“Save a bat, save the planet, huh?”
“Why not? Your mother would agree. Butterball’s a beautiful little showpiece for the success of intervention.”
“From what I saw on the ship, Butterball can take care of herself,” I said. “I hate things that fly.”
“Oh, you don’t mean that.”
“Yeah? Fly at me some time.”
“You’ll put your hand in decaying flesh, but you don’t like birds and butterflies?”
“I don’t like flying shit that bites. You can’t keep your eye on ’em.”
She sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand, because her fingers and palm were caked with the remains of those who should never have been here in the first place. I’d insulted her in some way, I could tell.
Looking pale and unhappy, Clark came up to us and broke our need for further talk. “Well? Any conclusions before we stop pretending it’s going the way we expected?”
I spared Bonnie the burden of going first. “All the bodies in the huts had their chests burst, except for the one woman. The bodies outside were killed by other means. One had some kind of segmented garrote around his neck. He was strangled. Two were speared through the body.”
“By what?”
“I don’t know yet. No sign of weapons. I don’t know if the researchers went crazy and killed each other, or those aliens you’re avoiding speared them.”
“What about the other three?”
I glanced at the rest of the team over there, the twitchy Marines and the spooked ship’s crewmen who were waiting unhappily in the dim midst of this death ring. I lowered my voice.
“They were pretty much ripped apart. One of them’s in three pieces.”
“How long ago?” Clark asked, burying a shudder.
“Different times,” Bonnie spoke up. “In this arid environment, protected by the cocoons, the black parasites may have the luxury of taking their time. I’ll have to let the medical computer analyze the tissue before we’ll know for sure.”
“I don’t think we need to know,” Clark said. “This doesn’t look good for sticking around. They didn’t last very long, did they? Rory, I hope you agree with me when I say that.”
I shrugged. “There’s a lot of violence here.”
He leaned closer. “Are any of them . . . uh . . . ”
“My mother or my sister? No. I’ve got three women here. One wore a wedding ring. One had dark red hair, and the third is too tall.”
“I’m sorry to drag you into this.”
“Quit apologizing. It’s just business.”
“Okay. You’re lying, but okay.”
“Captain! Over here!”
The call came from MacCormac. We knotted up into a group—mostly because nobody wanted to be alone—and Clark led the way down the hill and just out of the camp, into a grotto of red glass and dark black crispy mulch. On a quick look, I figured the sudden change from sand-colored skeletal mulch to this black stuff meant a lot of those black parasites tended to die in this area. At least, that was the uneducated conclusion. Actually, the black crunch could’ve come from any other source. What did I know about it?
“Stop!” Pocket called.
We piled into each other as we skid to a stop.
“We’re about to leave the ship’s protection grid.” He showed us the screen on his palm-tech. “Not the brightest idea, right?”
“Should we do that?” Bonnie asked.
Clark looked bewildered and didn’t have an answer. He had-n’t expected to leave the grid at all, never mind so soon.
At the bottom of the slope, MacCormac appeared. “Come on down! It’s safe! Be careful of the slope. It’s slippery as hell.”
The slope was indeed slippery, made of what must be millions of years of collected mini-skeletons crushed to a fine consistency and creating a dune-like slide. We helped each other down, but Carmichael stayed at the top when MacCormac signaled him to do so. I got the idea from the way he looked down here that he was perfectly happy staying up there. I only went halfway down myself, and was content to stay just far down enough to see what was going on.
At the bottom was a dimly lit grotto of mulch and glass that was like walking into the neck of a bottle and coming out inside. In front of us, Colonel MacCormac, Sergeant Berooz, and Corporal Edney stood around a nest of oval pods the size of beachballs. There were more than a dozen, each with its meaty top popped like a zit, triangular petals folded back and dried up. The Marines had their weapons pointed at the empty pods, and they were visibly nervous.
“Oh, crap!” Clark blurted.
He threw his arms out at his sides and stopped us all in our tracks. Bonnie and I bunched up behind him. “Oh, crap, crap,” he boiled over.
“It’s safe,” MacCormac assured. “They’re all expended. All hatched. They must’ve been the ones that . . . got a grip on those people in the huts. Y’know what I mean . . . ”
“What are they doing here?” Bonnie asked, breathing in little gulps. “Aren’t they supposed to be in some secluded incubation chamber? Isn’t that what the reports say? This isn’t like any of the reports. Why are they out here by themselves?”
Her confusion came out in fear. Information she had depended on was already falling apart, and we weren’t an hour into the mission.
“It looks like there must’ve been an attack,” Clark guessed. “Several of the researchers got pinched by the hatched stage of those creatures. The fingery, ugly, y’know . . . those. The researchers might have all died defending themselves.”
Oh, boy, here it came. Did I have to tell them?
Yes.
“They wouldn’t have defended themselves,” I said.
Clark gawked at me for shooting down his theory.
“They wouldn’t have had weapons,” I confirmed when I saw his expression.
“Excuse me?” Colonel MacCormac stepped closer, his square face screwed up in military complaint.
“No weapons. My mother wouldn’t allow it. You don’t come into the wolf’s territory, then shoot the wolf when it attacks you. You don’t swim with sharks, then get mad when one bites you. If you’re stupid enough to get killed, too bad.”
“No defense?” MacCormac contributed.
Edney hissed, “Now, that’s stupid.”
I congratulated her with a glower. “Welcome to how Jocasta Malvaux thinks. She may not have allowed them to harm these—these ‘animals.’”
“Why in the devil not?” MacCormac asked. He wasn’t being rhetorical. He wanted clarification.
“Because my mother has a little religious colony going here,” I supplied, “complete with martyrs. I’ve seen it before.”
At the crest of the slope, Private Carmichael, his voice much more timid than his weapon-bristling appearance, asked, “Every living thing fights for its life, right?”
I snapped him a harsh look. “Not brainwashed sacrificial lambs young enough to think that after you die, you wake back up and then you’re famous. Anybody who came on this trip because you wanted my mother’s autograph should’ve gotten it a year ago in some nice bookstore. If she got herself killed, that’s fine. I’m just sorry she took my sister and all those innocent starry-eyed chumps with her.”
In the stultified second after my words obviously stunned everybody into a whole new scare, I felt bad that I’d had to tell them the unvarnished truth.
Not enough to coddle them, though. “Besides,” I added, “notice that there aren’t any dead aliens lying around. The researchers didn’t fight.”
There was no way to ignore the fact that something else happened than we had first assumed. Nobody reviled my declarations more than I did. Nobody wanted to turn around and get out of here more. I’d believed Clark’s descriptions of an easy mission, quick on, quick off, drinks all around. I’d actually believed my mother might be the only problem and that we could handle her. I’d made the mistake of concentrating on that and letting somebody else worry about other things.
“Screw this shit to the wall.” Colonel MacCormac shook his head in frustration and clumsy attempts to sound in control. “I gotta take a piss.”
He crunched around to the other side of the nearest pillar, while the rest of us waited and had nothing to do but avoid meeting each other’s eyes. True to Marine practice, Corporal Edney marched to the best place to keep an eye on us and also on MacCormac. Nobody was to be left alone, not even for an instant. Line of sight was to be scrupulously respected.
“Sparren, Vinza.” Theo’s voice came fairly clear over the speaker, so crisply that it was startling.
Clark cleared his throat to find his voice. “Yeah, Sparren here. What’s up, Theo?”
“I don’t know. Something’s going on outside. The guards are gone.”
Everyone turned to Clark, holding breaths. He brought the com up to his lips and turned away from us, trying to have a private conversation.
“Gone? Like—”
“Like gone. I can’t see ’em, I can’t raise ’em. You want me to go out there and look around?”
“Negative. Stay inside the ship. Nobody goes out. They’re probably just looking around the perimeter.”
“Why aren’t they answering? It’s not like they can walk out of range.”
Clark crunched around and gave up trying to hide what was going on back at the ship. “MacCormac!”
“Yes, sir?” MacCormac appeared from the other side of the pillar, putting his pants back together after nature’s call.
“Donahue and Brand aren’t at their post at the ramp. They’re not answering hails.”
MacCormac’s face flushed. His brows came down as he hit his own com unit. “Donahue, Brand, signal in immediately. This is MacCormac. Speak up!”
“What happened to them?” I asked.
“Nothing can happen to them,” he assured. “They’re in the ship’s protection sphere and they’re well-armed.”
“Would they have left the protection sphere?”
“No. Not without orders.”
“Because this is such a controlled environment?”
“Mind your own business, detective, will ya?”
I ignored him and demanded, “Has any of this protection equipment ever actually been tested on an alien planet?”
Clark’s expression as he glanced at MacCormac, and the Marine’s as he glanced back, gave me my answer. “Let’s get back.”
That was all Pocket, Axell, and Mark needed. The three of them scrambled back up the grade so fast that they lay a spray of black skulch on the rest of us.
Clark shouted, “Stay together! Hold your horses! Hey!”
As his three crewmen passed Carmichael at the top of the slope, Clark leaned forward to scratch his way up the grade, grasping Bonnie by the arm as he went and drawing her with him. “Come on! Come on, let’s stay together! Rory, come on!”
“Let’s move!” MacCormac snapped to his Marines.
Moving on the slope was like climbing around inside a bowl of cereal. Every step pushed more skulch downward. For every step, we slid two.
That was when Berooz slipped. His left foot went straight out sideways and he went down on his right knee. His weapon slammed into a pillar, splattering bits of hard material. The bits flew into my eyes, causing me to stumble for a crucial instant. Berooz twisted to recover, but the slippery grade shifted under him and he went over backward, his weapon flailing above his head. I made a wild reach for him, caught the tie on the bandanna on his wrist, and received a yank that almost pulled my shoulder out of joint. I couldn’t hold him. The bandanna slipped out of my grip. Berooz pitched backward and head first, his back arched and his knees bent.
For just an instant I thought he’d be all right because all he had to fall on was expended egg pods and the skulchy mulch on the grotto floor. He landed on his back with his head bumping down inside an egg pod, which collapsed under his weight with a disgusting splush.
We all scratched to a stop and stared down. Berooz looked shocked, but blinked and lay there for a moment as if gathering himself to get up. In that pause, Edney uttered an aggravated, “Shit, jackass . . . ”
Berooz grinned, embarrassed. Edney reached out to pull him up. As soon as his hand clasped hers, everything changed. Berooz’s expression changed to blinks of bewilderment, then he began to twitch—his whole body from the spine, as if he were being given electrical shocks.
“Get him out of there!” Clark shouted.
Before anyone could move, Berooz began belching horrible broken yowps of agony and surprise. The back of his sensor cap was smoking, billowing with green stenchy tendrils, and suddenly liquid began to splash from behind his ears and neck. The screams became high-pitched with panic.
Edney recoiled for crucial seconds, then found her courage and met MacCormac at their comrade’s sides. They pulled Berooz to his feet. He was stiff as stone, his eyes wild, hands splayed and wagging aimlessly. Edney yanked off Berooz’s sensor cap, and that in itself was a mistake. She stared at her own hand as it began to sizzle. Her glove dissolved in an instant, and her skin was next. She shrieked and fell backward into Clark.
“Acid!” I gasped.
I clawed for the blue cylinder on my belt and skidded toward Edney. I fell to my knees twice, which caused me to hold back after what I’d just seen happen to Berooz. Damning myself for hesitating, I tried to get to her. Heaving out short breaths, she stared at her hand as it fried like an egg.
MacCormac grabbed for his own and tried to spray it on the back of Berooz’s head, but he fumbled and lost precious seconds. Berooz made one long howl of agony that seemed endless, stretching out until the last breath left his lungs. He dropped to a sitting position on the skulch, with MacCormac holding one arm, the other dropping flat at his side, palm up. The screaming stopped and changed to a prolonged wheeze.
MacCormac held him with one hand and sprayed the neutralizer base with the other, coating the back of Berooz’s head until the canister hissed dry, empty. The wheezing of Berooz and the gasping of Edney. I pushed Edney up against a pillar and grasped her by the wrist, pushing her hand flat against the red glass. She gritted her teeth, lips peeling back, and hissed out her pain as I sprayed her hand with the base. The bubbling flesh began to settle down in a final thread of steam.
Only then did I turn to look at the nightmare playing out beside us.
Berooz’s head was haloed in stinking smoke. His legs were twisted unnaturally under him. He pitched over sideways away from MacCormac, to land once again on his back, eyes glazed. What a stink . . .
MacCormac clung to him with both hands. “Help me get him up!” he shouted.
Clark and I were the closest. I pushed Edney, still in terrible pain, toward Bonnie. At the top of the slope, Pocket, Axell, and Mark had come back to look down at us, their faces pasted with confusion. Private Carmichael was on his way down the slope to help Bonnie with Edney.
To this audience the next horror played out. As Clark and I helped MacCormac take Berooz’s arms and lift him again to a sitting position, the poor young man went instantly from alive to dead. When we picked him up, the back of his head stayed on the ground. His brain tumbled out, rolled down his back, and slumped into the puddle of white neutralizer.
And there it lay.
* * *
Clark stumbled backward, petrified. MacCormac stared at the empty braincase of his comrade, and down at the disembodied brain lying in a vomitous gout of bubbles.
Me, I just crouched there holding the dead man’s other arm, once again gripping his bandanna-wrapped wrist. Berooz’s body stiffened in place. He never did go limp. I’d heard of that. Corpses on battlefields, still holding their guns up, still aiming.
Above me, I heard Edney’s pained gasps and Bonnie’s sobs as she tried to hold it in, but couldn’t.
I had to force myself not to pick up the brain and stuff it back into Berooz’s head to wake him up. Only minutes ago he’d saved my life from the same kind of misstep. I hadn’t caught him.
I hadn’t caught him . . .
What good was I here? What good could I possibly do here? I couldn’t save the life of a man standing next to me. What was I doing here?
What if that had been Clark?
Instantly I felt terrible for comparing a man I knew well to one I’d just met. Berooz was a simple guy, easy to make happy. And apparently just as easy to make dead.
“Bring him,” MacCormac rasped. He threw Berooz’s wea-pon over his shoulder, beside his own weapon. “Help me bring him . . . help me carry him . . . ”
“It’d be better to leave him—” I began.
“We’re taking him! I’m not leaving him here!”
MacCormac was either falling apart, or exhibiting exactly what we all needed. Since I didn’t have the people sense to know which was which, I just clammed up and helped him carry Berooz to the middle of the grade, where Pocket and Mark solemnly met us and took his legs. We struggled to the top of the grainy slope.
As we reached the top, Clark appeared beside us, carrying Berooz’s brain in the Marine’s discarded and half-dissolved cap.
Clark’s features were sallow and drawn as he met my eyes. “A man deserves to be buried whole.”
I looked at Berooz’s face as we held him suspended between us. The back of his head still dripped. His eyes peered up at me imploringly.
MacCormac’s face worked and twitched with emotion as if he had a mouthful of glue. He was enraged and mourning, fighting for acceptance, for control, so he could continue to lead. I knew that look. It was the cold bottle of a cop’s life, trying to get the job done without breaking down, to find answers without giving up the inner information that would chisel away our objectivity.
Clark started walking off his torment, leading in his own way. Carmichael moved to one side, Axell to the other, and Clark passed through them, heading back the way we had come, to walk through that sad camp to our ship, and then to leave this planet. It was all in their posture. We’d come too late, and botched the simple plan.
I would go with them, all the time wishing I’d never come to this pesthole. I was done too.
MacCormac, Pocket, and Mark and I carried Berooz. Carmichael bravely led the vanguard, though his steps were mechanical and halting. Axell waited until we passed, then helped Bonnie with the wounded Corporal Edney.
The Complete Aliens Omnibus Page 28