"There's nothing to forgive. You did your job."
"I'm not suited for this job."
"That's where you're wrong."
"Huh?" There was something about the way she'd said it. I looked up sharply.
She nodded. "You need to know this. Your aptitudes and abilities are constantly being monitored and analyzed. That's so the military can know how best to place you."
"Well, sure-everybody knows about the Personnel Placement Policy. There's a lot of LI processing involved in it. But I never put much faith in it. After all, look where they put Dannenfelser."
She made a face. "Believe it or not, Dannenfelser is exactly what General Wainright needs. No, listen to me. The process is much more sophisticated and thorough than you suspect. It's not just a question of matching skills to tasks. It's also a matter of matching emotional suitability as well. If someone can't handle stress, you surround him with people who can-he's protected, so is the job. Here's why I upped your clearance. You are what the psych section calls an 'alpha personality.' That means that you're able to handle large responsibilities. You're not afraid to make difficult decisions. Yes, you agonize about them-but you do it afterward. That's your way of double-checking yourself that you made the right decision at the time.
"That's why you keep getting promotions. You produce results. And that's why you keep getting sent into impossible situations. Because you discover things that other people don't. There aren't a lot of people in the world who can do what you do. You walk into dangerous places, you look around, and you come out again and report not just what you saw, but what you noticed. You're a natural synthesist-you learn, you theorize, you teach, you make a difference. And that's why you can be forgiven the deaths of those three soldiers. That was their job-to protect you and whatever it is you realized by being there."
I considered her words. I'd always known that I was good at what I did. I'd never realized that anybody else had noticed, or even cared. I got up and crossed to the window. It was my turn to look out at the dark green roof of the forest below. Amapa was already visible on the horizon, a splash of white carved into the distant hills. We'd be docking in less than an hour.
I took a breath. What I was about to say would not be easy. "If what you say is true, and I have no reason to doubt you, then I can't do the job anymore, Lizard. Because that would mean other people are going to have to risk their lives to protect me in the future. I can't have any more deaths on my conscience. Three is already too many. Of all the deaths I've ever caused, I don't know why, but these three are the worst."
She followed me to the window and put her arms around me from behind. She hugged me gently, then released me and began gently massaging my shoulders. She did that when she wasn't sure what she wanted to say. I didn't object, I liked the attention, but I also knew that she was monitoring my mental state by the tension in my shoulders and neck.
"Turn around," she said. I did so.
She took my hand and placed it on her belly. "Feel that," she commanded.
"Feels good," I said. I slid my hand lower.
She moved my hand back up to her belly. "Don't start. At least not until I finish saying what I have to. I might be pregnant, Jim. I hope I am. And if I am, then we're going to be responsible for bringing a new life into the world and raising it to be the best kind of person we can. But what happens if Dr. Meier tells us that this child is damaged or defective somehow? What if amniocentesis shows that it's a Down's syndrome baby or-I don't know. But what if it's not perfect?"
I let my hand fall to my side. "It will be."
"I know, but what if it isn't? Then what? What's our responsibility as parents?"
I made supportive noises. "We'll talk it over. We'll see it through. We'll handle it."
"We'll abort it," she said with certainty. "As parents, we take responsibility for this life. And if it can't be a good life, we'll also take the responsibility for ending it, won't we?"
I hated this conversation. It made me feel queasy. But I managed to nod my head yes.
"That's right. When you take responsibility for another person's life, you also have the responsibility to end it too, if that's appropriate." She stared into my eyes until I wanted to cry; there was a lot of that going on this trip; but I couldn't break away.
"Jim," she added, in an even more serious tone. "What if I was injured? What if I was in a coma, with no hope of recovery? Brain dead. Would you tell Dr. Meier to pull the plug on me?"
"Lizard, please-"
"Would you tell her?" she demanded. "Or would you let me he a living vegetable, wasting away in a hospital bed, year after year after year?"
"I hope to God I never have to-"
"I hope to God you never have to either! But if you did-?"
"If I did have to, then yes, I'd pull the plug on you, yes-and then I'd go home and put a bullet through my brain. I couldn't handle it-"
"No, you will not kill yourself. Whatever happens, Jim, you will handle it and you will survive it and you will report back to Uncle Ira or Dr. Davidson, or whoever else you have to, exactly what you saw and noticed and discovered. Because that's what you're good at. That's why you're here. Promise me that, Jim."
"Promise me! If you love me, promise me that one thing!" She stared into my face. "If you don't make me that promise, I won't warry you."
Somehow I got the words out quickly. "I promise," I said. "I won't kill myself. Not for that reason anyway."
"If you break that promise, I'll dig you up and slap your face." She meant it too.
"Lady," I said, "you're almost as crazy as I am."
"Crazier," she corrected. "I'm the one who's marrying you and helping you pass along your genetic heritage."
I pulled her to me, laughing only a little bit. I needed a hug. And besides, she smelled good. I let my fingers trace their way up through a lock of her beautiful red hair. "Okay, sweetheart, I promise you. If I have to prove how much I love you by killing you, I'll do it. But what's the point of all this?"
"The point is, sweetheart, that when you accept the responsibility for another person's life, you are also accepting the responsibility for their death-if that's appropriate."
"I know that."
"No, you don't. Not as an officer. Certainly not yet as a combat officer. Otherwise, we wouldn't be having this conversation."
I let go of her and waited. "All right," I said. "Tell me."
"You need to know this. You need to hear it from someone who's been there. When a soldier takes his oath, he's committing himself to do whatever is required of him by his superior officers. He's accepting your control over his life. He's acknowledging that the job is more important than his personal survival. Your job as an officer is to make sure that his service is used wisely and appropriately. And if the job does require the ultimate sacrifice from him-and you hope to God that it never will-if that sacrifice furthers the larger goal to which we're all committed, then that's part of the job too. And in fact, Jim, if you extend this line of thought all the way out, once you accept the responsibility for that soldier's life, then if you don't make that sacrifice where it's required, you're betraying the commitment, yours as well as his."
"I wasn't raised in a military home," I said slowly. "I don't think that way, Lizard. I hate that kind of thinking-I hate the justifications in it. I hate the callousness and the waste of life. I hate myself for having to think that way, and I think other people hate it too. I don't want to be hated anymore."
Lizard didn't answer immediately. She looked troubled; perhaps she was trying to decide how to proceed. At last, she cleared her throat and said, "I know you, Jim. I know what you've been through-with Shorty, and Duke, and Delandro, and all the others." She took my hands in hers and held them for a moment, looking at them as if studying and memorizing them, before glancing back up to my eyes. "Everything you've ever done, sweetheart, has been the right thing to do at the moment you did it. Based on the information you had available to you, you couldn't have just
ifiably done anything else." She stepped in close to me, and her voice became as candid as it had ever been; the moment was one of the most intense and intimate we had ever shared together. "I cannot possibly imagine you doing anything that would truly justify hatred-not from me, not from anybody. Anger, yes. Hatred, never. Remember that. Remember what I told you the very first time we made love. I don't go to bed with losers-and I certainly don't marry losers or failures, let alone bear their children."
I swallowed hard. If it had been difficult last night for Lizard to listen to the good truths I had to tell her, it was damn near impossible for me to listen to this. I wondered if the lump in my throat would ever go away.
"Let it in," she said. "You are a good man, and you will accept your responsibilities. I've seen you do it too many times not to have total confidence in you for the future." And then she added, "I love you. I'm going to marry you. I'm going to bear your son. I'm going to make you unbearably happy-"
"Actually, I was hoping for a little girl-with red hair as shiny as yours-" But then, abruptly, I choked on my own words. What she had said hit me with the impact of an onrushing wall. I gulped down my joyous embarrassment and let the tears of happiness well up in my eyes and pour down my cheeks. I managed to laugh and choke at the same time. "Oh, shit. Here I go again."
I glanced quickly at my watch. "We have a little time left before we dock. Why don't we, ah, get a head start on some of that unbearable happiness?"
General Elizabeth "Lizard" Tirelli's expression broadened into a lascivious smile. She winked and said, "Come on. I'll race you to the bedroom."
Most of the real growth of the Chtorran manna plant occurs in the topsoil, before the plant's fruiting body appears.
When a manna plant breaks apart, its spores are spread as easily as dust. Most of those spores will be eaten by Terran as well as Chtorran life forms, but a small percentage will always survive to begin the next generation.
Eventually, the surviving spores will find themselves in conditions suitable for growth, and they will begin feeding on the processes of decay that are present in all topsoil. When the growing fungi reach a critical size, they will mushroom up through the surface to spread spores of their own. The manna plant is one of the most widespread of all Chtorran species. Manna puffballs are a common sight on fields and lawns in most of the infested parts of the world.
Occasionally, however, large masses of manna plants will appear all at the same time over a large area. The triggering mechanism for this event is still unknown. It may be a response to a change in soil conditions, temperature, population density, or some combination of all of these conditions. It may also be a reaction to some kind of chemical triggering agent released by some other Chtorran plant or animal.
—The Red Book,
(Release 22.19A)
Chapter 38
Amapa
"Any man with a prosthetic charisma is undoubtedly a liar in other respects too."
-SOLOMON SHORT
Amapa was a place of nasty surprises.
While the Brazilian ambassador and his entourage were debarking through the forward ramp, a service crew was loading additional instruments, probes, and supplies through one of the aft access bays. Once aboard, several of the service crew disappeared into an inaccessible maintenance corridor and were not seen again.
Shortly after that, a minor problem developed in one of the starboard ballast assemblies, and Captain Harbaugh postponed lift-off until the maintenance team could double-check the rigging. After waiting impatiently in the lounge for fifteen minutes, Lizard tapped me on the shoulder. "Let's go," she whispered.
"Huh?" I looked up from the copy of Newsleak I was leafing through. The federal government had finally concluded its case against the Manhattan Twenty, a Japanese-American conglomerate that had bilked thousands of investors out of billions of plastic dollars with a phony reclamation plan for Manhattan Island. I had been looking through the pictures of the defendants to see if either Mr. Takahara or Alan Wise was there. Neither was.
I assumed that Mr. Takahara was too smart to get caught, and Alan Wise had probably been thrown back because he was too small. Sooner or later, I'd have to put a query into the network and find out what had happened to Mr. Wise.
"Come on," she repeated. There was an edge of impatience in her tone.
"Go where? I'm not through with the article." I held up the magazine so Lizard could see. The pictures of the real Manhattan reclamation project were both extraordinary and inspiring.
Lizard didn't even look at the magazine. She just bent down lower and whispered something amazing in my ear. What was equally amazing was the fact that I could still blush. I must have turned so red I could have stopped traffic on Fifth Avenue.
I managed to gulp out a yes, forgot the magazine, staggered to my feet, and slobbered hungrily after her. I was lucky I didn't step on my tongue. But instead of turning left toward our cabin, she turned right, looked both ways, and pulled open an access door to a service bay. I followed her up a ladder, down a Spartan passageway, and into-
I recognized Dr. Zymph immediately. She looked tired, but determined. The first time I'd seen her, I'd thought she looked like a truck driver; she still looked like a truck driver, but now she was one who'd just driven from New York to San Diego and back without stopping to pee. Beside her stood Uncle Ira—General Wallachstein; still bald, still grim, and probably still carrying the same grudge. He was wearing a plain non-military jumpsuit.
Captain Harbaugh was there too, but only a few other members of the scientific mission were present. All of the military officers were in attendance. I noticed that General Danny Anderson, Duke's son, was also there, also in a non-military jumpsuit. That was a surprise. He was standing next to Uncle Ira, looking like a slab of human concrete. If anything, his shoulders had gotten broader than before. The man was all chest and cheekbones. He must have worked out with heifers instead of barbells.
"What the-?"
"Shh," said Lizard. She pulled me around to a place at the front of the bay. I glanced around quickly. We were standing under the towering silver bags of helium that lifted the Bosch. I looked up. And up. And up. I couldn't see the top of the bags. They disappeared into the soft yellow haze of distance. There were work lights up there, but they could just as easily have been stars.
"All right," said Uncle Ira. "Everybody's here. Let's go to work. We don't have a lot of time.
"The scientific mission you are going on is legitimate, never forget that, but it's also the cover for a major military operation as well. The mission is classified Double-Q, Red Status. With a flag.
"The flag means that certain aspects of this mission have also been kept secret-at the President's request-from certain members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I'll say this in the clear. General Wainright knows only that there is a military component to this operation. He has been told that it is merely a security precaution, because that is what we want him to think. He does not know what orders you are about to be given." Uncle Ira looked as grim as I'd ever seen him. "He will never know your orders, nor will anyone else, because all of your orders are being delivered verbally. Nothing has been written down. Nothing is going to be written alown. And that is your first order. Do not put anything in writing that pertains to this operation.
"Other than the President of the United States, the only people in the world who know of the existence of the military aspects of this mission are right here, right now, in this room. We are it. Nobody else in the United States government knows. Nobody in the North American Operations Authority knows. In particular, and most important, nobody in the Brazilian government is even aware that I am on board for this briefing, or even that I am in the country. The same applies to General Anderson and Dr. Zymph. The fact that all three of us are here at once should give you some idea of how important we consider this operation. What we have to say to you is so important that we would not even risk committing it to paper or tape or any other media that might b
e interceptable."
Wallachstein glanced over to General Anderson. "You want to add anything?"
Anderson nodded. "We cannot stress the secrecy aspect of this operation strongly enough. If your cover is blown, we will try to protect you as best we can, but there is a limit to how far the umbrella will reach. If you get caught with your pants down and it looks like things are going to unravel badly, we'll not only disavow all knowledge of you, we'll probably have to send someone in to kill you. Don't worry, we'll do it as humanely as we can."
I raised a hand. "Excuse me? That's a joke, right?"
"That's a joke, wrong," Anderson snapped back quickly. "The best advice I can give you is to not let your cover be blown. If you talk in your sleep, shoot yourself before you go to bed. If you don't have that kind of willpower, sleep with someone who does."
I glanced over at Lizard. She looked grim. I had no doubts about her willpower. It was not a comforting thought. Before we went to sleep tonight, I'd probably have to reassure myself about her intentions. I suddenly had a lot of questions for her, but most of them were going to have to wait until later.
"All right," said Uncle Ira, taking over again, glancing at his watch. "Here's the hidden agenda. The United States wants Brazil to formally request military assistance against the Chtorran infestation. We have been pressing them to make this request for two years—even before we nuked the Rocky Mountain pustule." Dr. Zymph touched General Wallachstein's arm. She interjected quietly, "It's our concern that the Amazon mandalas are approaching a state of critical mass, a threshold level of stability that will make it possible for the next stage of the infestation to occur. What that stage might be, we can't predict; but, based on the previous history of the infestation, we can't afford to let it happen. These three sites have already become permanent reservoirs of infection; our best-case prediction is that they are about to metastasize. You don't want to hear our worst-case prediction." She nodded back to Wallachstein.
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