"-Without unduly endangering the safety of the troops, yes, sir."
"Have we completed our circuit?"
"No, sir, and with all due respect-"
"Of course, I'm only an observer, but I think you should carry out your orders, Captain. That's what I think." He clicked off.
I suppressed the urge to say something insubordinate and gave the order. "Take us away from here, Smitty. Away from the worm."
We bumped up the hill and then down again to cross a shadowed gully. We plowed a track through red kudzu so deep, there were places where the rollagons following us were invisible. I studied the map for a moment, then leaned forward and tapped my pilot. I pointed. "That way." Smitty nodded and began working his way up the opposite side.
I waited until all five vehicles were out of the gully and onto the plain. Then I ordered, "Column halt."
I popped the hatch, dropped down out of the machine, and strode deliberately back to the next-to-last tank in line. I crunched across blue iceplant so thick, I wished I was wearing skates. "Major?" I said into my headset. "May I see you for a moment? Privately?"
The rear hatch of the tank slid open. Major Bellus climbed out looking very angry. I waited for him to come to me. "Well?" he growled. "What is it?"
"Who's in charge of this mission?" I asked.
"Is that what you dragged me out into this fucking heat for? A stupid son-of-a-bitch procedural question? It's a goddamned sauna out here!"
I gave him my calmest look and waited for an answer. He was fumbling through his pockets for a cigar. He pulled out a half-smoked stogie and stuck it into his mouth. He glanced at me expectantly. "You got a light?"
"I don't smoke."
He sucked his teeth and started patting down the rest of his pockets. "Hell."
"Sir," I began. "Perhaps you don't understand. Uh, I took the liberty of checking your background. Very impressive, but if you don't mind my saying so, you don't have a lot of direct experience with the Chtorran infestation-I don't think you know what you're dealing with here. All this red ivy is very pretty, it's like the front lawn of Oz, but it's also a very good indicator that we're heading into a deeper patch of serious infection. We don't know why, yet; but the infestation tends to establish itself in patches and-"
"Shut up," he explained. I shut.
"I really don't give a shit," he said. "What I want you to know is the way things work around here. And the way things work around here is this. We do it my way or we don't do it at all."
I considered six different responses. Silence was the most appropriate.
"You have a problem with that?" he asked.
I shrugged. Almost anything I could have said would have been insolent.
He sucked on the soggy end of the cigar for a moment. "Don't you have anything to say, Captain?"
I scratched my neck thoughtfully. I returned his glance. "May I ask? Are you here as an observer? Or as a commanding officer?"
He narrowed his eyes at me. "Officially," he began, "I'm here to learn."
"Is there an unofficial side to that?" I asked as politely as I could.
"Just what kind of a bug have you got up your ass, boy?"
"I am not your boy," I said quietly. "I am not anybody's boy. I am a captain in the United States Army, Special Forces Warrant Agency, currently assigned to the jurisdiction of the North American Operations Authority, and I am entitled to be treated in an appropriate manner." I added pointedly, "Sir."
He glowered at me, sucking angrily on his unlit cigar. The insignia on his sleeve said he was from Quebec. He was old enough to have fought in the insurrection, but I couldn't tell from his accent which side he was most likely to have been on-as if any of that mattered anymore. He spat on the ground distastefully, looked up, and noticed that some of the men were watching us. He pointed with his chin. "Over there."
"Not a good idea, sir. That's-"
"—an order," he said. He was already striding purposefully away from me.
He must have been a lot angrier than he looked. I followed him for nearly the length of a football field before he finally stopped, and turned to confront me. He was red-faced with fury. "All right, now you listen to me, you little cocksucker. I know who you are. I've read your record. You've been white-washed more times than Tom Sawyer's fence. I know the truth behind your record too, and I don't care how many merit badges your old lady has pinned on your skinny little chest. I know the truth about you. You're a deserter, a renegade, a queer, a coward, a flake, and a Modie."
"You left out Revelationist. I'm also part Jewish, part Negro, and part Cherokee Indian on my great-grandmother's side."
"Don't smart-mouth me."
"I just didn't want you to leave anything out, sir. If you're looking for a reason to hate me, make sure you have all the right ones. In the meantime, sir, we're out here because we have a job to do." How to say it without bragging? Hell, I couldn't say it without bragging. "Whatever faults I may have, sir, I am an expert on this infestation. I have more on-site experience with the Chtorran ecology than almost anybody else in the forces. At least, anybody left alive. That's why they gave me this mission."
"And that's precisely why I took it over," he said, spitting at my feet. "You can't be trusted. Your sympathies are no secret."
"Huh? You must be talking about the other Jim MeCarthy-" He wasn't listening.
"You're like all the other queer scientists. You'd rather find a way to live with the worms than kill them. Well, that's not my agenda, and it's not the agenda of this mission. You fucking cowards don't have the cojones your mother gave you. Well, we're going to see some changes."
He was pacing back and forth as he shouted, gesticulating angrily with the butt of the stogie. I didn't know who he was mad at; it wasn't me. He was blowing off enough rage for a whole lifetime of bullshit. Whoever had done it to him had done a real good job. Probably his father. I decided not to take it personally. This man was not going to stop until he'd unloaded every angry message he was carrying; all the responses to all the people who'd ever done it to him in his entire life and refused to let him answer back. Now he was getting even. It didn't matter that he was unloading them on the wrong person-he'd keep unloading until he got one right. I thought about the best way to handle his case, decided I didn't have a contract to do so, and prepared to wait until he himself grew bored with his own performance. I studied the sky, the ground, my shoes, his shoes… After a while, I realized he wasn't going to bore easily. He was enjoying himself too much. Sooner or later, I was going to have to interrupt and remind him that we were standing in the middle of a field of hungry red horticultural vampires.
"Look at me, goddammit, when, I talk to you!" His anger was heading toward apoplexy.
"Sir-?" I tried to suggest that I might have something to say.
"Fuck you! I don't want to hear it. I've heard it. I know what you're going to say. You're going to recommend that we turn back now. You saw a dead worm and you're afraid of what's hiding under the ivy. Chtorran fairies, maybe. Hmp! You shouldn't be afraid of fairies! They're your people, aren't they?"
I had to assume the best. Nobody becomes a major by accident. "Sir. This is very important. Please let me-"
He shoved his face so close to mine, I could smell what he'd had for lunch. "You shut the fuck up! You will not speak unless I tell you to speak. You got that, soldier?"
Oops. Wrong. I had no idea. the Canadian forces had fallen into such a sorry state.
"-If I want you to have an opinion, I'll give you one!"
I took a breath. "Shut up," I said. I used the voice.
He gaped at me. "What the fuck did you say?"
"Shut up and don't move. You're endangering both our lives-"
He glanced around. There was nothing to see. Just the endless red ivy and some hulking foliage-covered masses that could have been trees once. "From what? Titmice?" Abruptly, he giggled manically. "You want to take a poke at me, don't you? Well? Go ahead, try it."
I thought about it. I could take him easily enough-not a brag, just a fact. He was flabby and out of shape. And I was pissed as hell. But as satisfying as it would have been to knock him on his ass, it would have been too dangerous. I looked off at the faded gray sky and considered its color. I looked down at his boots again. At mine. At his eyes. At the distant hulking shapes. I tried to gauge the distance back to the vehicles. Several of the men had stepped out curiously and were staring across the distance at us.
I scratched my ear thoughtfully. I hated running. Especially in combat boots. I hated the feeling of my heart pounding in my throat and my lungs aching for air. I took a deep breath. And another.
He was staring at me. "What the fuck are you doing?"
I swallowed my third breath. "You don't want to hear it." I took another deep breath. This was going to hurt, no matter how many deep breaths I took. I glanced at his feet. "You're standing on a creeper-nerve. You've been practically dancing on it."
He looked down and saw the vines beneath his feet. His eyes widened sharply.
"Those things over there are shambler trees." I pointed with a nod. "They're full of tenants-nasty, hungry little creatures that attack in swarms. Have you ever seen a feeding frenzy?"
"No-" he said. He was starting to sound uncertain.
"Well, I have-and they don't leave survivors."
"Yeah?" He looked skeptical. "How did you survive?"
"I didn't. I was killed too." And later on, I'd wonder how that thought got into my head. Right now, Major Bellus was having major doubts. He kept looking back and forth between me and the shambler trees. "Do you think you can outrun a swarm of angry tenants?" I asked. I didn't wait for his answer. "I don't think so. You're carrying too many potatoes."
I activated my headset. "Everybody back in the tanks-do it as quietly as you can. Lock down. Leave the hatches open only in the two closest vehicles. Those are shambler trees behind us. If the tenants go off, flame them; but not unless they go off. Understand?"
"Aye, aye, Cap'n."
"Now, listen to me. If they go off-and if it's clear that we're not going to make it-close the hatches. Don't be heroes."
"Yessir."
I clicked off and turned back to the asshole. His face was a confused mix of anger and panic. "You're lying-" he said, but his voice was uncertain. He took a nervous step sideways. "Why hasn't it triggered already?"
"You didn't read your briefing book, did you?" I shook my head. How did people like this end up in authority? "They're waiting to see how close we'll come. Shambler tenants can he very patient. They don't like to get too far from their hosts. I usually they wait until you're right under them."
"So… why can't we just tiptoe quietly away?" He was starting to sound desperate.
I gave him a sideways, skeptical look. "Don't be stupid. If they sense us moving off, they'll come right after us. I think we're both dead men."
"You're awfully calm about it-" He was looking for a reason not to believe.
"I'm not calm at all. I'm terrified. I'm just not dramatizing it. Panic is counterproductive."
He snorted and started to walk away from me.
"You're heading toward a ganglion-" I pointed. He stopped in midstride. "Step on that and you'll trigger the tenants for sure. That one's got at least ten, maybe fifteen vines linking into it."
He froze. He looked at me. He looked to the vehicles. He looked warily at the shambler trees, as if simply looking at them would be enough to set them off. Slowly, he pulled his foot back. I could see the sweat rolling down his face. "I don't fucking believe you. You keep saying we're dead men. How can you be so goddamned calm about this?" His anger had been totally overwhelmed.
"Because," I said, "I've already died three times. I can't be scared of it anymore. I've accepted its inevitability. If this is it, then this is it. I'm ready." I couldn't believe it. The Mode training worked.
"So, you're just going to wait here and die? Is that it?"
"Not at all. The fact that I've accepted it doesn't mean that I've also surrendered. I'm not going down without a fight, but I'm not going down like a coward either. That's all."
"So what are we going to do?"
"I don't know what you're going to do. I intend to survive." I took an elaborately cautious step. Unhurriedly, I lifted one foot, lowered it, and shifted my weight quietly forward. "I am going to walk back to the vehicles as slowly as I can. Maybe the tenants won't realize that there are two of us. You can stay here if you want."
"Captain-you have a duty to save your superior officer-" His tone was hard, but there was panic in his eyes. Good.
"Are you ready to listen to me now?" I took another leisurely giant step.
He nodded anxiously.
"Then do exactly as I tell you and keep your goddamned mouth shut. See what I'm doing? Do exactly the same. Watch. Lift your foot as carefully as you can, lower it without putting your weight on it, make sure your footing is secure, and then just shift your weight slowly forward. Can you do that?"
He could.
"Slower than that," I said. "Count to fifty between each footstep. If you skip a number, start over. Don't be impatient."
After the third step, he said, "This is stupid. I feel like a jerk."
I nodded. "You look like one too. The videos on this are going to be hysterical."
"Videos?"
"Uh-huh." I pointed to the cameras on the tanks. "It's standard procedure. Record everything."
He blanched.
I added quietly, "And just for the record-if we do get out of this alive, I intend to pluck your nuts. You never opened your briefing book, did you?"
He started to speak. "There's no call for that tone-"
"Shut up," I explained.
He shut.
We tiptoed in silence for a while, taking long, elaborate pauses between each step. The major was mumbling to himself, I couldn't tell if it was sullen resentment or quiescent panic. Probably it was both. The man had bounced through so many emotional stations in the past half hour that he probably didn't know where he was or what he felt anymore.
We were approaching a shallow dip. "Be careful here." I pointed forward.
He didn't answer.
"There's a lot of baby vines across this area. That's a bad sign. They'll work together like an antenna. They'll feed the vibrations of our footsteps straight to the nearest ganglion. We'll have to slow down."
"Slow… down… ?"
"Uh-huh. One stimulus won't trigger an attack. Two or three consecutive stimuli will. We'll need to slow down our pace."
He moaned. The sound was almost comic. "How can you do this-?"'
"It's called The Patience Exercise. We did it in the Mode Training. The idea is to see how long you can take crossing a room. We had to take a whole day just to get across a roorn the size of a gymnasium. There were a lot of angry people in that room before the day was over."
"Sounds stupid. What's the point?"
"Well, first you get to confront how impatient you are with the process of your own life." I remembered what Foreman had said. "It's about living in the moment of now. Most people are stuck in the past-except when they're trying to live in the future. Very few people know how to live in the now."
"Sounds like a lot of California bullshit," said the major.
"Very probably-but eventually there comes a point when you realize that there's no difference between a moment of waiting and a moment of moving. They're both moments. Each has equal value. So a moment of waiting isn't something to endure, to be gotten through as quickly and painlessly as possible; instead, it's just a moment to be lived, like any other."
"You believe this shit?"
"I don't believe anything anymore. I gave up belief. Now I just accept what the universe presents and act appropriately."
"I hate evangelists," he said.
"So do I," I agreed. "You asked. I answered."
He was silent for a while. I knew he wasn't counting. He was watching me, taking a
step only when I did. He didn't know whether to be afraid, frustrated, or angry. I could tell by the sound of his breathing that he was trying to do all three at the same time.
Finally, he couldn't stand it any longer. "We don't have to do this-this tiptoe-through-the-tulips routine-all the way back to the tanks, do we? I mean, how long until we're out of range?"
"It depends on how far the net of creeper vines has spread. Relax. We've got a long way to go before we can even think about making a dash for it."
"What about this? We run and one of the tanks comes and gets us?"
"We'd never make it. We're still too far."
"Well, what if a tank circled around wide and laid down a swath of flarne between us and the trees?" His anger was going, but he was still frustrated and desperate.
"Same problem. Too much vibration. It'd trigger the tenants for sure." I turned and studied the trees again, just to be sure. They loomed tall and ominous. Great black lumps of vegetation, they dripped with showers of wide, waxy leaves, a purple-and-ebony cascade. Several of them were decorated with blood-red vines and parasitic creepers with bright pink flowers. "Uh-uh. They're spread too far apart. We could never hit them all. Not with enough flame. And certainly not fast enough-assuming we could even get a tank into position. They'd all swarm at once."
"I thought these suits were supposed to provide some kind of protection-" Now the frustration was going, leaving him purely desperate. Would he bottom out at resolve or catatonia?
"I've seen what a shambler swarm can do to a herd of livestock. Do you think your jumpsuit is stronger than cowhide?"
"It's supposed to be-
"Do you want to bet your life on it?"
He didn't answer. He took another elaborate step. He was starting to look a little rocky. No question anymore. He was aiming straight for the paralysis of despair. Too bad. I'd honestly expected better from him.
I knew how he felt. Walking this slow is more difficult than it looks. It's actually harder than running. I could feel the sweat trickling down my sides. The only satisfaction was that Major Asshole was sweating worse than me: I wondered how much more he could take-I glanced back at him. His face was so pale, it was colorless. "Oh, shit." He was about to faint.
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