“I take beasts of the field and I give souls to those that will receive them; what other work is there?”

You seek me to provoke me , Luis Quinn thought. You desire me to react to what I see as arrogance and self-aggrandizement. Luis Quinn folded his hands into the still-damp sleeves of his habit.

“I am nearing a judgment, Father Gonçalves. Soon, very soon, I promise you.”

That night he came to the maloca that Diego Gonçalves kept as his private quarters. Pacas fled from Luis Quinn’s feet; Father Diego knelt at a writing desk, penning by the yellow, odorous glow of a palm-oil lamp in a book of rag-paper. Luis Quinn watched the concentration cross Gonçalves’s face as his pen creaked over the writing surface. Ruled lines, ticks, and copperplate, an account of some kind. Quinn’s approach was unseen, unheard; he had always been quiet, furtive even, for a man of his size.

“Father Diego.”

The man did not even start. Had he been aware all the timel Gonçalves set down the nubbin of quill.

“A judgment by night?”

The prie-dieu was the only solid furniture in this long, palm-fragrant building. Quinn settled his large frame to kneel on elaborately appliqued cushions.

“Father Diego, who are those men and women beneath the deck of the ship?”

“They are the damned, Father. The ones who have rejected Christ and His City and so condemn themselves to animal slavery. In time they will all be sold.”

“Men and women; children, Father Diego.”

“They have brought it on themselves; do not pity them, they neither deserve nor understand it.”

“And the sick, Father Diego?”

Gonçalves’s boyish face was bland innocence.

“I am not quite certain what you mean.”

“I looked into one of the malocas. I could not believe what I saw, so I looked into another, and then another and another. This is not the City of God; this is the City of Death.”

“Overtheatrical, Father.”

“I see no play, no amusement in whole households dead from disease. The smallpox and the measles rend entire malocas and leave not one alive. Your ledger there, so neatly ruled and inscribed — have you records there for the numbers who have died since being liberated into your City of God?”

Gonçalvessighed.

“The indio is a race under discipline. They have been given over to us by God to be tried, tested, and, yes, admonished, Father. Through discipline, through exercise, comes spiritual perfection. God requires no less than the best of us as men and as a nation sacred to Him. These diseases are the refiner’s fire. God has a great plan for this land; with His grace, I will build a people worthy of it.”

“Silence.” Luis Quinn’s accent cut like a spade. “I have seen all you have wrought here, but I take none of that into account into my judgment, which is, that you are guilty of preaching false doctrine: namely, that the people to whom you have been sent to minister are born without souls and that it has been granted you the power to bestow them. That is a deadly error, and with it, I find you also guilty of the sin of hubris, which is the fatal sin of our Enemy himself. In the name of Christ and for the love you bear Him, I require you to place yourself under my authority and return with me to São José Tarumás, and then to Salvador.”

Gonçalves’s lips moved as if telling beads or chewing sins.

“Buffoon.”

Rage burned up in Quinn’s heart, hot and sickening and adorable. That is what he wants. Quinn continued in the same flat, emotionless voice, “We will leave at dawn in my canoe. Instruct your headmen and morbichas in whatever they require to maintain the aldeia until your replacement has been sent from Salvador.”

“I truly had expected more.” Gonçalves’s hands were folded piously in his lap. Palm-oil lamps cast unreadable shadows on his face. “A man of languages, from Coimbra indeed; not one of those local peons who can barely even read their own names, let alone the missal, and hear devils in every thunderstorm and várzea frog, a man of learning and perception. Refinement. Have you any idea how I long for a brother with whom I could discuss ideas and speculations as far beyond the comprehension of these dear, simple people as the firmament? I am disappointed, Quinn. I am sadly disappointed.”

“You refuse my authority?”

“Authority without power is empty, Father. Brazil has no place for empty authority.”

“You have seen my commission; you are aware of the license Father Maggalhaes has given me.”

“Really? Do you really imagine you could? Against me? Almost, almost I might try it. But no, it would be a waste.” An index finger lifted a fraction, and directly a dozen crossbows were trained on Luis Quinn. Quinn let his hands fall meekly open: See, like Christ I offer no resistance. How soon he had forgotten the guile and skill of the people of the rain forest.

“’I ask for a task most difficult,’ — you said that once.” Was there no limit to this man’s information’ “I have such a task for you. I had hoped you might embrace it willingly, even gladly; recall. Now it seems I must compel you.”

“I do not fear martyrdom at your hands,” Luis Quinn said.

“Of course not, nor do I imagine I could coerce you by threat to your life. Merely consider that for every bow pointed at you, three are trained on Dr. Robert Falcon as he sleeps in his hammock at the meeting of the White and Black rivers.”

The two men knelt unspeaking. The compline of the forest spoke around them: insects, frogs, shrieking birds of night passage. Luis Quinn gave the barest of nods. Father Diego’s finger scarcely flickered, but the bowmen dissappeared like thoughts.

“Your task most difficult.”

“There is a tribe beyond the Iguapárá River, a vagrant people, the Iguapá, forced from their traditional terrains as other peoples flee the bandeirantes and lesser orders. You will be interested to note that their language is neither a Tupi derivative nor an Aruak/Carib variant. Among all the people of the Rio Catrimani and Rio Branco, they are known as a race of prophets. They seem to believe in a form of dream-time, akin ro real time, inverted. All tribes and nations consult them, and they are always right. Their legend has bought them immunity: the Iguapá have never been involved in any of the endemic warfare that so delights these people. It is my burden to bring the Iguapá the love of Christ and his Salvation, but they are a fugitive, elusive nation. The tribes protect them, even those assimilated into my City of God, and my missionaries have so far been unsuccessful.”

“My predecessors,” Luis Quinn said. “The ones you said departed from you hale in will and wind. You sent them to martyrdom.”

Gonçalves pursed his lips in contemplation.

“Why, I had not considered it in that fashion, but you are right, yes, yes, martyrdom I suppose it is. Certainly none survived.”

“They returned to you?”

“Burning with visions and ravings, insanities and impossibilities. Their minds were quite destroyed; some were babbling and incoherent; a few even had lost the power of speech or were completely insensate.” Gonçalves pressed his hands into unconscious prayer, touched them to his lips in wonder and devotion. “Most succumbed after a few days. One individual, a stout German, endured two weeks. Father Kaltenbacher led me to speculate that an individual with even more highly developed mental faculties might survive, even with the mind intact to communicate what they had seen among the Iguapá.”

“Your overweening pride leads you to madness if you believe that my coming was anything other than at the order of Provincial-General de Magalhães.”

“Is that what you believe?” Gonçalves asked. “Truly?” Again he touched his praying hands to his lips. “Tomorrow you will leave with your native slave and a crew of my Guabirús and travel up the Catrimani and the Iguapára. The peoples who make use of the Iguapás’ talents know how to find them when they need them. You will understand if I do not take you upon your honor to travel unescorted.”