A Season for Slaughter watc-4

by David Gerrold

  I was certain that there were even more astonishing partnerships yet to be discovered. If we could monitor the complete life cycle of everything that went on within this womb-nest, what surprises would we find? What mysteries of Chtorran growth would finally be unraveled?

  I leaned forward and switched one of the displays to monitor the status of Sher Khan. We were going to have to bring the prowler back. Its sample bays were getting full, and its fuel cells were going to need recharging soon. We could reload it with wide-band remotes and send it back down into the nest. Once released, the probes could install themselves, and we'd get a much more detailed view of the nest.

  I glanced at my watch. It was still early. If we worked through the night, we could probably do the turnaround before dawn. If anything interesting was going to happen in that nest as a result of the pink storm, we should get the bigger probes in place as quickly as possible. And I didn't want to run the risk of putting Sher Khan on emergency power to get it out of the nest; the margin was too small. Okay-I made up my mind. We'd pull it out now.

  I leaned against the chair one more time, trying to get the vertebrae in my back to crack, but either I was all cracked out, or too tightly knotted. The best I could do was give myself an uncomfortable cramp.

  I limped back into the main cabin of the van. "Siegel, plant the rest of the probes and bring the prowler home. Once you get it started up the tunnel, let Reilly or Locke monitor the climb out. Put the samples in the freezer, reload the beast with an EMPgrenade and as many wideband remotes as it can carry, then send it back down. Let Valada handle the on-board operation; she or Reilly can take it down the tunnel. You or I will take over when it gets into the inner chamber. I want the first of those probes in place before dawn. Got it? Good. Let's move."

  Willig glanced over to me. "Got time for an argument first?"

  "Only a short one," I said. I grabbed the overhead support and hung from it, half looming over her. "You have three minutes. Go."

  "Don't need it," she answered. "I think it's a mistake to pull the prowler out now. What if something important happens down there?"

  "I thought of that. If something important happens, we'll catch it on the probes. But if we don't get the prowler out now and recharge it, and something happens, we risk losing not only the prowler, but all its samples too. I think it's safer to do it now. I don't think anything's going to happen tonight; not while the storm is at its thickest; tomorrow, I'm not so sure. Once the dust settles, that's when the eating starts. I'd like Sher Khan to have a full charge before then."

  "Okay," she said. "Argument's over." She turned back to her station. "I've charted a path back. Mostly solid ground; the dust shouldn't be too deep; but there are one or two places where it might get a little tricky, and there's that erosion gully that might make for a misstep or two. Whoever brings it back will be working blind. We'll be better off letting the LI engine handle it. Let the operator sit back and enjoy the ride."

  "My thought exactly," I said. I gave her my best grin. "The secret of being a brilliant commander is to let your troops have brilliant ideas. Set it up."

  She was already doing so. She didn't even glance up from her keyboard and screen. "What time should I wake you?"

  "You putting me to bed?" I asked.

  "You were already on your way. When I put you to bed, you'll know it."

  I stumbled to the back of the van and fell into the bottom bunk. And suddenly, I was alone again-and feeling everything that I had been resisting for hours.

  It all rushed in on me at once. Everything was buzzing. My head, my heart, my hands. My whole body was vibrating. I touched the vein in my neck. My heart rate was uncomfortably accelerated. How long had I been running myself at this intensity? A day? A week? A lifetime? I didn't remember the last time I had allowed myself to relax. I couldn't even do it now. I lay in the bunk and trembled. I knew this feeling well, anxiety rushing toward panic; desperation, frustration, and the razory feeling of terror. My mind was racing. I was afraid to let myself relax, afraid that if I did let go, I would also be letting go of life; that the exhaustion would so overpower my control over my own body that there would be nothing left to hold me together. I would just evaporate. I would simply topple into unconsciousness and disappear forever. The bottom would open up underneath me and I'd drop down into oblivion. Not death-but the step beneath it.

  I sat up abruptly. Too fast-it made me dizzy. I put my head between my hands and started counting slowly. Waiting for the dizziness to pass. Waiting for my body to calm down. Only it wouldn't. Couldn't. My gut was knotted like the mass of writhing Chtorran creatures beneath the shambler grove. What was gnawing at me so intensely that I wanted to break out of this cabin, pop the door, and go running naked out into the dust?

  Did I even have to ask?

  Everything we were doing-it was only valuable if we could get safely back. Would we be able to do that? How thick was the dust outside? How fast would it congeal into goo? Would we be buried in it? Or just find ourselves so stuck that we couldn't get out? The vehicle might be glued to the landscape by tomorrow. Would they pick us up if we tried to call for a chopper?

  More important, would anyone look at the data that we'd gathered?

  Or was my name so poisoned now that they'd flush away our samples without looking at them, simply because my name was attached?

  What was General Wainright doing? What did Dannenfelser have planned for me next? And what would Dr. Zymph have to say? Nothing printable, I'm sure.

  Most important of all, what would Lizard do? What could I say to her? What could I do to make it better?

  I'd gone too far three times in a row now. I had this dreadful feeling

  I lay back down on the bunk again. I was buzzing more ferociously than ever. What had I done the last time I had felt this crazy? I didn't know. I couldn't remember ever having been this crazy-no, that wasn't right. I had been crazier than this. Much crazier. But this time, I wasn't enjoying it.

  "I don't know," I said. "I just don't know."

  And then I heard Foreman's voice in my head. "I got it. You don't know. But if you did know… what would you know?"

  "No," I said. "I really don't know."

  "I hear you," he replied, laughing. "But if you really did know… what would you know?"

  Despite myself, I laughed. Last time, I'd felt so terribly trapped and desperate, I'd written over a hundred limericks, some of them so awful that even I was embarrassed to read them.

  Writing limericks hadn't cured my craziness; it had only channeled it into a more socially acceptable behavior. That was the joke. Dr. Davidson once told me that there is no real sanity. All that anyone ever learns to do is fake it so well that other people don't find out the truth.

  Limericks. Dumb idea. Still-it was something to do. Something to distract me.

  What could I rhyme with Marano? Nothing. I'd have to try the first name.

  Sex as performed at Miss Lydia's is usually quaint and fastidious, and even the price is said to be nice, except, of course, when it's hideous.

  Sooner or later, I was going to have to find a second rhyme for Willig.

  I fell asleep before I could think of one.

  The stingfly is a perfect example of parallel evolution. The creature is the Chtorran equivalent of the anopheles mosquito. It is smaller, faster, and much more voracious, but it is the functional equivalent of its Terran counterpart.

  The stingfly bites its victim, it injects an anticoagulant, it sucks blood (or whatever body fluid serves the purpose of blood in Chtorran organisms), it picks up bacteria and viruses, and it delivers them directly to its next target.

  The stingfly has an extremely rapid metabolism. Because of its small size and rapid growth, it must feed again and again throughout the day. In a twenty-four-hour period, the stingfly is capable of biting and infecting as many as a hundred different individual animals, both Chtorran and Terran. The stingfly appears to be the primary mechanism for the spread of Chtorran
microorganisms.

  As a result, it is an extremely efficient vector of disease. At this writing, most scientists believe that the stingfly was the original agent by which the Chtorran plagues were introduced into the human population.

  —The Red Book,

  (Release 22.19A)

  Chapter 21

  Playback

  "The trouble with picking up cats is that they always run to the bottom."

  -SOLOMON SHORT

  Willig, the unrhymable, shook me awake gently. "Captain McCarthy?"

  "Huh-? What?" Trying to sit up, I banged my head on the upper bunk. I rolled out sideways, still rubbing my forehead. "What time is it?"

  "It's seven-thirty. Nothing was happening, so we let you sleep."

  "I wish you hadn't-"

  "You needed the rest."

  "'Scuse me? The army I'm in, captains get to give orders to corporals."

  "Add it to the list of charges at my court-martial. I'd have let you sleep longer, but-"

  "What happened?"

  "Nothing yet. We got the prowler recharged and reloaded. I thought for sure the noise would have awakened you. We got it back down the hole at six-thirty in the ayem. The LI took it all the way down without any problem. We've already got half the wideband probes on-line. Siegel is placing the rest."

  "But-?"

  "We've got something moving topside. It's still below the horizon-"

  "How's the dust?"

  "It stopped coming down some time last night. The day is clear. Visibility out to the edge. The landscape looks so pink, you almost expect to see the Emerald City in the distance."

  "And?" I prompted. I was already heading forward.

  Willig followed. "We've got dust plumes in the distance. Analysis suggests three separate objects."

  I tapped Locke out of the chair at my station. "Let's have a look."

  Locke pointed from behind my left shoulder. "There, and there-"

  "I see."

  "Is that worms?"

  "It's consistent with worms," I acknowledged. "But it could just as easily be jeeps or humvees. Or crazy bikers. Or bandits."

  "Uh-uh," said Willig. "No sane person would go out in this shit."

  "Well, that narrows it down to only two billion survivors. There aren't any sane people anymore."

  "You know what I mean."

  "Ever hear of renegades?" Willig stopped arguing.

  "But," I added, "the odds do favor worms. This is a worm neighborhood, not a human one. Have you got a track on them?"

  Locke reached past my shoulder and tapped a button. "Here's the map, here's the overlay. See? They're tacking back and forth, but always moving steadily northeast. They'll be here within the hour."

  "Good," I said. "That gives me time for breakfast." I pushed away from the console and swiveled to look at Willig. "I'll have bacon and eggs, eggs over hard, bacon crisp, a large orange juice, white toast with soft cream cheese and strawberry jelly. Grapefruit sections in syrup. And peel me three grapes."

  "You'll have what the enlisted men are eating," Willig said. "It's brown. It's gooey. And there's no shortage of it."

  "Well, it was worth a try." I turned back to Locke. "How long have you been on shift?"

  "Only an hour."

  "Okay, you go topside and man the turret. If Reilly's awake, put him in the other bubble. Charge the weapons. We'll use cold rockets and tangle-sprays. Until it settles, the pink stuff is still fairly explosive."

  "You want to put a spybird up?" Willig asked.

  I thought about it. I scratched my head. I stuck a finger in my ear and wiggled it. I smoothed my hair. I scratched my cheek. I needed a shave. My butt itched. I wanted a shower. I looked up at her and said, "Nah. We'd probably lose it in the dust, and we may need it later. Let's just sit tight. Siegel? Anything happening in the nest?"

  Siegel didn't answer immediately. He looked like he was searching for the right words-and failing.

  "What?" I asked.

  "Uh-something kinda weird. I don't know how to explain it."

  "Don't panic. Everything's kinda weird. Let me see the playback-" I reached overhead and pulled the VR helmet down. I dropped back down into cyberspace with surprising ease. Today the Chtorran nest didn't seem quite so alien; I didn't know if that was good or bad.

  The view was of the same nest of slugs, or maybe it was a different one. They still looked like hairless baby worms. But I'd seen a baby worm fresh out of its shell; it had been born-hatched?-with hair. So, whatever these were, they had to be embryonic or… something.

  "Okay," said Siegel. "Here's the playback-"

  In front of me, reality shifted and flickered; the time readout said we were looking back less than an hour. There were more slugs in the pile. It was bigger.

  "We were planting probes," said Siegel. "One of them slipped. Well, just watch."

  The probe was shaped almost like a slug itself, only hardshelled. It was a flat, rounded ovoid, looking something like a streamlined beetle. It didn't have the intelligence of a prowler, it was a simple-minded thing, but it was sufficient for the job at hand.

  In the view ahead, one of the probes was trying to crawl over the mass of squirming wet creatures when it disturbed the equilibrium of the heap, and a number of the slugs started sliding wetly down. Immediately all of the slugs began screaming, a shrill, high-pitched, piercing chorus of noise. As they did, the pile broke apart into several smaller conglomerations. A scattering of individual slugs squirmed across the fleshy floor of the nest. All of them were moving faster now, writhing and wriggling with nasty agitation. Some of the organs of the nest began reacting to the noise and the excitement, resonating with their own tremblings and blubbering sounds. This only increased the discomfort and agitation of the slugs.

  "Now, watch this-" said Siegel. "Watch the two on the right."

  The slugs were squealing like piglets separated from their sow. The two on the right were the most annoyed. One of them accidentally bumped into the other; both of the slugs reacted with intense visceral anger. They faced each other, both retracting back and bristling with goose-bumpy-like protrusions. One of them attempted to rear up; the other attacked, biting furiously. The first one squealed in pain, then it too began biting; the two of them rolled and tumbled, biting and screaming, writhing across the soft floor like eels. The pallid slugs had amazingly large mouths. Our scans of the prowler's first three specimens showed they had no teeth, only hard-ridged gums. It wasn't hard to believe that they might in fact be baby worms. The ferocity of the fight before us would be evidence enough for most people.

  "Here we go now," said Siegel. "This is the amazing thing." The two slugs careened like a pinwheel, suddenly slamming into a red blubber and ricocheting off into another agitated cluster of siblings. Immediately the cluster of slugs exploded with anger, each of the individual creatures transforming into the same kind of enraged creature as the two who had triggered the chain reaction. Each of the slugs attacked whatever slug was closest to it, sometimes forming a daisy chain of attackers, sometimes clumping, forming and re-forming new clusters of churning furies. Within seconds, every slug in the jumble was part of the fray. The thick blood spattered, then it flowed, finally it puddled.

  A few seconds more and the pattern of the fight solidified. Every slug was attacking, every slug was biting, every slug was furiously eating. Those slugs that were too severely wounded, or overpowered by multiple attackers, soon stopped moving and were quickly devoured. Soon the furies began to slow, shortly the fighting stopped altogether, replaced instead by an orgy of voracious feeding, gorging, and mindless chewing. Eventually, the original jumble began to re-form again, this time with fewer, but much fatter, members. Of the missing brethren, only a few dark patches remained. The remaining slugs were still uneasy, but we could see that they were quieter now and would soon resume their former, less agitated state.

  Siegel returned the display to now-time. "Pretty scary stuff, huh?"

  "I've seen committee m
eetings that were worse," I said, but not too convincingly. Siegel was right. These creatures had a ferocity that belied their blobby, amorphous innocence.

  "What do you think?"

  "Interesting defense mechanism," I said. "Whenever you're distressed, eat someone." My voice was a lot calmer than my stomach said it should have been.

  "So? Do you think these are baby worms?" Siegel asked.

  I hesitated before answering. "I don't know," I admitted. "I've seen baby worms. They had hair. These don't. Maybe these are some kind of transitory phase." I popped off the VR helmet and began thinking out loud. "The babies I saw had been tamed by a renegade family. They already had three adult worms, but they wanted more. I think they wanted to start breeding them. I've always wondered how that would have worked out-who would have ended up controlling who.

  "But I was with them when they found a fourth worm, a baby just hatched. It was a very important event to them. They said it was a completion. Later, when I had the chance to come back with appropriate armament, they had a whole nest of little worms. I never did find out where the babies came from or how these people were taming them. No, that's not right-I do know a little bit about the taming. There's an imprinting process. I think it's done when the worms all cuddle up together and go into communion, but that still doesn't answer the question of how a human can tame a worm, let alone live with it."

  "But you know it's possible, you've seen the proof of it," Siegel said.

  I nodded thoughtfully. "I know it's possible. I just don't know how they did it. I can't imagine someone climbing down into a shambler nest and pulling a few of these babies out. And I can't imagine taming a worm after it's started to grow. But that's the question about the renegades that needs to be answered. I'm convinced that the process has to be a simple one, and it involves being there when the worm first hatches. Maybe it's something as basic as just being there to feed it and pet it and mother it and rub its nose in the puddle whenever it leaves an opinion on the carpet. That's how you tame humans. Most of them, anyway." After a reflective moment, I added, "If that's really the case, then I have a feeling we're going to be seeing a lot more renegades in the future."