"I guess I'd better explain the situation," I said, touching her arm gently. Lizard nodded, and let me take over. This was going to take some fancy tap-dancing, but it was the least I could do, considering what Lizard had just done for me.
"A renegade tribe attacked a small settlement called Family on the California coast," I said. "They killed some women and children. I was living there at the time. I organized the survivors into a posse. Using the Captain Anderson identity, I secured certain necessary pieces of military hardware. We caught up with and captured the renegades, tried them, convicted them, and executed them. I don't know if the report is in there or not." I looked to Lizard for help.
"All the renegade material is under very tight security," she said calmly. "And none of it is in the network. It's all hard copy, and only on a need-to-know basis."
"Oh," I said. "Well. It was, um-then I guess I'd better not say too much about it. It was a very unpleasant duty, and uh, the resolution was particularly disturbing. Perhaps it was even mishandled, but if we hadn't handled it the way we did, it wouldn't have been handled at all-and letting the renegades continue what they were doing would have been even more intolerable.
"The point is, this particular incident made it quite obvious what the nature of the renegade-Chtorran relationship really was." I noticed that one of the president's aides had handed her a red-covered folder. She was reading it as I spoke. Occasionally, she would glance up and study me. If that was the report, I wondered who had written it.
Lizard said, "That was when Captain McCarthy put a prearranged pickup signal into the network and I pulled him out of Colorado."
The general did not look convinced.
It didn't matter. The president spoke then. "Captain," she said. "May I ask you a question?"
"Ma'am?"
"You've given us the bare bones, but I know that there's a lot more to it than you've told us. I've been looking over your file. It's obvious that you've been through a great deal of personal anguish here. Is that correct?"
"Yes, Ma'am. That is."
"Thank you. Now, I'm going to ask you something, and I want you to try to put aside your personal feelings. As difficult as that may be, it's necessary. I need you to be an impartial observer of your own experience, so you can give me an accurate answer."
"I'll do my best, Ma'am."
"I'm sure you will. Here's the question, Captain. In your experience, are the renegades still human'?"
"Um . . . Ma'am, I've seen them in all different kinds of situations. I've seen them celebrate birthday parties for their children, giving the kids worm-back rides. Have you ever seen a worm in a party hat? If that was all I'd seen, I'd say yes, the renegades have found a way to preserve their humanity and incorporate the worms into their lives. But that isn't all I've seen." I stopped and cleared my throat. "May I have a glass of water please?"
An aide provided a pitcher and a glass. She filled the glass and handed it to me.
"Thank you," I said.
She smiled quickly and then got out of the way.
I continued. I said, "The other things I've seen-I'd prefer not to talk about. I'd prefer not to think about them. I'd prefer not to even have them in my head. But they are in my head, and I'm afraid they always will be. I've seen humans directing worms against other humans as if they were military weapons. I've seen humans sorting children into pens for use as food for worms. I've seen-" My throat tightened then, and my voice choked. I put my hand up to cover my mouth, then my eyes. "I've seen my own children-"
And then the tears came.
Lizard handed me a tissue. I turned away from the table for a moment. I could feel her hand on my shoulder. "It's all right, Jim. Let it out," she said. "It's all right."
After a moment, I turned back. "Madam President. You've asked me to be impartial. That's almost impossible for me. From what I've seen of the renegades-I'd have to say this: There's a point at which their identification with the worms is so complete that they've lost touch with the rest of humanity.
"When we captured the tribe that invaded Family, the question that we needed to resolve was not one of guilt. That wasn't in doubt. It was the question of response. What do we do about it? And what it boiled down to was this very question: Do we treat the renegades as human or worm? The answer we came up with at family was that by the very act of collaboration, the renegades had turned in their humanity. I don't know if that's the answer you want, but it's the one that was true at Family. And it's still true for me today. I don't think that traitors to the human species deserve any better than any of our other enemies."
I sat down.
"Thank you, Captain. I think you've definitely made your point." The president looked uneasy. Lizard sat down again too. She turned back to me, put a hand on my knee and whispered, "You did fine."
I shook her hand away and stared at the floor and wondered what I had done. Who had I betrayed this time?
There once was a whore from St. Paul,
who took anyone, wide, short, or tall.
She said to her clients,
"It's not really science-
it's just that one size will fit all!"
62
A Small Piece of Truth
"Those who abhor history are compelled to rewrite it."
-SOLOMON SHORT
"Come on," said Lizard. She poked me out of my chair. "I'll buy you dinner." She pushed me quickly toward the door.
Two of the men in uniforms started toward us on an interception course, but Lizard just shook her head and kept on guiding me out. "Colonel Tirelli!" one of them called. She let the door cut him off.
They followed us out into the corridor. "Colonel!"
"Just keep moving," she said to me.
They were hurrying to catch up to us. General Wainright was sixtyish, red-faced, overweight, and out of breath. He spoke in exclamation points. The colonel looked like he'd been stamped from a mold.
The general said, "You're not going to get away with this, you know!"
"I don't know what you mean, sir. Now, if you'll excuse us, I have another appointment."
"You cooked that conference. You stacked the deck." The colonel grabbed her arm and stopped her where she stood. Lizard looked at his hand on her elbow.
"Should I deck him?" I asked. I was already stepping forward.
"You do and you're a dead man," the colonel said.
"I'm already dead," I replied; he didn't understand.
Lizard touched my arm. "I'll handle him, Jim." She looked at the man. "Colonel? How many of those fingers do you want broken?"
The general nodded at his aide. "Let go of her."
The colonel did so. The general said, "We know what you did. We know how you scheduled your flights. You've been pulling teams out of Colorado for a year. You deliberately allowed certain areas of infestation to get beyond manageable limits. You wanted to go in there with the nukes, didn't you?"
Lizard looked at him. "General, I've said everything I have to say to the President of the United States."
"You might be able to fool her!" blurted the colonel. I was sorry I wasn't going to be allowed to hit him. "That old grandmother's just a flunky for the Agency anyway."
"She's the commander in chief! By the highest law of this land. Maybe that's something you don't understand," Lizard said. She turned to the general. "This man-" She jerked her thumb at the colonel, "-is dangerously close to talking sedition! If you don't report him, I will!" Her eyes were blazing. She turned and stalked down the hall. I hurried to fallow after.
As we stepped into the elevator, I glanced back to see if they were following. They weren't. The elevator doors slid shut and Lizard burst out laughing.
"Huh? What's so funny'?"
She was punching the top button. "Everything. The worms are in the suburbs of Denver. General Wainright wants to drop the bomb-so do we-and we're at each other's throats because neither side wants to be left holding the bag if it doesn't work."
"Do we
want to drop the bomb?"
"No," said Lizard. "We don't. It's just the only thing left that we haven't tried. After that, all we have left are fallback plans, and the president has authorized those too. We might have to abandon the whole planet."
"Huh? How-?"
The elevator doors opened and we came out into the security cage. Lizard put her palm on the clearance panel and the doors slid open. As we took the escalators down to the parking garage, Lizard explained, "If we have to, we can evacuate to the moon and the LS stations-by the way, Alpha was eighty-five percent complete when the plagues hit; it won't be too big a job to make it livable. It already holds ten percent atmosphere. We just have to send up enough gas to bring it up to livable pressure. It's doable. We know that there are still a hundred and eleven survivors in the Lunar stations. I don't know how they're hanging on, but they are. We can learn a lot from them. We estimate we can salvage maybe ten to fifteen percent of our ecology, plus germ plasm of maybe another ten or fifteen percent. Figure we'll lose the rest. We've already begun to evacuate the World Ecology Bank. We may do that if we evacuate the planet or not."
"How many people?" I asked.
"About five hundred thousand. And sperm samples from ten million more. The species' genetic heritage will be saved."
"But not the species."
"Not the species, right. Not unless we figure out some kind of sterilization that local flora and fauna can survive. Dr. Zymph isn't optimistic. Anything strong enough to kill Chtorrans would take out humans too. Here's the car."
I got in. "Where are we going?"
"Dinner, remember?"
"Why me?"
"Because," said Lizard, "it's very simple. I want you where no one else can get their hands on you. You know too much. Worse, you don't know what you know."
She started the car then. The motor whined up to inaudibility and we slid up and out into the Denver night. Lizard laughed abruptly. "The general was right. We did let that infestation get bigger than manageable. But not for the reasons he thinks. The nuclear option wasn't the only one. We've got five other alternatives to take out that camp. And the president knows those alternatives too. However, yes, we did cook that conference. We always do." She stopped grinning. "We didn't just cook it, we boiled it-right down to the essentials. We don't have time any more, Jim. We don't."
I nodded.
She fell silent. "What do I know?"
"I don't know," she said. "But I intend to find out."
There was a young fellow named Forrest
whose cornhole was one of the sorest.
Said he, "I don't mind
a regular grind
-but I do wish my ass were elitorlsed."
63
Fadeout
"Loving well is the best revenge."
-SOLOMON SHORT
"Remember this place?" Lizard asked as we came down the ramp ofl'the freeway.
"The Marriott-Regency? How can I forget? Only the last time I was here, there were fireworks and lasers."
"Sorry, we don't do that any more. There's a war on."
"I can see that."
The place looked like a tomb. The huge pyramid looked somehow shrouded. Then I figured it out. There were no exterior lights. No fountains. No celebrations. This building used to be a pcm. Now it was a hulking dark monolith. There were individual room lights on, but somehow they served to make the building seem even more deserted, more lonely.
We coasted up the service ramp and into the interior lobby. At least there was still a valet to park the car. As I got out, I noticed now stark the interior looked.
"We took the plants out," Lizard said before I could ask. "They got infected. Plant diseases. Viruses. They turned purple. Or red. They turned into Chtorran things. They were pushed out of their pots. " She took my arm and guided me toward the escalator. Last time I'd ridden this escalator, it had been with Ted and Marcie and a Colonel who looked like a buffoon. Marcie was dead. Colonel Buffoon was dead, and I didn't know where Ted was. He was probably dead too. Lizard was saying, "It was too disheartening. This was supposed to be the nerve center of resistance and we wouldn't even protect our own green plants. We're losing Denver, Jim. It's just a matter of time."
One thing was still the same, the buffet where I'd met Foreman. I noticed that the selection wasn't quite as lavish as I'd remembered. The salmon was canned, not fresh. And instead of human waiters there were robots trundling back and forth.
"We kept the chef when we took over the facility," Lizard said. "It's good for morale to have good food available. It's comforting. Or as Foreman says, 'It's like getting back to Mama's tit."' She handed me a plate. "Here, Chtorr into it."
"Chtorr into it?"
She shrugged. "Chtorran jokes. What can I say?"
"Don't say anything." I was staring at the canned peaches, the fresh cottage cheese, the warm bread, the cold sliced roast beef, the pickles, the sausages, the scrambled eggs, the . . .
I lowered my plate.
"What's the matter?" Lizard asked.
"This is unreal. Last night, I was a thousand klicks away from here, trying to make a meal out of hard salami and stale sourdough. I got my brains fucked out by a hallucination. This morning I had my van blown up. Then I helped strafe a worm camp. I came back and was debriefed by the president of the United States. Suddenly, I'm back in civilization staring at a hotel buffet. And I'm told that it's good for morale."
I turned to face her. There was no one else around us. It didn't matter, I would have said it anyway. "Colonel, I must be in some kind of culture shock. Three weeks ago I did something that should have put me in front of a firing squad. I've been running from it ever since. Suddenly I'm here-and it doesn't make sense. It isn't real."
She put her hand on my arm. "Jim . . ."
I shook it off. "No, let me finish. It wasn't real out there. It wasn't. Every time I took a breath and smelled Chtorr in the atmosphere, it wasn't real. Every time I looked at the hills and saw purple or pink or blue or red, it wasn't real. I've been crazy. I still am. I've been walking around saying, 'This can't be happening. This isn't happening. Please let me wake up.' Only, it is happening. And now I'm here, looking at this buffet, and you take it for granted that there's all this food. I've been out there, Lizard. This isn't real. This is artificial. I don't know how long you can keep pretending here, but I know that this is not real. This is the pretense. It is happening. And . . . I don't feel right anywhere."
"I know the condition, Jim." She looked straight into my eyes. "I do. We all do. It's called . . . well, never mind. We're all a little fuzzy around the edges. That's why we keep this buffet t~wing. To remind us of the way it used to be. It's the one bearing wa still have in a world gone mad." She took my plate and handed n to me again. "Will you eat?"
I didn't answer. I couldn't win. And there was no escape. So I let go. I let my body go through the motions and drifted along helplessly behind it. It was easier that way.
The body turned to the table. It put food on the plate. It did it mechanically. I wasn't there. This was easier. I didn't have to be involved in any more decisions.
Lizard said to do something and my body did it, but I was uanewhere else, I don't know where. Hiding. Thinking. Trying to figure it out. Being crazy. Being numb. Being nothing.
Jim's body followed her back to a table. I watched from a distance while she ordered wine from a waiter. She tasted it and wrinkled her nose. A second bottle was produced. It was acceptable.
He drank wine. He ate food. He tasted nothing. Everything was nice and numb. Lizard talked to him. Sometimes she asked questions. Mostly he grunted. If she pressed, he answered mechanically.
Abruptly, she pushed her plate away. She put her hands on the table. "Jim?" she said. "Are you even here?"
"I'm here," he replied.
"No, I don't think so," she said. "You're showing all the Symptoms,"
"I am?"
"Yes, you are."
"Symptoms of what?"
"Oh," he said. "That's interesting. How does it happen?"
"It happens to everyone. When things become too confronting or too intense . . ." She stopped herself. "Shit. Why am I trying to explain this to you? Wait here." She got up and went to the service bay. She came back a moment later with two live waiters. "Him," she said, and pointed to Jim in the chair. I watched with Interest.
The two waiters grinned and grabbed him, picked up the chair with him in it and carried him and it across the dining terrace, out to the main concourse, across the interior patio, toward the pool at a run, and tossed him into it, ass over teakettle.
I came up spluttering and swearing and shaking clouds out of my head. "What the goddamn bloody fuck do you think you're doing, you crazy pink bimbo?" I started swimming toward the shallow end. "This is a stupid, flaming, asshole, mother-fucking, sadistic stunt!"
Lizard was standing there laughing, so were the waiters. I squished and squelched out of the pool toward them. "Shit! I don't care if you are a colonel, Lizard! There are some things that you just don't do!"
"Oh, are you pissed?" she asked.
"You bet your rosy-cheeked freckled ass I am!" I bellowed at her. "I'm so fucking angry I could-"
"How angry are you?" she demanded. "Show me."
Something snapped then. Something happened. I exploded. My rage filled my entire body. I began to scream. I began to bring up great howling gasps of breath. I took in great gulps of air and turned them into gutteral roars. I could feel the muscles of my face stretched into a rictus of terror. I could feel the muscles of my arms and legs tensing as if I were pushing against the weight of the entire universe. I pushed against my own rage and pushed it out of my body and out against Lizard and beyond her, out against the walls of the hotel. I could see them shattering before my screams. I pushed my rage out into the entire universe. I was hoarse with roaring.
And then I collapsed wetly to my knees in a sodden heap, gasping, sobbing out of breath.
I looked up to applause. "Huh?"
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