A Matter For Men Part 16

She patted my arm. Did she mean that as rea.s.surance? I didn't ask.

"Uh, I'm here on research," I offered. "I mean, I'm with the army. That is, I'm doing research for them."

"Everyone is," she said. "Everyone in Denver is working on Chtorrans."

"Yeah," I thought about it. "I guess so."

"Have you ever seen one?" She said it casually.

"I ... burned one ... once."

"Burned?"

"With a flamethrower."

She looked at me with new respect. "Were you scared?"

"No, not at the time. It just happened so fast.... I don't know-it was kind of sad, in a way. I mean, if the Chtorrans weren't so hostile, they could be beautiful. . . ."

"You're sorry you burned it?"

"It was awfully big. And dangerous."

"Go on," she said. Her hand tightened around mine.

I shrugged. "There isn't much to tell. It came out of the but and I burned it." I didn't want to tell her about Shorty, I don't know why. I said, "It all happened so fast. I wish I'd seen it better. It was just a big pink blur."

"They have one here, you know." Her grip was very intense.

"I know. I heard from the Lizard."

"You. Know. Her?"

"No, not really. She was just the pilot who flew us in. Me and Ted."

"Oh." Her grip relaxed.

"She told us about the Chtorran they have. She flew it in too." We took the elevator down to the third level of the garage where she had a custom floater waiting in one of the private pads. I was impressed, but I didn't say anything. I climbed in silently beside her.

The drive whined to life, cycled up into the inaudible range, and we eased out onto the road. The light bar on the front spread a yellow-pink swath ahead. The bars of the incoming traffic were dim behind the polarized winds.h.i.+eld.

"I didn't know any of these had actually hit the market," I said.

"Oh, none of them did. Not really. But several hundred of them did come off the a.s.sembly line before Detroit folded up."

"How did you get this one?"

"I pulled strings. Well, Daddy did."

"Daddy?"

"Well ... he's like a daddy."

"Oh."

Abruptly she said, "Do you want to see the Chtorran?"

I sputtered. "Huh? Yes!" Then, "-But it's locked up. Isn't it?"

"I have a key." She said it without taking her eyes off the road. As if she were telling me what time it was. "It's in a special lab. One that used to be a sterile room. If we hurry, we can watch them feeding it."

"Feeding? It?"

She didn't notice the way I'd said it. "Oh, yes. Sometimes it's pigs or lambs. Mostly it's heifers. Once they fed it a pony, but I didn't see that."

"Oh."

She went on babbling. "They're trying to duplicate what it eats in the wild. They're hunters, you know."

"I'd ... heard something like that."

"They don't kill their prey-that's what I find interesting. They just bring it down and start eating. Dr. Mm'bele thinks there's a kill reflex involved. This one won't eat dead meat unless it's very, very hungry, and even then only when it's being moved around so he can attack it."

"That's interesting."

"They say that sometimes they eat human beings. Do you think that's true? I mean, doesn't that seem atypical to you?"

"Well-"

She wasn't waiting to hear. "Dr. Mm'bele doesn't believe it. There aren't any reported cases. At least, none that have been verified. That's what the U.N. Bureau says. Did you know that?"

"No, I didn't." Show Low, Arizona. "Um-"

"There was supposed to be one once," she said, "but-well, it turned out to be just another hoax. They even had pictures, I heard."

"A hoax, huh?"

"Yep. You didn't know that, did you?"

"Uh, how did you hear about it?" I don't think she noticed, but I was riding at least three lanes away from her.

"I work here. I'm permanently stationed. Didn't you know?"

"Oh. What do you do, exactly?"

"Executive Vice-Chairperson, Extraterrestrial Genetic Research Coordination Center."

"Oh," I said. Then, "Oh!" Then I shut up.

We turned off the main highway onto the approach road. There had been very little traffic going either way.

"Is there anything interesting about the Chtorrans? I mean, genetically?"

"Oh, lots. Most of it is beyond the lay person, but there is a lot to know. They have fifty-six chromosomes. Isn't that odd? Why so many? I mean, what is all that genetic information for? Most of the genes we've a.n.a.lyzed seem to be inactive anyway. So far, we've been unable to synthesize a computer model of the way the whole system works, but we're working on it. It's just a matter of time, but it would help if we had some of their eggs."

"I-uh, never mind. I'm just amazed that they, have chromosomes and genes."

"Oh, well, that's universal. Dr. Hackley proved it almost twenty years ago-carbon-based life will always be built on DNA. Something about the basic molecular structure. DNA is the most likely form of organic chain-almost to the point of inevitability. Because it's so efficient. DNA is almost always there first-and if other types of organic chains are possible, DNA will not only outgrow them, it'll use them as food. It's really quite voracious."

"Um," I said. "How appropriate."

She burbled on. "It's really amazing, isn't it? How much we have in common with the Chtorrans?"

"Um, yeah. Amazing."

"I mean sociobiologically. We both represent different answers to the same question-how can life know itself? What forms give rise to intelligence? And what ... structures do these forms have in common? That would tell us what intelligence is a response to, or a product of. That's what Dr. Mm'bele says."

"I've, uh, heard good things about him."

"Anyway, we're trying to put together a program to extrapolate the physiology of the Chtorran animal from its genes, but we don't have anyone who can write a program for it yet. You're not a programmer, are you? The lack of a good hacker will probably add anywhere from two to three years to our research schedule. And it's a very important problem-and a double-edged one. We don't know what the genes are supposed to do because we don't know the creature, at least not very well. And we can't figure out the creature because we don't understand the genes. Some really peculiar things." She took a breath. "Like, for instance, half the chromosomes seem to be duplicates of each other. Like a premitosis condition. Why is that? We have more questions than answers."

"I'm sure," I said, trying to a.s.similate what she was telling me. "What about the millipedes? Didn't they give you any clues?"

"You mean the insectoids? They're another whole puzzle. For one thing, they all seem to be the same s.e.x-did you know that? No s.e.x at all."

"Huh?"

"We haven't found any evidence-n.o.body has-that there's any s.e.xuality in them at all. Not physically, not genetically; no s.e.x organs, no s.e.xual differentiation, no secondary s.e.x characteristics, no markings and not even any way to reproduce."

"Well, they must-"

"Of course they must, but the best we've found are some immature structures that might-just might, mind you-be undeveloped ovaries or testes-we're not sure which-and a vestigial reproductive tract, but they've been inoperative in every specimen we've dissected. Maybe they're just growth glands. But even if they were s.e.xual structures, why are they buried so high up in the abdomen with no apparent connection to any outlet?"

She stopped at the main gate just long enough to flash her clearance at the scanner, then zoomed forward, turning sharply right and cutting across a lot toward a distant L-shaped building. "The Chtorrans have some s.e.xuality, don't they?"

"Oh, yes. Quite a bit. We're just not sure how it works. The one we have-we thought it was a female. Now we're not sure. Now we're guessing it's a male. At least, I think it is, but ... we don't have anything to compare it with. We've been able to dissect some dead ones in the past couple months-two we think were females, one pretty definite male and two we're still not sure of. The big one was definitely male," she repeated. Her voice went funny then. "I wish I could have seen that one alive. He must have been magnificent. Two and a half meters thick, maybe five meters long. We only got the front half. The back half was ... lost. But he must have been magnificent. What a warrior he must have been. I'll bet he ate full-sized cattle."

"Um," I said. I didn't know what else to say. I was beginning to wonder-was this part of getting laid? Or what? I wasn't sure I wanted to any more.

The floater slid to a stop before the building. It wasn't Lshaped, but X-shaped. We had parked in one of the corners. Bright lights illuminated the whole area. As I got out, I paused to look up at the poles. Just as I thought, there were snoops on every tower; that's what the lights were for. Security. Nothing was going to get in-or out-without being recorded.

I wondered if anyone was looking at the recordings. And then I wondered if it mattered.

There were eleven other people already in the room. It was long and narrow and dimly lit. Two rows of chairs ran the length of the room, facing a wall of gla.s.s. I could make out five women, six men. The men all seemed to be civilian types, but I couldn't be sure. I didn't know if the women were their colleagues or their companions for the evening. If the latter, I couldn't help but wonder at their choice of entertainment. The men waved to Jillanna and looked curiously at me. I waved back, halfheartedly.

Jillanna's eyes were wide with excitement. "Hi, guys. Have we started yet?"

"Smitty's just getting ready."

"What's on for tonight?"

"Coupla dogs they picked up from the shelter."

One of the women, the redheaded one, said, "Oh, that's awful."

"It's in the interest of science," someone answered. I wasn't convinced.

Jillanna shouldered her way up to the gla.s.s. "Okay, make room, make room." She squeezed a place for me.

The gla.s.s slanted diagonally out over a deep room below us; we overlooked it as if on a balcony. The light was dim below, hardly much brighter than the viewing room. There was a distinct orange cast to the illumination. I felt pleased at that-so someone else had discovered the same thing!

Deep, slow-paced sounds were coming from two wall speakers. Something breathing.

I stepped forward to look. There was an inclined notebook rack at the bottom of the gla.s.s; I had to lean out over it to see.

A layer of straw-it looked orange in this light-was spread across the floor. The room was high and square, a cube, but the bottom half was circular. The corners had been filled in to make a round enclosure four meters high; the top of it came right up to the window. There were cameras and other monitoring devices on the resulting shelves formed in the corners.

The Chtorran was directly below me. It took a second for my eyes to adjust.

It was a meter thick, maybe a bit more; two and a half, maybe three meters, long. Its fur was long and silky and looked to be deep red, the color of blood-engorged skin. As I watched, it humped forward once, twice, a third time, then stopped. It was circling against the wall, as if exploring. It was cooing softly to itself. Why did that unnerve me? As I watched, ripples-like waves moving through sluggish oil-swept back across its body.

"That means he's excited," breathed Jillanna. "He knows it's dinner time."

It slid forward into the middle of the room then, began scratching at the straw on the floor. From this angle, I could see its cranial hump quite clearly-underneath that fur, it was helmeted across the shoulders. A bony carapace to protect the brain? Probably. Its long black arms were folded now and held against its sides like wings, but I could see where they were anch.o.r.ed to the forward sides of the helmet. The brain bulge was directly behind the creature's two thick eyestalks. From this angle, the Chtorran looked more like a slug or a snail than a worm.

"Does he have a name?" one of the women asked. She was tall and blond.

Her date shook his head. "It's just it. " Sput-phwut went the speaker. Sput-phwut.

"What was that?"

Jillanna whispered, "Look at his eyes."

"It's facing the wrong way."

"Well, wait. He'll turn."

"Be a good show tonight," the guy at the end said as he lit a cigarette. "Saint Bernard and a Great Dane. I'm betting the Bernard puts up a better fight."

"Aah, you'd bet on your grandmother."

"If she still had her own teeth, I would."

Jillanna leaned over to me. "He needs fifty kilos of fresh meat a day. They have a real problem getting a steady supply. Also, they're not sure that terrestrial animals provide all the nutritional elements he needs, so they keep varying the diet. Sometimes they pump the animals up with vitamins and stuff. Sometimes he rejects the food; I guess it smells bad to him."

Sput-phwut.

The Chtorran humped around and looked at us with eyes like black disks. Like dead searchlights. It humped up, lifting the front third of its body into the air, trembling slightly, but focusing its face-like the front end of a subway, flat and emotionless-toward us. I stepped back involuntarily, but Jillanna pulled me forward again. "Isn't he beautiful?" Her hand was tight on my sleeve.