A Season For Slaughter Part 51

CAROLYN JANE BENSON was a strident orange worm showing brilliant stripes of flaming red and yellow; there were disturbing tracks of black outlining some of the brighter colors.

"When we get back, I'll fix you up with her. You can see for yourself."

"Please don't do me any favors. I don't ever want to see anything that red again."

CAROLYN JANE BENSON humped across the screen, disappeared off one display, and appeared a moment later on another. It was a rotund animal, sleek and bright and gaudy-undeniably proud. For some reason, I thought of a samurai warrior in medieval j.a.pan, stalking haughtily through a village of respectful peasants.

Whatever family CAROLYN JANE BENSON came from, it was definitely a family to be treated with caution-probably the whole tribe.

"Let me name the next one," said Brickner. He waited until the channel blinked active, then announced, "This one is DUPA. DUPA T. PARROT."

"You wanna explain that, George?"

"Nope."

Six people turned and looked at him. "Aw, come on-" Brickner just smiled to himself and repeated the national mantra. "Everybody's crazy. I get to be crazy in my own way. Good night, Mrs. Calabash, whoever you are."

Benson nudged Swett. "Don't worry about it. Some people have a funny way of paying off old grudges. Friedman over there named his last six worms after a herd of lawyers he once had a run-in with."

"Ugh. He must really hate worms."

"He said it's appropriate. Those are the worms we're putting radioactive darts into, to see how long they take to die."

Chris Swett swiveled in his chair. "What about you, Cap'n? You have anyone you want to name a worm after?"

I shook my head politely. "Sorry. I can't think of anyone who really deserves the honor."

"How about Bellus? Or Dannenfelser?"

I just smiled weakly and refused to be baited. "Nope. That's unfair to the worm.

Worms don't have a choice. People do."

"Come on," said Benson. "You have to name one. Everybody does."

"Oh, all right-that big fellow up there. The nasty-looking one. Call him ROBISON. NASTY JOHN ROBISON. And the other one, the deep purple one, you can call him FOREMAN. All right? You happy now?"

"Ecstatic."

Shreiber wandered through at one point and casually dubbed the five members of one particularly noisy nest HAIRY GARCIA, BOB WEIRD, PHIL LEECH, BILL CRUSTMAN, and MICKEY HEART-ATTACK. Brickner, Benson, and Swett exchanged puzzled glances. I didn't get it either. Probably some old TV show. I could look it up later.

By the third day, we were starting to get some good data on some of the families and tribes and nations within the mandala. We started naming the nations first-AMERICA, RUSSIA, ENGLAND, FRANCE, MEXICO. We named the tribes after cities-NEW YORK, LOS ANGELES, SAN FRANCISCO, DENVER, HONOLULU, LONDON, LIVERPOOL, BIRMINGHAM, MANCHESTER, PARIS, NICE, BREST, Ma.r.s.eILLES, MOSCOW, ST. PETERSBURG, KIEV, LA PAZ, TIJUANA, MAZATLAN, ACAPULCO. We named the families within each tribe after suburbs-HOLLYWOOD, BEVERLY HILLS, BURBANK, MANHATTAN, BROOKLYN, YONKERS, NEW JERSEY-until our memories failed us and we had to dial up the world atlas for more names.

CAROLYN JANE BENSON was from the BROOKLYN family of the NEW YORK tribe. NASTY JOHN ROBISON was from the NEW JERSEY family. Chris Swett had tried to point out that New Jersey was not a suburb of New York City, but Benson had simply replied, "Don't tell that to anyone who lives in Manhattan."

I replied to that one. "n.o.body lives in Manhattan anymore."

"They will again," Benson said. "They will."

By now, we were starting to get a little desperate on worm names. We were giving them names like RED HAT, RED QUEEN, RED SQUARE, BIG BEAR, FAT b.u.t.t, HUMPALONG, SNUFFLES, STEAMBOAT, BALLBUSTER, CHICKEN.

LITTLE, and THE WELL OF LONELINESS-or just THE WELL for short. THE WELL was a particularly interesting worm, something of a loner. It was an extremely large purple beast, and it nested at the far end of one of the southernmost tendrils of the mandala. Apparently no other worms nested with it, and that aroused our curiosity. We'd never observed a reclusive gastropede before. Periodically, THE WELL would wander into the mandala, munching its way through the gardens and corrals. On one visit, it devoured ten bunnydogs in succession-unfortunately, they were tagged ones. We lost the channels to ENZER, CARROLL, ROBERTS, MOEHLE, POWERS, GANS, NASH, MURPHY, FARREN, and HAYDEN, all in a single meal. Robin Ramsey, the accounts manager, swore a purple-and-red streak for twenty furious minutes. "Those G.o.dd.a.m.n, son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h, c.o.c.ksucking probes are too s.h.i.t-f.u.c.king expensive! And too G.o.dd.a.m.n hard to motherf.u.c.king put in b.l.o.o.d.y place!"

"Don't mince words, Robin," Brickner said calmly. "Tell us what you really think."

She just glared at him, then stormed out incoherently. Benson decided to rename the worm VERY WELL in recognition of its impressive appet.i.te.

We didn't see Robin again until the end of the day. No one wanted to tell her that CAROLYN JANE BENSON, NASTY JOHN ROBISON, DUPA T. PARROT, and GOJIRA had, between them, just wiped out WILL, MARSHALL, HOLLY, SID, MARTY, KIRK, SPOCK, SCOTTY, SULU, CHEKOV, PICARD, RIKER, DATA, TROI, TASHA, and THE GREAT BIRD.

Oh, and WESLEY too.

We are now seeing the development of many new Chtorran forms, variants that have probably always been possible, but could not occur until the conditions necessary for their appearance became established.

Of particuiar interest is the discovery of gastropedes of reduced proportions.

These miniature gastropedes, or "mini-Chtorrans," have been observed ranging in size from one to three meters. With the exception of their diminutive dimensions, they are mature Chtorrans in every respect, even demonstrating fully striated displays of color banding that identify their service to specific nests within the mandata.

These miniature Chtorrans can be found only in very large, very well-developed mandata settlements. They are apparently a natural biological dysfunction that occurs when a Chtorran infestation becomes so dense that the surrounding territory cannot sufficiently feed all of the settlement's members.

Perhaps what we are seeing here is evidence that the Chtorran ecology is self-regulating, that it knows its own limits, and that when it reaches a natural boundary to its expansion, it shifts from a context of expansion to one of a.s.similation. Perhaps these mini-Chtorrans are actually the final and mature form of the gastropede in a stable Chtorran ecology. However, the ultimate verification of this thesis is impossible without first realizing a large-scale extermination of the remaining Terran ecology.

-The Red Book, (Release 22.19A)

Chapter 62.

"You're not going."

"Upset causes change. Change causes upset."

-SOLOMON SHORT.

-and then the horror closed back in again. The new pictures were the most monstrous of all. All the names just faded back into unreality. Meaningless. As if by naming things, we could somehow understand or control them. Or take away their power to hurt. How stupid we'd been.

It was like smashing headfirst into a wall of pain.

-I broke away from the wall of monitors and turned back to the video display table where Lieutenant Siegel and Sergeant Lopez waited silently and respectfully for me.

Siegel indicated the map of the distant mandala. Several places were highlighted.

"Here," he said. "We've located five sites." lie looked twitchy. He didn't look like the same Kurt C. Siegel of two weeks ago, who was ready to jump out of the rescue pod to go after Corporal Kathryn Beth Willig. This Siegel was unnerved. He'd seen something-maybe something about the map, or something about the mission, or maybe just something about the responsibility of deciding who lives and who dies-1 didn't know what it was, but it worried me. It wasn't good to have doubts about the job. I could testify to that.

He realized I was studying him, and he looked across at me intently. "Something wrong?"

I shook my head slowly. "I don't know." And then, to his quizzical look, I had to explain. "I mean, I don't know anything anymore. Everything just keeps getting worse, doesn't it?" He didn't understand. I sighed, I shook my head. "I'm sorry," I confessed, "I'm really losing it, aren't I?"

"We all are," said Lopez. "It's the mission. It's the worms. Everybody's crazy."

"I wish you were right." I reached across the corner of the table and clapped her roughly on the shoulder in a gesture of masculine camaraderie.

She returned the stroke, patting me on the shoulder with a gentle, almost feminine grace. "Hang in there, boss man. You got a good lady lookin' out for you. She needs you to stay sane enough to look out for her too."

"It's that obvious, huh?"

Lopez shook her head. "Let's go to work, huh?"

I nodded, gratefully. "What's on the plate?"

"Five sites," repeated Siegel.

"a.s.sessment?" I asked.

"You first," Siegel said. He punched up pictures from all five locations. "Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon."

I trade places with Lopez. I move around to the same side of the table and look at the pictures. They blur. Little boys like bunnydogs, pink and furry. Shocking erections. Fat women. Swollen. Pregnant girls with thick legs and thick lips and bloated b.r.e.a.s.t.s. All naked. Bunnymen humping on them like desperate monsters.

Imps and demons. Where are the older boys? Where are the men? More pictures.

Women like apes-three hundred kilos-enormous and strong. Little brown men like withered gnomes, grinning and ferocious. Eating, chewing the flesh off a human leg bone. Little red people. They look almost human. I can't tell what they are anymore.

They chatter at each other in Indian languages, and the LI runs translations underneath. I want to vomit.

I reached past him and clicked off four of the images. "Infected. Infected.

Infected. Infected."

"Alpha?" he asked.

We studied the pictures together. People. Mostly children. Thin. Clean skins. In a corral. Prisoners? We can't tell. The mood is different. Whatever was happening in the other sites, it hasn't happened here. Not yet.

"Colombians?"

Siegel nodded. "They're new. This corral was empty two days ago."

I looked at the pictures for a while longer. There was a little brown girl in a pink dress. She was an echo of all the little girls I'd ever seen in the world. She had black hair and big eyes and the smile of an angel. She was too innocent to be here. She was holding a baby in her lap-her little brother? The baby was crying, and she was trying to rock him and calm him. There were other children. The corral was filled with children. All of them with black hair and brown skin and beautiful eyes. All children have beautiful eyes. I thought of Holly and Tommy and Alec and Loolie and... all the rest of them, and my throat hurt so hard, I didn't know if I was crying or raging. It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair! Where is the end to this madness?

I looked at Lopez, I looked at Siegel. They saw the look on my face and they both nodded grimly. Agreement.

"We'll need authorization."

Siegel and Lopez exchanged a quick glance. Meaningful. You tell him? No, you tell him.

"Excuse me-?" I asked. I looked from one to the other.

"You're not going," said Siegel. He sounded embarra.s.sed.

"Uh, there must be something wrong with my hearing. It sounded like you said-"

"I'm sorry, Captain. But you're really not needed. And... I think I'd prefer to handle this one by myself."

"Did General Tirelli tell you not to let me-?" They both shook their heads too quickly. "You're lousy liars."

Lopez leaned across the corner of the table and spoke to me, low and intensely.

"She didn't have to speak to us. We already had this discussion among ourselves.

You've done your share. And it's killing you. A bite at a time. You're more valuable up here."

"No," I said. "I have to go with you."

"Listen to me, Captain," Siegel was speaking like a lieutenant now. "It's time to let it go."

I turned slowly and stared into his eyes. He held my gaze. A lifetime of meaning.

The command had pa.s.sed. We both knew it. He was right.

The reactions flooded up in burning waves. I felt so angry, I wanted to kill him.

He'd pushed me aside. Rejected. Old. Unneeded. Unwanted. All the emotions flashed like road signs.

But-he was right. We all knew it. It wasn't my job anymore. And there were all the other reactions too. Relief. Gratefulness. Grat.i.tude that it was him and not me-grat.i.tude that this time I wouldn't have to give the orders.

Finally, Siegel nodded in gentle confirmation and broke the moment.

I let out my breath. I leaned forward over the video table, looking at the display again, but not really seeing it, looking off, looking back. They waited politely beside me, waiting for me to speak. At last, I shrugged and scratched my head and said more easily than I'd expected to, "Well... you'll still need authorization."

"You'll talk to the general?"

I nodded. "She's already expecting me."

Siegel put one big hand on my shoulder and patted gently. Lopez put a smaller hand, but just as hard, on my other shoulder. It was a moment of farewell camaraderie, and I hated them both for it. I hated them almost as much as I loved them. We'd been through too much together. It wasn't fair that they should go on without me-and at the same time, it was. If I'd done my job right, teaching them, training them, coaching them, then this was the payoff. It still hurt.

I swallowed hard. "I guess... I'd better go see the general." I straightened up from the table, turned around, studied them both. "If you guys f.u.c.k up and get eaten by worms, I'll never speak to either one of you again."

"That's fer sure," grinned Siegel.

Lopez followed me to the door of the observation bay, catching up to me just inside the corridor. "Y'know, for a gringo, you're not half bad. Your general's a lucky lady." And then Lopez surprised me. She stood up on her tiptoes to give me a good-luck kiss that left us both blushing.

Some evidence exists to suggest that many of the Chtorran forms may be much more unstable than previously thought. One of the most curious and puzzling of all biological phenomena is that of the "exploded" millipede.

Periodically, a millipede will be discovered that seems to be bulging right out of its own exoskeleton. The sh.e.l.l segments are pushed apart, sometimes even discarded, and fatty protrusions have expanded aggressively outward. From one day to the next, these swellings will increase at a cancerous rate; the growth is almost visible to the naked eye. Sometimes the creature is able to survive for a while in this condition, but death usually occurs within a week or less. In some cases, the creature's exoskeleton gives way suddenly, and the creature simply "explodes"-not violently; the impact is less than that of a water balloon; but it is still noisy and forceful enough to startle unprepared observers.

It is possible that this condition is a Chtorran disease-some cancerous condition that affects only millipedes; perhaps it represents some failure of the millipede to adapt to Terran conditions. It is equally possible that it represents a failed attempt by the millipede to metamorphose into something else. In either case, the mechanism by which millipedes may be exploded is worthy of further investigation, as it may point to ways to disable not only this species, but other related ones.