We'd missed it. We'd known this all along, but we hadn't let ourselves experience the reality of it. We'd been seeing them as individual creatures-things that formed families and eventually tribes and maybe nations. But we'd overlooked the obvious truth of it. They had no individual identities. They were a hive/nest/ colony thing.
"Stop thinking of worms as the enemy," I said. "The worm doesn't exist. Think of the mandala as the creature that we're up against-and see where that train of thought leads."
The words formed themselves on the screen in front of me. They were complete. I didn't know what else to add. At least, not right now. But I was certain that if I let the idea percolate awhile, a lot more would occur to me. I had the wonderful feeling that I had opened a very large door today.
Contrary to popular belief, the most ubiquitous organism in the Chtorran ecology is not the stingfly. It is the neural symbiont.
The symbiont is able to infect and survive in the bodies of a wide variety of Chtorran life forms. Neural symbionts have been found in gastropedes; bunnydogs, ghouls (gorps), libbits, snufflers, and nest boas. Additionally, a related form of symbiont has been found growing in shambler nests, red kudzu, and some varieties of wormberries.
Quite simply, the creature is so well adapted, it will grow wherever it can find appropriate nutrients.
The creature is apparently capable of functioning as both a plant and an animal, depending on the circumstances of its environment. It obviously prefers the flesh of the gastropede, because it grows thickest inside gastropede bodies, but it is clearly not limited to a narrow spectrum of host environments.
—The Red Book,
(Release 22.19A)
Chapter 45
Intimacy
"Intelligent life is a way for the universe to know itself. In other words, the universe is just as vain as the rest of us."
-SOLOMON SHORT
I have never liked airplanes. I have never liked looking down out of a window. Seeing that the only thing holding me up is the goodwill of the universe is not my idea of a good time. I've had loo much experience with the so-called "goodwill" of the universe.
The Hieronymus Bosch, on the other hand, wasn't an airplane. It was a cruise ship, drifting through a silent ocean of air. We vailed through shoals of purple-banded clouds. Soft and noiseless, we slid through the blazing tropical day and the brilliant equatorial night with equal grace. We were an Enterprise fish of the sky, bright, implacable, impassive. Our multiple spotlights probed, oxplored, revealed-the jungle beneath us was black.
I decided that I liked the gigantic airship. It was a great mothering whale in the sky, peaceful and serene. I actually felt relaxed here, out of reach of everything that had been pursuing me Ior so long. I felt comfortable again
It was an illusory feeling, at best. There was no escaping the horror that we were heading into, but for this short while, I didn't have to deal with it. I floated above my nightmares in a peaceful, dreamlike reverie. If only we could have gone on like this forever, circling the world around and around again, never landing anywhere, like some fabulous legend in the sky…
Once, while we were still over the flat blue ocean, Captain Harbaugh had pointed out a school of dolphins racing along beneath us, flipping themselves up and out of the water, in and out of our tremendous shadow. For a moment, I had felt both innocence and joy-there was still goodness in the world. There were still creatures who could play in the spray of the sea. And then, the feeling faded into one of sorrow. How long did these creatures have left to live? Would they run into a patch of red sea sludge and sicken and die? Or would these fragile and beautiful souls be swallowed up by one of the five Enterprise fish known to be scouring the south Atlantic? Or would they simply beach themselves in confusion as so many thousands of others had already done? I wanted somehow to reach down and warn them. Or save them. Or somehow protect them. I felt futile and helpless and angry.
Now, as we moved deeper into the heart of the great Amazon basin, the feeling intensified. Captain Harbaugh was following the course of the Amazon, generally keeping the wide waters of the river beneath us or within sight. Our shadow had become a long looming menace, gliding steadily westward, an enormous blot that rolled across the feathery green surface of the jungle canopy. Sometimes the abrupt silent darkness would startle a colorful bird into flight; screeching and chattering its dismay. Several times we saw Indians in their canoes stop and stare upward. Once we saw children run screaming to their parents. Who could blame them? A giant pink Chtorran in the sky? Wouldn't you run?
The balcony was an unexpected luxury, a source of continual wonder. Over the ocean, we could stand at the railing and look straight down at the luminous foam dancing across the surface of the deep dark sea. The dirigible's shadow left no wake. We moved across the water and left it undisturbed. Later, over the jungle, we could see the shine of moonlight reflecting eerily off the lush and verdant foliage below. A million waxy leaves, their individual surfaces just shiny enough to gleam, not quite bright enough to sparkle, added their glimmers together, all of them voting a collective dazzle, flickering like grounded stars. They looked like moonbeams on a broken sea.
And then, sometimes, the jungle would break abruptly apart, revealing a sudden startling reflection of brightness like a piece of dark mirror peeking upward through the tangle to catch and bounce a flash of errant light-the moonlit clouds beyond us or the glare of our lights. It was only the river, or a tributary, winking hello, reminding us again of its brooding presence.
I was standing out there, staring into darkness, when Lizard came up silently behind me. She stood next to me without speaking, and together the two of us just breathed in the flavors of the wind. Below, the jungle must have been pungent. Up here, wlng with the clouds, it was a scent of greenery and blossoms. There were darker, unfamiliar odors too; some of them were the steady processes of growth and decay, out of which a jungle feeds itself-earthy textures, not unpleasant; but some of them were crimson too, and once I caught the faint waft of a gorp, but it was very far away, and the odor disappeared quickly behind us.
Lizard didn't speak. She laid her hand on mine, and after a while, she put her arm around my shoulders and let me lean on her, Iike a little boy leaning tiredly against his mommy. It was her turn to be strong.
"I read what you wrote," she said. After a while, she asked, "What does it mean?"
I chuckled softly. "That's the same question Siegel and Lopez asked me. I don't know yet. I just know it's true. It feels true." We didn't talk for a while. We just let ourselves be. We listened and breathed and tasted the smells in the air. I turned my head so I could smell the duskiness of her perfume. "You smell nice," I said.
"I need a shower," she said. "I feel hot and sweaty. Want to scrub my back?"
I put on a quizzical expression. "I dunno if I should. I mean, when I was just a mere captain, you could order me to perform personal maintenance duties; but now I'm a civilian, I think those kinds of chores should be voluntary-"
"Never mind," she said. "I'll ring for Shaun."
"You play dirty, lady."
"I am dirty. Now are you going to scrub my back or not?"
We continued our discussion in the shower. While I washed her, we talked of minor matters, procedural things. Did you take the cat to the vet? What do you want for dinner on Sunday? Did you remember to call your sister? The baby did what? That kind of thing. The sex play, for once, was forgotten, unnecessary. If anything, it would have been an interruption.
There is an intimacy that transcends the mechanics of intimacy, and Lizard and I had finally achieved that state. We had become so familiar with each other, so knowing of each other's bodies, that we didn't have to talk of bodies every time we took off our clothes; we didn't have to talk about sex all the time.