A Rage for Revenge watc-3

by David Gerrold

  I sat before the terminal, shaking.

  Nobody would give me any help in my decision making any more.

  Not my father, he was dead.

  What was it Jason had said? Oh, yeah. Help diminishes a person. It rips them off of the opportunity to grow. You have to handle it yourself.

  I was truly alone.

  And here was the question that Jason had left me with: What was my life about?

  Killing worms.

  Except-what if worms weren't a threat any more?

  It was only that we insisted on seeing them as a threat. But-that's not true, Jason. I'm not making the worms a threat. They are a threat. They eat people. You, yourself, said it, Jason. We are their food.

  And I don't fucking want to be food.

  There is only one law in biology. It is the fundamental law. Survive!

  If you don't survive, you can't do anything.

  Goddamn you, Jason Delandro-what did you do to me? How do I deprogram myself from your madness?

  I climbed back into my sleeping bag. I masturbated myself into unconsciousness. I awoke and ate and cried for no reason at all. I stayed there in that ruined house waiting for it to be over, waiting for Santa Claus, waiting for rigor mortis

  I was tired of waiting.

  I thought about killing myself.

  No. Not until after I put a bullet through the brain of Jason Delandro.

  That was what my life was about. No.

  I didn't know. It didn't matter. The Chtorrans were going to take over the planet anyway. Gizzard.

  That was the rhyme I was looking for.

  There once was a lady named Lizard,

  who got lost in a pink candy blizzard, with a fellow named Jim

  who wanted to swim,

  up her legs to visit her gizzard.

  It wasn't a good one, but it was a start.

  I never had found a rhyme for Jason. That was what had stopped me. If I could find a rhyme for Jason, I'd be free. He wouldn't be in my head any more. I could put him dawn on the paper and rip up the paper and burn the pieces, and put the ashes in a jar and seal the jar and put the jar in a lead box, and seal the box in concrete and drop it down to the bottom of the ocean where an undersea volcano will swallow it up, and if that isn't enough, I'll have a comet strike the goddamn planet to obliterate the last trace of that scumbag son of a bitch

  Comet. Vomit. Not the best rhyme, no.

  There was a young fellow named Ted,

  who had a radio put in his head.

  Long wave or short,

  he did it for sport

  - and to improve his reception in bed.

  Okay. But what rhymes with Jason? Basin? Maybe.

  There was a young lady from Venus,

  whose body was shaped like a penis.

  A fellow named Hunt

  was shaped like a cunt,

  so it all worked out fine, just between us.

  It made no sense at all, but I loved it. It rhymed and it was filthy as hell. I wanted to stand up in church and recite it aloud. Nascent? No, bad rhyme, and too obscure.

  Jase?

  Trace. Face. Place. Disgrace.

  He said, with a trace

  of the stuff on his face,

  No, not the internal couplet. And not Jase. It would have to be Jason.

  Disgracin'? No.

  The problem gnawed at the back of my brain. I could hear a thousand little voices scrabbling around for answers; but I had ta solve this one myself to be free.

  There was an old bastard named Gene,

  impotent, selfish, and mean.

  His dick was so shamed

  by what the man claimed,

  it pretended that it was a spleen.

  That one was easy.

  Probably because I didn't know anyone named Gene. Jason.

  There once was a fellow named Jason,

  whose horrible death I would hasten.

  That was it.

  Jason had left me incomplete.

  No. I had let myself be incomplete with Jason. Incomplete-meaning there's stuff you haven't said. You need to say it to be complete; but you haven't said it, so you're walking around carrying all this stuff you haven't said and need to say-and you're going to say it to the first person you meet who looks like Jason. Heaven help them.

  So what did I want to say to Jason anyway? Fuck you?

  It was a start.

  No. I knew what I wanted to say.

  I'd say, "I don't like being cheated and robbed and manipulated and lied to."

  But Jason wouldn't see it that way. He'd just see it that I'd betrayed him. He wouldn't see it from my side. He wouldn't see it the way I'd experienced it.

  "Fuck you," would have to do.

  Except he wouldn't squirm. He'd see it as an honor. I wondered how the worms would feel about it.

  That made me smile. Then it made me laugh. Out loud.

  That would be the ultimate irony-if everything Jason said about the worms was bullshit.

  What if Jason was wrong? What if the worms didn't care? What if he was just one more piece of food-but useful food because he kept the rest of the food from running away.

  Ha ha. Oh God.

  With a French lass, it's unwise to trifle.

  They have urges they simply can't stifle.

  A woman of France

  will pull down her pants

  at the sight of a towering eye full.

  I didn't know where it was coming from; once it got started, I couldn't stop-but I didn't care.

  I'd write them and I'd laugh and feel pleased with myself. It was so satisfying to be able to do something that didn't have to mean anything at all.

  The rest of the world could go to hell.

  "My God!" screamed devout Mrs. Pike,

  as she fondled her stableman's spike.

  "This is quite out of place,

  and a great loss of face

  - but I think I have fallen in like!"

  I'd feed him to worms,

  just to see how he squirms

  but they'd vomit his crap in a basin.

  I made up my mind. I will never be food again. I took long thoughtful baths.

  I masturbated and thought of Lizard.

  I left the TV to babble about shuttle launchings and lunar ecology projects. I turned on all the machines in the house and surrounded myself with music and words and pictures and smells. I went from one house to the next, all of them abandoned, looting through the shelves for discs and tapes and books and games.

  I got angry. I got afraid. I cried.

  I screamed. I did a lot of screaming.

  I slept and ate and shivered and after a while I didn't cry as much, and I didn't rage as hard, and one day I even found myself laughing at something somebody said on the TV because it was silly and stupid and funny, and I marveled at myself.

  A well-endowed fellow from Ortening

  prepared for an evening of sportening,

  with a boy from a disco,

  till he lubed up with Crisco,

  and discovered, alas, it was shortening!

  I was learning how to be ordinary again. I felt terrific. I could be ordinary!

  And then I felt sad again for a while, I didn't know why. But now I knew what was happening. I was getting better. Something bobbed up to the surface of my mind. Something I'd heard about the Revelationists, from way back before the first plagues appeared in Africa and India. Somebody had left a Revelationist tribe and written a book about his experiences. He'd said that he'd lived at such an intense, incredible peak of emotional activity, day after day after day, that when he was finally free of that kind of continual stimulus, he went into a profound physical and mental depression.

  That was what was happening to me now. It was all right. It was part of the process.

  When I finished being depressed, I would be me again. Whoever that was.

  But at least, now that I knew what was happening, I could begin to be really responsible for myse
lf again.

  I walked outside for the first time in days. The sky was drizzly. Cold droplets spattered into my eyes. It was beautiful. For the first time in months, water rolled down my cheeks that didn't have salt in it.

  A lady who read Sigmund Freud,

  thought her genitals underemployed;

  so she put in a stand

  for a seven-piece band,.

  and held dances that we all enjoyed.

  29

  Family

  "Misery only likes company. It prefers loneliness."

  -SOLOMON SHORT

  I should have headed north. To San Francisco. I turned south.

  I didn't know where the place was exactly-I wasn't even sure why I was going there-but it was someplace to go and I knew I could find it.

  Highway 101 was a long straightaway of tall trees and burned out buildings. The people of San Francisco had fled south along this road, spreading the dreadful plagues they were fleeing. Every burned-out building or abandoned automobile was a monument to someone's death.

  The highway was empty now.

  The abandoned cars had been pulled off. Many of the burned buildings had been bulldozed flat. Some new greenery was beginning to creep into the war zone, but still the highway seemed carved down the center of a bleak scar of rubble.

  All the roads in America were like this.

  There had been no escape from the dying, but people had fled anyway. The very act of fleeing had only hastened the spread. The National Science Center at Denver-had still not identified all of the different diseases. Not all of them had attacked human beings. Animals and plant species had suffered too.

  At San Jose, I turned west across the mountains. There had been fires here. There were blackened tree stumps dotting the hillsides. The new growth would take a long time to cover the wounds.

  I noticed that some of the new growth was pink. Not a good sign.

  The Chtorran plants were more aggressive than Earth ones. If the native plants were already established, that was enough advantage for them to survive; but given an area where they had to compete on equal terms, the Chtorran plants would take hold every time. Burning out the Chtorran growth wouldn't work. It would just come back over and over. That was another problem that would have to be addressed.

  I came out on the coast road. The Pacific Ocean was bright with reflected sun. The highway looped across green fields and along the shore. I stopped the Jeep and stood up to look over the windshield. The wind came stiff and cold across the grass, carrying the smell of raw salt air. High above, a seagull wheeled and hawked across the sky, spreading seagull screams as it went. I could smell seaweed on the beach.

  For a moment, I almost forgot there was a war. For a moment, I almost forgot the confusion in my head. Jason. . .

  He wasn't going to give up.

  He'd keep his word. I could depend on that. He'd find me and he'd kill me.

  If he was still alive.

  Maybe I'd gotten him first. And maybe not. There was no way to know.

  No.

  I had to put him behind me. Logically -I had to be logical about this-there was no way for him to find me. Logically, I wasn't worth the trouble.

  Forget him. It's over.

  Go somewhere quiet and figure out what to do next.

  I released the brake and let the Jeep ease forward. South.

  A few kilometers down the road there was a sign that read, "New Peninsula Turnoff. Next Right." I took it.

  Twenty-three years ago, a development company had sunk five gigantic turbines into the ocean current off the coast of California. They had been supplying most of Santa Cruz's power ever since. But during the off-use hours of midnight to six A.M., their power was diverted into an underwater shoal of metal and junk. The reaction of electricity and seawater produced an accretion around the metal: a growth like coral, but with the strength of concrete.

  Over a period of years, an entire peninsula was grown. Tons of landfill were deposited on the concrete shoal. Solid waste from all over the state was transported to the site. A landscape had been constructed along the length of it, and a private little vacation village had been constructed at the tip.

  The village had been built to be a model of technology. It had free electricity from the ocean turbines. That power was also used to distill fresh water. The extra heat was used to heat every building on the peninsula and provide hot water as well. There was an underground-underwater network of service tubes and access bays.

  I knew all this from the articles I'd read in the Sunday Features. I came around a curve and I could see it in the distance. It was almost an island. A mountain had been constructed where the peninsula touched the shore.

  The peninsula was a southward-pointing loop. A long concrete bridge curved around a huge recreation lagoon and touched the peninsula on the westward side. This was the only access to the village.

  As I turned onto the bridge, I realized just how effectively this whole thing had been designed. I wondered if the Disney people had been involved. For just a moment, I had the impression that I was driving straight into the ocean, then the bridge began to curve and I was coming across the water toward a glimmering seaside fantasy. The village shone in the midday sun. There were domes and towers and clustered places of arches and arcades, all flashing shades of pink and gold and white. The effect was dazzling. I knew how it had been done; they were made of a kind of foamed glass concrete; it hardened to a shiny stucco-like surface with the albedo of tile; even if you could chip it, all that you would do would be to reveal more of the same shimmering surface, but even knowing how the effect was done did not diminish its magic.

  The drawbridge was down and I rolled across it slowly.

  The gateway to the village was a simple arch; I suspected that it was also a frame for security devices, but it was so elegantly designed it looked more like a friendly welcome.

  I rolled past wide lawns. Three robot gardeners were trimming hedges. Two more were trimming the grass with laser-mowers. You could land airplanes on this field.

  Directly ahead of me was a forest, and all the plants were green joyously, verdantly green. There were tall palm trees with green fronds waving in the air, gnarly Monterey pines curling like dragon claws, and sparkling yellow aspen with leaves glittering like golden petals in the bright noonday sun. Slender eucalyptus trees stretched against the crisp blue sky. There were graceful elms and thick-trunked oaks and sheltering willows lining the streets. Every building seemed to be nestled within a garden or a pool or a shady nook. Huge ferns cascaded over walls. There wasn't a red or pink plant in sight. The Chtorran infestation hadn't touched here yet. If you had the power, you could do anything.

  I felt as if I'd found Paradise, a tiny piece of it at least. Even the air smelled green.

  Except-the streets were deserted. It couldn't be Paradise without people. But I didn't see any other vehicles. I eased the Jeep forward.

  The roadway turned. It formed a loop around the entire peninsula. The center of the loop was a lush green wilderness, a kilometer wide and seven kilometers long: the village had been constructed around, and probably under as well, a deep sheltering park. A shallow stream fed down from the mountains, filling the park with a network of freshwater ponds. Here and there, I could see ornate Japanese bridges arching high over the brook. Each area of the park seemed to have its own separate personality. Here was a wide field, there a sheltered copse, here a rocky outcrop. It beckoned the onlooker; it invited you to explore.

  The south end of the loop led past what had once been a mall of restaurants and theatres and community buildings. As it turned back north, these gave way to hotels, condominiums, and apartments, two or three blocks of them. These gave way to clustered houses and finally estates.

  The north end of the loop paused at the base of the man-made mountain, the hiking ridge, and then turned south again, through another residential district to a hospital, a courthouse, and a sheriff's office. Here the road turned back out o
nto the bridge. Traffic here was intended to be all one way. It took less than ten minutes to circle the entire village.

  Abruptly, a gaggle of naked screaming children burst out of the bushes ahead of me; they were charging happily across the street. I stood on the brakes and brought the Jeep to a screeching halt. Some of the children stopped and stared. Others darted around the vehicle and kept going.

  Three teenage girls in dripping wet bathing suits came out of the park after the children. They looked like they were trying to herd them, and not doing a very good job of it.

  A fourth girl, dressed in blue jeans and carrying a bullhorn, followed after. She started calling the children back to her. "All right, now: form a circle. Everybody. Come on, quickly now."

  She had dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin. She glanced up once and saw me watching them. An expression of annoyance flickered across her face, then she turned back to her job. "All right, I don't think you're being noisy enough, kids! Let's see how much noise you can make!"

  The children were delighted at the opportunity. They started screaming and hollering.

  "Oh, boo-I can hardly hear you. I thought you said you were going to make some noise!"

  The children laughed and screamed even louder. They jumped up and down and waved their arms in the air and hooted and whooped like Indians. I figured there were at least forty of them. They were all sizes, all ages, all colors. Less than half of them were white. I'd heard the plagues were hardest on Caucasian and Asian people.

  "Come on, kids! Let's make some real noise now! B-Jay can't hear you yet! Let it go! Let's hear some real screaming! I can still hear myself think! Come on, let's make the biggest noise in the whole world!" The girl was good.

  For a moment, I thought of Delandro and his Revelations. This looked almost the same. She was coaching those bobbing little bodies into a frenzy. The children screamed like geese and steam whistles. They whooped and hollered until they collapsed laughing to the grass.