"There are no accidents, Jim. If you get killed, the game is over. You lost."
Simple.
Except... what would you call lying in a hospital bed looking like a bride's first roast?
Duke had screwed up somewhere. He'd trusted me. It didn't matter what Colonels Tirelli and Anderson said. This was my fault. I wished I could wake him up long enough to ask him to forgive me.
Except I knew he wouldn't.
THIRTY-TWO
TWO DAYS later, my chest scan came up clean and they checked me out of the hospital. They needed the bed space. "Go visit your mother," they told me. "She's been bugging us three times a day."
My mom was in Santa Cruz, doing something with maps-I wasn't sure what. She said she'd explain when I got there. I checked out a jeep from the motor pool and headed south on I-117.
It was over an hour's drive, but I barely noticed. The whole way there, all I could hear was the argument inside my head.
I was considering resigning my commission.
It was something that Dr. Fletcher had said; it still rankled. "You and I have two different jobs. Your job is to kill worms. My job is to study them." I was looking at myself in a mirror and wondering how the hell I'd gotten here. This wasn't where I'd wanted to be.
What I really wanted to do was what Dr. Fletcher was doing-study the worms. But how could I do that with stripes on my sleeves? They kept putting weapons into my hands and that guaranteed that all I could do was kill worms. That was the thing about being in the army-there weren't a whole lot of options.
But killing the worms-at least the way we were doing it now-was not working.
The Chtorran ecology was eating us alive.
Its microorganisms alone had killed billions of people. Those of us who survived the plagues still had to deal with the sea sludge, the stingflies, the bladderbugs, the red kudzu, the oilworms, the "grabgrass," the binnies, the libbits, the meeps-and of course, always and inevitably, the worms.
Our ancestors had killed the dinosaurs. We'd sucked their eggs and eaten their children. We still ate their descendants today: chickens, ducks, and turkeys. If tyrannosaur and hadrosaur and deinonychus still walked the Earth, we'd find a way to eat them too. The Chtorrans would do the same to us. They couldn't see us as anything more than food. Do you talk with your sandwich?
And if this was only the first wave of the invasion-as Dr. Zymph kept saying-what horrors were still waiting to manifest themselves?
How long did it take to Chtorra-form a planet? How many waves of infestation?
There had to be an intelligence behind this madness-but it might not show up for centuries, perhaps not until long after the last human being was... what? In a zoo? In a museum? Did we figure at all in the equation?
I didn't think so.
But-
-if I really felt that way, then why did I bother to keep on fighting? If the situation was that hopeless, why not just lay down and die?
Because-I had to smile at myself-I still didn't really believe it. I knew it, but I didn't believe it.
But none of this had anything to do with the army anyway. The army was irrelevant. We were holding back the worms by sheer brute force because we couldn't think of anything else to do.
No, it wasn't the futility of the situation that was making me think about resigning. I'd fight the worms forever, no matter how ugly the odds.
No. This was really about Duke. I felt responsible.
Damn it anyway!
It was Shorty all over again, but with a vengeance. I'd burned Shorty-and the worm that came down on top of him. Shorty had been lucky; he'd died quick; but Duke might take years.
If I did resign, I could probably go to work immediately for Dr. Fletcher. I already had the security clearance.
It was very tempting. I even went so far as to unclip my phone from my belt.
But I didn't call. No. I might be able to resign from the army; I'd fulfilled the basic obligation over a year ago; but I'd never be able to resign from the pain.
And that was the real issue.
I pulled off the freeway in Santa Cruz, but inside my head I was still in the same place. Stuck.
And I wasn't looking forward to seeing my mother either. I knew what that was going to be like.
She had an office-apartment in a private (read fortress) community called Fantasy Valley Towers, a sprawling complex of bubbles, domes, and spires like something out of a Hollywood fairy tale. The style was called Apocalypse Baroque. Inside the walls, it was a maze of arches, terraces and balconies. Before the plagues, it must have been very expensive. Now it looked run down-and even a little wild.
The front doors of Mother's apartment were twice as tall as I was, and they looked like they were made out of crystal. But the effect was spoiled by the unswept leaves piled up against the portico.
Mother answered the door with a flourish and a wild laugh. She was wearing a gaudy concoction of bright silks and feathers; she was a cascade of pink and scarlet-and around her neck, she had a silver and turquoise Navajo squash blossom necklace, with twelve jeweled squashes on each side. It looked heavy. So did the rings on her fingers.
"Ahh-here's my baby now!" she cried. She presented her cheek for a kiss. It tasted of powder. She had a glass in her hand. "I'm sorry we didn't come and visit you in the hospital, but they wouldn't let us-"
"It's all right. I wouldn't have been very good company anyway-"
She took my wrist and led me out onto the terrace, calling loudly, "Alan-! Alan! Jim is here! Jim, you remember Alan, don't you?"
"The surfer-?"
"No, silly. That was Bobbie-" Bobbie had been only two years older than me; when I met him he still hadn't decided what he wanted to be when he grew up. "-This is Alan Wise. You remember, I told you about him-"
"No, you told me about Alan Plaskow."
"I did?"
"Uh huh. I don't think I know this Alan."
"Oh, well-"
This Alan was tall and blond and graying at the temples. When he smiled, his eyes crinkled. His handshake was just a little too hearty, and his chest was in the process of migrating south toward his stomach.
There was another man on the terrace too. He was short and dark and of Japanese descent. He wore thick glasses and a dark gray business suit. He looked like a lawyer. Alan introduced him as Shibumi Takahara. Mr. Takahara bowed politely. I bowed back.
Alan slapped me on the shoulder and said, "Well, son-it must feel good to get home for a little old-fashioned cooking, eh?"
"Uh-yes, sir. It does." Except this wasn't home and my mother hadn't cooked a meal herself since before the Hindenberg went down.
"What are you drinking?" he asked. He was already at the bar, dropping ice into a glass. "'Nita? Do you want a refill?"
"Do you know how to make a Sylvia Plath?" I asked.
"A what-?"
"Never mind. You probably don't have the ingredients anyway."
Mom was looking at me funny. "What's a Sylvia Plath, Jim?"
I shrugged. "It's not important. It was just a joke."
"No, tell us-" she insisted.
Mr. Takahara answered her. "It's a layer of mercury, a layer of salad oil, and a layer of creme de menthe. You drink only the top layer." I looked at him sharply. Behind his glasses, his eyes were twinkling.
Mom frowned. "I'm afraid I don't get the joke. Do you get it, Alan?"
"'Fraid it's a little too deep for me, hon. How's about a Crimson Death?"
"Uh, no thanks. I've had enough Crimson Death this month. I'll just have a beer, if you don't mind."
"Don't mind at all," he said. He ducked behind the bar, muttering to himself. "Beer, beer ... where's the beer-? Ah!" He came up with a slender green bottle. "Here we go-private stock. Imported especially for you from exotic, erotic, exciting... Topeka!" He poured with a flourish.