars +and find the people there knew us before we knew ourselves--but they +died or maybe picked up and went, leaving just this behind." He used +both hands to lift the precious gray cylinder from its box. "And of +course you linguists in particular get a big charge out of this +discovery." + +"_If_ it's a record of human speech it'll be the oldest ever found. It +may do for comparative-historical linguistics what the Rosetta Stone +did for Egyptology." Dalton grinned boyishly. "Some of us even nurse +the hope it may do something for our old headache--the problem of the +origin of language. That was one of the most important, maybe _the_ +most important step in human progress--and we don't know how or when +or why!" + +"I've heard of the bowwow theory and the dingdong theory," said +Thwaite, his hands busy with the machine. + +"Pure speculations. The plain fact is we haven't even been able to +make an informed guess because the evidence, the written records, only +run back about six thousand years. That racial amnesia you spoke of. + +"Personally, I have a weakness for the magical theory--that man +invented language in the search for magic formulae, words of power. +Unlike the other theories, that one assumes as the motive force not +merely passive imitativeness but an outgoing will. + +"Even the speechless subman must have observed that he could affect +the behavior of animals of his own and other species by making +appropriate noises--a mating call or a terrifying shout, for instance. +Hence the perennial conviction you can get what you want if you just +hold your mouth right, _and_ you know the proper prayers or curses." + +"A logical conclusion from the animistic viewpoint," said Thwaite. He +frowned over the delicate task of starting the film, inquired +offhandedly, "You got the photostat of the label inscription? What did +you make of it?" + +"Not much more than Henderson did on Mars. There's the date of the +recording and the place--the longitude doesn't mean anything to us +because we still don't know where the Martians fixed their zero +meridian. But it was near the equator and, the text indicates, in a +tropical forest--probably in Africa or South America. + +"Then there's the sentence Henderson couldn't make out. It's obscure and +rather badly defaced, but it's evidently a comment--unfavorable--on +the subject-matter of the recording. In it appears twice a sort of +interjection-adverb that in other contexts implies revulsion--something +like _ugh_!" + +"Funny. Looks like the Martians saw something on Earth they didn't +like. Too bad we can't reproduce the visual record yet." + +Dalton said soberly, "The Martian's vocabulary indicates that for all +their physical difference from us they had emotions very much like +human beings'. Whatever they saw must have been something we wouldn't +have liked either." + +The reproducer hummed softly. Thwaite closed the motor switch and the +ancient film slid smoothly from its casing. Out of the speaker burst a +strange medley of whirrings, clicks, chirps, trills and modulated +drones and buzzings--a sound like the voice of grasshoppers in a +drought-stricken field of summer. + +Dalton listened raptly, as if by sheer concentration he might even now +be able to guess at connections between the sounds of spoken +Martian--heard now for the first time--and the written symbols that he +had been working over for years. But he couldn't, of course--that +would require a painstaking correlation analysis. + +"Evidently it's an introduction or commentary," said the archeologist. +"Our photocell examination showed the wave-patterns of the initial and +final portions of the film were typically Martian--but the middle part +isn't. The middle part is whatever they recorded here on Earth." + +"If only that last part is a translation...." said Dalton hopefully. +Then the alien susurration ceased coming from the reproducer and he +closed his mouth abruptly and leaned forward. + +For the space of a caught breath there was silence. Then another voice +came in, the voice of Earth hundreds of centuries dead. + +It was not human. No more than the first had been--but the Martian +sounds had been merely alien and these were horrible. + +It was like nothing so much as the croaking of some gigantic frog, +risen bellowing from a bottomless primeval swamp. It bayed of stinking +sunless pools and gurgled of black ooze. And its booming notes +descended to subsonic throbbings that gripped and wrung the nerves to +anguish. + +Dalton was involuntarily on his feet, clawing for the switch. But he +stopped, reeling. His head spun and he could not see. Through his +dizzy brain the great voice roared and the mighty tones below hearing +hammered at the inmost fortress of the man's will. + +On the heels of that deafening assault the voice began to change. The +numbing thunder rumbled back, repeating the pain and the threat--but +underneath something crooned and wheedled obscenely. It said, +"_Come ... come ... come...._" And the stunned prey came on stumbling +feet, shivering with a terror that could not break the spell. + +Where the squat black machine had been was something that was also +squat and black and huge. It crouched motionless and blind in the mud +and from its pulsing expanded throat vibrated the demonic croaking. As +the victim swayed helplessly nearer the mouth opened wide upon long +rows of frightful teeth.... + +The monstrous song stopped suddenly. Then still another voice cried +briefly, thinly in agony and despair. That voice was human. + +Each of the two men looked into a white strange face. They were +standing on opposite sides of the table and between them the playback +machine had fallen silent. Then it began to whir again in the locust +speech of the Martian commentator, explaining rapidly, unintelligibly. + +Thwaite found the switch with wooden fingers. As if with one accord +they retreated from the black machine. Neither of them even tried to +make a false show of self-possession. Each knew, from his first +glimpse of the other's dilated staring eyes, that both had experienced +and seen the same. + +Dalton sank shivering into a chair, the darkness still swirling +threateningly in his brain. Presently he said, "The expression of a +will--that much was true. But the will--was not of man." + + * * * * * + +James Dalton took a vacation. After a few days he went to a +psychiatrist, who observed the usual symptoms of overwork and worry +and recommended a change of scene--a rest in the country. + +On the first night at a friend's secluded farm Dalton awoke drenched +in cold sweat. Through the open window from not far away came a +hellish serenade, the noise of frogs--the high nervous voices of +peepers punctuating the deep leisured booming of bullfrogs. + +The linguist flung on his clothes and drove back at reckless speed to +where there were lights and the noises of men and their machines. He +spent the rest of his vacation burrowing under the clamor of the city +whose steel and pavements proclaimed man's victory over the very grass +that grew. + +After awhile he felt better and needed work again. He took up his +planned study of the Martian recordings, correlating the spoken words +with the written ones he had already arduously learned to read. + +The Martian Museum readily lent him the recordings he requested for +use in his work, including the one made on Earth. He studied the +Martian-language portion of this and succeeded in making a partial +translation--but carefully refrained from playing the middle section +of the film back again. + +Came a day, though, when it occurred to him that he had heard not a +word from Thwaite. He made inquiries through the Museum and learned +that the archeologist had applied for a leave of absence and left +before it was granted. Gone where? The Museum people didn't know--but +Thwaite had not been trying to cover his trail. A call to Global Air +Transport brought the desired information. + +A premonition ran up Dalton's spine--but he was surprised at how +calmly he thought and acted. He picked up the phone and called +Transport again--this time their booking department. + +"When's the earliest time I can get passage to Belem?" he asked. + +With no more than an hour to pack and catch the rocket he hurried to +the Museum. The place was more or less populated with sightseers, +which was annoying, because Dalton's plans now included larceny. + +He waited before the building till the coast was clear, then, with +handkerchief-wrapped knuckles, broke the glass and tripped the lever +on the fire alarm. In minutes a wail of sirens and roar of arriving +motors was satisfyingly loud in the main exhibit room. Police and fire +department helicopters buzzed overhead. A wave of mingled fright and +curiosity swept visitors and attendants alike to the doors. + +Dalton, lingering, found himself watched only by the millennially +sightless eyes of the man who lay in state in an airless glass tomb. +The stern face was inscrutable behind the silence of many thousand +years. + +"Excuse me, Oswald," murmured Dalton. "I'd like to borrow something of +yours but I'm sure you won't mind." + +The reed flute was in a long case devoted to Earthly specimens. +Unhesitatingly Dalton smashed the glass. + + * * * * * + +Brazil is a vast country, and it cost much trouble and time and +expense before Dalton caught up with Thwaite in a forlorn riverbank +town along the line where civilization hesitates on the shore of that +vast sea of vegetation called the _mato_. Night had just fallen when +Dalton arrived. He found Thwaite alone in a lighted room of the single +drab hotel--alone and very busy. + +The archeologist was shaggily unshaven. He looked up and said +something that might have been a greeting devoid of surprise. Dalton +grimaced apologetically, set down his suitcase and pried the wax plugs +out of his ears, explaining with a gesture that included the world +outside, where the tree frogs sang deafeningly in the hot stirring +darkness of the near forest. + +"How do you stand it?" he asked. + +Thwaite's lips drew back from his teeth. "I'm fighting it," he said +shortly, picking up his work again. On the bed where he sat were +scattered steel cartridge clips. He was going through them with a +small file, carefully cutting a deep cross in the soft nose of every +bullet. Nearby a heavy-caliber rifle leaned against a wardrobe. Other +things were in evidence--boots, canteens, knapsacks, the tough +clothing a man needs in the _mato_. + +"You're looking for _it_." + +Thwaite's eyes burned feverishly. "Yes. Do you think I'm crazy?" + + * * * * * + +Dalton pulled a rickety chair toward him and sat down straddling it. +"I don't know," he said slowly. "_It_ was very likely a creature of +the last interglacial period. The ice may have finished its kind." + +"The ice never touched these equatorial forests." Thwaite smiled +unpleasantly. "And the Indians and old settlers down here have +stories--about a thing that calls in the _mato_, that can paralyze a +man with fear. _Currupira_ is their name for it. + +"When I remembered those stories they fell into place alongside a lot +of others from different countries and times--the Sirens, for +instance, and the Lorelei. Those legends are ancient. But perhaps here +in the Amazon basin, in the forests that have never been cut and the +swamps that have never been drained, the _currupira_ is still real and +alive. I _hope_ so!" + +"Why?" + +"I want to meet it. I want to show it that men can destroy it with all +its unholy power." Thwaite bore down viciously on the file and the +bright flakes of lead glittered to the floor beside his feet. + +Dalton watched him with eyes of compassion. He heard the frog music +swelling outside, a harrowing reminder of ultimate blasphemous insult, +and he felt the futility of argument. + +"Remember, I heard it too," Dalton said. "And I sensed what you did. +That voice or some combination of frequencies or overtones within it, +is resonant to the essence of evil--the fundamental life-hating +self-destroying evil in man--even to have glimpsed it, to have heard +the brainless beast mocking, was an outrage to humanity that a man +must...." + +Dalton paused, got a grip on himself. "But, consider--the outrage was +wiped out, humanity won its victory over the monster a long time ago. +What if it isn't quite extinct? That record was fifty thousand years +old." + +"What did you do with the record?" Thwaite looked up sharply. + +"I obliterated that--the voice and the pictures that went with it from +the film before I returned it to the Museum." + +Thwaite sighed deeply. "Good. I was damning myself for not doing that +before I left." + +The linguist said, "I think it answered my question as much as I want +it answered. The origin of speech--lies in the will to power, the lust +to dominate other men by preying on the weakness or evil in them. + +"Those first men didn't just guess that such power existed--they +_knew_ because the beast had taught them and they tried to imitate +it--the mystagogues and tyrants through the ages, with voices, with +tomtoms and bull-roarers and trumpets. What makes the memory of that +voice so hard to live with is just knowing that what it called to is a +part of man--isn't that it?" + +Thwaite didn't answer. He had taken the heavy rifle across his knees +and was methodically testing the movement of the well-oiled breech +mechanism. + +Dalton stood up wearily and picked up his suitcase. "I'll check into +the hotel. Suppose we talk this over some more in the morning. Maybe +things'll look different by daylight." + +But in the morning Thwaite was gone--upriver with a hired boatman, +said the natives. The note he had left said only, _Sorry. But it's no +use talking about humanity--this is personal._ + +Dalton crushed the note angrily, muttering under his breath, "The +fool! Didn't he realize I'd go with him?" He hurled the crumpled paper +aside and stalked out to look for a guide. + + * * * * * + +They chugged slowly westward up the forest-walled river, an obscure +tributary that flowed somewhere into the Xingu. After four days, they +had hopes of being close on the others' track. The brown-faced guide, +Joao, who held the tiller now, was a magician. He had conjured up an +ancient outboard motor for the scow-like boat Dalton had bought from a +fisherman. + +The sun was setting murkily and the sluggish swell of the water ahead +was the color of witch's blood. Under its opaque surface _a mae +dagua_, the Mother of Water, ruled over creatures slimy and +razor-toothed. In the blackness beneath the great trees, where it was +dark even at noon, other beings had their kingdom. + +Out of the forest came the crying grunting hooting voices of its life +that woke at nightfall, fiercer and more feverish than that of the +daytime. To the man from the north there seemed something indecent in +the fertile febrile swarming of life here. Compared to a temperate +woodland the _mato_ was like a metropolis against a sleepy village. + +"What's that?" Dalton demanded sharply as a particularly hideous +squawk floated across the water. + +"_Nao e nada. A bicharia agitase._" Joao shrugged. "The menagerie +agitates itself." His manner indicated that some _bichinho_ beneath +notice had made the noise. + +But moments later the little brown man became rigid. He half rose to +his feet in the boat's stern, then stooped and shut off the popping +motor. In the relative silence the other heard what he had--far off +and indistinct, muttering deep in the black _mato_, a voice that +croaked of ravenous hunger in accents abominably known to him. + +"_Currupira_," said Joao tensely. "_Currupira sai a cacada da noite._" +He watched the foreigner with eyes that gleamed in the fading light +like polished onyx. + +"_Avante!_" snapped Dalton. "See if it comes closer to the river this +time." + +It was not the first time they had heard that voice calling since they +had ventured deep into the unpeopled swampland about which the +downriver settlements had fearful stories to whisper. + +Silently the guide spun the engine. The boat sputtered on. Dalton +strained his eyes, watching the darkening shore as he had watched +fruitlessly for so many miles. + +But now, as they rounded a gentle bend, he glimpsed a small reddish +spark near the bank. Then, by the last glimmer of the swiftly fading +twilight, he made out a boat pulled up under gnarled tree-roots. That +was all he could see but the movement of the red spark told him a man +was sitting in the boat, smoking a cigarette. + +"In there," he ordered in a low voice but Joao had seen already and +was steering toward the shore. + +The cigarette arched into the water and hissed out and they heard a +scuffling and lap of water as the other boat swayed, which meant that +the man in it had stood up. + +He sprang into visibility as a flashlight in Dalton's hand went on. A +squat, swarthy man with rugged features, a _caboclo_, of white and +Indian blood. He blinked expressionlessly at the light. + +"Where is the American scientist?" demanded Dalton in Portuguese. + +"_Quem sabe? Foi-se._" + +"Which way did he go?" + +"_Nao importa. O doutor e doido; nao ha-de-voltar_," said the man +suddenly. "It doesn't matter. The doctor is crazy--he won't come +back." + +"Answer me, damn it! Which way?" + +The _caboclo_ jerked his shoulders nervously and pointed. + +"Come on!" said Dalton and scrambled ashore even as Joao was stopping +the motor and making the boat fast beside the other. "He's gone in +after it!" + +The forest was a black labyrinth. Its tangled darkness seemed to drink +up the beam of the powerful flashlight Dalton had brought, its uneasy +rustlings and animal-noises pressed in to swallow the sound of human +movements for which he strained his ears, fearing to call out. He +pushed forward recklessly, carried on by a sort of inertia of +determination; behind him Joao followed, though he moved woodenly and +muttered prayers under his breath. + +Then somewhere very near a great voice croaked briefly and was +silent--so close that it poured a wave of faintness over the hearer, +seemed to send numbing electricity tingling along his motor nerves. + +Joao dropped to his knees and flung both arms about a tree-bole. His +brown face when the light fell on it was shiny with sweat, his eyes +dilated and blind-looking. Dalton slammed the heel of his hand against +the man's shoulder and got no response save for a tightening of the +grip on the treetrunk, and a pitiful whimper, "_Assombra-me_--it +overshadows me!" + +Dalton swung the flashlight beam ahead and saw nothing. Then all at +once, not fifty yards away, a single glowing eye sprang out of the +darkness, arched through the air and hit the ground to blaze into +searing brilliance and white smoke. The clearing in which it burned +grew bright as day, and Dalton saw a silhouetted figure clutching a +rifle and turning its head from side to side. + +He plunged headlong toward the light of the flare, shouting, "Thwaite, +you idiot! You can't--" + +And then the _currupira_ spoke. + +Its bellowing seemed to come from all around, from the ground, the +trees, the air. It smote like a blow in the stomach that drives out +wind and fight. And it roared on, lashing at the wills of those who +heard it, beating and stamping them out like sparks of a scattered +fire. + +Dalton groped with one hand for his pocket but his hand kept slipping +away into a matterless void as his vision threatened to slip into +blindness. Dimly he saw Thwaite, a stone's throw ahead of him, start +to lift his weapon and then stand frozen, swaying a little on his feet +as if buffeted by waves of sound. + +Already the second theme was coming in--the insidious obbligato of +invitation to death, wheedling that _this way ... this way ..._ was +the path from the torment and terror that the monstrous voice flooded +over them. + +Thwaite took a stiff step, then another and another, toward the black +wall of the _mato_ that rose beyond the clearing. With an +indescribable shudder Dalton realized that he too had moved an +involuntary step forward. The _currupira's_ voice rose triumphantly. + +With a mighty effort of will Dalton closed fingers he could not feel +on the object in his pocket. Like a man lifting a mountain he lifted +it to his lips. + +A high sweet note cut like a knife through the roll of nightmare +drums. With terrible concentration Dalton shifted his fingers and blew +and blew.... + +Piercing and lingering, the tones of the pipes flowed into his veins, +tingling, warring with the numbing poison of the _currupira's_ song. + +Dalton was no musician but it seemed to him then that an ancestral +instinct was with him, guiding his breath and his fingers. The powers +of the monster were darkness and cold and weariness of living, the +death-urge recoiling from life into nothingness. + +But the powers of the pipes were life and light and warmth, life +returning when the winter is gone, greenness and laughter and love. +Life was in them, life of men dead these thousand generations, life +even of the craftsmen on an alien planet who had preserved their form +and their meaning for this moment. + +Dalton advanced of his own will until he stood beside Thwaite--but the +other remained unstirring and Dalton did not dare pause for a moment, +while the monster yet bellowed in the blackness before them. The light +of the flare was reddening, dying.... + +After a seeming eternity he saw motion, saw the rifle muzzle swing up. +The shot was deafening in his ear, but it was an immeasurable relief. +As it echoed the _currupira's_ voice was abruptly silent. In the +bushes ahead there was a rending of branches, a frantic slithering +movement of a huge body. + +They followed the noises in a sort of frenzy, plunging toward them +heedless of thorns and whipping branches. The flashlight stabbed and +revealed nothing. Out of the shadows a bass croaking came again, and +Thwaite fired twice at the sound and there was silence save for a +renewed flurry of cracking twigs. + +Along the water's edge, obscured by the trees between, moved something +black and huge, that shone wetly. Thwaite dropped to one knee and +began firing at it, emptying the magazine. + +They pressed forward to the margin of the slough, feet squishing in +the deep muck. Dalton played his flashlight on the water's surface and +the still-moving ripples seemed to reflect redly. + +Thwaite was first to break the silence. He said grimly, "Damned lucky +for me you got here when you did. It--_had_ me." + +Dalton nodded without speaking. + +"But how did you know what to do?" Thwaite asked. + +"It wasn't my discovery," said the linguist soberly. "Our remote +ancestors met this threat and invented a weapon against it. Otherwise +man might not have survived. I learned the details from the Martian +records when I succeeded in translating them. Fortunately the Martians +also preserved a specimen of the weapon our ancestors invented." + +He held up the little reed flute and the archeologist's eyes widened +with recognition. + +Dalton looked out across the dark swamp-water, where the ripples were +fading out. "In the beginning there was the voice of evil--but there +was also the music of good, created to combat it. Thank God that in +mankind's makeup there's more than one fundamental note!" + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Record of Currupira, by Robert Abernathy + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RECORD OF CURRUPIRA *** + +***** This file should be named 31762.txt or 31762.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/7/6/31762/ + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Barbara Tozier and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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