"It's called Schlemiel," she said. "It's a game. You win by getting people to forgive you. That's the payoff. You can play it forever-as long as there are people to spill soup on." She looked at her ration bar sourly. "But it bores the hell out of me."
I didn't know what to say. I opened my mouth anyway. Words fell out. "Well excuse me for being on the same planet with you. Excuse me for being in the same species."
"I'm not so sure that we are the same species. . ." she said. "I'd like a second opinon on that."
I flustered. If I could have gotten up and walked away, I would have; but there was no place to walk to. How was I supposed to respond to her? I said, "I don't know what to make of you! Just a few minutes ago we were talking like two human beings-now you're treating me like I'm some kind of a-a thing!"
She didn't answer immediately. She was chewing quietly. When she did speak, she kept her voice calm. She said, "I'm treating you like you're acting, Lieutenant. You're acting like a spoiled little brat. It's boring. I'm tired of listening to you apologize. I'm tired of you taking the blame for everything that goes wrong in the world. "
"Well, but-"
"No. Just shut up and listen. You're not giving yourself any credit for the things you did right."
"I don't think I did anything right!"
"That's right. You don't think you did! You went out in that dust and got a good look at some previously unknown Chtorran creatures. You saved Duke's life-I grant that you did it with an extremely unorthodox and probably not recommended procedure, but you did save his life. You single-handedly dragged him back to the chopper. I know a lot of people who wouldn't have done that, they'd have given up first. You didn't give up! And when you did get here, you didn't stop. You didn't do anything for yourself until you'd first done everything you could for Duke. I was here too. Remember? I saw it! You know, they give out medals for that kind of stuff. You're a goddamned hero, McCarthy-"
"No, I'm not!"
"-but you won't believe it, because you have some picture in your head of what you think a hero is supposed to be, and that's not you! Right?"
"Uh-"
"Right?" she demanded. "Am I right?"
"Uh-I know I'm not a hero. Yes, you're right."
"Yeah," she nodded. "So you go around apologizing for being who you are. And in the meantime, you keep forgetting to notice that who you are is not such a bad person. You know, you'd be kind of cute if you weren't such a schmuck."
"Huh?"
She flushed and threw her hands up in the air. "Now you know my secret. I think you're cute. An asshole, but a cute one."
"Cut it out! I don't like being teased like that! I had my fill of it in high school!"
"I'm not teasing." She was dead-serious.
"Huh-?" This conversation wasn't making sense. "You mean that? You think I'm cute?"
"Yeah." She nodded. "You."
"Uh-no. I'm not. I have a broken nose that was never properly set. And I'm too short. And I'm too thin. And I'm-"
"There you go, doing it again. Can't you just let it in and say thank you?"
"Uh-" This was very hard. "I'm not-used to this. Compliments I mean. Nobody ever-I mean-uh-" I stopped. I felt embarrassed. And I felt good. Lizard was really a beautiful woman! "Thank you," I said.
"Good." She beamed. "Very good." She looked at what was left of her ration bar. "But you're right about one thing, you know."
"Huh? About what?"
"It sure as hell isn't lobster."
NINETEEN
I WAS awakened by Lizard's voice. My throat felt filled with cotton. I tried to clear it and couldn't.
"-no, we're still buried. It's darker in here than the inside of a bear."
I opened my eyes. She was talking on the radio again. I tried to take a breath. My chest hurt.
"-no, I can't tell how deep. I think the sun's coming up though. There's a faint glow in the turret and at the top of the windshield, but I'm not sure that means anything. The stuff is translucent. And when it piles up in drifts it doesn't get very dense, so it passes a lot of light. We could be under ten meters of it and not know."
I'd heard this conversation before. Lizard and I had covered the same material all last night before we'd finally collapsed into separate makeshift bunks.
I pulled myself painfully into a,sitting position. I was stiff. I was sore all over. Everything hurt. My lungs were the worst. Every breath was an effort. I wanted to cough, but I knew I didn't dare. If I started I'd never stop. I knew I had to keep my breathing shallow and my movements to a minimum. The pressure to cough was incredible.
But-first things first. I had to check on Duke. He was still asleep.
He looked bad. Most of his hair was burned away. Parts of his scalp were peeling and blistered. The skin looked dead. He looked so bad I didn't want to look at him. I didn't want to know what he looked like under the medi-blanket. I felt queasy.
This wasn't Duke any more. This was burned meat. It didn't look like it would ever be Duke again. A thought crossed my mind-maybe he'd be better off if he died. I shoved it away. And prayed that God hadn't heard me. I didn't mean it, God, I said silently. I really didn't.
I punched the console for display. The medi-kit was continually monitoring his body functions and the level of sedative in his bloodstream was automatically maintained. It was probably dangerous to keep him out for this long-but what else could we do? They were reading the same information at Oakland. They knew what our circumstance was. If there was anything else to do, they would call us-or they'd reprogram the medi-kit directly. But for the moment, all we could do was wait.
And I hated waiting.
It made me feel useless.
Duke was starting to smell bad. Very very bad. The screen said his legs were infected. This couldn't go on much longer.
The chopper had a tiny lavatory at the very rear of the cabin. I stepped into it and threw up. And then I started coughing. It hurt like hell.
By the time I rejoined Lizard at the front of the ship, she was off the radio. She had turned her chair around to face the rear again and had just cracked open a new ration-kit.
"G'morning," she grinned. "Want some lobster?" She waved a stick of something gray at me. It looked unhealthy.
"No thanks," I said. I collapsed into my own chair. My chest ached.
"How about some prime rib instead?" She held up a sickly green-looking bar.
"Please-I've already thrown up once this morning. That stuff is not fit for human consumption."
"It depends on the wine you serve with it," she said over a mouthful. She held up a can of beer to show me.
I looked over at her. "When we get out of this," I said, "I will buy you the biggest fucking lobster in Arizona. And the best bottle of wine I can afford. Until then, I don't want to hear about food. "
"You're on," she said. "With any luck, that'll be tonight."
"Really?"
She nodded. "Weather scan shows the cloud has dissipatedor spread out too thin to register on the scope. There were strong winds last night. The main body of the cloud passed us by around three in the ayem. Oakland says the last of it is still breaking up over Sacramento. They got a couple inches of cotton candy-but nothing like we got. There's also a chance of rain-with all these dust particles in the air, it's a very good chance. Weather service is adjusting their model now-but I'm betting that it rains before they can bring the new simulation up and running."
"Mp," I said.
Assuming that the puffball clouds hadn't left a permanent pink haze in the air, we still had to address the real problem. The chopper was buried in this crap. How were we going to get out of the ship? If we were under more than two meters of dust, we might as well forget it.
And that suggested another problem. Just how extensive were these drifts anyway? I already knew from experience that we wouldn't be able to move very far through them. No, it was too unlikely that we could get to clear ground-they were going to have to pick us up here.
&n
bsp; And then there was the problem of Duke.
I sucked at a water bulb and looked at Lizard. She was lost in thought as well.
She caught me looking at her. "Yes?"
"How are we going to get Duke out of here?"
"You've gotten that far with it, huh?"
"Uh, I haven't gotten anywhere. I just figure that Duke is the hard part of the problem. If we can handle that, the rest takes care of itself."
She said, "I think we're going to have to wait for outside assistance. Right now, the best solution I can come up with is a Sikorsky Skyhook. It could just pull us out-if we could get the grapples in place."
I said, "If any part of the parafoil is accessible, they can hook onto that, can't they? They could use that harness."
"Hey! That's not bad-"
"Thanks."
"-except it won't work." She explained, "It's not your fault. The problem is the Sikorsky. No chopper can rescue us. It'll stir up too much dust. It'll ruin its own engines. They'll come down right on top of us."
"I wonder if this stuff could be washed away? My great-grandmother once tried to teach me a rain dance. You said there's a chance of rain. I'll call it down here."
She smiled sourly, "That'll turn this stuff into mud-and then it'll harden into concrete."
"But it's just-cake flour!"
"You ever try to eat a stale bagel?"
I threw up my hands in despair. "I concede the point."
"Got any other ideas?" she asked.
"Well, we know we can burn it away...." I said it unenthusiastically.
"Now that's a thought," Lizard replied brightly. "You and Duke have already proven the dust is flammable. And this chopper is tiled. It'll make a wonderful oven." She grinned at me. "Do you like brick-oven cooking?"
"No thanks." I picked up the flashlight, switched it on, and swiveled forward. I stared at the pink barrier on the opposite side of the windshield. "I wonder what they do on the planet Chtorr?"
"They probably don't fly in cotton candy weather."
"Yeah, they probably have candy warnings."
"I can imagine the forecasts," Lizard said. "Tomorrow will be mostly fair with scattered high candy and a twenty percent chance of lemonade."
"Not lemonade," I corrected. "Wrong color. More likely strawberry soda."
"And instead of snow, they get syrup? Sounds like a good way to get your wicket sticky?"
"Actually," I mused, "that might not be so far from the truth. Everything is edible to something else. We're just another kind of snack to the worms. Maybe their own planet is one great big smorgasbord to them. It's all point of view. Maybe this is the season of candy."
"Well, we could sure use a couple of worms with sweet tooths along about now," Lizard said.
"Uh-I'm not so sure they're not already here," I replied very slowly.
"Huh?"
"Turn your seat around and look. I think something's moving out there."
TWENTY
"WHERE?" SAID Lizard.
"There. Up near the top."
"I don't see anything."
"Keep looking. It was just a flicker-right there. As if something's moving on top of the dust."
We stared and waited. Nothing.
After a moment, Lizard said, "Well, I don't see it."
"I'm sure of what I saw." There was an edge of anger in my voice.
"Yes, I'm sure you are," she replied quietly. "Last time you were that sure, you disrupted a conference."
I ignored the knife between my ribs. "And I was right, wasn't I?"
Lizard shrugged. "Being right is rarely a victory."
"Huh?"
"Never mind." She anchored one foot on the console, grunted, and swiveled her seat to the back again. "If there's really something out there, we'll see it soon enough."
I muttered something unprintable and grabbed the flashlight. I climbed past her to check on Duke again. The medi-console said he was stable. He looked a little less gray. I wished I'd taken more pre-med courses. I wasn't sure how to interpret any of this.
"Uh--Colonel?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you know anything about first aid?"
"A little."
"Come here and listen. Duke's breathing sounds funny."
She came to the back and squatted down next to Duke. She listened. Then she smiled. "His breathing's fine."
"But that wheezing-"
"He's asleep," she said. "He's snoring."
"Are you sure?"
Lizard looked me straight in the eye. "I know what a man's snoring sounds like."
"Uh-right. Thank you." I picked up the flashlight and went to the back of the tail to look and see if I could see anything out of the rear bubble. The cotton candy seemed a little more translucent there. I could feel my face burning.
How long would it be till we really started getting on each other's nerves? I wondered if I could get angry enough to kill her. I was afraid I might find out.
I climbed into the bubble seat, folded my arms across my chest, and faced the back.
What is it about women anyway? Why do they all seem to think that life is about challenging men? And then they wonder why the men are so touchy-
I was staring at it for several minutes before I realized what I was seeing. I came out of the chair so fast, I bumped my head on the Plexiglas. "Holy shit!-Owww!"
"Are you all right?" Lizard called.
"No-"
"What happened?"
"I bumped my head-" I could still feel the ringing. "Come here!"
"Why? You want me to kiss it?"
"I want you to see something. Come here!" I started coughing then, and couldn't think of anything for a minute. Every paroxysm was agony. I forced myself to stop, I don't know how.
When I opened my eyes again, Lizard was looking up at me with a concerned expression. She was holding out a bulb of water. I took it gratefully. "Thanks."
She came climbing past Duke with a sigh. "All right, what do you want me to see?"
I pointed at the window. "There is something out there."
She looked. She frowned. She looked confused. Then her eyes widened.
The entire surface of the bubble was alive.
It was still a solid pink mass-but we could see something through the pink. It was like looking through a layer of suds. There was something flickering behind it; the whole surface was flickering.
It was a seething movement, but the eye couldn't resolve a pattern. As we watched, the movement grew more pronounced than ever. The flickerings became scratchings.
"What is it?"
"I don't know. But it's getting bigger."
"Bigger? Couldn't you have chosen another word?"
"How about closer?"
"Not much improvement." She folded her arms around herself as if she were cold. "It's getting lighter in here, isn't it?" she offered. "Could it be the wind-blowing the dust off?"
"I wish it were. But I doubt it."
I moved as close to the window as I could and still keep my eyes focused. Something was moving the pink powder around-the way it shifted and swirled, it looked like thousands of tiny little shapes, all moving and scrambling at once.
And then it resolved-"Unh," I said.
"What-?" she asked.
"Look close."
She leaned into the bubble, staring. Her eyes widened in horror. "Bugs!"
The entire surface of the bubble was flickering and swirling and seething. We were looking at the bodies of millions and millions of frenzied insects.
"They're feeding on the powder," I said. I dropped back into my seat. I was starting to feel itchy.
Lizard dropped out of the bubble and scrambled forward. I could hear her stopping at the ports. "They're all over these windows too!" She checked the front of the ship. "They're all over us!"
I levered myself out of the seat and went forward to join her. She was staring at the window. Because this part of the chopper was buried deeper in the drift, the seething movement
was still limited to the very top of the windshield. It wasn't as clear yet as it was at the tail, but it was clear enough.
Lizard shuddered. She couldn't tear her eyes away from that flickering pink wall. "They're all over us!"
I tried to imagine what the chopper must look like from above. A large pink sugary lump in the middle of a pink snowdriftcovered by a billion crawling insects, nature's perfect little machines, all of them feeding. I could imagine them working at the powder, their tiny mandibles flashing. I could imagine them chittering and scraping and jostling-
I grabbed her by the shoulders. "Listen to me! Is this ship airtight?"
"It should be- Oh, my God! The compartment-!" She looked to the floor.
"Does it seal?"
"Uh-yes, it should."
"Good. Now, we've got to find every other possible breachevery leak, no matter how small, has got to be plugged-"
"Plugged?"
"What? Is there an echo in here? When those bugs eat down far enough, some of them are going to get in. That's a feeding frenzy out there! They're going to be coming in hungry! You and I and Duke are the only things edible in this larder. What have you got that'll keep them out?"
"Uh, I don't know. Wait a minute-let me think."
"Come on-I thought these choppers were stocked for every emergency. "
Abruptly, Lizard stiffened. She looked at me hard. "I suspect that this one isn't in the book. The army hasn't had much reason to bury choppers in cotton candy, so we don't really know what happens when bugs eat them out." She looked angry. That was a good sign. "Obviously," she continued, "you and I have been given the opportunity to research the subject."
"Terrific!" I said. "What an opportunity! What'll we try?" Lizard looked at the floor of the chopper, frowning. She let her gaze travel slowly toward the back. She looked like she was using her X-ray vision to inventory each separate cargo compartment.
Abruptly she said, "Shelterfoam!" She was staring all the way back. "You'll have to move Duke-"
"What's shelterfoam?"
"It's in case you crash somewhere and need to build a shelter-especially in cold weather areas. First you inflate a big balloon, then you spray it with shelterfoam. You wait a half hour for it to harden, cut a door, and move in. It's like living in a pumpkin. We used it as quick-fix housing in Pakistan." She pointed. "Put Duke all the way in the back. He's lying right over the compartment I need to get at."
A Day for Damnation twatc-2 Page 14
