I smiled, remembering. I liked making up with Lizard Tirelli better than anybody.
But I'd learned something that night. I'd learned that I could handle my grief or rage or fear or whatever other pain might come along. I could handle it alone, by myself, without help, if I had to, in the privacy of my own bathroom. All I needed was a mop and a bucket.
I hadn't really thought about the set of luggage I'd collected in the past few days. Not really. I'd just carried it about, with a mental note to check it with the first bellboy who came along. Only nobody had come. I knew what I was going to have to do when I got home. Either the bathtub or-that was a thought. I could go down to the gym. They had mannequins there. I could program a couple to act like a general and his pet sycophant. After that… well, I didn't know what I would do after that, but at least I'd be in a place where I'd be much better able to handle it, whatever it was.
I had a pretty good idea who the Blue Fairy was-or at least, who had sent him. The Uncle Ira group had to be patched into the circuit somewhere. I didn't think I was likely to find anyone who'd answer the question truthfully, but it was a question I had to wonder about. Why did the Uncle Ira group consider us-me?-important enough to rescue? Or maybe it wasn't me. Maybe Uncle Ira had some reason to be interested in the specimens we were carrying.
That was an uncomfortable thought. Hell. It was something else to be angry about-that the specimens in our cases were more important than our lives. Except-I had made the same decision myself not more than an hour ago. I had decided that these specimens were more important than the lives of Reilly and Willig and Locke. And I had seen the consequences of that decision close up.
I was going to be a long time in the bathroom. I had a lot of crying to do.
The stingfly larvae is not a parasite. It provides a unique digestive service to the host organism.
Inside the gut of the grub can be found large colonies of digestive bacteria. While an individual grub is usually host to only one, particular species of microorganism, there are many different species of digestive bacteria. A sampling from the stomach of the average gastropede shows that there are at least twenty or thirty different kinds of microorganisms active in the grubs of any given host.
These symbiotic microorganisms break cellulose molecules down into digestible starches and sugars, enabling not only the grub to survive an otherwise indigestible diet, but also the host organism that contains the grubs- Tne bacteria in the grubs help to feed both their hosts simultaneously.
—The Red Book,
(Release 22.19a)
Chapter 27
In Transit
"Contentment is the continuing act of accepting the process of your own life-no matter how hasty it gets."
-SOLOMON SHORT
We were on the ground for less than five minutes at San Antonio. We taxied to a stop, the pod was lowered from the cargo bay the door popped open, and we were Pointed toward a waiting chopper by a faceless woman in helmet and goggles. She waved insistently, almost angrily with her batons.
"Come on, let's go," I said, swinging my helmet and the autolog cases. It was obvious We weren't going to get either answers or courtesy here.
"You mean we're not gonna visit the Alamo?" Lopez asked. "One of my ancestors won a famous victory there-"
"Save it for later, Macha," I said. "This isn't a good time for that stuff." I shoved her with my shoulder in the direction of tho chopper; its rotors were lazily stropping through the air. I probably pushed her harder than I should have, but I wasn't feeling in the best of spirits, and there was some business I was impatient to attend to. I noticed that the air-taxi had no insignia of any kind. Interesting, but inconclusive. I climbed aboard with a sour feel in my gut. I wasn't looking forward to our arrival in Houston.
The door slammed shut behind me, and we lifted off the ground before I even had a chance to find a seat, let alone strap in. I fell into one of the backward-facing chairs at the front. The surviving members of the team were looking at me with puzzlement. "What the hell is going on?" asked Siegel.
I shook my head. Better they shouldn't know.
But Siegel wasn't satisfied. "Come on, Captain. This isn't standard. We should have been met by a debriefing team. And a medical squad." After a beat, he added, "And a chaplain too."
Lopez grunted. "Yeah, what gives? This isn't right."
I sighed. I looked at my boots. I wondered what my feet were going to smell like when I finally pulled them off. I wondered if there was a way I could leave the room before I unlaced my boots. I scratched the back of my neck idly. I did a whole performance of laconic, good-natured captain. I met their eyes again. They weren't convinced. So I shrugged and said, "You want my best guess? Blue Fairy Airlines doesn't like us. I don't think they want our repeat business."
"Just once-" Seigel said, "could we have a straight answer?"
"Somebody doesn't want us leaving a trail. The less we know, the easier it is for us to not say anything."
"Would you translate that into English?" Valada said, pulling off her helmet and pushing her dark hair back out of her eyes. She looked mightily annoyed.
I puffed my cheeks and made a horsey sound as I let the air out of my mouth. "Look-I agree with you, yes, there's something going on. But obviously it's a need-to-know operation, and you and I do not need to know."