A Season For Slaughter Part 37

"That sounds pleasant. Maybe I can die in it and get this taste out of my mouth."

"You don't drink very often, do you?"

I blinked blearily at her. "Huh-? I can handle it." I shuddered. "Yick. What was that stuff?"

"Alcohol neutralizer. Industrial strength."

"Is that the stuff that gets into your bloodstream and soaks it up and breaks it down-"

"That's right. It accelerates the whole metabolic process." She glanced at her watch. "Stand by. Here comes the fun part. As the alcohol breaks down, the sugar rush begins. Want to go jogging?"

"You've gotta be kidding-"

"The trick is exercise. Lots of exercise."

"I'm a civilian. The only exercise I want to get is in bed. I think I'll f.u.c.k myself to death."

"By yourself? Or with a partner?"

"Whatever Lizard wants." I sat up straighter, blinking hard focus. "Okay, I think I'm fine now. You can let me go." She let me go. I fell over sideways.

"That might not have been such a good idea," I remarked from the floor. After a moment, I added, "Have you ever noticed the pattern on the rug, how it slides off sideways? Interesting trick of perspective here. Come on down and look."

Lopez propped me back up again and looked at me angrily. Then she turned around and barked at Siegel. "You had to give him firewater, didn't you! Didn't anybody ever tell you about civilians?"

Siegel came over and looked into my face, tilting my head back so the lights dazzled my eyes. I squinted in reaction. He used his thumb and forefinger to force my left eye open.

"He'll live," he grunted. "I don't know what they're making officers out of these days-"

Lopez looked at him sardonically. "I do. And it ain't a pretty sight, amigo." She turned back to me. "You're going to have to talk, Captain. You're too drunk to sing."

"No, wait-I've got a better idea." I put on my best Irish accent and pulled myself sloppily to my feet. "I'm going to tell you the one about the leprechaun and the penguin." I climbed up onto a chair, thought better of that, and decided to just climb up onto the floor instead. "Siegel, you come back here." -I waggled my hand at him.

"I listened to your story about Sweaty Betty. You have to listen to the leprechaun joke. Besides, it's a tradition. The new guys, they haven't heard it yet-"

Lopez took me by the arm. "No leprechaun joke, Captain. The Const.i.tution of the United States prohibits cruel and unusual punishment."

"No leprechaun joke-?"' I asked plaintively.

"Don't you remember why you were asked to leave Ireland?"

"Actually, I don't remember much of anything right now-"

"Trust me."

"Hey! What was that you said about singing?"

"I didn't say anything about singing."

"Oh. I thought you did. Never mind." I hiccuped and said, " I have an idea.

About the worms." They both looked at me abruptly. "Hey! Why the serious faces?

This is supposed to be a party." I forgot what I was thinking and fumbled around for a gla.s.s. "Let's have a toast to my idea."

"You're toasted enough," Siegel replied. "What's your idea? Come on, talk to me, Captain."

Instead, I belched. I giggled, but I was coherent enough to realize I should be embarra.s.sed as well. "I'm sorry-" I belched again. "Is that the sober-up?"

"More or less. Don't worry about it," said Lapez. "I already knew you were a pig.

I just couldn't tell you before." She sat down across from me and held my hands in hers. "You said you had an idea."

"No. It's gone now. I had it on the tip of my mind, but I forgot it."

"Something about the worms-?" They both looked worried.

"Uh-uh." I shook my head in annoyance. "There's this feeling that keeps flirting with me, it's not really an idea yet, just a physical sensation, but if I could find the words for it, I think-I don't know. If I could just say it, I could know it. d.a.m.n all.

There's something here I'm missing-"

"Just think about the feeling," said Lopez. "No. Don't even think. Just feel. Just feel the feeling and then look at what it feels like-"

"I know the exercise," I said, cutting her off. "That won't work here." I sat up straight, belching again. "That sober-up stuff is working too well. No, the feeling is completely gone. I've lost it. Maybe it wasn't important anyway. Maybe it'll come back to me." I sank back against the wall behind me, letting my body sag again.

Lopez and Siegel sat opposite me, studying me warily. "Hey!" I said. "How come you guys aren't drunk?" They both looked abruptly embarra.s.sed. "Uh-"

"Oh, I get it," I said. "It's the old bridegroom prank. Get him so drunk, he pa.s.ses out on his wedding night."

Siegel shook his head. "No, not quite-"

Lopez interrupted. "Yeah. Exactly. Siegel thought it would be fun to get you drunk, Cap'n. Sort of a payback. Give you a chance to make a fool out of yourself.

Be one of the guys. Then we remembered the stories we'd heard about the weird flashes of insight people get when they're suddenly flushed with Sober-Up, and we thought, well, we thought we'd try it on you, because you know so much about the worms, maybe you'd come up with something great-"

"You're probably p.i.s.sed as h.e.l.l, right?"

I barely heard him. "Y'know, that's not a bad idea-letting the drugs make us more creative than we really are. I'm sorry to disappoint you. Too bad it didn't work."

"You're not p.i.s.sed?"

"Only physically," I said distractedly. "I was just thinking about the way the worms think. Something you said reminded me of one of the theoretical discussions we had when we were planning this mission. We were wondering what would happen if we could implant a worm. Like Dwan Grodin. Or like the members of the Teep Corps. The Teep Corps could listen in, could look out through the worm's eyes, could feel what a worm feels, could think like a worm thinks. And then they could tell us what's really going on. That'd be something, wouldn't it?"

Siegel and Lopez exchanged a glance, "It' d be great," Siegel said.

"Go on," said Lopez, intently.

"Well, we pa.s.sed the suggestion upstairs, and there's a study group looking into it. I haven't heard if they've decided anything. There's a couple of reasons why it'd be tricky. I mean, not just the biological ones. For one thing, the worms don't have much brain. I mean, not real brain. What they have isn't much more than a clumping of overripe ganglia. As near as we can tell, most of their actual thinking-or whatever it is they do that pa.s.ses for thinking-takes place in the rest of their bodies, in the network of quill-stuff that infests them. It's the same stuff as their fur, but growing inside. The big ones are just huge sacs of neural quills-they're great big hairbags. Cut one open, and it's like looking into a vacuum cleaner bag that's been used to sweep out a kennel. But that's part of why the big ones are so hard to kill What isn't muscle is brain."

"Yeah? So what's the tricky part?"

"Well, not tricky. Dangerous. What if the Teep Corps peeks out through a worm's eyes, and somehow the way that a worm thinks is so fascinating or infectious-like a virus-that the whole Teep Corps starts thinking that way and decides to turn renegade? Part of the problem is to construct an isolated Teep Corps. But then, the isolated Corps is going to know it's isolated, and that will affect its behavior. If it does get its thinking changed, maybe it'll try to hide that fact. How do we know how a worm's mind works? What are they really doing when they go into communion? Do we want even a small network of Teeps thinking like worms. And would it ever be safe to let the isolated Teep communicate with the parent?"

"You just realized this?" asked Siegel.

"No," I said. "The study group has been worrying about this for months. What I was thinking about was the way the worms think."

"What about it?"

"Worms don't think," I said abruptly. "They sing." I blinked at them. They both looked blank.

"You don't get it, do you?"

Lopez spoke first. "Well, of course, they sing-"

"No. That's just noise. They make noise and we call it singing, but that's not what they really do. What they really do is sing."

Siegel frowned. "I'm sorry. You're losing us."

"I can't explain it," I said. "But I can feel it. There's aulnething about the singing-dammit!-I don't have the language for it. This is what I was struggling with before." I took a deep breath and tried again. "It's the difference between me , belting out "Yankee Doodle" and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing the choral movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony-"

And suddenly something clicked. I stopped in midsentence, stunned.

Lopez saw it in my face. "What?"

"The herds. Have you ever been in a herd? Have you ever seen une close up?

They sing too. The worms sing like the herds. No, that's not right. The herds sing like the worms-"

"Hold it, wait a minute," said Siegel. "Are you talking about the herds like the ones in San Francisco and Los Angeles and MazatIan?"

"Yeah. I spent a week in a herd one afternoon. There's this thing that happens, the herd starts humming. Everybody. It's like a cosmic 'ommmm.' Everybody who hears it gets sucked into it. It's the most amazing sound you've ever heard. Try it sometime, get a thousand people together and get them all to start going mmmm.'

They'll all tune themselves to the same note, without knowing how or why-It's the most incredible sensation because it sucks you into it. You can't resist, you can't help but become a part of it. Even if you don't make any sound yourself, it still gets to you. All those people resonating together, the vibration rattles you and dazes you and fills you up and everything else just disappears. You disappear. You vanish into the herd. You're not there anymore, only the all-pervasive, incredible, soul-filling sound remains. Everything is the sound. The world is filled with it, resonates with it.

It's not something you can explain. You have to experience it. It's like a drug high, only it isn't. It's like touching G.o.d, only it isn't. It's like being G.o.d. Only-afterward, you walk around dazzled by this gorgeous sense of who you really are. It's singing.

That's what the worms do." I sat back in my chair, finished, and relieved to have the thought finally out of my head.

Siegel looked underwhelmed. "But we already know that. The comparison between the herdsong and the nestsong was first made four years ago. No conclusions were made because we don't know enough about the worms. Are you saying now that it's the same process?"

"Um-no," I said. "I don't know if it's the same process. It might be. But this is my point, if it is the same process, then it has to be much more intense an experience for the worms. The herd only sings a little bit. Only two or three times a week. The worms sing all the time. They're totally immersed."

Lopez and Siegel exchanged a silent glance. Then they both looked back to me.

"Okay, yes, but-what does it mean?"

"I don't know," I said. "I don't know that it means anything at all. I'm sure it must.

I'm sorry that it doesn't make more sense to you. But that's my big realization. The worms sing. All the time."

Are the whales truly extinct?

Although we have not had any confirmed sightings of whales in the past fourteen months, we hesitate to state for certain that they are gone.

Some small hope remains. It is certain that the extensive damage to our information gathering network is keeping us from seeing a complete picture. Because of the needs of the North American Operations Authority, many key stations have been rea.s.signed to other duties, and the resultant large holes in the Gaia Geophysical Monitor Network have made satellite tracking of the whales an uncertain business at best. Land- and sea-based observations also remain unreliable.

But even if any whales have managed to survive in our suddenly hostile seas, it is unlikely that they can persevere much longer. The key agent of their destruction is the ma.s.sive Enterprise fish, which apparently dines not only on whales, but on its own smaller siblings whenever it catches them.

Almost everything we know about the Enterprise fish can be summed up in one sentence: it's very big and it's very hungry. The appet.i.te of one of these animals is simply unimaginable. Whatever gets swept into that enormous maw is fuel for the beast's relentless hunger and unceasing growth.

Mostly gray in appearance, the beasts are very slow moving and apparently very stupid.

Slow to act, slower to react; the best current hypothesis has it that the very small brain of the fish and its primitive nervous system are simply insufficient to the task of managing the needs of the creature when its size grows beyond a certain point.

The creature is particularly hard to destroy not just because of its ma.s.sive size, but because it is mostly fat. The outermost layers of its body are incredibly thick slabs of blubber and cartilaginous webwork. The creature's internal substance has a rubbery, gelatinous consistency; in effect, the Enterprise fish is a giant bag of pudding with some internal organs suspended in the ma.s.s.

Existing weaponry is not designed for this type of target; ordinary bullets are wasted; explosive bullets carve out visible chunks of the creature's skin, but do little real damage. Larger explosives may gouge out craters in the animal's thick hide, but the low density of nervous tissue makes it unlikely that the creature will even notice.

On those occasions where military attacks have met with some success, the efforts have required thirty to forty-five minutes of the most intense bombardment before the leviathan even seems to notice its injuries-at least enough to change course or move away from its attackers. Perhaps it takes the monster that long to realize that it is experiencing pain and has been hurt.

Because of the threat to s.h.i.+pping, the network maintains a constant posting on the positions of all known Enterprise fish.

We have harpoon-tagged six leviathans in the waters of the northern Atlantic, and five more in the southern reaches. The Pacific basin currently hosts nineteen that have been tagged, and there have been reliable sightings of at least four others. No specific migration patterns have yet been charted. In general, Enterprise fish follow the path of least resistance and stay within the major ocean currents. Two leviathans have been destroyed by experimental Navy torpedoes with low-yield nuclear warheads. Additionally, another is known to have died of unknown causes, beaching itself in Auckland harboi; the stench of its decomposition rendered large parts of the city untenable for several weeks.

To date, individual Enterprise fish have sunk or disabled three nuclear submarines; an additional specimen, the largest observed to date, managed to inflict severe damage on the U.S.S. Nimitz before it was driven off by repeated missile attacks. Computer enhancement of the aerial views of the battle suggest that the leviathan was at least twice the length of the aircraft carrier. If so, then the attack might have been motivated out of hunger and the creature's perception that the carrier was another, albeit smaller, fish like itself.

Another Enterprise fish destroyed two hydroturbines off Maui, seriously damaging the island's electrical generation capability. Repair of the damaged turbines, if possible at all, is expected to take eighteen months. The same individual may also be responsible for ripping apart and sinking the Pacific-equatorial solar farm, field III; over twenty square miles of solar film was lost in that attack.

Lloyd's of London reports that over sixty other vessels have disappeared in the last two years, whose loss can almost certainly be attributed to the depradations of various Enterprise fish.

It is possible that these underwater behemoths are attracted to electrical or magnetic fields; experiments are currently underway to determine if this is so.

Perhaps it is possible to lure Enterprise fish away from most human s.h.i.+pping lanes.

Whatever the ultimate prognosis, at this point in time it is certain that our seas have become a very untenable environment for all forms of human endeavor.

-The Red Book, (Release 22.19A)

Chapter 44.

Adrift in the Head "The shortest distance between two puns is a straight line."