"I love it when you talk scientific," said Willig, but despite her interruption, she was as rapt as all the others. The entire crew-not just Willig, but Reilly, Siegel, Locke, Lopez, and Valada-were caught up in this extrapolation.
"Go on," said Siegel, impatiently.
"The big red blubbers are egg-factories. All the other things are the support systems. The little flecks are the freeze-dried nuclei, duplicated by some kind of organic copying mechanism-and not just the simple nuclei alone; there also has to be the instructions included on what kind of egg to grow around each nucleus and what kind of nurturing that egg is going to need to hatch. I'll bet that some of these other organs are here to act as incubators to hatch the eggs and nurture whatever creatures pop out of them. That tunnel we came down-it isn't an entrance, it's an exit. That's the birth canal."
"Worms come out of it?"
"Everything comes out of it," I said, shuddering at the thought.
I sank back in my chair, stunned at the size of the realization. "This hole hasn't been here for six months; it's been here for six years at least. Probably longer. These groves-all over the world-this is how the infestation started. If we had known, if we had realized-" I felt suddenly helpless.
"We've gotta burn these things wherever we find them." Siegel spoke with determination. "Maybe we still have a chance-"
"It's too late," I said. "These womb-nests are only landing vehicles, the last part of the transportation process. You can grow Chtorran babies in it, but once they leave the nest, they'll grow their own babies." I realized how defeatist that sounded, and added perfunctorily, "You're right, though, we should burn these wombs, at least to slow down the infestation every way we can. But we should study them too. There might still be things growing in the raspberry Jell-O that we haven't met yet."
"What about these little slugs?" Willig asked. "Are they baby worms or not?"
"I dunno. They're a little small, but that might not mean anything under these circumstances; we're at almost double atmosphere down here. And they don't have any fur either. Without its fur, a worm is both blind and catatonic; and these guys seem kind of lively. But-"I shrugged"—maybe there are things that need to be taken up to the surface, and these little fellas are the taxis. If that's all they are, then it doesn't matter if they live or die, does it?"
"Guess not."
"But… if they are worms, then this is our opportunity to study their breeding patterns. Dr. Zymph thinks that our best chance of defeating them is to find some agent, biological or chemical, that will interrupt their reproductive cycle. The problem is, nobody really knows how they breed. We know they hatch from some kind of large leathery eggs; but we've never actually seen a worm laying eggs. In fact, we still haven't been able to identify the worm sexes. That's assuming that they have different sexes. We can't tell."
"As long as they can tell," said Siegel. "That's all that counts. Hey, Captain?"
"Yeah?"
"Not to change the subject, but how do you think worms fuck?"
"I don't know. When we get back, ask Dannenfelser if you can watch." I didn't add the other thing I was thinking. If we got back. We had some astonishing recordings here; the virtual-reality playbacks were priceless. We had extensive evidence of a significant and previously unknown part of the Chtorran infestation. We were monitoring manifestations and behaviors previously undreamt of. This would eventually help us target potential hotspots before the terrain maps turned pink. We'd be able to identify and neutralize mother-nests before they began spewing their cargo of hungry red children.
All we had to do was survive the pink storm and get back to base. I tried to reassure myself. How hard could that be? After all, this vehicle had been designed to withstand assaults like this. On the other hand… I hadn't survived this long by underestimating the voraciousness of the enemy.
Only this time, it wasn't the Chtorrans I had to be most concerned about. The human enemy was proving to be the difficult one. What if somebody back in Houston didn't want us to get home?
"Hot Seat," April 3rd broadcast: (cont'd)
ROBISON:… What's The Core Group, Dr. Foreman?
FOREMAN: The Core Group is that set of people who are committed to contextual shift. Many of them are graduates of the Mode Training. Not all.
ROBISON: Ahh, Modies. I see. So now we have it. Your followers-people who you have personally brainwashedhave a secret plan for preempting the direction of the United States government. (holding up a sheaf of papers) I have here an article by a Dr. Dorothy Chin, one of your-failures, I guess. What do you call people who get up and walk out?
FOREMAN: People who got up and walked out.
ROBISON: Right. Well, Dorothy Chin is one of your disenrollments, a person who quit the Mode Training because, in her words, it was "political indoctrination masquerading as a motivational resource seminar, using various techniques of advanced brainwashing to demonstrate, prove, and enforce a monstrous, mechanistic, monolithic, self-perpetuating, behaviorist view of human conduct; thus justifying in the minds of its practitioners the assumption of rights and powers hitherto reserved for God and governments." According to Ms. Chin, your secret goal is to supplant the purposes of the people's lawfully elected representatives with your own unauthorized agenda, and you're doing that by systematically enrolling key members of the administration, both houses of Congress-both political parties, various members of the media, and most dangerously, key members of the United States Armed Forces, all branches.
FOREMAN: Your paranoia is showing, John. I think it's time for you to have your medication checked again.
ROBISON: So you're denying that there's a Core Group?
FOREMAN: Not at all. But your interpretation of what it is and what it's meant to be is so deranged that I can't help but wonder if you're deliberately misconstruing the nature of the group so you can look like a crusader for truth, or if…
ROBISON: -or if what?
FOREMAN: Or if you're just stupid. Frankly, I have to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the former. The Core Group isn't a group. It's an idea.
ROBISON: But there are people who are members of The Core Group, aren't there? And these people are some of the most important and well-respected people in the country. In the world. Correct? And isn't this all part of the Modie master plan?
FOREMAN: (sigh) The Mode Training has been part of the military's basic ethical instruction series since the time of the Moscow Treaties. Before the plagues, over six million people had participated in one of the seven different forms of the training that were offered through the auspices of the federal government, including just about every single man and woman who ever put on a uniform, whether it be Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, Space Corps, or the United States Postal Service; and at least another twenty million civilians participated in Mode-sponsored seminars.
ROBISON: And you got paid a royalty on every enrollment, didn't you?
FOREMAN: Sorry, the Mode Foundation collects the royalties, not me. I'm on salary from the Mode Foundation; that salary is determined by the Board of Governors. Nice try, but your information is wrong there too. The point is that there's nothing weird or unusual or bizarre or illegal or unethical about the training or anything connected with it, nor is there anything wrong or disgraceful about the fact that an educational foundation earns a profit. Why shouldn't we be capitalists? Our success demonstrates that the training works. People want to live powerfully, and they take the training to give themselves the tools they need. According to the Foundation's records, you did the basic training yourself while you were in college.