A window opened up in my vision. Dr. Guyer as he looked two days before he disappeared. Handsome. Tall. Curly light brown hair. Blue eyes. Laughing. Smiling. His eyes twinkled. He was standing in a garden, wearing T-shirt and shorts, holding a hoe. He was talking to someone off camera, whistling and making ludicrous whooping noises. Finally, he waved us off and turned back to his hoeing.
The window closed, and I was looking at Dr. John Guyer as he looked today-smaller somehow, bent and hunched, but still grinning; the smile was the same. The eyes were bright. He bobbed and bounced and cackled gleefully. His hands clenched and unclenched like little claws. The lines that swirled up and down his body gave his skin a rough and scaly appearance—lizard-like, reptilian. The red fur that hung off him was a patchy fringe. Ben Gumm! His curly brown hair was gone; the quills on his head made him look like a mohawk. He circled Siegel, poking at him curiously. "Where be your stripes? What be your nest?" Something about his posture. Something about his eyes
"He's blind!" I said abruptly. "Or he's drugged to the gills. Or both."
"Bring him up?" Siegel asked.
A pat on my shoulder from Lizard. Yes.
"Do it," I advised. "Spray him if you have to."
Siegel was pointing to the basket over and over. "Come with us, Dr. Guyer. We're here to save you." The image panned quickly around the corral-all the children were gone; rising up into the sky. One last basket waited. Something outside the corral was screaming. One of the spiders fired a missile. Something exploded. There was an orange flash, a thud, and a pattering of small rocks.
Guyer looked alarmed. Frightened. His eyes went wild. He hunched and swiveled his glance from side to side. "The king will not like this!" he screamed. "Frenzy! Frenzy! Run and hide! Hide!" He scampered for the wall, started climbing his way up it.
The image jerked as Siegel ran after him. I heard the sound of the spray. Guyer kept climbing, laughing and screaming in terror, almost made it to the top, climbed halfway over-Siegel leapt, grabbed his leg, pulled him back this way. He toppled, fell on top of us, pinning us for a moment.
"Goddamn-" Siegel said.
Something on the other side of the wall was screaming purple epithets. Siegel rolled Guyer off him and pulled the now-limp goblin-form toward the last basket, perched lopsidedly in the middle of the corral. He lifted Guyer with difficulty, toppling him into the basket, just as a giant red worm came battering its way through the wall-not enough aerogel had been sprayed to stop this one; it trailed smoke along its entire body; both aerogel and flames-it was on fire too!
The basket jerked as Siegel fell into it, and we rose upward. Screaming and laughing.
"We got him! Go!"
The airship was already rising away from the Japuran nest. We could see things falling out of all the hatches as we rose into its silent belly.
The question arises almost immediately-who digs these tunnels and chambers and reservoirs? What agency of the infestation is responsible for the removal and transportation of such large amounts of soil?
The assumption until now has been that the gastropedes themselves are responsible for the construction of the extensive subterranean nests. But this assumption is mostly inaccurate. A gastropede family is responsible only for the initial construction phases of its nest. This includes the dome entrances, some corrals, the primary chambers and their connecting tunnels, and occasionally even the first of the spirals that will corkscrew down to the large reservoir that will eventually appear at the bottom of the nest.
But very quickly, as the family establishes itself within its nest, expanding and growing into a tribe, a new symbiont appears-one that seems specifically designed for tunneling and maintenance. For lack of a better name, the creature is called a "jellypig." It has been described as "an obese, blobby thing with a mouth on one end and not much else in the way of distinguishing characteristics."
In actuality, the jellypig is a fat gray slug with many rudimentary feet. It resembles nothing so much as a hairless gastropede mounted on a millipede chassis, leading some observers to suggest that it is closely related to either one or the other of these species. If either of these cases is true, then it is most likely a metamorphosed millipede. Some evidence exists to validate this possibility.
—The Red Book,
(Release 22.19A)
Chapter 67
Sameshima
"You can believe anything you want. The universe is not obligated to keep a straight face."
-SOLOMON SHORT
—yanked the headset off and ran for the hatch. The retrieval crew-all wearing safety lines-slid the basket sideways onto the Il
The baskets were unloading. The children, some of them still crying, were being carried or led to detox. Siegel and Lopez carried Guyer between them-this close, and in the flesh, he was even a more startling apparition. Cadaverous. Something out of Poe. "The Masque of the Red Death."
I stopped myself at the red line, tracked with them while they walked their burden to the showers. "Get him monitored. Full pack. Give him to Shreiber. She does people. This is her specialty. I'll catch you on the other side."
Lopez flashed me a thumbs-up, and the three of them disappeared into the detox tube.
Turned back to Lizard, grinning. "We got 'em!"
She looked pleased, but not triumphant. She didn't have to say It aloud. Her expression was enough. But did we get them fast enough? Are they infected? We wouldn't know until we got the lab monitors into them.
She held up one hand to silence me. She was listening to her phone. "Yes, Captain? No problem. I'll give the orders immediately. Thank you, Captain Harbaugh." She closed the phone and clipped it back to her belt, raised her eyes to mine. "That was a very expensive operation. You don't want to know how much helium we lost."
"Code Blue?"
She nodded grimly. "I want you to run with the starboard team. Manage them! Nose to tail. Every cabin. Dump everything. Beds. Chairs. Terminals. Refrigerators. Lamps. Bathtubs. Sinks. Cabinets. Clothing. Roll up the carpets. Floorboards. Wall panels. The stewards have the tools for pulling down the living quarters. They've already started. As soon as we secure here, I'll send more people to join you. Twenty minutes per cabin, Jim. No more. Keep them moving as fast as you can. This is going to be close."
"I'm on my way, I love you-!"
"I love you too!"
Up the stairs as fast as I could run. On the slidewalk, running anyway. Stitch in side, clutching chest. Jogging. Swearing. Is it my imagination or is this ship tilting upward?
Caught up with the team, just as they were finishing the second cabin. Didn't get in their way, followed them into the third cabin. Still gasping for breath, helped them with the couch. Used it as a battering ram to break the railing of the balcony, then shoved it out and over the jungle canopy. Watched it fall, end over end, down into the terrible trees below. It crashed down into the green foliage, sending startled birds up into the sky.
Jumped out of the way as chairs came flying after. Lamps, a table, a mattress-
Someone shouted, "You here to work or watch?"
Didn't try to explain or apologize. Still clutching chest, I turned and started helping the team roll up the carpet. Sideways. Can't roll it out the window. Too wide. Roll it into a cylinder and battering ram the cylinder straight out after the couch.
Nothing for me to manage. The stewards are self-organizing. I keep out of their way and grab and carry as much as I can. Bathtub came unbolted easier than I thought. Sink too. Shaun and I carried it out to the balcony and pushed it over. Be careful, he said. Don't fall.
Armloads of clothes. I recognize the blue nightgown. It flutters away. Oh. This was our cabin.
No matter. The bar follows. All those bottles. All that liquor. I want to cry.
Wall panels. Lightweight. Almost too light to do us any good. Bu
t it all adds up. They flutter and turn and spin into the dark green sea of vegetation. Already the mandala is far behind us.
How fast are we going?
We're taking too long! The next room and the next. We're six minutes behind schedule!
Siegel and Lopez join the team, with two of the new kids right behind them. We split into two teams; the first to start a room, dumping the easy items, furniture and clothes; the second to roll up the carpets, dismantle the bathtubs and sinks, take down the walls. We start catching up.
My phone beeps. Jim, please come forward to the captain's garden
Oh shit. Sameshima's beautiful little slice of heaven! I take off at a run, terrified of what I might find.
The garden is gone. Instead, an empty cavern. The forward window… gone. Everything just pushed out. Everything. The koi ponds. The banana palms. The purple wandering Jew. The white poinsettias. The bridges. The gazebo. Everything is gone.
Alone, in the center of the empty warehouse-sized space… is Harry Sameshima. Wearing only a loincloth. Sitting on a mat. Facing his sword. Shiny-bright death. Chanting to himself.
Lizard sitting opposite him. Talking. Captain Harbaugh watching.
"-Harry, listen to me. The garden isn't gone. Only the physical manifestation of it has been discarded. The real garden lives on, in here." She touches her heart. He ignores her. "It still lives here." She touches his naked heart-
He pushes her hand away, keeps chanting. Lizard looks back, sees me. Her expression is helpless. What do I do now?
I remember Foreman in the training. Ruthless compassion. Without stopping to think, I walk over to them. "We don't have the time to waste on this," I say to Lizard.
I step between them. I kick the sword aside, the mat as well. I grab Harry by the arm and yank him to his feet, slapping his face. Hard. As hard as I can. Probably dangerous-but I'm too elevated with adrenaline to worry about the risk.
"You goddamn little coward-" I shout in his face. "Just because you lose a few water lilies you think it's the end of the world and you're ready to throw yourself overboard. Well, I'm glad we found this out now before we trusted you with any real responsibility." I drag him toward the gaping front window. "You want to die? Yes or no?" I hold him out over the edge. The wind tugs at both of us. "Quit wasting valuable helium. Let's settle this right now-shut up, Lizard!" She hadn't said anything, but Captain Harbaugh had started to protest. "Yes or no, Harry?" I turned him so he could look down at the blighted Amazon.
Harry Sameshima retched. A thin strand of spittle drooled from his lips. Whipped away into the darkening jungle below.
I yanked him back inside. "I thought not," I said with all the disgust I could muster. "Fucking coward! Won't pull your weight. Run and hide. Crying like a puny little girl. You're a disgrace. I should throw you overboard. You're a useless little Jap-"
That was the one. It happened so fast that everything blurred, and the next thing I knew I was nailed to the floor with Sameshima's knee on my chest and his angry hand quivering stiffly in front of my eyes. The flat edge of his palm is a dangerous weapon. My throat is exposed. My nose. My eyes. He could kill me with a single blow.
I look past his hand and meet his angry glare. I manage a grin. "So-you don't really want to die after all. Do you?"
And abruptly he got the joke. Leaned back. Relaxing. Releasing. Tears rolling down his cheeks. Tears of relief and terror as well. I rolled sideways, up onto my elbow. Lizard ran to Harry. "Are you all right?"
He nodded, as if nothing at all had just happened here. He shook her off. "I have work to do. Excuse me."
Captain Harbaugh helped me up. "That was a damn fool stunt-"
"It worked, didn't it?"
"Yes, but-"
"He wanted to be talked out of it. He wanted someone to hold his hand. You and Lizard bought into the whole performance. But we don't have the time. When this is over, we can all hold hands then-"
Lizard was looking at me with surprise and admiration. She followed me toward the door. "How did you know?"
I didn't want to answer, but I did anyway. "I've been there," I said. "Remember? You had to blow up the road in front of me just to get my attention."
"Oh," she said. She grabbed me by the shoulders and kissed me quickly. "Thank you, Jim."
"We both have work to do." I broke the kiss off several weeks sooner than I wanted to. "I love you. Now I gotta go find some elephants to throw overboard."
Jellypigs are one of the first symbiotic forms to appear in a Chtorran nest. They appear only as a few individuals at first, but within a very short time, there are hundreds of jeliypigs in the nest, living together in oily congestions.
The creatures exude a kind of slime that functions not only as a lubricant for the entire congestion, but also gives each congestion its own identifying smell. Jellypigs will follow trails of their own slime, and it is believed that this is the way the gastropedes direct their tunnel building.
—The Red Book,
(Release 22.19A)
Chapter 68
Shiny! Shiny!
"There are some things a gentleman doesn't discuss. He only drops hints."
—SOLOMON SHORT
Somehow, in all the madness, the mission continued.
Even as the monitors were being pulled from their frames and thrown out of the hatches, the technical teams strove to carry on. I pushed my way through the debris-littered corridors to the medical observation bay. Dr. Shreiber had installed "our most interesting specimen"-that was her term for him-in the number-one theater. A polite term for a padded cage. Not becaase they were afraid of him, but because-so she said-she didn't want him to hurt himself. "He's a human being," I said grumpily.
"You haven't spoken to him," she replied.
"That's what I'm here for. I want to interview him."
"He's deranged. He's…" Shreiber shook her head. She didn't have the words. It unnerved her. "Listen to me. He's scared, he's dysfunctional, he's turned into something alien."
"I still need to see him."
"I think you should leave him alone-"
"He knows things," I said. "He's been there. He's lived with them. He can answer questions that nobody knows."
"You're not going to get any answers." She was angry-as if I were challenging her expertise, not just her authority. "I'm the expert on this one, Captain McCarthy."
"Yes, you are," I agreed. "But I'm the guy who has to make the report to Uncle Ira." I lowered my voice. "Please don't interfere."
She stepped out of my way. "Don't say I didn't warn you."
I pushed into the theater.
Dr. John Guyer of the Harvard Research Mission was sitting naked on the padded floor, playing with his penis. He was giggling quietly to himself at some private hallucination; his voice had a high, edgy quality. I approached slowly, taking my time to study his appearance carefully.
His skin was sun-brown and leathery. The dark red lines that illuminated his body were furrowed ridges. They curled up and down his arms and legs, all over his back and belly, his neck and face and skull, like a full-body tattoo. They were hardened scars or scales-I couldn't tell. The quills growing out of his head were feathery things. Alive!
He was covered with a very light coat of fur-almost like down-a pale red, almost pink. The long fine strands of it quivered as if moved by the wind. But there was no wind in the room. I remembered the stuff that grew out of the burns on Duke's legs. I remembered Jason Delandro in his cell. Was this what the final form of the infection would look like?
Without looking up, without raising his head, without meeting my eyes, he said, "I see you. The shiny one! You smell like food. Not smart. Not smart."
I squatted down opposite him, staring at him. "Hello," I said. "My name is Jim. Jim McCarthy. What's yours?"
"Shiny, shiny, bright and shiny." He opened his arms wide, as if to show me the spiral patterns around his nipples, the purple fur all over his chest and belly. "I see you!" He raised his eyes and looke
d directly into mine, and it was as if a whole other person were suddenly speaking to me. "This one used to be John Guyer," he said in a strangely dead monotone.
"Dr. Guyer, I've been wanting to meet you." I held out a hand, as if to shake. He just stared at it.
"Pünnnk," he marveled. His voice was high and raspy again. "Pretty. Sing with me tonight?"
"Thank you, John. I appreciate the compliment, but I'm a married man." I pulled my hand back. "John, can you understand me?"
He grinned at me wildly, head tilted. "I understand you perfectly. But you don't understand, do you?" He stroked his head with his hand. His feathery quills were vibrating rapidly.
"No, I don't. But I want to. Explain it to me."
He laughed, a deranged noise that rose and fell alarmingly.
"Please," I insisted.
He stopped laughing, looked sideways at me. He shook his head. His laugh came out like a sob. "You can't see what I see. You can't know."
"Tell me," I insisted.
He didn't answer. He began playing with his penis again, examining it, pulling back the foreskin, wetting his finger, touching his glans, then tasting his finger.
I patted my pockets; what did I have to distract him? Chocolate? Yes! A piece of a Hershey's bar, part of Captain Harbaugh's wedding gift. I broke off a square and put it on the floor in front of him.
He looked at it for a long moment, staring, studying. He recognized it. At last, he reached out and picked it up. He held it against his nose and sniffed it hard. He laughed in sudden delight, throwing himself backward, falling on his back, still holding the scrap of chocolate to his face, inhaling the delicious fragrance. "Yes, yes, yes-" He dropped it into his mouth, sucked and moaned for a long moment, rolling back and forth, back and forth across the floor of the theater. He sat up again abruptly. "More!" he demanded, holding out his hand.
I shook my head. "No. No more. Talk to me first."
"Worm lines!" He pointed at me. "You have no worm lines. You can't talk. You can't listen. You're all shiny, but you can't see! You grow worm lines and we talk. We hug, we kiss, we sing together. We make babies. Give me my chocolate."
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