A Day for Damnation twatc-2

by David Gerrold

  "Yes! I do! I want to find out who the enemy is! Maybe they're just as curious about us-"

  "Y'know, that's the trouble with you-and with the rest of your so-called experts. You want to study everyfhin'. You want to question it. And you want to piss away our time! Sometimes Ah wonder just who's side you're really on-"

  I stood up. "Goddammit! This may cost me my assignment-but if you're mad at someone, tell them! Not me! I just want to do the job I was trained for! The United States Army wants me to study the worms and the millipedes and the bunnydogs and all the other Chtorran creatures. Yeah, I'll admit it-I'm fascinated by them. These are the first extraterrestrial life-forms that humanity has ever encountered. But don't you go making assumptions about my loyalties, sir! That offends me. I want the Chtorrans off this planet just as much as you do-but I'm also realistic enough to recognize that might not be possible. If it isn't, I want to know how 'to survive among them. And if it is possible to neutralize the Chtorran infestation, you won't find anyone more dedicated than myself. I'll burn worms till you pry the torch out of my hands! You've got my record there on your desk-you look and see! But I can't stand people making up their minds about a subject before all the facts are in!" I added politely, "Sir!"

  And sat down.

  The general applauded. He grinned. "Not bad. You throw almost as good a tantrum as Ah do. You could use a little polishin' but experience will take care of that."

  Blink. "I beg your pardon, sir?"

  "Son, sit down and listen for thirty seconds. It doesn't matter how Ah feel about this joyride. Nobody's listenin' to my opinion. Ah think you're a damn fool' and Ah think this is a waste of valuable time. But the Science Section has given this a triple-A priority, so like Ah said, it doesn't matter what Ah think.

  "But-" he continued, "you are still under mah command-and Ah am responsible for your life. So, if nothin' else, Ah want to know that you're sure about what you're doin'. Ah don't have to be sure, but you do. Ah've found that a little bit of certainty makes a lot of difference in the results you produce."

  "Yes, sir."

  "It looks to me like you're actually willin' to put your life and your career on the line. Ah'm impressed, Lieutenant. With that kind of intention, you just might have a chance of comin' back. But-" he added, "Ah still wouldn't start any trilogies."

  "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." I felt like I should be looking for the Dormouse and the March Hare. "Uh-would you like to hear about my plan? I'm very well prepared."

  He shook his head. "No. Ah'm going to trust you."

  "But I really think you should."

  "Lieutenant, don't press your luck. It might be a very stupid plan. And then Ah'd have to reconsider mah decision. No. Ah think Ah'll bet on your certainty more than your intelligence. And Ah will trust Colonel Tirelli's faith in you. Have a nice trip."

  He stood up and reached across the desk to shake my hand. I had to stand up again to grab it. "Uh, thank you, sir."

  "Oh, one more thing. It might be some small comfort to know. If you get killed, you'll be automatically promoted one rank. It'll be a consolation for your family."

  "Uh, thanks. What about if I live?"

  "We'll talk about it when you get back. Now, get the hell out of here. Ah have some real work to do." He sat down again and I left, shaking my head and marveling.

  FIFTY

  FLETCHER SPENT most of a week training me.

  On the morning of the first day, she showed me how to listen. "It's about listening with your whole soul-" she began.

  "You have to listen so completely," I said, "-that you become the person you're listening to."

  She looked at me surprised. "Who told you that?"

  "A telepath."

  "Well, he/she was right."

  On the afternoon of the first day, she defined bullshit:

  "You use that word all the time, James-but you don't even know what it means. `Bullshit' is a colloquialism. We use it to mean that something is inaccurate. A lie is bullshit. An excuse is bullshit. A justification, a rationalization, a reason, an explanation. All bullshit. Anything you use to excuse yourself from being responsible.

  "From this moment on, any time you are inaccurate, any time you let bullshit fall from your mouth, I will bust your chops. You got that?"

  On the morning of the second day, she showed me how to listen even deeper than before.

  "Close your eyes and actually look at how you're feeling. Look at your emotions. Look at what your body is doing. Look at the memories that come floating up to the top. Pick an incident from your memory, or make one up. Look at the incident-and notice what your machinery is doing. Notice how you feel. Notice what your body is doing. Notice what memories are connected-"

  We did that all morning.

  On the afternoon of the second day, we talked about righteousness:

  "Do you know that most people, when they tell you something, they're really just second-guessing. They're trying to figure it out afterward, explain it or justify it-and ultimately, prove themselves right. Listen, that kind of right is the enemy. When you try to be right like that, you add inaccuracy. The specific word is righteousness.

  "You can't make yourself right without making the other person wrong-that automatically makes him your enemy. It doesn't give him room to do anything else. You can't go out into that circle being right about being human. You can't take your pain and grief and rage into that circle. The bunnies want to communicate, not have a shrieking match with the monkeys at the waterhole.

  "You cannot have enemies in that circle, James-only partners-"

  On the morning of the third day, she showed me how to center my sense of myself.

  "Did your telepathic friend tell you about identity?" I nodded.

  "Then you know that you are not what you think. You are the person who hears the thoughts. The question is whether or not you're really listening.

  "Do you know there are three levels of listening? First, you hear the sound. Second, you hear the meaning. And third, you hear the meaning under the meaning. You can't be `centered' unless you're listening on all three levels-"

  "This is starting to get confusing-"

  "I know. A lot of it comes from the telepathy training, and more of it comes from the Mode training. I know it's a break in your reality-the reality that you've made up for yourself. You can't get out of that reality, James; all you can do is learn how it works. That's the point here. All of this information comes from looking at how people experience things and how they react to them. Call it the technology of living. You've been running your machinery without an instruction book-"

  On the afternoon of the third day, we talked about concepts: "Your name for this object is `chair.' This is not a chair. This is a collection of molecules, a focus for your attention. This is a thing that you use for the purpose of chair, but the chairness of it exists only in your mind. It's a concept.

  "This object is a chair only to the extent that it matches that concept. If you were cold enough, this would not be a chair any more. It would be firewood-well, not this chair, but you know what I mean. Do you follow this? See, you think the connections you've made between your concepts and the physical universe have meaning. They don't-only in your head. If you believe the world is flat, does that make it flat? No, of course not.

  "Now I'll ask a hard question. If you believe the world is round, does that make it round? Take your time. Right-what you believe is irrelevant. The Earth is an oblate spheroid; and it doesn't care what you believe. You don't get a vote on the physical universe. It is what it is, regardless of your opinion about how it should or shouldn't be. The only thing you have any control over is what you're going to do about it-"

  On the morning of the fourth day, we talked about creation: "Creation is not making something up out of nothing. You can't create in the physical universe-the best you can do is reorganize its molecules. No, real creation happens in here-" She reached over and tapped my head.

  "Creation is the act of
discrimination. You separate this from that and you have created a space between them. Creation is also the act of connection. You connect this to that and you have created a new entity or a new relationship. Creation is the act of drawing a line. You use the line to connect or separate or enclose; but you're the one who drew the line in the first place.

  "The question is, what do you want to create? What kind of line do you want to draw? Do you want to draw a circle around humans and bunnydogs? Do you want to draw a line between humans and worms? How are you going to make it up? You need to be clear about the circle you're creating before you walk into it."

  And in the afternoon of the fourth day, we created. "Are you ready for the last lesson, James?"

  "Yes."

  "It's bad news."

  "I can handle it."

  "All right. This is it. You're a monkey."

  "Huh?"

  "I'll get you a mirror. Your umpty-great-grandmomma and umpty-great-grandpoppa swung naked in the trees and lived on bananas and coconuts. You're their umpty-great-grandson. You live in a house, but you still like bananas and coconuts. And if we took away your clothes, you could climb back up into the trees and nobody would ever know the difference. Are you getting this?"

  "I'm not sure. What's the point?"

  "The point is, you're a monkey. You are-or at least, you think you are-the dominant species on this planet. That may be a conceit. It's ultimately irrelevant. You can't go out there thinking that. You can't go out there being anything but a monkey, because that's all you are. A monkey. You are not a representative of all humankind. Most humanity doesn't even know you exist, and if it did know, it probably wouldn't want you as its representative."

  "You have a great way of pumping me up."

  "Listen, you have to operate in the real world. Out there it will be a circle and some bunnydogs. And you are a monkey. A naked monkey. You have to go out there and be a monkey meeting a bunnydog. That's all you can be. You can't speak for any other monkey on this planet. Are you getting this?"

  "Yes, I think so."

  "Good." She looked at me. "So what are you?"

  "A monkey." I scratched myself in a monkey gesture and made an "eee eee" sound.

  She grinned. "Mates and bananas, James. That's the bottom line. Remember that. There's not a lot much else for monkeys."

  "So, do I eat the bunnydogs or screw them?"

  "That's up to you," she said. "Now-look, you need to be clear about what monkeys do. What happens when a monkey comes up against something new, something outside of its experience-what's the very first thing that happens?"

  "Um... it shrieks. I shriek."

  "Yeah -startlement. That's where the human race has been with the infestation. We're still running around startled. What comes after startlement?"

  "Fear. Obviously."

  "Mm hm. Good-you did your reading. A monkey has only two responses, James. Yipe and Goody. There aren't any others. Everything is variations on that. There isn't an animal on this planet that doesn't have that basic mechanism hard-wired into its cerebral cortex. That's your machinery. You can't not react with yipe or goody. And most of the time, just to be on the safe side, you react with yipe. So you spend ninety-nine percent of your life running your yipe machine. And it doesn't matter how much intelligence you've superimposed on it, James. The intelligence doesn't control the machine, it serves the machine. The intelligence only expresses the yipe on a higher level."

  She pointed forward. "Those creatures out there-those bunnydogs-no matter what kind of animals they are, no matter what kind of culture they operate in, no matter who they pretend to be-they have the same machinery. Or equivalent machinery. Or they wouldn't be there. I'm talking about basic survival machinery. If you don't have a yipe machine you don't survive. Evolution automatically produces a yipe machine. So, what you need to know is that those creatures out there are as scared of you as you are of them."

  I nodded my agreement.

  She continued, "What comes after fear?"

  I thought about it. "Running?"

  "No-let's say you can't run from the thing you're afraid of. What do you do next?"

  "Um-I get angry?"

  "Are you asking me or telling me? What happens when someone threatens you and threatens you and threatens you-?"

  "I get angry."

  "Right. Anger. After fear comes anger. How do you act out anger?"

  I bared my teeth at her. I growled.

  She grinned. "Right. You counterattack. You start by baring your teeth and growling and making terrible faces. If that doesn't work, you start screaming and shrieking. And if that doesn't work, you start throwing coconuts. In other words, you put on a performance of rage. All monkeys do. You do it when your survival is threatened-or the survival of anything you identify with, anything you consider as part of your identity.

  "It's all part of the automatic machinery. If you scare away the thing that you're angry at, then the machinery worked; you survived. At the very worst, you might have to fight-but most of the time, though, a good performance of anger can prevent a fight. I've just told you everything you need to know to understand international politics."

  She let me appreciate the truth of that joke for a moment, then she continued, "That may be fine for monkeys, James. It may even be fine for human beings, though I doubt it. It is definitely not fine for dealing with worms. That's what you need to know.

  "Some of us are moving through fear and are starting to move into anger toward the Chtorrans. It could be a fatal mistake. Our monkey machinery is stuck in yipe. There's no escape. Running doesn't help. And there are no goodies. So, the next step is rage."

  "I know-I've seen it-"

  "Go on. Tell me, what's rage."

  "Rage is the fighting machine gearing up."

  "Right," she said. "And we know we can't fight the worms, can we? They've already demonstrated that we can't outfight them. So, what comes next, James?"

  "Uh-"

  "What comes after rage, James?"

  "I don't know-"

  "Come on, what happens after you've been arguing the same argument for a week?"

  "I don't know about you, but I get bored-"

  "Right. Boredom." She nodded with satisfaction. "After you've raged and raged and raged and used up all your energy and frustration, suppose the thing you're frightened of, angry at, raging at, is still sitting there picking its teeth and grinning at you. That's when you get tired of being angry. We call that boredom. Or annoyance. But now that you've given up being angry, there's room for you to actually become interested in that thing-whatever it is-that scared you in the first place. That's how the machinery works. It isn't until you let go of the yipe that you have room for the goody, right?"

  "Right."

  "That's the machinery, James. That's what you're operating on top of. You can't stop it from running. You never could. Now, why do you think I'm telling you all this?"

  "So, I can-uh ... well, the object of this is to establish communication, so this is about not letting the monkey machinery get in the way of the communication ... right?" I grinned, I knew it was.

  "Right." She grinned right back. "I want you to finish being afraid and angry and bored in here. Don't take that into the circle or that's what the circle will be about. When you give up all that stuff-what can you do?"

  I shrugged. "Nothing, I think."

  "Don't be flip. What can you do after you give up all those monkey-machine reactions?"

  I shrugged again. "Have a party?"

  "That's exactly right. After all that other stuff is taken care of, there's nothing left to do but play together. You make up a gamecall it business or marriage or United States Congress-but it's still only a very fancy game played by very fancy monkeys. So ... do you know what you have to do in that circle?"

  "Make up a game for monkeys and bunnies."

  "You got it. That's all you have to do. If you're fun to play with, the communication will take care of itself."


  "Yes, I see-I really do." I was marveling at the simplicity of it. "I have to leave my rifle behind. I have to leave my military mind-set behind. I have to even leave my scientist act behind. I have to just-I see it!-I have to just go in there as a monkey who wants to play, don't I?"

  "Congratulations." She beamed at me and shook my hand. "As Chief Medical Officer of this operation, I hereby pronounce you fit for duty. You are the best chimpanzee in the United States Army." She handed me a banana.

  "Only a banana?" I asked. "I don't get a mate?"

  "That, James, is part of the graduate course."

  FIFTY-ONE

  THE FINAL meeting of the presentation team took place at eighteen hundred hours.

  Colonel Tirelli, Dr. Fletcher, Dr. Larson, three staff members I didn't recognize, the two women on the audio-video team, five observers, three mission specialists, six pilots, two programmers, two spider handlers, and the weapons team. I almost felt crowded.

  There wasn't a lot of business that needed to be handled. Even Dr. Fletcher admitted that. We checked the weather forecasts, narrowed our choice of target sites-we'd make the final selection tomorrow morning-and then opened it up for questions. There weren't a lot.

  Colonel Tirelli took over then and asked if anyone wanted to reconsider their decision to participate. This was a strictly volunteer operation and if anybody present wanted to drop out, they could do so now-or they could see her privately if they preferred. "You have until-" she looked at her watch, considered, and said, "-twenty-one hundred hours. There are backup people available, I assure you-so don't feel that you have to do this. The operation is dangerous, so do consider your participation carefully. If I don't hear from you by twenty-one hundred hours, I will assume that you have made a complete and total commitment. Did everyone understand that?"

  Affirmative nods.

  "Well, then-that seems to be it. Does anyone here have anything else to add?"

  No. No one.

  "Good. Thank you-and good night! Get yourself a good dinner, get to bed early, and get a good night's sleep!"