"Along with the Cleveland Philharmonic, the Bolshoi Ballet, the Stanford Marching Band, and the original cast of last year's Doo Dah Parade too, right?"
"The Doo Dah Parade couldn't make it, but the rest are waiting in the aft lounge." She kissed me again, this time only a quick peck. "Follow this catwalk all the way back. It leads to an auxiliary bay that doesn't even exist on the blueprints. Great for smuggling."
"Secrets-everybody's got secrets. Eesh!" I grabbed her abruptly and kissed her again. "I want more than just a quick peck from you, sweetheart."
When I released her, she said breathlessly, "Wow! That is not a quick pecker. If you keep that up, that's another secret that's going to get blown."
"Don't start with me, General. At least, not unless you're planning to finish with me." Shaking my head in disbelief, I zipped myself up again. "Hey-I just realized. If I'm a civilian, I don't have to salute you anymore, do I?"
She glanced at the bulge in my pants and grinned. "It's too late. You already did." And then she added, "Don't worry about it, that's the kind of salute I like." She blew me a kiss and headed forward.
I sighed to myself. "A dirty mind is a joy forever."
"I heard that-" Her voice came singing back to me. I smiled all the way aft.
Manna threads will continue to cluster into larger and larger aggregations the longer they stay in the air. The largest aggregates will eventually lose their buoyancy, and instead of floating through the air, will bounce and roll across the ground like Russian tumbleweeds until they come to a barrier or obstacle they cannot get past.
This is the mechanism for the great pinkstorms that regularly blanket parts of the western United States. Clusters as large as houses have been regularly observed. The great Alameda fluffball was actually a gigantic herd of house-sized aggregations that all dried out and came to rest at the same time.
When clusters of manna threads dry out, they shatter into dust, hanging in the air or settling across the ground in soft sticky drifts. It is the biological equivalent of polymer-aerogels, and the resultant damage to the environment, especially to Terran plants and animals caught in the cotton-candy blanket, is every bit as severe.
—The Red Book,
(Release 22.19A)
Chapter 41
Brownian Motion
"Nothing exceeds like excess."
-SOLOMON SHORT
It was a long walk.
Halfway there, I started singing to myself. And dancing. A silly old song. I felt so good, I couldn't hold it in.
"Oh, I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy. Yankee Doodle is my name. A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam, born on the Fourth of July. I've got a Yankee Doodle sweetheart. She's my Yankee pride and joy-oh, Yankee Doodle went to town, a-riding on a pony-I arr that Yankee Doodle boy-"
I tap-danced my way happily along the metal catwalk. I was delirious with giddy abandon and totally oblivious to-
Two heavyset men in yellow jumpsuits were lounging at an intersection of two walkways. They were leaning against two stanchions, arms folded, and apparently not doing anything at all. They were nearly identical, stamped from the same beefy mold. I came to an out-of-breath and very embarrassed halt almost directly in front of them. They looked at me curiously. I had the distinct feeling that it was no accident that they were chatting idly in this exact location. There was a narrowness of expression in their eyes.
"Uh-" There was no way to recover my dignity. I wasn't even sure I wanted to. I put on my best foolish grin, took a breath, and made as if to continue.
Both of the men straightened. The taller of the two took a single step sideways, blocking my way. "Sorry, sir. Passengers aren't allowed up here." He spoke with quiet courtesy. "I'll be happy to show you the way back." It was the kind of courtesy that left no room for disagreement.
The other man had the preoccupied look of someone listening to a faraway voice. Abruptly, he said, "Wait a minute. May I see your ID, please?"
I thumbed the updated card out of the transparent pocket on my shirt and passed it across. He glanced at it, glanced at me, then read off the validation number. The voice in his ear must have responded affirmatively, because he nodded and handed the card back to me.
"Thank you, sir. Sorry to have troubled you."
"No trouble at all." I slipped the card back into its pocket.
"Just keep on heading aft," he pointed. "The catwalk ends at a big staging platform. There'll be someone waiting for you there."
"Thanks," I said. "Uh-" There was no nametag on his jumpsuit. He followed my stare. When I met his eyes again, he just smiled and shook his head. "Well, thanks anyway." I headed aft, wondering. More blue fairies?
I had to laugh and shake my head. Why can't people just tell the truth? It'd make all of our lives a whole lot easier. Foreman had said something about this once. In the Training. He'd said, "The ultimate cause of every single problem in the world is a breakdown in communication. A breakdown in communication." And then he'd grinned at us impishly with a delicious sense of anticipation; it was that look of his that we'd learned always portended a truly evil punch line. He paused for effect, looking slowly around the room, until he was satisfied that we were all hanging impatiently on his every word; then at last, finally, he dropped the other shoe. "Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you. Godot called. He'll be late."
Some people never got the joke. Those who did never stopped laughing.
And then I had to laugh again. Because the joke was on me. It was always on me. The smile slid easily across my face. Yesterday at this time, I'd been threatening to throw myself out the window of this airship. And then… I had just given up and let the universe do whatever it wanted to do. What it wanted, surprisingly enough, was almost exactly the same thing I wanted.
That was the joke. It's amazing how well things can work out for you if you just stop fighting them
There was a thought.
If you just stop fighting them
I hadn't considered that idea in a while. Dr. Fletcher had thought it might be possible. Jason Delandro knew it was. I still didn't believe it. The price was too high. But I wondered-maybe the nagging voices were right. Maybe the only way the human race was going to survive was by carving itself a niche in the Chtorran ecology. I didn't like the idea, but the alternatives were extinction or a continual state of warfare. There was no fourth alternative. Well… no, there was. Abandon the planet. Move to Luna. Move to Mars. Move to the asteroid belt. Maybe someday scourge the Earth and start again? But no-if we did that, we'd always be in a state of retreat; we'd have admitted our vulnerability to the Chtorran infestation, and no matter where we went or what we built, we would always know that we could only stay there until the Chtorrans showed up and decided they wanted that world too.
There had to be a way for humanity to-to what? What did we really want?
If we could figure that out, then we could begin to draw a line from here to there. We could try to follow that line. We couldWe couldn't do anything. We were working in the dark. It wasn't that we didn't have the wisdom. We didn't have the light. We didn't know what we could do because we didn't know what was possible. That's what this mission was supposed to resolve. "Oh, I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy-
The song kept running through my head. My brain was trying to do two things at once. Three, if you counted walking. Sing. Think. Walk. Dance. The catwalk stretched for days in front of me. Behind me.
Sink. Thing. Want.
Echos.
Resonance.
Something.
Songs.
What was that other thought? Who said it? I didn't remember. But I remembered the words. "What we need is someone who can think like a worm." No, not worms. The intelligence behind them. We need something that can think like the Chtorr. An Intelligence Engine? Maybe. But how do you program it? What's the model? Before you can think like a Chtorr, you have to be a Chtorr. Bingo.