A Season For Slaughter Part 56

We jettisoned the flyers, we sent them on ahead to Yuana Moloco, each one carrying one pilot and one infant child. We dropped spybirds continually. Siegel and Lopez disarmed the surplus ordnance, set it to self-destruct, and tipped it out the hatch. I hated seeing it go. If this ship went down, we might need that stuff.

Shaun and I and two other stewards patrolled the ship, looking for other things to dump, things we might have missed. We rolled up the rubber deck from the jogging track. We knocked down the windows from the observation levels. We unbolted doors and cabinets. We jettisoned the sewage tanks. We tossed out two of the water-recycling units. We gutted the airship's kitchen-all the stoves, all the sinks, the refrigerators and freezers, all the various machineries of cuisine. Down and down into the leafy green sea. Everything. All of it. We'd eat fresh fruit and salads and peanut b.u.t.ter sandwiches for two days if we had to. We couldn't let this ship go down And still we sank.

The land rose up to meet us, closer and closer by the hour. We were approaching the foothills north of j.a.pura. We weren't going to get over them. And we were running out of things to lose.

We sent people up to the skydecks, and the choppers lifted them away, six at a time. First the children from the camp, then the Brazilians, then the most valuable of the scientists. Lizard refused to go, so did I. Shreiber had to stay with Guyer. We ordered Dr. Meier aboard a chopper at gunpoint. She climbed out the other side and went right back to work.

We took apart the med-bay, pulled down the operating theaters, rolled out all the various pieces of diagnostic equipment, pushed them out into the open air and watched them tumble away. We pulled up the floor panels wherever we could, pulled down ceiling panels and ventilation ducts. We unbolted the air-conditioning units and let them crash downward to the jungle. File cabinets. Security safes. Paper shredders. Encryptors. Conference tables. Desks. Draperies. Paintings. Gla.s.s part.i.tions. Televisions. The ship's entire library. All the books. All the disks and tapes. A wealth of history, literature, and science. All the knowledge of the world.

The backup computers. People were abandoning their personal belongings too. I pulled the backup memory out of my notebook and scaled the machine out the window too. One less kilogram to worry about.

"This G.o.dd.a.m.n airship!" Shaun was swearing. "Everything is so lightweight, we're going to have to dismantle two thirds of it to stay aloft!"

The ship's wine cellar. We had to restrain Feist, we had to sedate him. He wanted to leap out after his Montrachet and Mouton Cadet. We were tempted to let him. He ma.s.sed a good ninety kilos. But Captain Harbaugh would never have forgiven us.

We sent him out on the next chopper instead.

The land kept rising. Achieving neutral buoyancy in the air wasn't going to be enough. The farther north we sailed, the higher the foothills rose. This airship was going to be a big pink drapery sprawled across the Brazilian hills.

There were worms beneath us still. Every now and then, we'd see them rushing through the greenery, chirruping and singing, calling up to us, crying and trying to join us. If we hit the ground, they'd be all over us.

My phone beeped. It was Lizard. Captain Harbaugh was ordering us off her ship.

It was too late. We were to be on the next chopper out.

"Meet me in the main lounge, I've got the last of the mission logs, including all the stuff we didn't send out. Help me carry it up to the skydeck."

"I'm on my way-"

And that's when the whole thing came down.

Jellypigs extract most of their nutrients from the soil as it pa.s.ses through their bodies; working together, a swarm of jellypigs can carve out several meters of tunnel per day. While individual members of the congestion may fall behind while they rest, sleep, or digest, the cl.u.s.ter itself is always active. The effect of the jellypig congestion is to pack the soil into a dense lining surrounding the tunnel; this lining is rich in nutrients for the Chtorran plant forms that inevitably follow the tunnel builders.

-The Red Book, (Release 22.19A)

Chapter 70.

Down "You always find teh one typo in print that you missed in galley proof."

-SOLOMON SHORT.

It began with a sliding sensation, as if the Hieronymus Bosch were being pushed sideways through the air. Someone, somebody was screaming a desperate order; someone else was just screaming, "No, no, no!" as if denying the reality of the situation. As if sheer willpower and lung power alone would be enough to keep the vessel airborne.

The floor lurched and we tilted-not a lot at first, but enough to be noticeable, and then it kept on tilting-and as everything and everyone came sliding sideways across the floor of the bay, the tilt became even more p.r.o.nounced; our weight was pulling the ship over, and now we started to hear the sounds of heavy objects sc.r.a.ping and breaking, and then something large went b.u.mp somewhere aft. It wasn't a particularly loud sound, or even a jarring one, but it was a horribly deep note, felt in the bones more than the ears, as if someone had struck a single profound note on the world-gong, and the echo of it came reverberating up through our souls like an expanding bubble of dread; only the sound of it never stopped-instead, it grew and kept on growing; louder and louder, it rolled outward from its initial paralyzing impact, until eventually, it was submerged in the growing cacophony of other noises crunching up from below.

The crash went on and on forever. My heart sank with the ship. I scrambled for something to hang on to The sounds-oh, the terrible sounds-at first, just the gentlest sensation of distant things crunching quietly into each other-but like the deceptively soft punch of the first impact, the crunching didn't stop. It just got bigger and bigger and closer and closer. We could feel it crashing forward through the body of the airship. It advanced on us like a great shuddering wave of destruction.

The noise of it was composed of many different parts, all of them hideous-gla.s.s breaking, metal bending, metal screaming, great structures of support twisting and turning as the airship collapsed into the treetops like a crippled cloud, towering gasbags ripping and tearing open, mylar curtains falling in sheets and folding across the uneven terrain of the jungle canopy, everything rippling into rumpled, broken shapes. From below, we heard the sounds of the jungle screaming and protesting; the sound of branches breaking, being stripped and torn from the trees, the roaring havoc of a great forest slowly bending, resisting, crunching, ripping, toppling, crashing, smashing under the ponderous and inexorable weight of the giant airship easing itself down toward its horrible final resting place.

We came down and down, and still we kept on coming down and dowrr. The metal shrieked as it bent. The trees shrieked as they died. Everything was being crushed. The floors creaked and cracked, and then they twisted and broke and exploded with a series of sudden loud bangs as the panels began shattering out of their frames. They cartwheeled across the intervening s.p.a.ce-one of them caught Clayton Johns, slicing him nearly in half. His blood spurted like a flood.

And then the airship really lurched. It tilted crazily on its side, and everything went sliding rapidly down into the port side of the bay, now the bottom; the last few chairs and tables, all the last remaining crates of equipment and supplies and devices we still needed. A writhing prowler scrabbled for purchase, leaping from the top of one box to the next, all the time screaming mechanically, sounding exactly like a wounded horse, clawing its way futilely upward. I grabbed a strut and hung on tightly, reached for Siegel-he lunged for me and missed and slid away in the madness. A crate came sliding after him, I didn't see him after that.

And still, the airship kept on crashing!

The roar of it was deafening. The tumultuous confusion flashed with shades of red and black and purple. Something below us exploded with a bang, and the terrible jagged spike of a treetop came thrusting rudely up through the open hatch, pushing people and machines aside like so much paperwork, puncturing all the way up through the ceiling, ripping it asunder and revealing a tiny patch of open sky beyond.

A gasbag was escaping incongruously up into the blue serenity.

The lower wall of the bay imploded, crunched inward by the pressure of the forest beneath it; it came collapsing upward toward me, pushing rubble and debris and furniture and machines in a mighty thrust before it. I pulled myself around, began climbing upward to escape Something slammed against me, yanking the strut from my grasp-I fell and hit the floor, which was now a wall. I slipped and skidded, sliding toward the gaping wound that was all that remained of the access hatch. I scrabbled for purchase, all knees and elbows, but the wall grew steeper and I fell sideways and outward-slammed against a concrete tree, bounced backward off of it, grabbed for a broken branch and missed, banged it with my face instead, there were vines and webs pulling at me; my leg caught, twisted, and popped, and then I fell again, toppling downward, banging through eternity Above me, the flashing pink glare of the Hieronymus Bosch still twinkled brightly as it fell away into the sky. It was still coming down relentlessly-all of it-still smashing, toward me, but I was crashing downward even faster.

Except I wasn't- I was already on the ground, lying on my back and staring upward at the fluttering silk remnants of the skin of the Hieronymus Bosch and wondering why it was still so loud, why everything was still making so much noise everywhere around me. How long would this continue? Crunching and popping and breaking and falling and crying! And now I began to hear other sounds as well, new sounds, purple sounds, red sounds, growing louder-the sounds of voices screaming, cursing, yelling for help. If anyone was shouting orders, I didn't hear it yet. Things were roaring and exploding. People were running. Choppers clattered overhead. The ground thudded with the distant whumppp! of a daisy-cutter bomb clearing a s.p.a.ce in the jungle for helicopters to land. And pieces of the twinkling circus canopy still kept drifting downward to blow across my face. They fluttered like pennants.

I couldn't move. I couldn't feel anything. I just stared at the pretty pink sky and wondered why it was all so f.u.c.king bright.

Considerable dirt removal remains necessary in the nest, and this function is performed by a bizarre partner/predator relationship with the millipedes who are invariably to be found living in any Chtorran settlement. The millipedes in the nest will prey on the various congestions of jellypigs found throughout the tunnels of the nest, usually devouring those that fall away from the main body of the cl.u.s.ter.

Occasionally, the gastropedes in the nest will also seek out a congestion of jellypigs and dine at length, often decimating the pack in the process.

Because most of the jellypig's ma.s.s at any given moment is the soil in its intestinal tract, the millipede ends up carrying the jellypig's burden; so does any gastropede that has gorged itself on jellypigs. In this way, most of the soil carried by the jellypigs finds its way out of the tunnel and ultimately to the surface of the mandala.

Gastropedes always wait until they have exited the nest before defecating.

Gastropedes often use their feces, a substance with the consistency of tar, in the construction of the walls of their domes and corrals.

-The Red Book, (Release 22.19A)

Chapter 71.

Dial M for McCarthy "A telephone is dike a rash. It demands attention."

-SOLOMON SHORT.

My phone beeped.

Without thinking, I fumbled around for it. Surprise. It was still on my belt. I unclipped it and lifted it up to my face, thumbing it on curiously. "h.e.l.lo?"

"Jim!" It was Lizard. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," I said. And wondered why I'd said that. I wasn't fine. I couldn't move.

I could barely speak.

"Are you sure? You sound funny-"

"Oh, I'm right here. I think."

"Where's here? Where are you?"

"Um, I'm-" I turned my head. "-at the bottom of the tree. Where are you? I'll come and get you."

"Stay where you are. Don't move."

"Okay," I whispered. "No problem." My voice started to fade away. "I'll just rest awhile."

"Good. You stay there-leave your phone on. Keep talking. Will you do that?"

"Uh-huh. Where are you?"

"I'm still in the ship. The lounge got all twisted sideways and crushed. I'm in a corridor. I think I can-yes, I can climb up to the top. It's quite a crawl, but I can make it." Her voice was very controlled. "Do you hurt anywhere?"

"I don't-think so."

"Can you move?"

"I answered my phone, didn't I?"

"Jim?"

"Yes?"

"Listen to me, I'm going to put you on hold for a minute, so I can put a tracer on you. Don't go away, okay?"

"Okay."Promise?"

"I promise: Can you hurry?"

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing. It's just-I think I do hurt a little."

"Where?"

"Everywhere. It hurts to breathe, I think. It hurts to swallow. Can you bring me some water?"

"Hold on. I love you-" There was a click and she was gone. She was gone for the longest time, and I lay on the shimmering jungle floor and listened to the sounds of things crunching in the distance and dropping through the treetops and thudding softly in the muck. Some of the things were screaming, and somewhere off in the dark emerald gloom someone was calling for help.

"Anyone? Is anyone there?"

"I'm over here," I said. But I didn't have the air to say it very loudly. "Over here."

-sudden bright-insect buzzing in my face, a whisper of brightness that I can't brush away, a distant chorus, a soft wall of voices, can't make out the words, only the meaning, Jimbo, stay awake, we're coming, and then a sensation of being lifted up into the arms of something strong and comfortable, secure and golden-pink, angelic, masculine, a smell of sweat and glory and pine, distant voices muttering incomprehensible status reports of blood-sugar levels and pain thresholds and damping levels, a mess, something about a kneecap- "Over here! There's someone over here!" The light was in my eyes. A flashlight. I opened my eyes, blinked, and blinked again. It was nighttime. There were lights everywhere. Above it all, the pink shroud of the airship still fluttered and glowed.

The great ceiling flickered with golden light.

"It's McCarthy-Jesus Christ!"

"No. Just call me Jim."

"Is he alive?"

"I think so. Yeah. Dead men don't look this bad. Captain McCarthy? Can you hear me? It's Siegel-He's alive! Get a stretcher down here!"

Somehow, I croaked out some words. "Where's... Lizard?"

"Who?"

"General... Tirelli-"

"Sorry, I don't know. They haven't found her yet."

"She's on the phone-" I waved my communicator at Siegel. He took it and frowned. "Sorry. It's dead, Jim."

"It can't be! I was just talking to her. She put me on hold."

"Jim, what time is it?"

"What are you talking about. It's what? Afternoon. We just came down on the treetops and-"

"Jim, it's almost midnight. You've been unconscious. You're all right. Help is coming. Just stay calm."

"But Lizard sent you, didn't she?"

"n.o.body's seen her, Jim. Or heard from her."

"But she's still on the ship. In a corridor off the briefing lounge. All twisted sideways. Climbing toward the top. She called me on the phone." It was hard to say it all, but it was important to get it all out.

Siegel hesitated. "Did you get that?" he called to someone. "Check the briefing lounge."

"The lounge was crushed-" I didn't recognize the voice. Someone from the crew?

"Check the corridors," Siegel ordered. "Now!"

"Siegel?"

"Yes, Captain?"