A Day for Damnation
( The War Against the Chtorr - 2 )
David Gerrold
McCarthy was drafted from his college biology studies and became a member of the Special Forces. Then he is given the opportunity to contact the Chtorr, but when a helicopter crash leaves him and his companions stranded in enemy territory, he must decide whether to communicate with the Chtorr--or kill them!
The War Against the Chtorr
Book 2
A Day for Damnation
David Gerrold
For the Mccaffreys, Anne, Gigi, Todd, and Alec, with love
CHTORR (ktor) n. 1. The planet Chtorr, presumed to exist within 30 lightyears of Earth. 2. The star system in which the planet occurs; a red giant star, identification unsure. 3. The ruling species of the planet Chtorr; generic. 4. In formal usage, either one or many members of same; a Chtorr, the Chtorr. (See CHTOR-RAN) 5. The glottal chirruping cry of a Chtorr.
CHTOR-RAN (ktor-en) adj. 1. Of or relating to either the planet or the star system, Chtorr. 2. Native to Chtorr. n. 1. Any creature native to Chtorr. 2. In common usage, a member of the primary species, the (presumed) intelligent life-form of Chtorr. (pl. CHTOR-RANS)
-The Random House Dictionary of the English Language,
Century 21 Edition, unabridged
ONE
THE CHOPPER looked like a boxcar with wings, only larger. It squatted in the middle of the pasture like a pregnant sow. Its twin rotors stropped the air in great slow whirls. I could see the tall grass flattening even from here.
I turned away from the window and said to Duke, "Where the hell did that come from?"
Duke didn't even look up from his terminal. He just grinned and said, "Pakistan." He didn't even stop typing.
"Right," I said. There wasn't any Pakistan any more, hadn't been a Pakistan for over ten years. I turned back to the window. The huge machine was a demonic presence. It glowered with malevolence. And I'd thought the worms were nasty to look at. This machine had jet engines large enough to park a car in. Its stubby wings looked like a wrestler's shoulders.
"You mean it was built for the Pakistan conflict?" I asked.
"Nope. It was built last year," corrected Duke. "But it was designed after Pakistan. Wait one minute-" He finished what he was doing at the terminal, hit the last key with a flourish, and looked up at me. "Remember the treaty?"
"Sure. We couldn't build any new weapons."
"Right," he said. He stood up and slid his chair in. He turned around and began picking up pages as they slid quietly, one after the other, out of the printer. He added, "We couldn't even replace old weapons. But the treaty didn't say anything about research or development, did it?"
He picked up the last page, evened the stack of papers on a desk top, and joined me at the window. "Yep. That is one beautiful warship," he said.
"Impressive," I admitted.
"Here-initial these," he said, handing me the pages.
I sat down at a desk and began working my way through them. Duke watched over my shoulder, occasionally pointing to a place I missed. I said, "Yeah, but-where did it come from? Somebody still had to build it."
Duke said, "Are your clothes custom made?"
"Sure," I said, still initialing. "Aren't everybody's?"
"Uh huh. You take it for granted now. A computer looks at you, measures you by sight, and appropriately proportions the patterns. Another computer controls a laser and cuts the cloth, and then a half-dozen robots sew the pieces together. If the plant is on the premises, you can have a new suit in three hours maximum."
"So?" I signed the last page and handed the stack back to him. He put the papers in an envelope, sealed it, signed it, and handed it back to me to sign.
"So," he said, "if we can do it with a suit of clothes, why can't we do it with a car or a house-or a chopper? That's what we got out of Pakistan. We were forced to redesign our production technology." He nodded toward the window. "The factory that built that Huey was turning out buses before the plagues. And I'll bet you the designs and the implementation plans and the retooling procedures were kept in the same state of readiness as our Nuclear Deterrent Brigade for all those years-just in case they might someday be needed."
I signed the envelope and handed it back.
"Lieutenant," Duke grinned at me, "you should sit down and write a thank-you note to our friends in the Fourth World Alliance. Their so-called `Victory of Righteousness' ten years ago made it possible for the United States to be the best-prepared nation on this planet for responding to the Chtorran infestation."
"I'm not sure they'd see it that way," I remarked.
"Probably not," he agreed. "There's a tendency toward paranoia in the Fourth World." He tossed the envelope into the safe and shut the door.
"All right-' he said, suddenly serious. "The paperwork is done." He glanced at his watch. "We've got ten minutes. Sit down and clear." He pulled two chairs into position, facing each other. I took one and he took the other. He took a moment to rub his face, then he looked at me as if I were the only person left on the planet. The rest of the world, the rest of the day, all of it ceased to exist. Taking care of the soul, Duke called it. Teams had gone out that hadn't and they hadn't come back.
Duke waited until he saw that I was ready to begin, then he asked simply, "How are you feeling?"
I looked inside. I wasn't certain.
"You don't have to hit the bull's-eye," Duke said. "You can sneak up on it. How are you feeling?" he asked again.
"Edgy," I admitted. "That chopper out there-it's intimidating. I mean, I just don't believe a thing that big can get off the ground."
"Mm hm," said Duke. "That's very interesting, but tell me about James McCarthy."
"I am-" I said, feeling a little annoyed. I knew how to clear. You dump your mind of everything that might get in the way of the mission.
"There-" pointed Duke. "What was that?"
I saw what he meant. I couldn't hide it. "Impatience," I said. "And annoyance. I'm getting tired of all the changes in procedures. And frustrated-that it doesn't seem to make a difference-"
"And ... ?" he prompted.
"And..." I admitted, "...sometimes I'm afraid of all the responsibility. Sometimes I just want to run away from it. And sometimes I want to kill everything in sight." I added, "Sometimes I think I'm going crazy."
Duke looked up sharply at that, but his phone beeped before he could speak. He pulled it off his belt, thumbed it to life, and snapped, "Five minutes." He put it down on the table and looked at me. "What do you mean?"
"Well... I'm not sure if it's even real or not. . ." I weaseled. Duke glanced at his watch. "Come on, Jim-there's a chopper waiting for us. I need to know if you're going on it or not. What's this `crazy' stuff about?"
"I've been having... episodes. . . ." I said.
"What kind of `episodes'?"
"Well, dreams. Sort of. I don't know if I should even be telling you this. Maybe I should plug into Dr. Davidson-"
"Yes, you should be telling me this!" Duke looked annoyed and impatient now. "'Cause if you don't, I'm going without you." He started to rise.
I said quickly, "I've been-hearing things." Duke sat back down.
"And," I continued, "-I've been remembering things. Mostly when I'm asleep or dozing. But it's things I've never heard or seen before. And-this one is the most confusing; you know how most people dream in pictures? Well, last night, I dreamed in sound. A symphony. It was cold and ghostly. It sounded like it was coming from another world, or another plane of existence. I thought I was dying. I woke up in a sweat, it scared me so."
Duke studied me like a father. His eyes were sharp. "Dreams, huh? That's what's been bothering you?"
I nodded.
He didn't say anything immediately. He looked away, out the window, then looked back to me. "I have dreams all the time," he admitted. "Nightmares actually. I keep seeing all the faces of all the people-" He stopped in the middle of the sentence. He dropped his gaze and looked at his hands. His huge old battered hands. I wondered if I should say something. Abruptly he looked back up at me, and he was Duke again-and he'd left several volumes unsaid. "But I don't let it stop me. Jim, do you hear what I'm saying?"
"Uh huh. It's just-"
"What?"
I was embarrassed to admit it. "It's just that I'm afraid of going out of control," I said. "It's almost like there are voices-I think if I could just make out what they're saying, I'd know the answer and everything would be all right. But I can never quite make it out. It feels like distant whispering." There. It was out. I waited for his reaction.
Duke looked troubled. He looked as if he couldn't find the answer he was looking for. He looked out the window at the chopper again. When he came back at me, his expression was unhappy.
"By all rights," he said, "I should ground you pending a medical exam. Except, I can't. I need you for this mission. That's the way this whole damn war is being run. There's not a one of us that doesn't deserve a couple of years of R and R. But we'll never see it. Instead, we'll just keep getting kicked from one crisis to the next and we'll have to take care of our sanity at the stoplights." He studied me sharply. "Do you think you're crazy?"
I shrugged, "I don't know. I certainly don't think I'm normal."
Abruptly, he grinned. "Now-that's normal! Nobody's normal on this planet, Jim. If you're aware of that, you're not crazy. It's only when you start insisting that you're sane that we're going to lock you up."
I blinked and hesitated-and then I got the joke. Sanity. If you thought you had it, you probably didn't. The evidence that you have it is that you wonder if you do. You can go crazy thinking about that one too long.
"Jim-" Duke said, "put all that aside for the moment. What are you here for? What's the job?"
"I'm here to kill worms. The job is to stop the Chtorran infestation of the Earth. By whatever means possible."
"Good," Duke said. "Now, let me ask you another question. Do you have to be sane or fit some standard of `normality' to do that job?"
I thought about it. I looked at the answer inside my head. Obviously not. "No," I said.
"Good. So you see, it doesn't matter if you're crazy or not. There's only one thing I need to know. Can I count on you today?"
Now it was my turn to grin. "Yes, you can count on me."
"Absolutely."
"Absolutely." And I meant it.
"Good," he said. "Grab your kit and let's go."
I didn't move. There was one more thing. "Uh-"
"Something else?" He looked concerned.
"Um, not really. Just a question-"
"Yes, what?"
"Um ... Duke-who do you clear with?"
He looked startled. He turned away from me while he picked up his phone and his traveling kit. Then he turned back to me and said, "I check in with the boss from time to time." He jerked a thumb toward the ceiling-and beyond. "The man upstairs." And then he was out the door.
I followed him, shaking my head in wonderment. The universe was full of surprises.
TWO
I WAS wrong.
A machine that big could get off the ground.
It lumbered through the air like a drunken cow, but it flewand it carried enough troops and gear to overthrow a small government. We had three of the best-trained teams in the Special Forces-Duke and I had trained them ourselves-a complete scientific squad, and enough firepower to barbecue Texas (well, a large part of Texas anyway).
I hoped we wouldn't need to use it.
I climbed into the back and sat down with the "enlisted men." Draftees, all of them. Except they weren't called draftees any more. The Universal Service Obligation had been rewritten-twice-by the New Military Congress of the United States. Four years of uniformed service. No exceptions. No deferments. No "needed skill" civilian classifications. And this means you. You were eligible on the day you turned sixteen. You had to be in uniform before your eighteenth birthday. Very simple.
To get into the Special Forces, though, you had to ask. In fact, you almost had to demand the opportunity. You couldn't end up in the Special Forces any more unless you wanted to be here.
And then, you have to prove you could handle the job.
I didn't know how rigorous the training was-I'd fallen into the Special Forces by accident, before the standards were tightened, and I'd been spending most of my career playing catch-up-but I could tell by looking at this team that it produced the result. I'd also heard that three-quarters of those who started the training dropped out before it was halfway over.
These were the survivors. The winners.
There wasn't one of them old enough to vote. And two of the girls didn't even look old enough to be wearing brassieres. But they weren't kids. They were combat-hardened troops. That these soldiers still counted their ages in the teens was incidental; they were as dangerous a bunch as the United States Army could put togetber. And it showed on their faces. They all had that same coiled look behind their eyes.
They were passing a cigarette back and forth between them. When it came to me, I took a puff-not because I wanted one, but because I wanted to make sure it wasn't "dusted" before I passed it on. I didn't think any of my troops would be that stupid, but it had been known to happen-on other teams, not mine. The army had a technical term for officers who let their troops go into combat situations stoned; we called them statistics.
The team wasn't talking much, and I knew why. It was my presence. I wasn't much more than three years older than the oldest of them, but I was the Lieutenant and that made me "the old man." Besides-they were afraid of me. Rumor had it I'd once burned a man alive on a worm hunt.
I felt old looking at them. And a little wistful too. These kids would be the last ones on the planet for a long time who would be able to remember what a "normal" childhood was like.
They should have been in high school or their first year in college. They should have been putting up balloons in the gymnasium for some school dance, or worrying about their Global Ethics reports, or even just hanging out down at the mall.
They knew this was not the way the world was supposed to work. And this was definitely not the future they had planned on. But this was the way it had turned out; there was a job that had to be done and they were the ones who had to do it.
I respected their commitment.
"Sir?" That was Beckman, tall and gangly and dark. I remembered, his family was from Guam. I glanced over toward him. "Are we gonna be back in time for Derby?" he asked.
I thought about it. We were headed into Southern Wyoming. Two hours in the air each way. Four hours on the ground, maximum. Derby was on at 9:00 P.M. T. J. had found out that Stephanie was coming back from Hong Kong. Now for sure, he had to locate the missing robot before Grant did. "Should be," I said. "If we're off the ground by six. No later." I glanced around at the others. "Can you guys target on that?"
They nodded agreement. "Sure."
"Fine by me."
"Let's do it."
I gave them a grin. A trick I learned from Duke. Spend your smiles as if each one cost you a year off your life. Then your troops will bust their buns to earn them.
They looked so thrilled, I had to get up and go quickly forward before I burst out laughing.
Duke glanced at me as I climbed up beside him. "They okay?"
"They're worried about the missing robot."
"Huh?"
"Derby. It's a TV program."
"Never touch the stuff myself," he said. He checked his watch. He leaned forward and tapped the pilot's shoulder. "You can call Denver now. Tell them we've passed Go-NoGo Lambda. They can launch the follow-chopper." To me, Duke said, "You can start warming up the jeeps n
ow. I want to drop the hatch and roll as soon as we hit dirt. I want this ship empty in thirty seconds."
"You got it," I said.
The target was nearly fifty klicks south of Wheatland.
It had been spotted, almost accidentally, by a Reclamation Scout. Fortunately, he knew what he was looking at. He called it in, then turned his jeep north and drove like hell. He nearly made it too.
A response team spotted the overturned jeep from the air a day later. A drop squad pulled the jeep's log-disk, and the video record confirmed the infestation site. Four worms. Three "children" and an "adult." The nest would have been burned or frozen within forty-eight hours-except this time, Denver had a better idea.
This time we were going to capture a whole Chtorran family alive.
Duke and I always got the good jobs.
THREE
WE BANGED down onto the ground with a thump hard enough to rattle the teeth out of our skulls. Almost instantly, the rear door of the chopper blew open and the exit ramp popped out and down with a metal clang. It felt like the whole ship was coming apart at once. The lead jeep was already bouncing down the ramp and onto the hard Wisconsin clay. The rollagons rumbled right down after it. And then the rest of the convoy.
The lead jeep wheeled north immediately; its wheels stirred up the loose dirt on the ground and it left a thick cloud of dust in its wake. The dust tailed out quickly-the wind was strong today, not the best of conditions.
The other seven vehicles turned north also, forming a ragged diagonal line on the prairie. I was riding in the command vehicle with Duke, the largest of the rollagons-it looked like a landing barge with centipede legs and balloon tires, but it was steady and it was almost comfortable. In addition to our driver, we also had two auxiliary technicians, and a drop squad. For the moment, it was their mission. Duke and I were just cargo. Our job was to sit quietly and be delivered on-site.
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