Free The Green Brain by Frank Herbert

plants already have disappeared from lack of natural pollination.”
    â€œNo useful plant has been lost!”
    â€œAnd what happens,” Joao asked, “if our barriers are breached by the insects before we’ve replaced the population of natural predators? What happens then?”
    The elder Martinho shook a thin finger under his son’s nose. “This nonsense must stop! I’ll hear no more of it! Do you hear?”
    â€œPlease calm yourself, Father.”

    â€œCalm myself? How can I calm myself in the face of … of … this? You here hiding like a common criminal! Riots in Bahia and Santarem and …”
    â€œFather, stop it!”
    â€œI will not stop it. Do you know what else those mameluco farmers in Lacuia said to me? They said bandeirantes have been seen reinfesting the Green to prolong their jobs! That is what they said.”
    â€œThat’s nonsense, father!”
    â€œOf course it’s nonsense! But it’s a natural consequence of defeatist talk just such as I’ve heard from you here today. And all the setbacks we suffer add strength to such charges.”
    â€œSetbacks, Father?”
    â€œI have said it: setbacks!”
    Senhor Prefect Martinho turned, paced to his desk and back. Again, he stopped in front of his son, placed hands on hips. “You refer, of course, to the Piratininga.”
    â€œAmong others.”
    â€œYour Irmandades were on that line.”
    â€œNot so much as a flea got through us!”
    â€œYet a week ago the Piratininga was Green. Today …” He pointed to his desk. “You saw the report. It’s crawling. Crawling!”
    â€œI cannot watch every bandeirante in the Mato Grosso,” Joao said. “If they …”
    â€œThe IEO gives us only six months to clean up,” the elder Martinho said. He raised his hands, palms up; his face was flushed. “Six months!”
    â€œIf you’d only go to your friends in the government and convince them of what …”
    â€œConvince them? Walk in and tell them to commit political suicide? My friends? Do you know the IEO is threatening to throw an embargo around all Brazil—the way they’ve done with North America?” He lowered
his hands. “Can you imagine the pressures on us? Can you imagine the things that I must listen to about the bandeirantes and especially about my own son?”
    Joao gripped the sprayman’s emblem until it dug into his palm. A week of this was almost more than he could bear. He longed to be out with his men, preparing for the fight in the Serra dos Parecis. His father had been too long in politics to change—and Joao realized this with a feeling of sickness. He looked up at his father. If only the old man weren’t so excitable—the concern about his heart. “You excite yourself needlessly,” he said.
    â€œExcite myself!”
    The Prefect’s nostrils dilated; he bent toward his son. “Already we’ve gone past two deadlines—the Piratininga and the Tefe. That is land in there, don’t you understand? And there are no men on that land, farming it, making it produce!”
    â€œThe Piratininga was not a full barrier, Father. We’d just cleared the …”
    â€œYes! And we gained an extension of deadline when I announced that my son and the redoubtable Benito Alvarez had cleared the Piratininga. How do you explain now that it is reinfested, that we have the work to do over?”
    â€œI don’t explain it.”
    Joao returned the sprayman’s emblem to his pocket. It was obvious he wouldn’t be able to reason with his father. It had been growing increasingly obvious throughout the week. Frustration sent a nerve quivering along Joao’s jaw. The old man had to be convinced, though! Someone had to be convinced. Someone of his father’s political stature had to get back to the Bureau, shake them up there and make them listen.
    The