Free The Economy of Light by Jack Dann

they moved quickly, leaving me with the impression that they could have been parted by God’s hands. Then the sky became completely clear, and the humidity returned like air blown through an exhaust pipe. The sky, suffused with pink, gave way to a pellucid clear blue; and the savannah glistened as if covered with dew. It was like walking through a painting of the clarity and intensity of a Vermeer. The hugeness of sky, the rolling grass and jungle climbing into hills seemed to stop time, made me feel as if I were suspended in perfection, that this was the form from which the rest of the world had been, imperfectly, made.
    We followed a winding path made by ants, which looked like a white chalk-line that had been dropped by some impossible craftsman, and Genaro navigated it as easily as if he were steering the barco we had rented. He would put one foot exactly in front of the other, which gave him extraordinary speed and balance; the same reason why American Indians do so well walking on high girders. It was an entirely different way of walking. As I couldn’t keep up with him, he had to slow his pace until I could see it was plainly agonizing for him. He had found a few moments of freedom here, and, once again, I was restricting him. But even walking slowly, I had a tendency to drift off the ant-path and trip and smash into hidden vines, roots, and branches.
    “You must be careful of snakes here, Meester,” Genaro said. “Not so many here that can hurt you, but you walk like a drunk man off the path and step on one of them and they’ll bite you good.” I had once stepped on a fer de lance at my fazenda; luckily I had been wearing high leather boots, or I would have been dead. It had drooled a scummy yellow venom all over my boot. In the savannah, I might encounter cascavel , or rattler, and maybe cobras-corais , which can be pulled away from the skin before it expands its mouth, if the potential victim is fast enough. I had medicine for snakebite, including antihistamine for shock; but even under the best of circumstances, the chances of surviving were only about fifty percent.
    But as we neared the forest, he slowed his pace, at times stopping entirely and cocking his head, as if listening for something. I asked him what was wrong, but he only said, “Dreams. Can’t you feel them?”
    “What do you mean?” I asked as I looked at the forest looming beyond the savannah; it seemed endless. Above the forest, layers of cloud had gathered like smoke. Although I had always felt good being near primal land such as this, I now felt something ominous; it was as if with every step we took toward the jungle ahead, we were getting nearer to darkness and heaviness.
    I had felt that before.
    In the camps.
    “You feel them or you don’t,” Genaro said. It was as if these dreams he was feeling were closing him up once again, for his manner, his posture, even his face took on the sullenness I had known at the fazenda. Whatever he was feeling, or fighting, had clouded him; and I felt the old, traditional barriers between us, the silence of companionship suddenly and irrevocably replaced by the silence of isolation.
    Genaro was in a shell, and I knew as we entered the darkness of the forest that we were near our destination. This forest was identical to every other I had been in over the years, with one exception: this one didn’t seem quite real. It smelled like earth and leaf and compost; macaws crashed through brush above and screeched like metal penetrating metal; but somehow it all felt wrong. Dreamlike, that was it. Everything was in place; everything was perfect, except for one minor and yet impossible thing. What that was I didn’t know...yet.
    So yes I felt the dreams, I supposed. But I couldn’t tell Genaro I understood; he was too locked into himself. He was the old hollow-eyed, tight-faced Genaro, and worse. We were getting closer to the source of his burden. I could feel that, and I wanted to comfort him. But it was