A Season For Slaughter Part 53

Fear raised my voice. "It's the stingflies!"

Lizard was skeptical. "Those stupid little bugs?" Skepticism became incredulity.

"The camouflage worked too well-" Once again, the adrenaline chill exploded. My voice got louder. "They think the Bosch is a worm! Go up to the skydeck. They're all over the skin! Stinging! Biting their way in! By now there must be a million pinhole leaks in the gasbags."

I thought that would have shredded the last of her composure. Instead, she caught her breath-"Oh, my G.o.d"-and slipped immediately into control mode. "Why didn't you tell me-?"

"I just realized it myself! If you'd told me about the helium loss sooner-" I stopped myself in mid-word. I held up both hands in a gesture of disarmament.

"Never mind. This isn't about blame. We have a real problem here. We've got to tell Captain Harbaugh-"

"Tell Captain Harbaugh what?" The skipper of the airs.h.i.+p came storming out of the conference room, Sames.h.i.+ma behind her. The door remained open. White faces stared out. "What the h.e.l.l is going on?" she demanded. "We can hear you all over the s.h.i.+p."

"Stingflies," Lizard said unhappily.

"What-?"

"Chtorran insects," I said. "They bite. They sting. They're mosquitoes the size of gnats. They've been biting their way into the skin of the airs.h.i.+p. They think it's a giant worm. They want to lay their eggs. Or whatever it is they do. Once inside, they land on the gasbags. The red light filtering through the outer skin makes them react like they're still on the body of a worm. So they bite again. They keep biting until they find warm worm flesh. Only there isn't any. They're getting inside the gasbags, there's no oxygen, and they're dying there. But each one leaves a pinhole. That's how you're losing helium. Probably the tops of all the gasbags are shredded by now. You won't see anything, the holes are too small. But check the bottoms of the bags, you'll find dead flies. Pretty soon you won't be able to replace the gas fast enough. We're sinking."

Captain Harbaugh didn't want to believe me. Sames.h.i.+ma already did.

The nightmare was loose aboard the airs.h.i.+p.

At the time of this writing, remote probes have extensively explored two mandala nests: the Colorado infestation that was destroyed by two nuclear devices, and the western Canadian infestation. The latter infestation was probed both before and after its destruction by a.s.sorted fire, freeze, and short-life radiation weapons.

Although it is probably too soon to say with absolute certainty, it is likely that the same patterns of construction observed in these two nests will also obtain in nests still to be explored; it is on that basis that this discussion is founded.

The dome-like structures that were originally identified as Chtorran nests are in fact only the surface entrances to the underground cities of the gastropedes. Wide, corridors circle downward from the entrances; there are always at least two per entrance. Later, as the surface nest is rebuilt to accommodate a larger subterranean nest beneath, there will be several main channels leading down into the body of the settlement.

Regardless of whether the main channels circle clockwise or counterclockwise, branching corridors always spiral off in opposite directions, so the structure of the underground colony resembles a set of bedsprings.

Centered within each set of bedsprings may be found a wide variety of chambers and apartments, each with its own specific use. Many of the rooms are used for storage; others function as reservoirs for various fluids within the nest: water, waste, and a honey-like secretion; some of the rooms are obviously meant to be used as living quarters or nesting zones, while other chambers appear to be either incubation chambers or feeding areas-or both.

Some of the rooms have unusual structures, and their purposes are not yet clear; for example, what is the purpose of the small chamber at the bottom of a vertical tunnel? Should a gastropede crawl into such a room, it would be unable to get out again-and in fact, the desiccated bodies of small worms have been found in several of these chambers.

-The Red Book, (Release 22.19A)

Chapter 65.

Commitments "Show me a moral victory, I'll show you a loser with a self-esteem problem."

-SOLOMON SHORT.

And suddenly, everybody was talking at once.

Siegel pushed out into the lobby demanding that we go after the children immediately; Lopez, right behind him, already barking orders into her headset.

Shreiber and Johns-were they lovers, or just Siamese twins joined at the opinion?-started hollering about aborting the operation now. Dwan Grodin was stuttering something unintelligible, tears streaming down her face, babbling in bizarre syllables; her brain must have jammed. Sames.h.i.+ma was standing to one side, quietly speaking into his own headset. Captain Harbaugh and General Tirelli were both talking at once. n.o.body was listening-except me. And I couldn't understand a word that anyone was saying.

"s.h.i.+t," I said. I gave up and walked back into the conference room. General Tirelli and Captain Harbaugh followed me-and then so did everybody else. Babbling and hectoring, like a roomful of chickens.

Abruptly, silence in the room.

They were all looking to me for the answer. I didn't have one. I looked to Lizard.

She nodded me toward the podium. If you have something to say I shrugged. What the h.e.l.l? And took the dais. General Tirelli and Captain Harbaugh followed me to the front of the room. Everybody else headed back to their chairs.

"First of all," I said very quietly. "Everybody shut the f.u.c.k up and stay shut the f.u.c.ked up. This is an emergency. Democracy is suspended until further notice.

Priority one-" I pointed to Sames.h.i.+ma. "How long can you keep us aloft?"

Harry shook his head. "I don't know. I have no valid numbers. I can't predict. I can't run a simulation."

"Okay, let me ask it another way. What can you do?"

"I'm already doing," he said. He started ticking points off on his fingers. "I've called in an emergency helium drop. Reserve supplies are on their way. I've mobilized the entire crew. They're spraying the gasbags with sealant. We'll do two coats at first. We'll spray continually. I've ordered more tanks of sealant and pesticide. We could have them tomorrow. I've got another team on the skydeck, spraying sealant up there as well. And-I've got the s.h.i.+p's computer printing out jettison schedules. You'll have to put your people to work on that. Every chair, every bed, every table, everything that isn't nailed down can be thrown out the nearest window. But not all at once. We'll do it as we need the lift. If we drop the flyers and all the probes in the cargo bays and even most of our ballast-" He shrugged. "I won't know until I can get some new lift projections. An hour. Maybe two. It'll be a continual thing. My gut feeling-?" He shook his head grimly.

"How far can we get?"

"If we lift anchor now and fly straight-we might make Yuana Moloco. In Colombia. It's been prepared as an emergency landing site. Most of our emergency supplies are coming through there. They can meet us en route. That'll help."

Beside me, General Tirelli and Captain Harbaugh were whispering to each other.

They both looked up at the same time. Almost in unison, they said, "Do it." Captain Harbaugh added, "Now!" And Sames.h.i.+ma was heading for the back of the room.

"Wait a minute!" Siegel was on his feet shouting. "No, G.o.ddammit! We've gotta go after the children!"

"Sit down, Lieutenant! I'm not through. Harry, wait-" Siegel remained standing, but he shut. Sames.h.i.+ma paused at the door, frowning in puzzlement.

"The SLAM team has aerogel," I said. "Have them spray it all over the skydeck and down over the sides of the vessel. It might help. If it works, spray the interior of the gasbags too. It might prevent further erosion."

Harry looked to Harbaugh. She nodded. He ducked out the door, grinning with ferocious resolve. He stood in the lobby, giving quick, curt orders to his headset.

"Now," I said to Siegel. "How determined are you to go after those kids?"

"Huh?" He didn't understand the question.

"Determined?" I asked. "Or stupidly determined?"

"Oh." He got it. "Uh..." He grinned. "I'm afraid I'm stupidly determined."

"Me too," chimed in Lopez.

"I thought so. Okay-" I looked to the captain and the general. Harbaugh was expectant. Lizard was genuinely curious. "Let's hear it."

I quick-nodded acknowledgment and plowed ahead. "Here's my idea," I said.

"We go straight across the center of the mandala, blazing like a billboard. We anchor so that only the bow of the s.h.i.+p is over the arena. And we light it up like a rock concert. We stay dark at the tail, we run moving arrows toward the bow, brighter and brighter all the way; we do visual dazzles, patterns and stripes and everything else they reacted strongly to in Coari. And as soon as they start singing, we broadcast their own song back to them as loud as we can. We know it'll paralyze them. Meanwhile, we have the tail of the s.h.i.+p over the corral and we winch down as many baskets as necessary to pull up the children. One member of the team for each basket. We load, we lift, and we go. And wait a minute-there's another advantage too. While we're grabbing the children, we can drop all the rest of our probes and monitors. They get planted. We gain lift. The kids get out. We get out." I spread my hands wide in a there-you-have-it gesture.

n.o.body spoke for a moment. I looked at my ringwatch. "If we're going to do it, we have to make the decision in fifteen minutes." I looked to Lizard.

She put her hands to her face, as if hiding behind them to think. When she lowered them again, her eyes looked bleary, but determined. "Brief your team, Lieutenant. Have them stand by."

"It's a go?"

"I don't know. We're going to have to play this one by ear."

"You can't do this," Shreiber interrupted angrily. "It's a lousy idea."

"It may be, but it's the only one we've got," Lizard replied. "Do you want those children on your conscience?"

Shreiber refused to be intimidated by morality. "We can't save them all. Those kids are probably already infected with-with whatever it is. We can't run the risk of bringing that infection aboard this s.h.i.+p."

"We'll use standard detox procedures. We'll quarantine the children as we bring them aboard."

"It's too dangerous. You're risking our safety."

"We're risking your safety, you mean." General Tirelli shook her head in exasperation. "I want those children out of there. I want to know we did something right." She looked across the table at Shreiber. "I don't know about you, but I want to feel good about myself again."

"It's not that easy, General!" Shreiber's face was contorted. "You can't buy your way into heaven like this."

"You're probably right, Doctor. But I'd rather go to h.e.l.l my way than yours."

"Well then, I hope I get the chance to send you on your way." Shreiber stormed out.

Lizard just shrugged and shook her head. "Go to work, guys," she said.

A surprising number of storage rooms within the nest seem to be filled with eggs and nests f various partner species, many of which have still not been fully identified.

We have, however, recognized millipede eggs, snuffler eggs, jellypig incubants, and external wombs containing embryonic gorps.

A number of large leathery pods resembling chrysalises have been found in various nesting chambers, and we suspect that these may in fact be gastropede eggs; but no viable specimens are in hand to confirm this a.s.sessment.

Complicating the identification process is the fact that the gastropedes appear to make no distinction between eggs stored for food and eggs of symbiotic partners.

-The Red Book, (Release 22.19A)

Chapter 66.

Cyrano in the Sky "The Greeks called it Deus ex Machina. The G.o.d in the Machine drops from the sky and saves you from yourself. We call it therapy and leave out G.o.d."

-SOLOMON SHORT.

Once more, the singing of the worms filled the cargo bay.

It was a smothering purple sound. Even here, at the aft end of the vessel, the intensity of it was overwhelming. It was a physical presence in the hot wet air of the j.a.puran afternoon. The unnerving harmonics made all of us in the cargo bay uneasy and irritable.

The last few preparations for the drop were almost finished. Lopez positioned the cyrano-band on Siegel's head and gave me a thumbs-up signal.

The cyrano-transceiver was a standard military model, a lightweight tiara, with lenses mounted at the temples and microphone cups around the ears. The wider-than-normal positioning of the lenses would exaggerate the stereo effect and make objects seem a little bit smaller than they actually were, but it helped the range-finding functions of the image-processing computers.

I pulled my headphones down around my ears and flashed a thumbs-up back to Lopez. She walked around Siegel, quietly whispering a dirty limerick.

"There was a young lady from Venus, Whose body was shaped like Athena's.

She was eighteen feet tall, Which made humans seem small, So she giggled and laughed at their wee-ness."

With my eyes closed, it sounded exactly as if Lopez were walking around me.

"All right," I said, opening my eyes again. "Audio's okay. Let's try the cameras." I flipped my eyepieces down, spent a moment- fiddling with the focus, let myself look forward, and found myself abruptly standing three meters closer to the open cargo hatch. Lopez walked around in front of me, suddenly wheeled and feinted a punch that almost hit right between my eyes. I flinched involuntarily. She laughed wickedly.

"The video's okay," I said. "Anytime you're ready, Lieutenant, let's go for a ride."

Siegel's voice seemed to come from just below my chin. "Right. Uh, Cap'n-?"

"What?"

"What?"

"Could you, uh, not talk, unless it's really important? I mean, I find this, really distracting."

I laughed. "No problem." I thumbed my microphone off, so I wouldn't accidentally distract Siegel. I leaned back in my chair and made myself comfortable.

Somebody patted me affectionately on the shoulder. She left her hand in place. I patted her hand, recognized the ring on her finger, and knew it was Lizard.

A moment later, we were dropping Lopez and Siegel down out of the airs.h.i.+p. The image in front of me s.h.i.+fted uneasily with the bobbing of the basket. The sounds of the nest rose up around us, rhe endless purple singing of the worms.

We looked up. We were under the dark stern of the airs.h.i.+p. It was an oppressive overhead presence. The great shadowy bulk of the Bosch blotted out the sky like an enormous roof. We were hanging exposed under a vast umbrella of twilight.

"Hold here for a moment," Siegel said. "Let's see how the worms react."

I thumbed the microphone on and whispered, "Look forward please."

The image jerked around, refused to steady "Hold your head still, dammit!" The image froze. "Sorry, I didn't mean to yell."

"No. My fault. My harness was caught on the cable. I was trying to free it."