She started talking in a voice so filled with fatigue and weariness that it hurt just to listen to her. "You think it's been hard for you?" Her face was drawn and haggard. "How do you think it's been for me. Every time you pull one of your stunts, everybody looks to me. They look at me in the cafeteria. In the hallways. In the briefings. I know what they're thinking. 'What does she see in him? How does she put up with it? Why can't she control him?' Every time you blow up, you call attention to yourself, and that calls attention to me. They all start wondering, 'Is she going to defend him again?' You're undermining my credibility. No. The damage is done. You've destroyed it. Everything I've worked so long to accomplish; my entire career-it's all in shambles, Jim."
Her words were like bricks; hard lumps of pain that she piled slowly, laboriously, one on top of another. I felt like that fellow in the Edgar Allan Poe story who was walled up alive. Only the bricks in this wall were the bricks of my own anguish.
"You've become a spoiled brat, because you know that Mama's always going to be there to pull your nuts out of the fire. But every time I do, I spend a little bit more of my credibility, and a little bit more, and a little bit more, until I don't have any credibility left anywhere. I don't have any more favors to call in. I'm bankrupt. I'm without authority. You've not only demolished yourself, Jim-you've brought me down with you. Do you know how badly you screwed up? We almost had Operation Nightmare canceled because you were the science officer. I had to agree to replace you. Only the fact that you wrote the briefing books on the infestation kept you from being jettisoned altogether.
"And the hell of it is that everybody knows it. There are no secrets anymore, Jim. You're an open book. You and I-we're a goddamn soap opera. Everybody talks about us. I hate that. I don't want people knowing the details of my private life. I don't want people knowing who I sleep with or when or what we do in bed. I don't want everyone peeking over my shoulder. I want my damned privacy back."
She had been standing with her arms folded, her back firmly against the wall; now she let herself sag backward against it in sheer weary exhaustion; her arms fell emptily to her sides.
"We're not even good drama anymore, Jim. We're just another sitcom that should be canceled and forgotten. These people have been preparing for this operation for almost two years, and your little stunt almost flushed all that work down the toilet." There was real regret in her voice. "They're so pissed at you, Jim, that you don't have to jump out of one of those windows. You're likely to get thrown out. Haven't you noticed that nobody has spoken to you yet? Nobody's even nodded hello? You're being shunned. Even if I wanted to try to find a way to work with you, I couldn't. If I tried to tell these people to respect your authority, they'd laugh in my face, and I'd lose the last little shred of credibility and control that I have. I am not in a good position for a commanding officer."
She looked across the room at me. Her eyes were incredibly sad. And then she said the worst thing of all, the part that nearly killed me. I'd rather have been dragged naked across the floor of hell than hear what she had to say next.
"I would have resigned. But if I had, then for sure they would have canceled this operation. So I took a long walk and I had a long talk with myself and I realized that you've cost me too much. I can't afford you anymore. And yet, here you are, I can't even get rid of you. I don't want you here. I really don't. I want to do my job. I want to get this mission over with, and I want to go home. And if the President will let me, I want to emigrate to Luna or to one of the Lagrange colonies. Both L4 and L5 are being officially reopened. They're going to try to make them into genetic sanctuaries." She shook her head with heavy resignation. "The fallback plan is that if worse comes to absolute worst, that's where humanity will end up. In space. Chased off our own planet. But at least some of us will survive." Then she added in a voice so quiet, I had to strain to hear her, "I don't really care if I survive or not. I just want to go someplace where I can work without hurting so much."
Even with all the pain she'd handed me, I felt sorry for her. I wanted to go to her and comfort her. I wanted to drop to my knees and beg her forgiveness. I wanted-
It didn't matter what I wanted. Anything I wanted was irrelevant. I sank down onto a chair and buried my face in my hands. There was nothing I could do. I'd already done too much. Anything I might try to do now would only worsen the situation.
And then she surprised me. She let out a wail of anguish that brought me up sharply. I stared at her in astonishment. She sank slowly down against the wall until she was just sitting on the floor with her knees drawn up close in front of her chest, and her hands hanging limp in front of her knees. She looked lost and broken. She turned her face up to the ceiling and let out a long exhausted groan of despair.
"This mission's a waste of time," she moaned. "We're losing the war. We've already lost. You don't know this. Nobody knows it yet. Dr. Zymph only told the President last week. The Chtorran infestation will hit the critical biomass threshold in less than thirty-six months. Maybe sooner. That's the point at which we stop trying to control pockets of infestation and start trying to preserve pockets of protection. Have you seen the latest maps? The little pink pockets aren't winking out, Jim. The green ones are. We're losing. We're dying. It's all coming true. Everything we've been warning against. It's all happening, step by horrifying step. And there's nothing you or I or anyone can do to stop it anymore. Oh God, I'm so afraid. I don't want to live like this and I don't want to die. I don't want to be here anymore and I don't want to be me. And all these brave young men and women, these good, kind children, they keep looking to me for their inspiration. I'm so tired of lying and pretending…"
Abruptly, she looked across the room at me. "Say something."
I didn't move. I didn't even look up.
"Jim-say something. Tell me a joke. Anything. The one thing I always loved about you was that you never quit. You always can find something to say that's right for the moment. Say something to me now."
I stood up. "Uh-uh, I can't. If you're quitting, then so am I. You were the only thing that kept me going."
I went to my room and closed the door behind me. I threw myself sprawling across the bed and stared vacantly out the angled windows at the red-tinged sea below.
Now, let us approach the same question from the other direction.
The first stage of the Chtorran colonization had to have occurred covertly. We have already demonstrated that its presence had to have remained undetected for years, thus giving it the time it needed to feed and grow and reproduce, establishing itself, spreading and preparing the later stages of its developmentall of this without having to perform any direct or overt actions against any other part of the Terran ecology.
Therefore, the first stage of the Chtorran colonization had to have occurred in a biological arena that is easily accessible, simple, and out of sight.
Let us consider such an arena of biological activity-a simple natural process-that occurs all around us, everywhere on the planet at all times; a process that can be easily tapped into by an invading ecology because it is at the lowest possible level of the food chain. Is there such an arena?
Yes. It is called decay.
—The Red Book,
(Release 22.19A)
Chapter 34
After the Anvil
"There's a lot to be said for thinking with your dick. The average penis is a lot more likely to stand up for what it wants than the average man."