Simply infecting one or two individuals in a population is not enough to guarantee that a plague will take hold, even a Chtorran plague. A determined vector is required, not a casual or accidental avenue of introduction. Only a carrier that guarantees repeated access can make a plague inevitable.
What is needed, for example, is a Chtorran equivalent for the flea or the mosquito. Before the plagues can occur; before the pernicious diseases can begin, a vector of strong opportunity first has to be established.
At this writing, the most likely candidate for the mechanism of transmission is the ubiquitous stingfly-a voracious biting "insect." The stingfly starts life smaller than a gnat, but can grow as large as a dragonfly if it has sufficient access to food.
—The Red Book,
(Release 22.19A)
Chapter 20
Nightfall
"The dog was nature's first attempt to make a neurotic. Practice makes perfect."
-SOLOMON SHORT
Outside, the pink storm covered the countryside with a thick blanket of silence and dust. In this neighborhood, the stuff would be gooey by morning, and by the end of the day tomorrow, it would be a hard and brittle crust.
In the gullies and arroyos where the muck pooled in thicknesses a meter or more, the congealed masses would be almost unbreakable. It could be a year or more before the stuff degraded or eroded or was finally washed away by rains, but in the meantime, the sugary slabs would serve as caches of quick protein for any hungry young worm fresh out of its shell. This was purely a Chtorran treat; an Earth-creature would break a tooth or a jaw trying to bite off a piece of this rock candy.
Inside the rollagon, we monitored the doings under the earth. We had more than enough to keep ourselves busy.
We sent the prowler crawling up and down the walls of the womb-nest, tasting, smelling, touching, measuring, recording, canning, exploring, and sampling everything it came across. We took specimens wherever we could. Our needles poked and pierced; we cut slices off the walls, slivers from all the organs. We prodded and thumped and did everything short of provoking the nest into uproar. The inhabitants-embryonic members of the Chtorran ecology-barely reacted. Apparently, the activities within the womb-nest were sufficiently insulated that the tenants above could not be triggered into swarming by the prowler's actions below.
Willig sat quietly at her station and watched the threedimensional map of the chamber grow toward completion. Siegel and I took turns monitoring Sher Khan's steady progress; we fed Willig the raw data for her map. Reilly and Lopez shuttered the overhead bubbles and retired into the back to try to get some rest. They woke up Locke and Valada and fell into the still-warm bunks. Valada cursed softly; Locke just scratched himself and went looking for caffeine.
Pink twilight turned into ruddy dusk. Ruddy dusk became a velvet-black well. Inside the womb-nest, things turned restlessly in their amniotic sleep. If the pink blanket above was having any effect down below, it wasn't immediately obvious.
"Captain-?" Valada called me over to her work station. Exhausted, I got up from my chair and went forward to peer over her shoulder. "What've you got?"
She pointed to the display on one of her monitors. Several of the gray slugs were trying to ooze their way up a tunnel. "I think you're right about these little guys being taxis to the surface. They've been trying to get up that slope for an hour now."
"Okay, but where are the passengers?"
"I've been working on that too." Valada brought up a new set of images. "Look, this is from another part of the nest." The gray slugs were chewing remorselessly at the edge of one of the red blubbery organs. They wasted as much as they ate. Parts of it spilled wetly around them. "Some of it sticks to their sides," Valada said. "But-notice how they just gulp down their food without even chewing? I'll bet you that a lot of the eggs survive the trip through their intestines untouched. The slugs get up to the surface, they take a crap, the eggs hatch in slug-shit, and the next generation of critters is free to run amuck."
"That's usually the case with next generations," I muttered thinking of something else. "I'll give you half a point-"
"Only half a point?" she protested.
"You missed the obvious one. After we have a chance to scan one of those little bastards, I'll bet you anything that we'll find that some of the eggs have already hatched in the slug's belly-and whatever things have hatched out of those eggs will be happily munching away on slug innards."
"Ugh," said Valada, wrinkling her nose.
"I agree. But nature doesn't waste. Especially Chtorran nature. If the slugs are just taxis, then once they get to the surface, their job is over, right? What do they do then? Wait to die? That's wasteful. Use them as food for something else and nothing is wasted, not even the squeal. I'll be real interested to see what's inside one of those things."
She nodded her agreement. "We should bring back the prowler. It's got three in the freezer."
"You're right." I gave her an approving pat on the shoulder and headed forward to the driver's compartment. The cockpit. The so-called bridge. With Siegel in the back, it would be the quietest place in the van. I needed to think.
Everything up front was locked down and secure; but even on standby it was still an active command center. All seven of the screens across the front panel were still brightly lit, still showing the status of the vehicle and its occupants. I stood for a moment studying the mission boards. We were in pretty good shape, considering. Either Willig or Siegel would be watching duplicate displays in the back of the vehicle; if anything occurred that needed human intervention, they'd catch it immediately.
I placed both hands on the back of the pilot's chair and leaned my weight against it. Without really concentrating on it, I began doing various stretching exercises to work the kinks out of my back. I hurt all over-my head, my back, my legs, my feet-I was getting old before my time. I didn't feel lucky anymore. I didn't feel like I was going to survive the war. As a matter of fact, I didn't feel as if anyone was going to survive the war.
And yet… the irony of the situation was that even as the remainder of the human race stood in horror before the doom that crept across the skin of our planet, we still were able to detach ourselves emotionally from our fear so we could appreciate the beauty and the wonder of the amazing Chtorran ecology. I hadn't yet met a scientist or a technician who didn't marvel at the workings of the machineries of infestation.
I couldn't explain it. I wasn't sure I even understood it. But I felt the same admiration myself. The more I saw of Chtotran life, the more astonished I was by its intricacy. All the different pieces of it fit together in ways that beggared description. The relationships here went beyond mere symbiosis as we knew it on Earth. When two Chtorran species joined, they became a totally new kind of plant or animal. In fact, none of these creatures were truly independent beings. Yet, rather than being hampered or limited by their partnerships, they were enhanced and expanded.
Could the neural cilia exist independently of the hairless slugs? Could the slugs survive without the awareness granted by the neural functions of the symbionts? Maybe, maybe not-who knew? But put the two species together, and you get worms, large and hungry and ferocious, and equipped with the sensory equipment to track their prey across kilometers of rugged terrain.
I was certain that there were even more astonishing partnerships yet to be discovered. If we could monitor the complete life cycle of everything that went on within this womb-nest, what surprises would we find? What mysteries of Chtorran growth would finally be unraveled?