A Season For Slaughter Part 4

Unfortunately, as events progressed, the entire matter quickly became the studio's biggest headache. All three of the major guilds involved were claiming the right to arbitrate and wanted access to the evidence. The top management at Marathon Productions simply wanted the whole thing to go away; they would have been happy to pay Goodman in full; but Lester Barnstorm would have none of it. He had decided to take the matter personally. Unfortunately, the studio was now in a position where they needed to keep Barnstorm happy, so they (reluctantly) mounted a ma.s.sive legal effort. They didn't care at this point, it was only "parking ticket money." The Marathon lawyers were able to stonewall almost every subpoena and keep the claim from reaching an arbitrator for nearly seven years; they were able to suppress most of the evidence because, in their words, "it could prove injurious to our good name and the earnings potential of our property." Translation: Let us finish milking this cash cow, and then we'll argue about your share. During that same period, the publicity department continued to churn out ream after ream of material about the genius of Lester Barnstorm, the sole creator of The Solar Ballet, thus creating and maintaining a vivid public perception that Barnstorm, the great man, was being unfairly and maliciously attacked by a disgruntled ex-employee. During that same time, they were also able to arrange (purchase) Humanitarian awards for Barnstorm from four different national organizations, a Congressional Citation, a successful worldwide lecture tour, the naming of a Lunar crater in his honor, a Black Hole award, and a star on Hollywood Boulevard. During those same seven years, The Solar Ballet realities earned 3.7 billion dollars from first-run domestic releases, foreign distribution, pay-per-view, cable, network, and direct-software sales; not to mention ancillary merchandising, including book and video spinoffs, clothing, electronic goods, personal props, restaurant tie-ins, toys, breakfast cereals, educational materials, and royalties from look-alike cosmetic surgery. During the same seven years; the c.u.mulative legal expenses bankrupted Daniel Goodman. He lost his savings, his house, his wife, his car, and, incidentally, what was left of his sanity. Finally, one day in October, despairing of ever seeing an equitable resolution of what he perceived as the theft of his greatest work; he calmly walked onto the lot, entered the (now-renamed) Barnstorm Building, went in through Barnstorm's private entrance, and took Lester Barnstorm hostage in his own office. Barnstorm's courage lasted only until he realized that Goodman was now truly psychotic. Goodman was carrying handcuffs, Mace, a taser, a Bowie knife, a revolver, a laser-pistol, and a Snell 11mm automatic household a.s.sault rifle. It wasn't until after several liberal applications of both the taser and the Mace that Barnstorm began to realize the predicament he was in. He began crying and babbling and begging for mercy. He hadn't realized, he said, how badly he had treated Goodman. What could he do to make it right? Goodman answered in a voice that was dead calm. He said, "All I want is the truth." What Barnstorm did not know was that Goodman had wired himself for both sound and video. By the time the SWAT team arrived and surrounded the building, Goodman's agent had negotiated lucrative real-time on-site video contracts with one domestic and two worldwide networks. As a result, most of what transpired in Barnstorm's office during the next nine hours went out live. The A. C. Nielsen company estimated that during peak viewing hours, more than 1.2 billion people were tuned in to The Solar Ballet Hostage Crisis. Goodman had deliberately preempted the seventh game of the World Series. (Which the Detroit Tigers won, by the way. The victory riot claimed twenty-seven lives.) During Goodman's persistent at-gunpoint interrogation, Barnstorm confessed to sleeping with three of the cast members of the production (two female, one juvenile male), and five of the extras. He admitted to having once had a serious alcohol problem, which he now had completely under control, due to the temperate application of marijuana and Valiam, and the occasional (once or twice a day) recreational use of cocaine, Quaaludes, methamphetamines, or Dago-black, all supplied by his personal lawyer. The only bad side effect of the drugs, he said, was that they tended to diminish your s.e.x drive. Barnstorm acknowledged that he was frequently impotent, except for the occasional devoted attempts at f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o by two of the office secretaries, the computer-maintenance woman, the staff librarian (male), and his twenty-three-year-old wife, none of whom (he claimed) knew about the others. His opinions about the relative skills of all of them were equally derogatory, though he gave the staff librarian high marks for enthusiasm, if nothing else. He went on to admit that his greatest disappointments were his children: his thirty-year-old son, now a preoperational transs.e.xual, and his daughter, who had recently married into an Afro-American Urban Heritage Commune and had become the seventh wife of Chief Amumba-9. He casually admitted stealing scripts, stories, outlines, and program code from Goodman and twenty-three other interactive-reality contractors who had subsequently worked on the project, but dismissed it with a casual, "Everybody does it," and went on at length to prove this point, giving example after example that the head of the studio legal department had personally discussed with him. As the conversation continued, Barnstorm became even more loquacious. The bottle of scotch in his bottom desk drawer lubricated the unraveling of enough salacious gossip to fuel a whole season's worth of prime-time melodramas. He chatted amiably about which two female stars had slept with each other, which two male stars had slept with each other, which three stars had once had a menage a trois on the studio's chattered jet, which young actor had once confessed to doing it with a dog, and why gerbils were illegal in the state of California. He also discussed the gross earnings of The Solar Ballet property at length, including what the property was actually worth, not what the studio merely admitted. Apparently, at least 30 percent of all earnings disappeared without ever showing up on any books anywhere; this was even before the gross earnings were computed; the studio head himself had once explained to Barnstorm how this worked. By maintaining close political ties with two members of the House of Representatives Committee on Organized Crime, the studio was able to make use of several very efficient moneylaundering facilities in Panama, Jamaica, Haiti, the Grand Bahamas, Quebec, Hong Kong, and Vancouver.

By now, Goodman was stunned speechless. He had clearly tapped into a gold mine of Hollywood lore. He knew that Barnstorm liked being important; he hadn't known that Barnstorm liked being this important. Barnstorm not only liked knowing secrets; he liked having people know that he knew secrets; he wallowed in showing off. Also, by now, he was sauced to the gills. It would have been impossible to stop him. He had momentum. And also, by this time, almost n.o.body on the SWAT team wanted to. The district attorney's office, three guilds, seven unions, forty-three legal firms, and an uncountable number of agents, business managers, writers, producers, directors, and performers were all hanging on Barnstorm's every word as well. They weren't disappointed. Lester Barnstorm went on to reveal that he liked to watch tapes of unusual s.e.xual gymnastics and prided himself on his collection, including a number of private tapes so legendary as to have achieved near-mythological status; tapes of various celebrities from the entertainment world, sports figures, the inevitable rock stars, of course, and a number of nationally known politicians, enjoying themselves enthusiastically by themselves, with each other, and even with the occasional commoner. Barnstorm even went so far as to preview several of the juicier parts of the tapes for Goodman, which conveniently allowed two of the wired-in networks to catch up on an afternoon's worth of missed commercials, the progress of the last World Series game, and a recap for late tuners-in. The third network, a French-based international carrier, unashamedly showed everything and tripled its ratings. By the time Barnstorm was finished, he and Goodman had managed to destroy one hundred and twelve careers, thirty-seven marriages, four legal firms, a critical alignment of power in the House of Representatives; and the entire upper echelons of management at Marathon Productions. The broadcast resulted in twelve investigations, ninety-three criminal indictments, and over three thousand civil suits. The crisis ended just as Barnstorm began talking about his abortive career as a deputy sheriff in San Bernardino, and a particularly nasty murder/drug/s.e.x scandal that was still unsolved, but which had very possibly involved several members of the Los Angeles Police Department, a Girl Scout troop, and the studio executive who had originally hired Barnstorm. It was at this very moment, apparently acting without orders, that a SWAT team sniper, shooting through Barnstorm's picture window from the top of the studio's water tower, neatly took off the top of Goodman's head. Goodman died instantly. Shortly thereafter, Barnstorm was horrified to discover that everything he had said and done during the past nine hours while negotiating (begging) for his life had been seen by over a billion fascinated human beings. The highest rating of his life and the destruction of his career had been simultaneous events. The editorial columnists didn't even grant him the saving grace of comparing his fall to a Greek tragedy; he was just a bloated old fart whose last shred of dignity had disappeared long before the last commercial.

Barnstorm survived this triumph for only another eighteen months, just long enough to realize to the fullest measure that he had become the industries most noteworthy pariah. His wife left him, his children refused to have anything further to do with him, and even his dog ran away from home. Two of Barnstorm's lawyers went to jail, the third refused to answer his calls. The studio banned him from the lot and delivered his personal items to his home the very same evening. His cast resigned en ma.s.se, followed shortly thereafter by most of the office staff. He (and later his estate) was served with so many subpoenas that his son (soon to be his daughter) ended up marrying one of the marshals from the district attorney's office. Meanwhile Goodman's heirs collected over three million in up-front money, plus an additional twenty-one million in bonus bucks, based on an unprecedented total audience share for hostage dramas. Over the next ten years, they collected 170 million in reuse rights and residuals, plus percentages of actions made possible by Goodman's original contract; which turned out to be three times as much money as they would have made if Lester Barnstorm had treated Daniel Goodman fairly in the first place. The lesson was not lost on other performers. The three-guild, eight-month wildcat strike that followed was called The Goodman Strike and resulted in one of the most significant realignments of power that the industry had ever seen. A statue of Daniel Goodman still stands in the courtyard of the Writers' Guild Plaza, an inspiration to artists everywhere. Flowers are placed in front of it every year on the anniversary of his death.

I doubted very much that I would ever equal Daniel Goodman's audience share.

For one thing, I wasn't tempted to try, and for another, there weren't that many people left alive on the Earththat is, if the latest government projections were to be believed. And besides, watching someone being eaten alive by shambler tenants-even as live interactive drama-is apparently nowhere near as interesting to the average viewer as finding out whose convexities have been inserted into whose concavities.

I took another's... I... o... w step, tugging Major Bellus after me. He was alternating between fury and panic. I wondered how long until he slipped over the edge and bolted like a frightened rabbit. This was going to be very interesting.

I itched all over. I wanted nothing more than a long deep soul-satisfying scratch all over my body. I wanted someone-preferably a professional, but an enthusiastic amateur would not be turned away-to start at the little bald spot at the center of my itchy scalp and then work her way slowly down my body, working with gentle fingertips across the painfully tight muscles of my shoulders, and then vigorotWy ma.s.saging all the way down my back, kneading my spine until it cracked, then proceeding down through the cramped muscles of my legs, rolling them like bread dough, and stoping only when he or she or it (who cares?) reached the soles of my aching feet. Ahhh!

It was a terrific dream, but it didn't make the pain go away. My throat was dry and my arms hurt like h.e.l.l. And my back. And both my shoulders. This was going to have to end soon, one way or another...

As a result of the current military policy of burning out the most virulent pockets of infection as rapidly as possible, the most highly developed phases of the infestation have been observed only in a few isolated areas, and only for very short periods of time. No long-period observations have been possible.

Whatever the military value of this strategy, it has left the scientific community with an impoverished view and an inability to accurately predict the directions of the ecological expansion confronting us. Despite the increased use of robots and remote-controlled probes, and despite the expansion of our biosphere facilities on both coasts, without on-site long-period observations, our models of how the infestation spreads and develops remain so woefully limited that any summary of what we know must be understood to represent only the barest of outlines. We cannot predict with any certainty what the ultimate form of the infestation may be, how it will develop, and what roles its member species will eventually play in that ecology.

Obtaining a better understanding of the final phase of the infestation and the stable patterns that exist in an established Chtorran ecology is not simply a matter of scientific curiosity; it may eventually provide the best tactical intelligence for our military strategy as well. We may discover that we can direct our energies more efficiently against some smaller, seemingly more innocuous part of the emerging structure, and have much more significant long-term impact than we presently experience with our current tactic of slas.h.i.+ng and burning every embryonic mandala immediately upon detection.

-The Red Book, (Release 22.19A)

Chapter 4.

A Pain in the Gra.s.s "You can lead a horse's a.s.s to water, but, uh... "

-SOLOMON SHORT.

The major mumbled something. "What?"

He repeated it. "You think you're so f.u.c.king smart, don't you?"

"You don't have to believe me. The tanks are over there. Go ahead. Make a run for it." Slowly, elaborately, I took another step. "Well, go ahead," I encouraged.

He didn't move. "You want me to do it, don't you?"

I shrugged. "After the tenants have fed, they'll be torpid. My chances'll be a lot better."

"f.u.c.k you," he said.

"You have neither the looks nor the money," I replied. I took another step.

He glared at me, fuming. He looked at the tanks, then glanced uneasily back at the trees. He looked trapped. Very reluctantly-he had no choice-he lifted one heavy-booted foot high, stretched elaborately, and stuck it forward. Slowly, he brought his leg back down again, as gently as he could. He s.h.i.+fted his weight carefully forward. His caution was exaggerated almost to the point of hysteria.

"They're just trees," he said. "f.u.c.king trees."

"And they can cover at least five, maybe six kilometers a week in search of water and suitable soil. And the tenants will range two or three klicks from the home tree, looking for prey. Shamblers host at least thirty symbiotic relations.h.i.+ps that we've already identified; probably a lot more. Some people think they're the habitat for at least six different ecologies-in their roots, in their trunks, in their branches, in their leaves, in the canopy, and in the wake of debris they leave behind; you don't know what you're dealing with here. There's nothing on Earth that even comes close. Have you ever heard of army spiders?"

He didn't answer.

"They can grow as big as your foot. Imagine a swarm of giant red tarantulas, only leaner, meaner, and hungrier. They're eight-legged vampires. They weave huge webs of very sticky silk. The slightest nudge on it will bring the whole nest of them down on you. The poison will paralyze you, but it won't kill you." I took a long, slow step.

"You'll be conscious the whole time they're feeding."

"Army spiders live in the shamblers?"

"Sometimes. We think it's a temporary marriage of convenience. We think the spiders are waiting for their preferred habitat to develop." I added, "But the spiders aren't the worst. It's just that nothing else will live in the same tree with them. That's why we think they're opportunists. Normally, a shambler carries a mixed bag of problems: vampires and wraiths and all kinds of other little biters.

"Sometimes they work in teams," I continued cheerfully. "The vampires follow the wraiths. They wait until the wraith has toppled something, then they come in and start feeding too. We used to see them going after calves. This year we're getting more and more reports of full-size cattle being taken. It's not a pretty sight. We're experimenting with cattle-armor and nano-fleas, but-" I shrugged. "It's still nasty.

We're still losing the livestock. Have you ever heard a horse screaming? Or a cow?"

The major made an untranslatable sound.

I sniffed the air. "What?" he asked.

"Well, I tried to tell you before. That smell. It means gorps."

"Yeah? I thought you said they weren't dangerous."

"Well, yes and no. They're like lawyers. They're not dangerous unless you excite them."

"How dangerous... are the gorps?"

"It depends on how hungry they are. Mostly they travel with shamblers. They like to feed on the leavings of the tenants. Where you find one, you're likely to find the other. But a gorp isn't fussy. Sometimes it doesn't notice that something isn't dead before it starts eating. They don't think very fast; it's not a good idea to let one get its hands on you. I hate to say it, but this looks like a pretty hungry neighborhood.

Smell the air. That's a whole fumble of gorps. I'm surprised we haven't seen them already. They've got to have heard the tanks. When they hunt, they hunt in packs, and they feel the creeper nerves for sympathetic vibrations. You want to know more?"

He was dangerously pale again. He shook his head.

I continued anyway. "I think the tenants we really have to worry about are the toe-hoppers and the carrion bees."

Despite himself, he asked, "Toe-hoppers?"

"Goblins. They're tiny little things. They look a little like monkeys, but they're small enough to sit in your hand; only they're not real cute. They're just weird. Big feet, big ears, oversized claws and heads. Very tiny bodies. Short stubby limbs. But they have faces like-I don't know-bulldogs, I guess; they're so ugly and grotesque, they look like little gargoyles. Individually, they're harmless. Well, mostly harmless; they're even easy to kill. They feed on bugs and mice, berries, nuts, leaves-whatever.

They're warm-blooded, but they lay these leathery little eggs, hundreds at a time; one set of parents can have thousands of offspring in a single season. Fortunately, they don't nest and they don't protect their eggs, so most of the children are eaten before they hatch. Normally, that is.

"But when they live in shambler trees, the predators can't get at the eggs as easy, and the families get big in a hurry. Very quickly they become swarms. A swarm has thousands of members, sometimes hundreds of thousands-all of them hungry, all of the time. We think it's the hunger that changes them. When they're ravenous, the goblins become... I don't know how to describe it. It's kind of like humans; a perfectly reasonable man turns into a monster when he's a member of a mob. When the toe-hoppers swarm, they develop the ferocity of rabid piranhas. I'm wondering if that's what killed that worm we saw. And if those trees are their nest.

"Then there are the carrion bees," I continued, blithely. The major's eyes had gone a little gla.s.sy, but I persisted anyway. "Carrion bees look like b.u.mblebees.

They live in the canopy; they feed on other insects mostly, but when there's carrion nearby, they'll swarm. They produce a truly evil-smelling, pungent red syrup that serves the same purpose as honey. You could live on it, if you had to-but personally, I think most people would prefer to die than take a second taste of the stuff.

"Plus-I don't know if these trees have any-but we've also observed flutters of ribbon creatures. They look like pieces of ribbon floating in the air, confetti or streamers, very bright, very colorful and attractive... and very deadly. They'll land on you, wrap themselves around you, and cheerfully suck your blood. They'll obstruct your vision, your air pa.s.sages, they'll get into every orifice of your body, probing and sucking. There are several forms; there's the garter ribbons; which are too small to hurt you as individuals, they're kind of like leeches, and they only swarm during their mating season; but they can bring down cattle too, so don't underestimate them. Then there are the boas. When they're small, they look like silvery mylar ribbons. The big ones look like telephone ribbons. They're really very pretty the way they reflect light; they look like a fireworks display. But they're awfully tough, almost impossible to kill.

"Anyway, I think those are the critters we most have to worry about." I stopped, turned, and looked back at the trees. "See, it's those silvery-looking leaves that worry me. I think... I think they're waiting for the wind to change." I turned back to Major Bellus. "Don't you dare faint on me again-"

He didn't. But he was d.a.m.ned close, and this time it would have been for real. I grabbed him by the lapels and pulled him close to me. "I don't care where you came from. I don't care what your agenda is. I don't care what you think of me. This isn't Earth anymore. This is Chtorr-and it doesn't care any more than I do. You're either a diner or a dinner. You want to die? I'll leave you here and never look back."

"No, please-" he gasped. He sounded worse than desperate. Pitiful. "I don't want to die." He choked out the first few words, and then the rest came pouring in a torrent of unembarra.s.sed sobs. "Oh, G.o.d, please-I don't want to die. Please, I'll do anything. Just get me out of here." The tears were streaming down his face. "Just tell me what to do and I'll do it."

Gotcha.

I studied him for a long moment. "I'm sorry. It's inappropriate for me to be giving you orders, sir."

"Huh?"

"You'll have to resign your commission."

He looked up at me, wild-eyed. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that it's inappropriate for you to surrender authority to me while you remain a commissioned officer. The men will lose respect for you. On the other hand, it's even more inappropriate for you to be in charge of men who know more about the job than you do. You're endangering their lives along with your own. I'm sorry, but if you want me to save you, you'll have to resign your commission."

"I can't do that-"

"Yes, you can. Stand up. Turn and face the cameras. Announce it loud and clear.

They'll record you." I added quietly, "And then I'll save your life."

For a moment, he looked confused, then angry. "This is a trick, isn't it?" he accused, but he was still uncertain and afraid.

"Did I tell you about the purple haze?" I asked innocently. "It's not really haze, it's mostly what you get when stingflies swarm. It just looks like a haze. And I should probably mention that some of the creeper vines are capable of releasing a paralyzing gas to help trap prey, for shamblers. And did I mention the-"

He held up a hand. "Please, no more. No more."

I helped him back up to his feet and turned him to face the lead rollagon. "They're recording. Say it."

"I hereby resign my commission," he mumbled.

"Louder," I encouraged. "I do hereby, and of my own free will, resign my commission... " I prompted.

Numbly, he echoed the words. "I do hereby, and of my own free will-"

"Resign my commission in the North American Operations Authority."

"Resign my commission-"

"In the North American Operations Authority." I nudged him hard.

"-in the North American Operations Authority."

"Give the date."

"Today is June third."

"And the year. And your serial number." He did so. He looked at me hopefully.

"You're not through yet." I poked him. "You have to a.s.sign acting command."

He turned back to the distant cameras. "I appoint Captain James Edward McCarthy acting commander in my stead... uh, until such time as higher authority either... uh, approves or changes that action." He trailed off.

I faced the cameras. "Witnessed and notarized by Captain James Edward McCarthy. United States Army, Special Forces Warrant Agency, a.s.signed to the North American Operations Authority for the duration."

I turned back to him. He was motionless, staring at the ground in front of him. He stood shamefacedly aware of his disgrace. "Give me your weapon," I said.

He didn't move.

I took a step over and pulled his pistol out of his holster, checked the safety, and jammed it into my belt. He flinched visibly as I did so.

I knew I'd done a terrible thing. This man had dedicated his entire life to his service. It was the sole measure of his ident.i.ty, and I'd stripped it from him. He was so desperate to live, he'd given up his only reason for survival. Maybe he was a good peacetime commander, maybe he was good at maintaining equipment and organizational discipline, and maybe wartime required a different set of skills-this war did, anyway. Well, maybe he could find counseling somewhere. There were supposed to be some pretty good counseling programs running on the supermachines. I felt bad for him, but I didn't feel bad about what I'd done.

"Can we go now?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said, a lot kinder than he expected. "Let's go." I took him by the arm and started walking briskly back toward the tanks.

"Huh-?" He jerked his arm away from me and stared. "What are you doing? What about the carrion bees and the ribbon clerks and the purple haze?"

I shrugged. "If you'd read your briefing book, then you'd have been able to recognize that this particular herd of shamblers is mostly untenanted. The giveaway is the leaf patterns. Those silvery leaves are the way they reflect light and attract the attention of lookee-loos. Lookee-loos are tenants looking for a home. These shamblers must have lost most of their tenants when the area was dusted. They must have gone dormant to survive, and they're just now waking up."

Major Bellus looked fl.u.s.tered and angry and confused. "But what about the gorps?"

"The smell is stale. They were here a week ago, rutting. The shamblers are following their scent trail. You should smell them ripe-they'll blister your eyeb.a.l.l.s.

I'm not kidding. We got a guy named Willie Rood who tried it. He took off his hood. He's still in the hospital waiting to grow new eyes."

"But-what about the... ?" He shut up, abruptly.

"If you'd read your briefing book, you'd have known that we were never in danger. Had there been a real threat, I wouldn't have followed you out into the open fields." I added thoughtfully, "Not even to stop you."

He was red-faced now. "You son of a b.i.t.c.h. I'm going to bust you for this."

"No, you're not. Everything you said and did out here was recorded-and monitored. I expect we pulled a very handsome rating this afternoon."

He looked around wildly. His eyes focused on the cameras on the top of the tanks and froze there. "It was a trick!" he shouted. "It doesn't count."

I shrugged. "The record speaks for itself."

He looked back at me, accusingly. "You too. They recorded you too."

"I'm well aware of that," I said. I couldn't help myself, I gave a Bugs Bunny sideways eye-flick to the cameras. "In the meantime, as far as I'm concerned, you're a civilian now. The fact that I'm taking the time to explain this to you is merely a matter of courtesy. Furthermore, I am now officially informing you that as acting commander of this operation, I will not tolerate any further interference with this mission, nor will I tolerate any actions that endanger the lives of my men. If you say one more abusive word to me, I'll put you under military arrest. You'll go bact to base in a sleepytime bag. I'm sure they'll wake you up in time for your trial."