The Jeep came sliding to a halt directly in front of the staircase, where several of the ship's officers were standing around a portable console that looked like a music stand-but my eyes were drawn to the one person wearing the colors of the United States Army. General Tirelli. Lizard. She looked so crisp and military, even in a shapeless jumpsuit, that you could have sliced bread with her.
I climbed out of the Jeep slowly. How should I greet her? I wanted to grab her and hug her gratefully, but something about the way she stood and the look on her face warned me not to. I wasn't sure what I should do. I covered by reaching around and grabbing for my duffel. The girl was already pulling away; the bag caught on something in the Jeep and I almost lost it. I must have looked spectacularly ungraceful.
I straightened myself up and saluted. "General Tirelli? Captain Harbaugh? Captain James Edward McCarthy, reporting for duty. I apologize for any delays or inconveniences my tardiness may have caused."
I was tired, unshaven, and dirty. I hadn't bathed or changed my clothes in three days; my combat fatigues were stained with sweat and mud and pink dust up to my chest; and I looked haggard and very unmilitary. If I smelled as bad as I looked, then I was probably in violation of several clean-air ordinances; I couldn't tell from the inside, my olfactory nerves had long since given up. Captain Harbaugh was looking at me as if she wanted to hose me off before letting me board her airship.
General Tirelli returned my salute with one of her own, a careless wave of her hand. Captain Harbaugh only returned it with a frown. She was wearing a communication headset, and she was clearly annoyed. Her disdain was unmistakable. Lizard's expression was unreadable, but equally dark. I lowered my eyes and looked away. The lump in my throat hurt and I didn't know what to say. The best I could do was wait for instructions. I looked to Captain Harbaugh.
Captain Anne Jillian Harbaugh was a tall woman with a commanding presence. She was taller than Lizard; she was statuesque. She was clearly not a woman to argue with. She had thick auburn hair and large hazel green eyes. She looked European, but she obviously had a trace of Hispanic in her ancestry too. She was probably beautiful, but at the moment, her countenance was so severe that her picture could have been used as a birth control device. She said, "We were supposed to be on our way six hours ago. I don't know if I can make up the lost time in the air." She glanced over at General Tirelli. "He'd better be worth it."
I looked to Lizard hopefully; but her gaze was neutral. She held out her hand expectantly. "Your orders, Captain?" I passed them over. My heart was thumping unexplainably. I felt dizzy with a rush of confused feelings-feelings for Lizard and feelings of displacement and exhaustion; I'd spent most of the day in the air.
She accepted my papers without looking at them. "Get aboard." To Captain Harbaugh, she said, "He's worth it." Captain Harbaugh hmpfed noncommittally. She nodded to a steward. "Show Captain McCarthy to his quarters. Miller, get the console. Let's get the hell out of here."
Unfortunately, the more we know about the life cycle of the stingfly, the more we realize that it cannot possibly have been the primary vector for the spreading of the first devastating plagues. This is a particularly troubling realization, as it demonstrates that there is a large gap in our knowledge of the processes at work. Nevertheless, the reasoning leaves us no other conclusion.
Before the stingfly can begin its pernicious career as a vector, it has to have established and stabilized itself into its own ecological niche-but the stingfly's complicated life cycle cannot be initiated and maintained until all the other support species are themselves available, especially gastropedes, wormberries, and the bacteria that thrive in the gut of the stingfly maggot.
If the stingfly is the only agent of transmission for Chtorran diseases, then the introduction of the plagues into the Terran biomass did not occur until the stingfly was established, and the stingfly could not have been established until its support species were present and established.
Therefore, before the first plagues occurred, the gastropedes and other Chtorran species had to have already been present. But the earliest evidence of the presence of gastropedes occurs only after the appearance of the first plagues, and not even on the same continent.
Let us consider the alternative possibility. If the stingfly was not the initial agent of transmission, then some other Chtorran life form must have served the purpose of introducing Chtorran plague bacteria and viruses into human bloodstreams.
Call it Agent X. Whatever its nature, it had to be able to operate in a pre-Chtorran ecology. This means that the causative germs for all of the plagues had to be readily present in the environment. They'had to be available over a large enough area to ensure that Agent X would have sufficient access. Only in that circumstance could the initiation of infectious germs into a susceptible human population occur-only in that way could it occur often enough to trigger the spreading waves of infection that were actually observed.
So where did the causative microorganisms originate? Were they already present in Agent X, functioning as symbionts or parasites? This doesn't seem likely-there are too many separate disease germs to be accounted for. So the question remains, where did Agent X pick up the infecting disease germs?
—The Red Book,
(Release 22.19A)
Chapter 31
Earthly Delights
"The constitution guarantees every citizen-the right to make a damn fool of himself, in public or in private, however he or she chooses."
-SOLOMON SHORT
The entire staircase came rising up after us. Captain Harbaugh pushed past me, already snapping orders into her headset, Lizard following in her wake.
"Uh, General-
"Later-" she said curtly. "There's a mission briefing in the main lounge, half an hour from now. You have just enough time to clean up. I'll see you in my quarters afterward." And then she was gone.
I stopped and looked around. We were in a grand lobby, at least an acre across. Two stewards waited beside a reception desk. Several other attendants were visible too, talking on headsets or working at terminals, probably taking care of the myriad routine matters associated with any large operation. A few people glanced in my direction, then turned away again with deliberate nonchalance. It wasn't exactly my greatest entrance. I was as out of place here as a warthog in a beauty pageant.
Despite the fact that this was now a military vessel, most of the original fittings remained. The atmosphere was one of quiet, understated elegance. Everything was spacious-there was space here to waste. Pale walls, high ceilings, mirrors, hanging screens; colored lights, feathery drapes, and a thick, muffling carpet, all made for a relaxed and stylish environment without serious weight penalties. Just about everything aboard this vessel was made of woven ceramics and lightweight foamed-polymers. You could transport a herd of elephants in the hold of this ship if you had a mind to.
"This way, Captain. I'll take your duffel."
The steward was only a teenager, but so soft-spoken and respectful, he could have been any age at all. He wore close-fitting shorts and a knit pastel T-shirt. His name tag identified him as Shaun. He had fine sandy hair that he wore in bangs, and a wide friendly grin. But he was almost too pretty to be a boy. I wondered if he was gay. "Is everybody on this crew under the age of sixteen?" I asked.
Shaun smiled politely. Evidently, he'd been asked this question a lot. "I think the captain is over twenty-one." Abruptly, there was a gentle bump from beneath our feet; almost unnoticeable. "Oh," he said, gesturing me to follow. "You'll want to see this." He was as proud as if he had built the Bosch himself. His demeanor was friendly and refreshing. He made no mention of my appearance, but he was visibly impressed and more than a little intrigued by the undeniable evidence of my recent battle experience. I had the weirdest sensation of having been plucked abruptly out of one world and dropped haphazardly into the next, without instructions, program book, or score card. I was feeling not just dirty, but disconnected and confused. So much had happened, was still happening