"Listen to me, Lizard. I know about Robert and Stevie. I doesn't hurt me to see you cry because you miss them. It make me proud of you for remembering what was special about the world before. I'm not jealous. How could I be? Do you know how much I love you? If I had the power to put the world back the wa it was before the Chtorrans came, I'd give you that gift right now. I'd do it in a minute, even if it meant I'd never see you again. But I can't and you can't and no one can, and we're stuck with things just the way they are. And we're going to hurt a lot, each and every one of us. But even if there weren't any Chtorrans, we'd all stil be hurting a lot; only we'd be doing it in different ways; because that's the condition of being human. At least, that's the way I've always experienced it. Well, I'm willing to accept that as the price of admission. And having done that, at least I'm going to choose the hurts that feel good. Do you hear me? I'm not willing to lose you for a stupid reason. If you want to give me up, you're going to have to come up with something a whole lot better than the bullshit you just offered."
Amazingly she listened to the whole speech in silence. Some people listen to the first sentence only and then wait politely while they mentally prepare their reply. Lizard didn't do that. She listened to every word I said. And when I was finished, she didn't argue. She didn't say anything. She just lowered her eyes, and then her head, and leaned silently into me. She rested her head against my chest.
I didn't move. I waited. I wanted to see if she would put her arms around me. She didn't. I felt so damned frustrated. All I wanted was just one little signal that it was all right to touch her again; but she wasn't going to give it to me. I wondered if she was through giving, if the whole thing had become so irrevocably damaged that it could never be repaired.
I made a decision. I had to know. Slowly, gently, I reached my arms up around her. I didn't pull her toward me, I didn't even hug her. I just put my hands on her shoulders in a comforting way and waited in wretched silence. She felt so warm and she smelled so good, and I ached so desperately to know what she was thinking or feeling. Did she still hate me?
She sniffled quietly and brought one hand up between us to wipe her nose. She looked at me bleary-eyed and shook her head sadly. "I can't ever win an argument with you, you know that?"
"Huh?"
"Oh, I can teach you. I can give you information you never had before, Jim-but I can't ever convince you of anything. You have always been so headstrong in your pursuit of what's right that all that anybody around you can do is cooperate or get out of your way." She leaned against me again, resting her head against mine, and put her hands on my shoulders. She sighed and finally let her body relax against mine. "It's so hard to be your friend. Harder to be your lover. But it's harder to let go altogether. I can't do it. I don't have the strength to let go anymore. I'm so tired." She glanced up at me. "You're going to have to be strong for both of us. I'm just going to hang on until you decide to give me up."
"I'll never give you up, you know that."
"I know." She looked so sad as she said it that I almost changed my mind.
I tilted her chin up so she was looking me straight in the eye. Her sea-green eyes were wet and shining. "Lizard-will you marry me?"
From this perspective, it is now clear that the most advantageous method of colonization is to start at the very bottom of the food chain, replacing the Terran processes of decay with Chtorran processes of decay-thus capturing the basic building blocks of the Terran food chain and transforming them into a source of energy for the Chtorran ecology.
The Chtorran ecology can now begin to assemble itself layer by layer without any overt or direct attacks on any Terran life form. The ecology of the host planet becomes progressively weaker while the colonizing ecology becomes progressively stronger.
—The Red Book,
(Release 22.19A)
Chapter 36
Chocolate and Babies
"It only takes one person to make a marriage work-it takes two to really fuck it up."
-SOLOMON SHORT
For the longest time, she didn't answer. Her silence lasted several centuries—during the whole of which time I agonized that I had taken advantage of her vulnerability, that I had said a terribly wrong thing, that I had finally, irrevocably, made myself the kind of fool that even she couldn't forgive-because no matter what she said in reply, yes or no, nothing between us could ever be the same again.
At last, Lizard sniffed, wiped her nose, wiped her eyes, smiled a little, looked up at me, shook her head, and said, "You don't have to do that. I won't lock you out again."
"Listen. I didn't ask you to marry me because I'm afraid of losing you. I asked you to marry me because right now you need me even more than I need you. I needed you to help put me back together after I was captured by the Revelationists. Now it's your turn-and my job is to hold you together."
"Why bother?"
"Because if I give you all of my strength, then you can be strong for the rest of us."
"But I'm not strong anymore, Jim. The best I can do is pretend."
"That's good enough. Nobody can tell the difference anyway. Fake it till you make it."
"Jim-" She tried to insist.
"Listen to me, sweetheart. It's always pretend-for everybody. We're all just little kids in grown-up bodies walking around saying, 'Huh? How did this happen?"'
She smiled in spite of herself. "Dr. Foreman trained you too well. You refuse to lie down and stay dead."
"I'm too mean to die-or too stupid."
She put her hand on my cheek and let her smile widen into a warming dawn. "You're not stupid," she said gently.
"Okay, then it's settled. I'm mean. Listen-" It was time to be serious again. "I know what's important. You are-and the work you do. Those people out there depend on you. They love you-almost as much as I do. They trust you and they need you. You can't let them down."
Her eyes were watering again. The hardest thing in the world is to keep your mouth shut and listen to somebody say good things about you-especially when you know it's true, but you've never let yourself believe it before.
She tried to pull away, but I wouldn't let her. She needed to hear this. "You say you need me-okay, I'm here." I took her hands in mine and she had to turn and face me again. I blinked back my own tears and swallowed past the hard lump in my throat and somehow managed to get the rest of the words out. "Lizard, my beloved-I will never abandon you again. I will never hurt you again. I'll be here for you night and day, to hold you and make you laugh and love you and give you whatever strength I can, so that you can go out in the world and inspire everybody else. That's the most important job that I can do-and just so you'll know that you'll always have your source of strength right here where you need it, I'm going to marry you. That way you can't lose me. Even if you try."
"Is that an order?"
"Yes. It is."
And with that, she relaxed. Finally. She let herself go completely limp in my arms, as soft as a kitten nestled in its mother's fur. She let out a long, tired breath-not her usual sigh of contentment, more a sigh of simple relaxation, but it was the most beautiful sound I'd ever heard. It said that she was at ease, at last.