"You're awfully calm about it-" He was looking for a reason not to believe.
"I'm not calm at all. I'm terrified. I'm just not dramatizing it. Panic is counterproductive."
He snorted and started to walk away from me.
"You're heading toward a ganglion-" I pointed. He stopped in midstride. "Step on that and you'll trigger the tenants for sure. That one's got at least ten, maybe fifteen vines linking into it."
He froze. He looked at me. He looked to the vehicles. He looked warily at the shambler trees, as if simply looking at them would be enough to set them off. Slowly, he pulled his foot back. I could see the sweat rolling down his face. "I don't fucking believe you. You keep saying we're dead men. How can you be so goddamned calm about this?" His anger had been totally overwhelmed.
"Because," I said, "I've already died three times. I can't be scared of it anymore. I've accepted its inevitability. If this is it, then this is it. I'm ready." I couldn't believe it. The Mode training worked.
"So, you're just going to wait here and die? Is that it?"
"Not at all. The fact that I've accepted it doesn't mean that I've also surrendered. I'm not going down without a fight, but I'm not going down like a coward either. That's all."
"So what are we going to do?"
"I don't know what you're going to do. I intend to survive." I took an elaborately cautious step. Unhurriedly, I lifted one foot, lowered it, and shifted my weight quietly forward. "I am going to walk back to the vehicles as slowly as I can. Maybe the tenants won't realize that there are two of us. You can stay here if you want."
"Captain-you have a duty to save your superior officer-" His tone was hard, but there was panic in his eyes. Good.
"Are you ready to listen to me now?" I took another leisurely giant step.
He nodded anxiously.
"Then do exactly as I tell you and keep your goddamned mouth shut. See what I'm doing? Do exactly the same. Watch. Lift your foot as carefully as you can, lower it without putting your weight on it, make sure your footing is secure, and then just shift your weight slowly forward. Can you do that?"
He could.
"Slower than that," I said. "Count to fifty between each footstep. If you skip a number, start over. Don't be impatient."
After the third step, he said, "This is stupid. I feel like a jerk."
I nodded. "You look like one too. The videos on this are going to be hysterical."
"Videos?"
"Uh-huh." I pointed to the cameras on the tanks. "It's standard procedure. Record everything."
He blanched.
I added quietly, "And just for the record-if we do get out of this alive, I intend to pluck your nuts. You never opened your briefing book, did you?"
He started to speak. "There's no call for that tone-"
"Shut up," I explained.
He shut.
We tiptoed in silence for a while, taking long, elaborate pauses between each step. The major was mumbling to himself, I couldn't tell if it was sullen resentment or quiescent panic. Probably it was both. The man had bounced through so many emotional stations in the past half hour that he probably didn't know where he was or what he felt anymore.
We were approaching a shallow dip. "Be careful here." I pointed forward.
He didn't answer.
"There's a lot of baby vines across this area. That's a bad sign. They'll work together like an antenna. They'll feed the vibrations of our footsteps straight to the nearest ganglion. We'll have to slow down."
"Slow… down… ?"
"Uh-huh. One stimulus won't trigger an attack. Two or three consecutive stimuli will. We'll need to slow down our pace."
He moaned. The sound was almost comic. "How can you do this-?"'
"It's called The Patience Exercise. We did it in the Mode Training. The idea is to see how long you can take crossing a room. We had to take a whole day just to get across a roorn the size of a gymnasium. There were a lot of angry people in that room before the day was over."
"Sounds stupid. What's the point?"
"Well, first you get to confront how impatient you are with the process of your own life." I remembered what Foreman had said. "It's about living in the moment of now. Most people are stuck in the past-except when they're trying to live in the future. Very few people know how to live in the now."
"Sounds like a lot of California bullshit," said the major.
"Very probably-but eventually there comes a point when you realize that there's no difference between a moment of waiting and a moment of moving. They're both moments. Each has equal value. So a moment of waiting isn't something to endure, to be gotten through as quickly and painlessly as possible; instead, it's just a moment to be lived, like any other."
"You believe this shit?"
"I don't believe anything anymore. I gave up belief. Now I just accept what the universe presents and act appropriately."
"I hate evangelists," he said.
"So do I," I agreed. "You asked. I answered."
He was silent for a while. I knew he wasn't counting. He was watching me, taking a step only when I did. He didn't know whether to be afraid, frustrated, or angry. I could tell by the sound of his breathing that he was trying to do all three at the same time.
Finally, he couldn't stand it any longer. "We don't have to do this-this tiptoe-through-the-tulips routine-all the way back to the tanks, do we? I mean, how long until we're out of range?"
"It depends on how far the net of creeper vines has spread. Relax. We've got a long way to go before we can even think about making a dash for it."
"What about this? We run and one of the tanks comes and gets us?"
"We'd never make it. We're still too far."
"Well, what if a tank circled around wide and laid down a swath of flarne between us and the trees?" His anger was going, but he was still frustrated and desperate.
"Same problem. Too much vibration. It'd trigger the tenants for sure." I turned and studied the trees again, just to be sure. They loomed tall and ominous. Great black lumps of vegetation, they dripped with showers of wide, waxy leaves, a purple-and-ebony cascade. Several of them were decorated with blood-red vines and parasitic creepers with bright pink flowers. "Uh-uh. They're spread too far apart. We could never hit them all. Not with enough flame. And certainly not fast enough-assuming we could even get a tank into position. They'd all swarm at once."
"I thought these suits were supposed to provide some kind of protection-" Now the frustration was going, leaving him purely desperate. Would he bottom out at resolve or catatonia?
"I've seen what a shambler swarm can do to a herd of livestock. Do you think your jumpsuit is stronger than cowhide?"
"It's supposed to be-
"Do you want to bet your life on it?"
He didn't answer. He took another elaborate step. He was starting to look a little rocky. No question anymore. He was aiming straight for the paralysis of despair. Too bad. I'd honestly expected better from him.
I knew how he felt. Walking this slow is more difficult than it looks. It's actually harder than running. I could feel the sweat trickling down my sides. The only satisfaction was that Major Asshole was sweating worse than me: I wondered how much more he could take-I glanced back at him. His face was so pale, it was colorless. "Oh, shit." He was about to faint.
I caught him just in time. "Come on, stay with me. Don't go down. Come on, Major."
He stayed limp. He'd been frightened into unconsciousness.
"I should leave you here," I said. "It just might buy me enough time to run for it."
No response. He really was out. Terrific.
That there are many large areas where the infestation appears to be minimal or nonexistent should not be construed as evidence of either weakness or failure on the part of the agencies of infestation, nor should it be interpreted as evidence of the effectiveness of control measures of human agencies. Such misperceptions can lead to dangerous miscalculations of resources and energy.