"Bingo," I whispered.
Around me, a chorus of quick sound cues chimed, as Siegel and Willig and Marano all plugged in via their own VR helmets. The flurry of their reactions temporarily filled the sound space. "Uh-oh-"
"What the hell!"
"Oh, my God-?"
"All right, put a cork in it," I interrupted. "I'm going down and I don't want any distractions." I leaned my head forward, and the prowler responded to the movement cue by sliding easily ahead. It paused at the entrance to the hole, sniffed the air, listened a moment, and readjusted its visual sensors for the darkness below. It looked as if the opening ahead had suddenly become illuminated.
The prowler ticked thoughtfully to itself, analyzing and considering; it tested its steps carefully. The rubbery tangle of roots had a pallid, sinewy quality. The footing was uneasy.
But at last the prowler was satisfied. It coeurled once, and then slid forward, descending effortlessly into the gloom.
Depending on the terrain, some shambler tenants are capable of releasing a wide variety of smells.
In areas of heavy infestation, the shambler colony will exude smells that are attractive to Chtorran life forms, many of which are unpleasant to human beings; but in areas of minimal infestation, a shambler colony will release odors that are surprisingly pleasant and attractive to lure the unwary.
A sweet pine-like smell is one of the most common scents that the shambler colonies have demonstrated. This may or may not be an adaptation to attract Earth animals; the evidence is inconclusive.
—The Red Book,
(Release 22.19A)
Chapter 11
The Hole
"If it were easy, it would have been done already."
-SOLOMON SHORT
It wasn't a normal worm hole. That was already obvious.
The tunnel walls were lined with a soft pink skin. It shuddered like flesh. It was thickly threaded with heavy twisting roots and thinner, parasitic creeper-vines. Everything was wet and rubbery looking. The cable-like strands twisted away into darkness. They looked like a writhe of braided anguish.
As it moved down the shaft, the prowler had to pick its way carefully. Very quickly, it began using its pincers to secure itself, clutching at the root and wall surfaces for footholds. It chirruped to itself warningly, but it kept on going.
As we descended deeper and deeper, the differences between this hole and every other worm nest we'd ever mapped became so obvious and so immediately apparent that for a long terrifying moment, I was afraid that we were about to discover a totally new species of Chtorran worm—or perhaps something even worse than that; maybe something that used the worms like the worms used the bunnydogs and the other creatures that shared their nests with them. My imagination offered up feverish pictures of a great bloated mass of slobbering malodorous flesh, pocked with gaping mouths, clashing mandibles, protruding rubbery tentacles, and drunkenly weaving eyestalks-then it gave up altogether and retired from the field in disgrace. Whatever I might imagine, what was actually waiting at the bottom of this nest was inevitably going to be worse.
Deeper now, the walls began showing other bizarre forms of Chtorran life; great bulbous cysts, and dripping sacs of brackish goo. The prowler reported that the globular purple ones that looked like rotting plums gave off smells every bit as ghastly as their appearance suggested.
The thickest of the cables branched abruptly, and the shaft branched with them. One channel led ahead, a smaller tunnel arced off at a tangent. We continued following the main channel down. A little deeper and the shaft began narrowing; at the same time, it became visibly smoother. The sinewy vines we followed disappeared into the substance of the shuddery red walls. The shaft was now a fleshy, all-enclosing tube. We had found our way inside the tree-maze.
The few twisting vessels still visible within the channel walls traced their way unevenly, eventually branching and threading off like giant blood vessels. It was as if we were inside the body of some enormous beast, brave microscopic intruders creeping tentatively through its circulatory system.
"Hold it-" I said. I sat back in my chair. The prowler obediently halted. I moved a display pointer to one of the arterial vines along the wall. "Did that just move?"
"Where?" asked Willig. "What?"
"There-" I highlighted a blubbery loop of twisted cable. Siegel's voice. "Stand by. We'll take a look at the replay-woops, there it goes again."
I was right. The root had pulsed. As we watched, a gentle swelling of viscosity seemed to move slowly along its length.
"Galoop. Galoop. Galoop," said Willig. "It's filled with molasses."
Fifteen seconds later, another glop of whatever galooped slowly through the vein slid wetly down the channel.
"It's got a heartbeat," I said. "It's got a fucking heartbeat!"
I could almost hear it. I could almost feel it thudding in my chest. For a moment, I couldn't breathe. The illusion was too complete, too compelling. I jerked the VR helmet off my head to reassure myself that I was still sitting in the distant rollagon.
"Captain?"
"No problem," I said. "I had to scratch my nose."
"Yeah-" agreed Siegel. "I get the same itch myself sometimes."
"Marano? How's the security situation?"
"No change, Captain. All is quiet. You're more likely to die of loneliness out here."
"That's truer than you know," I agreed. I pulled the helmet back down over my head. The reality of the tunnel enclosed me again. The thick red vein was still pulsing wetly in front of me. As long as I could remind myself it was still a couple of klicks away, it wasn't quite so frightening.
It wasn't the vein that was terrifying. It was what it implied. What was it here to nourish?
"Can we get a sample?" Willig asked softly.
"I'll give it a try-" I tapped gently on my keyboard, moving the prowler closer to the thick red vein. A syringe-tipped probe extended from underneath the prowler's chin; the needle pushed; into the rubbery flesh of the vein, hesitated, filled, then pulled out again. "Got it." I backed the prowler away and took a breath. "I don't know what we're looking at," I admitted. "But it's-it's certainly something."
The prowler flashed green; the sample was secure. More than secure; the prowler's internal sensors were already recording temperature, pH balance, and spectroscopic analysis. Microprobes were also in place; by the time the prowler returned to the vehicle, an extensive photographic record would have been made under a variety of lighting conditions, and most of the preliminary : analyses and LI pattern-checks would be complete. Even if we lost the prowler, we wouldn't lose the data; it was continually uploading its mission log to the vehicle's own LI unit.
I tapped the keyboard again. "Okay, let's go deeper." The prowler backed away from the vein; and we resumed our descent into the tunnels beneath the grove.
Here and there as we progressed, we began seeing other structures, larger and more intricate than those we'd passed above. Now the shaft was lined with flubbery red organs, they were veined with delicate black and blue traceries. They quivered nervously as we passed. I had no idea what they were.
Over and over again, we passed through spiderweb veils that hung across the entire shaft. We tore holes in them as we passed, but the veils had an elastic sticky quality, and the display showed them pulling themselves back together again behind us. Filters? Possibly.
"All right-hold it here," I called. I popped the helmet off and swiveled to the ancillary console. "Let's see a stereo map of where we are, let's get some bearings before we go any deeper."
"Working," said Wilüg. "Inertial guidance puts Sher Khan about fifteen meters down. The tunnel seems to spiral around counter clockwise. I've got a schematic on three."