A Season For Slaughter Part 9

I got up from my chair then: I popped the hatch of the rollagon and dropped down onto the crunchy red kudzu. The fruity smell of it was almost strong enough to cover the horrible afterburn of last week's gorps. Traces of the deadly gorpish odor still hung faintly in the air, and probably would for weeks to come, but I barely noticed. The grove of shamblers looked taller and darker than I remembered.

The other van was waiting only a hundred meters away. I waved halfheartedly at them. Marano flashed her lights. Then I turned away and stared again at the distant shamblers. What was going on over there?

What Willig had said was disturbing.

You aren't supposed to enjoy a war. War is everything wrong justified and rationalized and wrapped up in the flag to make it barely palatable-but underneath the patriotic plans, the diagrams and maps, it's all insanity. It's the abandonment of morality in the hot adrenaline rush of hate and vengeance; it's the last word of the illiterate, the ultimate breakdown of communication.

I knew all the speeches. All the explanations. All the nice words. War is a cruel reptilian scream drowning out the last gasps of reason. It's the sacrifice of rationality on the altar of selfrighteousness. G.o.ddammit-I knew the litany of pacifism as well as anybody. And I thought I hated war.

This was the most horrifying moment of the entire invasionthe realization that I loved what I was doing.

And rus.h.i.+ng close behind that hideous truth came the flaming white rush of another mirror-shock of recognition, just as terrible. Everything I had been holding back came flooding in and hit me all at once-I nearly buckled under the impact.

In the days before this war had begun, I had been a fat and selfish teenager, angry and resentful and a pain in the a.s.s to everyone around me. Now... well, I wasn't fat anymore, and I wasn't anywhere near as selfish. I had lost fifty pounds, and I had learned to watch out for others' needs. But-that was all I could be proud of. I had also become the kind of person I had once despised. I had grown the same cruel veneer of sullen nastiness that I used to fear in others.

I knew the truth. I just wouldn't admit it to myself.

Beauty is only skin deep; but ugly goes down to the bone-the same viciousness that I used on the worms, I had learned to use on the people around me, and I had learned the act so well that it wasn't an act anymore; it was me, all the way down to the little fascist at the core that actually enjoyed every hot flush of rage. I had turned into a vicious, dangerous man, unable to express compa.s.sion, affection, or tenderness without distrusting my own motives. I had become exactly like all the bullies who used to torment me in the school yards of my childhood; the only difference between what they had been and what I was now, was that my brutality had a much more horrifying vocabulary-I had overwhelming firepower. And I'd already demonstrated more than once that I wasn't afraid to use it-on human beings too, if necessary. I'd left my share of dead bodies behind, black and bleeding in the dirt.

Dannenfelser's nasty remark had been right. The Mode Training hadn't brought me to a state of enlightenment; the effect was precisely the opposite. It let me justify and rationalize and excuse all of my various perpetrations against other human beings. It hurt so bad I had to laugh. Did the Mode Training help? Yes, it did. I got to stop feeling uncertain about what I was doing.

I didn't stop doing the bad things; I just stopped beating myself up for doing them. Yes, Jim, you really are a self-righteous, inconsiderate, short-sighted a.s.shole.

Stop worrying about it and use your talents where they'll do the most good. Put on your jackboots and trample away. We have a planet to save.

s.h.i.+t.

We were so busy saving the f.u.c.king planet, we were turning into bigger monsters than the Chtorrans.

No. Not we. Me.

I was a f.u.c.king monster. A killer, a pervert, a moral r.e.t.a.r.d, and a deranged psychopath. And those were my good points.

I didn't know what anybody else was feeling, but I knew where I was. I was sitting in the middle of a Chtorran jungle feeling terribly alone and sorry for myself.

My throat hurt from the pain of choking back the hot red anger. I didn't dare risk letting it out. If I did, I might start raging, and I didn't think I would be able to stop.

The part that hurt the worst was the knowledge that I had done it to myself. I had raged at everybody around me until I had chased them all away. The pain of my solitude was a vast echoing roar-a mocking silence. There was only the sound of my own thoughts to taunt me.

But Willig was wrong about one thing.

This war was not the single most important event that had ever happened to me.

Elizabeth Tirelli was.

And I had never told her so.

If it was possible for my mood to turn even darker, that one thought was the single thing that would have done it. I wanted to climb right back into the van and call for an immediate pickup. I wanted to head straight back to Houston, find her, wherever she was, pull her out of whatever meeting or briefing, grab her and tell her.

And get down on my knees and beg her to forgive me. And help me get better.

I wouldn't, of course. I was too professional to do that. First, we had to finish this mission-this wild, reckless adventure that I had flown off on, that n.o.body had authorized, which would probably discover nothing at all, and would only end up adding more fuel to the emotional firestorms raging at home.

If I got killed here, she'd never know.

Best not to get killed then.

Almost immediately the mechanical part of my mind popped out an answer. I could put an Event-of-Death message into the network. That would do...

Right. But the thought of writing it made me queasy. I sat down on the bottom step of the van and put my head in my hands. Maybe Willig was right about the war.

If it hadn't been for the Chtorrans, I'd still be a fat and selfish teenager-no matter how old I grew. But if it hadn't been for the war, I would never have met Lizard.

She meant so much to me, and all I had done was make her unhappy. I didn't deserve her. It would serve me right if she told me she never wanted to see me again.

s.h.i.+t.

The shambler tree is a slow-moving giant; its mobility varies with the terrain.

The average range of a shambler in soft soil is less than a kilometer a day.

Shamblers prefer to move during the cooler hours of dawn and early evening. They are most active when the weather is wet and can often be found around lakes, swamps, marshlands, and river deltas; but they are not averse to crossing arid areas if necessary.

A shambler can survive for several weeks without direct access to the water table.

An individual tree has multiple storage bladders throughout its circulatory system; plus, it can extract additional fluids and nutrients from the internal droppings of its tenants.

Because shambler herds carry much of their own personal ecology with them, they are extremely resilient and adaptable; but at the same time, the individual shambler ecology also requires a great deal of energy to survive. Because the shambler is a hunting-feeder, it tends to exhaust an area quickly. The shambler must migrate continually to find new resources to feed upon; it must regularly find fresh soil and fresh prey.

Shamblers generally migrate within a region in great spiraling patterns, first outward, then in again. These spirals can be as much as fifty to a hundred kilometers in diameter. The shambler is always looking for arable soil, water, and animal matter for its tenants to feed upon. Shamblers will farm an area until it is decimated, then they will arc off on a new tangent and begin a new "great circle."

A shambler doesn't really walk as much as it resists falling in the direction it is walking; time-lapse imagery reveals that the shambler is continually pulling its rearmost legs forward, dropping them ahead, and leaning its weight against them to keep the rest of the structure from toppling over. A shambler will grow as many legs or trunks as it needs. On average, a shambler will have over a hundred separate trunks.

Shambler roots also play a considerable part in shambler locomotion. Young roots can be seen at the base of the tree, springing out like tube feet between the spines of a sea urchin; older roots sprawl like creepers and vines. The mature roots of the shambler will be strewn across the surface of the surrounding area in a seemingly haphazard fas.h.i.+on, where they serve as both physical anchors for the height of the tree, as well as feelers to determine the condition of the surrounding soil. Experiments have demonstrated that shamblers will move in the direction of the most "interesting" chemical tastes in the soil. The more complex the molecule, the more interesting it is to the shambler. (Appendix IV; Section 942.) As the shambler progresses, it is continually growing new roots to replace those that break off as it pulls away. The abandoned roots do not die; but neither do they become full-grown shamblers. Instead, they continue to survive and play host to other Chtorran organisms. A migrating shambler leaves behind itself a growing webwork of root fibers, vines, and creeper nerves, all of which quickly become independent of the parent organism. Eventually these shambler trails form paths of communication and migration for herds of shamblers, and many other Chtorran species as well.

It is currently believed that shamblers are one of the major vectors of expansion for the Chtorran infestation.

-The Red Book, (Release 22.19A)

Chapter 9.

Prowlers "Never buy anything with a low serial number. "

-SOLOMON SHORT.

But after a while, that got old, and I had a job to do, so I waved again to the other van and climbed back into my own vehicle. I secured the door slowly and thoughtfully. Willig glanced over at me curiously, but said nothing. Despite the cold breezes from the air-conditioning vents, I was sweating profusely.

I thumbed my communicator on. "Okay, put two birds in the sky and warm up a prowler. We'll need a wideband uplink to the network, all channels. And let's buy multiple coverage on the ground between here and there, flames and explosives both.

Second van covers the first. Questions?"

"Just one-" That was Siegel. "What are we doing?"

"Can't guarantee it, but I think there's a worm nest under that shambler grove.

Yes, I know-that would represent a significant departure from recorded behavior, but there's enough satellite evidence to give me confidence in the possibility. I want to send a prowler down. If we get pictures, we'll flash the nest. If not-"

"Can we suit up and go hunting?" Siegel asked as he climbed past me on his way to the rear lockers.

"Siegel, are you really that eager to see what the inside of a worm looks like? Let me save you the trouble. It's very dark in there."

"I want a Chtorran-combat ribbon. The red will match my eyes."

I sighed. "Reilly, when you get a moment, will you please tell Siegel how you got your plastic leg?"

"Captain McCarthy bit off the real one," said Reilly. "He said he was a taster for the worms."

"And my point is-?"' prompted Siegel.

"Don't get overeager."

"All right, can the chatter. Let's get those birds up and that prowler out. p.r.o.nto.

Andale! Andale! Arriba! Arriba!"

Siegel was already settling himself at the rear console. He adjusted his gla.s.ses on his nose, then yanked the overhead virtual-reality helmet down close; but he didn't pull it down over his eyes and ears yet. His fingers danced across the keyboard as he double-checked the status of the birds.

As soon as they were powered up and showing green, he popped the outer hatch on the launch bay, and they bounced down onto the ground, where they wavered uncertainly for a moment, s.h.i.+fting their weight as they tested their footing. One of the units flapped its wings for balance, then settled itself quickly. Its long gossamer wings were as pale as dawn. The heads on both the birds turned this way and that, sliding back and forth in quick snakelike movements.

The spybirds c.o.c.ked their heads and listened; they studied everything that moved with the precision awareness of clockwork predators. If it hadn't been for the alien cast of their eyes, they would have looked like s.h.i.+ning elongated swans. Their necks stretched forward like snakes, as flat and menacing as cobras-but the lidless...o...b.. that englobed both upper and lower sides of their heads were glittering hemispheres of cl.u.s.tered black lenses. They stared out at the world with a dispa.s.sionate, terrifying insect-like demeanor. To meet their dreadful gaze was to know the terror of intelligence without a soul behind it.

I admired the technology. I couldn't love it. Not like some people did. Not like Siegel. To me, mechanimal technology was a horror. These creatures were even more alien than the worms. The worms, at least, acted as if they had souls. Or maybe-I just wanted to believe that they had souls because they were organic. It didn't matter. The birds and the prowlers and the spiders and all the other t.i.tanium-ceramic creatures we had a.s.sembled and turned loose upon the world seemed less accessible in understanding than anything that had come from Chtorr.

Was that just my own prejudice? Or was it something else-? I could appreciate the aesthetics. But I couldn't feel affection.

At last Siegel was satisfied with the status boards. He pulled the helmet down onto his head and entered cybers.p.a.ce. The two birds began picking their way across the gentle slope of the hill to get clear for takeoff, stalking across the ground with the liquid grace of quicksilver furies.

I swiveled back to my own screens to monitor their progress. The first of the units spread its wings as if testing the air. It angled its surfaces this way and that, then abruptly caught what little breeze still dared to rustle the leaves, flapped twice, and lifted effortlessly up into the sky. The second one followed immediately after.

Both of the birds circled once, getting their aerial bearings, then flapped for height. They tore upward through the day with the brutal splendor of eagles. Here, art and technology intersectedand gave our eyes the mobility of the wind.

The images on our screens steadied and focused, even as the birds twisted and dove through the air. Evasive maneuvers were automatic on this model, with compensatory intelligence in the image processing. Not that evasive maneuvers would do much good if the tenants swarmed. That was always a possibility, sometimes even the flicker of a shadow across the top of a shambler was enough to set the tenants off. Then the sheer weight of numbers would be enough to bring these gauzy marvels fluttering clumsily down to the ground. I hoped it wouldn't happen, but if it had to happen, robots were more expendable than humans.

"Okay," I said. "Put them on automatic, circling high and wide. Tell them to watch their shadows. Let me have the prowler now."

"Up and running," said Siegel. He pushed the helmet up off his head and tap-danced across his keyboard again. "Sher Khan is hot to trot. Tarkus is on standby."

"Good." Sher Khan was the newer of the two beasts; a P-120, he was a sleek and graceful killing machine, a pleasure to use. Tarkus was an earlier model, a T-9, more tank than animal. He was loud and clunky, and a little too big to go casually diving into worm nests; but he was better armored than Sher Khan and had greater firepower, so we used him mostly for defensive operations. Unlike the towering spiders that stalked the countryside unattended far weeks at a time, the prowlers burned faster and hotter and required much more frequent tending; but operating under the direct control of a trainer, the mechanimals provided a brutal combination of mobility and firepower that significantly increased the kill-ratio per kilodollar.

The P-120 had been originally designed for armed reconnaissance. Built for use against urban guerrillas, it was fast, silent, and deadly. Now, retrofitted for going down into worm nests, its unique capabilities were proving particularly well suited to subterranean missions. Low and pantherlike, Sher Khan had six slender legs and looked like the disjointed mating of an elongated cheetah and a t.i.tanium snake; but the uplifted head was larger and more sinister-its jowls were gun barrels.

It also had the most advanced LI ever put into a cyber-beast. Sher Khan's optical nervous system contained enough processing power to handle the data flow of a small government, or a large corporation. The density of nerve endings throughout its bodyespecially in its metal musculature and polymoid-armor skinwas greater than that of a living creature. The P-120s weren't programmed; they were trained.

The technology for the prowlers and the spybirds, and all the other hard animals-the spiders, the rhinos, the balrogs, the torpedo-fish-had been developed so secretly that not even the President had known the full range of the cyber-beast program until after the abortive invasion of the Gulf of Mexico. In less than twenty hours, a hundred years of national paranoia had suddenly paid for itself; the ground opened up and the cyber-beasts boiled out into the open air like all the furies of h.e.l.l.

The enemy never had a chance; the creatures. .h.i.t their lines like a chainsaw.

Now the secrecy was over, and the paranoid investment was paying for itself all over again. Lockheed's deadly predators were out roaming the wilds again, this time hungering for a different kind of prey. They slid silently through the smoldering night, all their eyes and ears and radars probing relentlessly for worms and gorps and all the other dreadful things that lurked in the darkness. Together, the gossamer spybirds and the dreadful prowlers searched the remotest areas of wilderness, all the hills and gullies too dangerous and inaccessible for human surveillance. They worked on their own or a.s.sisted recon teams wherever they were needed.

It was a lethal partners.h.i.+p, forged in fire and fury. The spybirds soared aloft, spotting targets, sometimes even marking them with transmitter-darts; the cyber-beasts tracked, closed, and killed. Where it was safe, the prowlers flamed their targets; where it wasn't, they pumped hundreds, thousands, of exploding granules into the unlucky victim. Their confirmed-kill rating was over 90 percent. Target sighted, target destroyed.

If attacked or overpowered, the beasts would self-destruct explosively. More than one nest of worms had been annihilated that way. The machines couldn't stop, couldn't slow down, couldn't retreat; they didn't know how to do anything but hunt and kill and return to the tender for maintenance and rearmament.

And I wished the army hadn't kept them a secret for as long as they had. We could have used them in Wyoming and Virginia and Alaska-and especially in Colorado.

Rumor had it that the next generation of prowlers would look and act just like worms. The micro-prowlers would be millipedes. I hoped it wasn't true. I didn't want humans working with worms of any kind, not even mechanimal ones. A mechanimal simulation of worms in metal form would be an intolerable horror.

"Marano?" I said to the other van. "Have you got us covered?"

"You're as safe as a baby in its mother's arms," she laughed.

"Thanks, Mom," I said. I reached up and pulled my own virtual-reality helmet down and over my head. I fitted it comfortably over my eyes and ears, and abruptly, after the initial shock of reality adjustment, I was looking out through the glistening eyes of Sher Khan, listening through his precision ears.

The outside world took on the familiar color-s.h.i.+fted, sound-s.h.i.+fted strangeness of A-weighted cybers.p.a.ce. Because the cyberthings were capable of seeing and hearing way beyond the limited range of human eyes and ears, the sensory spectra had to be compressed, adjusted, and compensatorily translated to create a corresponding perception for the human partner. Now I could see everything from heat-s.h.i.+mmers to radio emissions; I could hear the groaning of the earth and the high-pitched squeals of stingflies and shrikes. Fortunately, the virtual-reality helmet made no attempt to emulate the chemical environment that would have a.s.saulted my nose had I been outside. If it had, I doubted very much that anyone would ever have put one on a second time.

"Coeurl?" asked the prowler, a soft questioning meow. It was a sound cue to let me know that the creature was armed and readyand scanning its surroundings with deliberate curiosity. "Coeurl?"

I tilted my head up and Sher Khan leapt forward. We glided across the flank of the slope and up toward the waiting shambler grove.

"Hot Seat," April 3rd broadcast: The Guest: Dr. Daniel Jeffrey Foreman. Creator of the Mode Training. Acting Chairman of "The Core Group." Author of thirty science fiction novels, several embarra.s.sing tele vision scripts, six books on lethetic intelligence engines and the machine/human interface, and twelve volumes on "the technology of consciousness." Because of the mane of white hair that floats around his head, he is sometimes described as: "an elf doing an Einstein impersonation."

The Host: Nasty John Robison, aka "The Mouth That Roared." In the words of his critics: "He is the ugliest man in the world." "His acne-scarred skin, flapping jowls, and gro tesquely squashed nose look like the worst possible cross between the uglier end of a bulldog and a vampire bat." "His gravelly voice has all the charm of a trash collection vehicle at three in the morning." "His manner is execrable and abusive; his interviews aren't conversations, they are calculated attacks."

"Obsequious, dangerous, cunning, and vicious-and that's if he likes you." "An ugly and monstrous little boy who has finally achieved his lifelong dream; the opportunity to get even with everybody in the world who he thinks ever did it to him, and that's everybody in the world." "Only a fool or a messiah would risk an appearance on Nasty John's hot seat. So far, there haven't been any messiahs."

ROBISON: The word on the street, Dr. Foreman, is that you're one of the leaders of a secret cabal that has seized control of the government.

FOREMAN: (laughing) I've also been called a liberal. The political dialogue in this country can get pretty vicious: ROBISON: So you're saying it's not true? That you and your cronies aren't acting as a hidden cabinet to the President, secretly directing the course of the nation, as well as the North American Operations Authority?

FOREMAN: (amused, annoyed) To the best of my knowledge, the President still runs the country.

ROBISON: The word in the Capitol is that you control her mind.