A Day for Damnation

TWENTY-TWO

IT WASN'T until late afternoon that the bugs finally cleaned off the turret bubble well enough so I could see them clearly.

The sunlight was slanting directly into the rear of the chopper and there were only pink streaks left on the clear canopy of the bubble to suggest that the ship had once been covered with the dust.

The insect-things were very tiny. Most of them were nothing more than little white specks. Few were big enough to have features. I had to strain my eyes to see them at all.

I called to Lizard, "Have you got a surveillance camera?"

"I've got a couple of electronics."

"That'll do. Let me have one, please."

She passed it up.

"Ah, good-it's a Sony. For once the army didn't buy cheap. I'll show you a trick I learned. You can dial these down for incredible closeups. We used to use them in school as portable microscopes." I braced myself and focused the camera on the insect-things on the surface of the bubble. The lighting was perfect. The afternoon sunlight was coming in sideways. The detailing on the image was perfect. The little bugs were white and powdery and-when the instant of recognition hit me, I felt my relief like a shot of Irish whiskey.

I started giggling. "What's so funny?"

I closed the shutter and dropped out of the bubble. I was laughing so hard I started coughing. I had to sit down on the floor of the chopper to catch my breath. I hadn't realized how tense and anxious I'd been. Now, it was all pouring out of me at once.

"McCarthy!" Lizard was getting annoyed. "What is it?"

"Come on up front, I'll show you." The bugs were clearly visible at the top of the windscreen. I handed her the camera. "Look-do you recognize them?"

She peered up at the windshield through the eyepiece. "No."

"You should. You saw Dr. Zymph's slides."

"Will you just tell me what they are?"

"Those are baby pipe cleaner bugs! They are absolutely harmless to human beings! These and the cotton candy are the only two Chtorran species that are not directly dangerous to us-and we've been hiding here in the chopper terrified all day! By tomorrow morning, they'll have cleaned this entire ship off. There won't be a speck of pink anywhere on this aircraft." I sat down in the copilot's seat again, feeling terrific, a big silly smile on my face. "We're going to be all right."

Lizard sat down across from me, looking relieved and relaxed for the first time today. "We're really not in any danger?"

"Not in the slightest. I feel like such a jerk."

Lizard laughed. "We should celebrate. You want a beer?"

"You got more beer?"

"That cooler by your feet."

I pulled the top open. "Jeez-you don't travel light, do you?"

She spread her hands apologetically. "You never can tell when you're going to be buried in cotton candy. Hand me one, thanks." We sat back in our seats and watched the bugs work on the windshield. We passed the camera back and forth.

Lizard said, "You're a biologist, aren't you?"

"I never got my degree."

"That wasn't the question."

"All right, yes, I'm as much a biologist as anyone is these days."

"Thanks. So, tell me-what s going on?"

"I can make a guess. The pipe cleaner bugs hatch on the same day as the puffballs explode. The puffballs are their primary food."

"But why so many? The scale of this-it's enormous."

"Uh huh," I agreed. "It's a good breeding strategy for bugs. Have zillions of offspring. That guarantees that enough will survive to breed the next generation." Another thought occurred to me then. "Of course ... that's a Terran explanation. The Chtorran explanation could be something else entirely."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Just a guess. Remember how Dr. Zymph said that what we were seeing was really the advance guard-that some extraterrestrial agency was obviously trying to Chtorra-form this planet?"

"Yeah, so?"

"Well, I've been thinking. Suppose we humans were going to Terra-form Mars or some other nearby world. Would we take our entire ecology? Probably not. No, we'd only take those creatures suited for the kind of climate and terrain we'd be moving into. In fact, we wouldn't even take the full spectrum of creatures, we'd only fill the ecological niches that we need to support our own survival. "

"What are you getting at?"

"Okay-we'd take a couple species of grass and grain, earthworms, rabbits, foxes to keep the rabbits in check, cows, ducks, chickens, and so on. That is, we'd take only those species immediately useful to us. We wouldn't bother with mosquitoes, termites, rhinoceroses, or three-toed sloths. I'll bet the Chtorrans have done the same thing. That's why the puffballs and the pipe cleaner bugs have experienced population explosions. There aren't the usual wide range of predators present to feed on them. At least not yet. Maybe they'll be here later."

"Mm," said Lizard. She took a drink from the can of beer, then leaned forward and tapped the window. "What's this?" she asked. She was pointing at a larger, darker speck.

I looked. The speck was round and black and very busy. "That's the creature that feeds on the baby pipe cleaner bugs," I said.

"Well that didn't take long," she said. "There's your first predator." She peered through the camera. "It looks like a spider-only it's got too many legs."

"If it's Chtorran, it's a mouth on wheels. Here's another. And another. It's nearly dusk-the night feeders are coming out. I'll bet we'll be seeing a lot more of them."

"And this?" pointed Lizard. "What are these?" She passed me the camera.

I looked where she pointed. The creatures looked like red-striped silverfish. They made me think of millipedes-these were the micro-size. Or maybe the larvae.... I said, "Obviously, these are the bugs that feed on the bugs that feed on the pipe cleaner bugs." I shifted my attention to a thing that looked like a fingernail-sized amoeba. Incredible. It was enveloping one of the silverfish. "You know what we've got here? Box seats! We're seeing a whole slice of Chtorran ecology."

"I'm not so sure these are box seats," said Lizard. "We're seeing it from the bottom."

"Best place to see it from. None of the details are lost." I moved higher up the window. "Look-see that? Remember that one? That's a nightwalker."

"He looks like a little vampire."

"That's how he got his name. He lurks in corners. This one must be a baby."

"What's he eating?"

"I can't tell-but it's pink."

"Oh, here's another one-oh, my God!"

I looked where she was pointing. The creature looked like a tiny little human being. Its eyes were froglike, but its body was pink and as moist-looking as a baby and its proportions were almost completely human, only scaled down to the size of a baby's finger. It was feeding on the candy powder and the pipe cleaner bugs and whatever else got in its way. It had a tiny red tongue.

"This is incredible. Where are the memory clips for this camera? We're probably seeing a hundred new life-forms today."

"In that dark blue box." Lizard jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "And check the battery packs. You may have to plug it in up here." I levered myself out of my seat. "Cokes, beers, medi-kits, shelterfoam, oxygen tanks, cameras-how come this chopper is so well packed?"

"All military choppers are now. It's standard issue. The robots check your supplies automatically and replace what's been used. It's all automatic. Obviously, it's for opportunities like this."

"Um," I said. "Hey! There's a Pentax-Pro in here! With eighty gigs of Zilog layered memory!" I held it up to show her. The batteries were fresh. "It's brand-new. You know, I used to dream about equipment like this."

"Help yourself. There's more where that came from."

"Huh?"

"The army wants you to have that equipment, McCarthy. Remember? There's a war on."

I grabbed the lantern and came back forward. "Here, hang this up somewhere so the light slants sideways. I'll get better contrast." I started shooting micro-closeups. The details visible just on the camera's preview screen were startling. "Are there any more of those little naked men?"

"Here's a couple-oops, you don't want to see what they're doing!"

"Yes, I do! No, I don't." I took their picture anyway.

"Voyeur," said Lizard.

"They're just licking the powder off each other," I said. "Besides, they might be female." I kept taking pictures. There was a thing that looked like a tiny pink cauliflower-or a walking brain. It was a gnarly little lump with red veins all over its surface. It looked dreadful. I noticed even the other creatures thought so-they kept out of its way too.

"This is incredible!" I said. I was probably repeating myself. I didn't care. I was too excited. "We're seeing things no other human being has ever seen! This is extraordinary! This must be the day everything hatches at once and feeds on everything else. This is wonderful. I don't think we've seen half of these life-forms before!"

Lizard said, "If that's true, then the joke's on you."

"Huh?"

"You just finished postulating that the Chtorrans would probably bring only their essential support species. Look at this zoo on the window! Do you still believe that?"

I lowered the camera for a second and looked. The window was totally covered with swarming Chtorran bugs and beasties. Long ones. Thin ones. Short fat juicy ones. Pink and black and purpleand red, all shades of red. They glistened in the reflected light of the chopper. Beyond was only darkness. It was already night outside. When had that happened? I'd been so entranced, I hadn't even noticed when the sun set. This closer spectacle was too overwhelming. The bugs were glittering little bodies now. The window fairly sparkled.

"Yeah," I said. "I do. This is still only a very narrow slice of an ecology. A planet might host a billion different species. We're seeing only a few hundred here. The Chtorrans probably haven't brought more than a few thousand altogether. Just what they need." I started to lift the camera to my eye again, then looked at it, stopped, lowered the camera and looked at Lizard again. Grinning.

"What?" she said.

"I take it all back," I said. "Well, part of it anyway. The Chtorrans haven't traveled any lighter than we did. We didn't pack just the bare essentials for this mission. We took everything we might conceivably need." I hefted the camera. "And so far, we've needed everything we've brought. They did the same."

Lizard laughed with me. She opened the last two beers and passed me one. She lifted hers high and toasted me. "Well, here's to the bugs. Here's to you."

I returned the toast. "It's a great show." We watched in silence for a while.

I tried to imagine what the ground outside must look like. If the moon was bright enough, it would be covered by a shimmering carpet of night creatures and insects. I wondered if any Earth lifeforms were part of that feast out there, and if they were diners or dinners.

Probably dinners. This was a feeding frenzy. These creatures were all so busy eating that they didn't even notice when something else came along and started eating them. I watched as new creatures kept landing on the windshield and joining the orgy. Where were they all coming from?

Lizard decided to call the little naked men "finger-babies." They reminded her of a set of tiny dolls she had owned a long time ago. The creatures had pale, nearly transparent skin, and they crawled along the window with slow deliberate motions. They had big bug eyes. It made them look expressionless-or perpetually frightened. It depended on your mood. They would open their tiny wide mouths and touch their tiny red tongues to the pink powder or the baby pipe cleaner bugs. Then they'd lift their heads while they swallowed and look slowly from side to side, before returning to their feast.

For a while, there were a lot of them. Many of them were licking the powder off each other. The window was covered with naked, squirming pink bodies. "It looks like you got your Blue Mass after all."

"There's something disturbing about the comparison," she responded. "Is that what human beings look like from above?"

As the night grew darker, more of the nightwalkers began to arrive. The little vampire creatures had pale faces and large mandibles. They grabbed the finger-babies with their upper pair of arms and pulled them into a disturbingly erotic embrace. The finger-babies didn't fight-not even when the vampires opened their mandibles and started eating. The vampires ate them like little plump sausages. They bit and chewed, bit and chewed, and the finger-babies died. They waved their little pink arms and kicked their little pink legs, but the nightwalkers kept eating. The finger-babies had bright red blood.

For a while, the window was covered with carnage. "I think I hate them," Lizard said.

"Careful," I said.

"Huh?"

"You're anthropomorphizing. You're making judgments about these creatures. Your species prejudice is showing. What if the finger-babies are really embryonic worms?"

She looked at me, startled. "You don't really think so?"

"No, I don't-but I just wanted to caution you not to make assumptions. I already made one mis-assumption about the bunnydogs. I don't want to make any more. These things are probably some kind of newt-like organism with a coincidental resemblance. In their adult form, they could be vicious serpents. Or maybe not. Don't make hasty judgments."

Lizard grunted. That was her only answer. We both fell silent again.

Something snake-like with a red belly slithered across my side of the window. It had a thousand flashing legs, and it plowed through the other life-forms like a vacuum cleaner. Oh no. "Lizard," I said.

"Yes?"

"You'd better call for help."

"Huh?" She looked at me. "I thought you said we were safe."

"I may have to revise that estimate. You were wondering what comes next?" I pointed. "See that? That's a Chtorran millipede. If that's what comes next, we'd better get out of here. I don't think the shelterfoam will stop them."