A Day for Damnation

THIRTY-FIVE

I PROBABLY should have discussed it with my commanding officer.

Except I hadn't seen her in three weeks.

But she'd assigned me a terminal in the Science Section, so I knew she hadn't forgotten me. I guessed she wanted me to catch up on my paperwork.

There was a note from Danny Anderson thanking me for keeping him posted on Duke. I wondered if I should tell him about his father's request and decided not to. This was something I was going to have to handle myself.

And there was a letter from Dinnie, that nurse in Denver, asking me how I was doing and if I'd heard from Ted recently. No, I hadn't.

General Poole had sent me a congratulatory note. I'd been awarded a Silver Star. I wondered if I was supposed to send him a thank-you note. I decided to play it safe and did.

Dr. Fletcher had forwarded me a copy of her section's schedule. She'd highlighted the session on "Gastropede Communication." That was only an hour from now. Obviously, she meant that as an invitation.

And-new orders from my colonel! A search and devour mission. Two lobsters! Nineteen hundred hours. Jack London Square. I logged my confirmation with a grin. She hadn't forgotten!

And one last item. The paymaster had authorized the bounty check for the worm I'd flash-frozen from the chopper. One million caseys. I stared at the display screen for a long moment. I really was going to have to do something about all those credits. Nobody had ever told me I was going to get rich in the United States Army. Maybe Alan Wise should join the Special Forces.

Nah.

The only position he was qualified to fill was bait. But the money worried me.

It was too much.

According to the newspapers, the economy was in dreadful shape. Everybody said so-and they had the numbers to prove it. All I knew was that the President had committed to getting as much dead cash back into circulation as possible-and that meant lots of bounty and reclamation programs-but there were a lot of civilians screaming about that too. They said this was one more example of big government looting the private sector.

Translation: they weren't getting their share.

But, hell-the worm bounty wasn't limited to members of the military. Anyone who wanted a million caseys could go out and kill as many worms as he could find. The government would cheerfully pay up. The Montana office even paid in cash-all you had to do was deliver the mandibles.

No, it was something that Dr. Fromkin had said a year ago. He'd said that with a steadily shrinking labor force, the casey was doomed to inflate. I wondered if these big bounties were proof of it. I hadn't paid too much attention at the time because I hadn't had enough caseys to worry about. Now, however... I probably ought to do something with this cash while it was still worth something-but I wanted to do something with the money that made sense.

Something that would help the human race win the war. Except-I already knew, better than most people, that the human beings could not possibly win this war. We'd already lost; most of us just didn't know it yet.

No, the best that humanity could hope for was not victory, but survival.

Hm....

I punched for DIRECTORY. Yes, there was a local office of Lunar Five Enterprises in Berkeley. A white-haired woman answered the phone. Yes, she said, the Lunar Colony was officially reopenedand yes, construction on the two L-5 stations had resumed. As a matter of fact, the project was operating under the authority of the North American Unification Treaty, and as such was able to draw funding from public corporations in Canada, the United States, the nation of Quebec, both Mexicos, and the Isthmus Protectorate.

Did I care to invest? she inquired. She flashed me a list of the companies currently involved.

I could have climbed through the screen and kissed her.

I studied the list for half an hour-did some exploring through the network for background information-and eventually decided to buy a nice large piece of a Boeing Olympus-class high-orbit shuttle. The more spaceships we had, the better. There was stock available in the Apollo, the Hercules, and the Vulcan. No, those were already funded to the point of construction. I wanted this investment to make a difference. It cost just a little under three million to start a new shuttle. I decided to spread my cash three ways and start construction on the Pegasus, the Athena, and the Ganymede. I swept half of the rest of the money into the Kilimanjaro catapult and the other half into the Beanstalk Project. The latter looked like a long shot to me, but the payoff was very attractive. If the orbital elevator worked, the cost of lifting one kilo of mass into orbit would drop from five thousand caseys to five. All you'd pay for was the electricity, and you'd get most of that back on the way down.

The Paymaster's office could handle the necessary paperwork. The advantage to using the U. S. Army brokerage is that the commission is held to a scale rate, and your taxes are paid automatically. These particular investments, though, fell under the Resource Incentive Program and no taxes could be assessed on reinvested funds-so almost all that cash got put to work and Uncle Sam's share was limited to the handling charge. I set up a recycling trust with instructions that any and all future bounty payments were to be automatically invested in the same areas, authorized and confirmed, signed off and put the whole thing out of my mind. Alan Wise be damned.

I finished by dropping a quick note into my mother's mailbox letting her know that I had named her as beneficiary.

I logged off-realized I was already late to Dr. Fletcher's session-and headed down to the lab section. I slipped quietly into the back of the theater; all the chairs were filled so I found myself an inconspicuous place on the side to stand. There were a lot more uniforms in the audience than last time. This must be important. There was a lot of brass present.

Down below, Tiny was already hard at work. The worm's claws moved thoughtfully over the controls of the problem. This particular puzzle had a lot of interlocking rods and sliding blocks. It was almost too complex to visualize.

According to the outline Fletcher had sent me, these problems were designed by a computer program and could be manufactured to almost any degree of difficulty. So far, they had not come up with a problem that Tiny could not solve. The longest the worm had ever taken had been six hours.

Right now, an overhead clock showed the elapsed time was seventeen minutes. According to the agenda, this was supposed to be an "easy" problem.

The chime sounded, the cage popped open-and Tiny grabbed the rabbit. A white rabbit. Seventeen minutes, thirty-seven seconds. The rabbit did not have time to squeal.

Dr. Fletcher touched her controls and the panel with the puzzle slid closed. She said, "I know that many of you have seen our earlier demonstrations, you know what Tiny is capable of. If we were to give it this puzzle again, Tiny would remember exactly the sequence of moves to open it, and would probably take no more than thirty seconds. Now-" She typed something into her keyboard, waited, frowned, typed again and looked up.

"Our second specimen," she continued, "was captured near Superstition Mountain in Southern Arizona last month. It was close to death from dehydration and hunger. That area is not particularly kind to the gastropedes. We've found a number of their carcasses in the area. We think they wander down from the northern part of the state; there have been sightings in the high country. Had this one not been so weak, capture would have been out of the question, as the creature already massed nine hundred kilos. As it was, two men were killed and three others injured-and the creature was almost destroyed. We call this second specimen `Lucky'." She added, "We think that Lucky may be a female-but we aren't certain." She touched a control and another panel in the chamber below slid open. "I am now going to introduce Lucky to the chamber."

There were audible gasps when Lucky appeared. According to the briefing book, this was the biggest worm in captivity. The beast slid into the chamber like a bus filling a row of parking places.

The two worms goggled their eyes at each other, chirruped and trilled. They circled each other like boxers

"We believe this is a ritual behavior," said Fletcher. "Perhaps a kind of meeting dance."

The two worms suddenly leapt at each other and writhed together like snakes, turning and tumbling across the floor of the chamber. First one, then the other, was on top. It looked almost like a combat to the death.

"The first time we put them together," Fletcher noted, "we thought they were trying to kill each other."

Suddenly, the two worms froze in position. They were wrapped rigidly around each other. They held like lovers at climax; their bodies were as tense as steel.

"We call this state communion. It is as close to a sexual behavior as we have yet seen in the gastropedes." She looked like she wanted to add something else, but was holding back. "The length of communion tends to vary. So far, our experience has been that the more often two worms are exposed to each other, the shorter any individual episode of communion will be. We have four worms we're working with here. We've found that the first exposure is usually the longest. We have some theories about this, but none that we're willing to discuss at this point, let alone endorse." She glanced down into the chamber. "Ah, I see that they're complete-"

Lucky and Tiny were disentangling. They curled and chirruped, rolled sideways, trilled and broke apart.

Now Fletcher opened the passage to Tiny's cell and the smaller worm slid obediently into it. She remarked, "As I've said before, we have not tamed the worms. The creatures appear to cooperate, yes; but we rather think that they're learning the routine of our operations more than anything else. Even a kitten can learn to identify a refrigerator as the source of milk."

Fletcher checked that the passage was clear, then closed the panel behind Tiny. Lucky was now alone in the chamber. It twitched its hands impatiently-the same gesture that Tiny had used the first time I'd been here. The big worm slid up to the panel that concealed the rabbit puzzle and waited.

"You want to notice what Lucky's doing now," said Fletcher. "Every time we change the puzzle, we also put it behind a different panel. Lucky already knows exactly where this one is going to appear."

Lucky looked up at the glass then and issued a rapid, highpitched trill. There were chuckles in the auditorium. "That's as clear a hurry-up as I've ever heard," someone remarked. Lucky repeated its cry, then returned its attention eagerly to the panel.

"What you're seeing now," said Fletcher, "is a very clear indication that the worm has learned not only to anticipate, but to actually enjoy these tests."

She opened the panel for Lucky then. The puzzle had been reset, this time with a spotted black-and-white rabbit. The rabbit was trembling in the cage.

Lucky burbled in delight and moved immediately to the panel. It unfolded its arms from its upper back, reached forward over its eyes, and began to work the knobs and switches of the puzzle with a swift deliberation. There was no uncertainty in the animal's movements.

Almost immediately, the puzzle chimed and the glass case popped open. There were gasps in the auditorium. Fletcher looked satisfied. So did Lucky. The worm grabbed the rabbit and popped it into its mouth. Again, the wet slobbery crunching.

Fletcher opened the passage to Lucky's cell, waited to see that Lucky was returning to its cage, closed the panel, and then closed the curtains of the theater. She paused for just the briefest moment, as if studying her notes, then looked out over her audience. The scientists looked excited. The soldiers looked grim. I could understand both reactions.

"There you have it," Fletcher said. "A very clear demonstration that the worms do communicate." She added, "I want to stress the importance of what you've seen here. Without this demonstration, a very good case could be made that a large part of the behavior of these creatures is instinctive and ritualized. We now have proof that they're capable of a lot more. How much more, we're still investigating.

"We do know that the communication between the two specimens-the transmission of information about the puzzle-occurs in the communion state. When the worms have visual and auditory access to each other, but are prevented by physical barriers from achieving communion, the transmission of information does not occur. It only occurs in the presence of communion.

"But. . ." and she paused to consider her next remarks carefully, "we still don't know what the mechanism of transmission is. We have extensively analyzed the chirps and trills of the creaturesand there is not enough patterning or modulation in the cries to indicate even a rudimentary language. At most, the chirruping calls are emotional indicators. We have identified a few calls to which we have assigned values corresponding to curiosity, interest, delight, impatience, anger, rage, anguish and despair; but we have not found any calls, patterns of calls, phonemes or patterns of phonemes, that are ever repeated with any correspondence to events in the physical universe.

"We have tested for chemical communication. The gastropedes have a very sophisticated set of pheromones which vary with their moods-but again, there is no pattern, and the bandwidth of the channel is too narrow to carry the necessary transmission. You don't send stereovision images by Morse code.

"We have measured the radio emissions of the worms, and the gastropedes are low-level transmitters. While the bandwidth of this particular channel is wide enough, all that we have been able to detect so far is static and noise. It may be that worms in the wild are capable of radio transmission, but these specimens are unconscious to it. We've tried broadcasting signals to them, but the only effect we've been able to produce is a nervous rigidity. It looks like-but we're not yet willing to say it is-a kind of insane terror."

She looked up at someone in the back of the room. "No-hold your questions for a minute. This may answer some of them. We wondered ourselves why the worms would have this potential if they don't use it. Our best guess is that it's a byproduct of the way the creature's nervous system is structured, and that it's too recent an evolutionary event for the species to have turned it into either an advantage or disadvantage. Just because the Chtorrans have a half-billion-year evolutionary head start on us doesn't mean that their evolution has stopped. In fact, we are very likely seeing their ecology in a state of severe chaos as it tries to adapt to this world. "But I've strayed from the subject-the mechanism for communication. We've noticed that the worms begin every communion by touching their antennae at some point. We're not sure what this means either, but we've monitored the electrical pulses at the creatures' antennae and found some patterning-but again, it's not a communication pattern. It's too rhythmic and there's not enough variation. It looks a lot like an alpha wave.

"But we do know that communication is occurring during communion. We've attached sensors to both animals and discovered that all of their body cycles synchronize during the act. When that moment of synchronicity occurs, the creatures demonstrate a rigid and frozen posture. Our best present hypothesis is that the mechanism of gastropede communication is multi-channel. The trilling cries might indicate the context of the information to be transmitted. The radio noise might contain some modulation we've missed. The physical gestures may mean something, as might the creatures' pheromones. We really don't know."

A hand from one of the scientists went up. "If you could identify the channel of communication, would it be possible to jam it in some way?"

Fletcher shrugged. "Maybe. It depends on the channel. We've identified the problem here. We're still a long way from the answer. "

"Can you give us a time frame?" asked one of the general's aides.

"No, I can't," Dr. Fletcher replied.

The general, with a thick Southern accent, spoke up then. "We wuh told, Doctuh Fletchuh, that you had infuhmation to present heah today that could be of vital military importance. Was that it? The wuhms talk to each othuh?"

"Yes, General, that was the point of the demonstration." She met his gaze with equanimity. "Was there something else?"

"Ah'm sorry, ma'am, Ah guess Ah would have preferred somethin' of real military importance. Like a weapon."

That was a mistake. Fletcher's eyes flashed angrily. "General," she said, looking directly at him, "I know you're here for answers. I wish I'had them to give to you. But right now, the very best this section can do is give you intelligence about the enemy; there's still too much we don't know about the worms; we still have a long way to go before we can start suggesting ecological countermeasures."

She raised her voice to include the rest of the room. "Listen, the purpose of these demonstrations is to give all of you a better idea of what you're up against." And then she focused on the general again. "I don't claim to be knowledgeable in military procedures. I'm a scientist. But I asked you to be here because I think this could be important for you to know that our enemy is capable of a very sophisticated level of information transmission. It may be possible for the worms to spread the word about our procedures almost as fast as we disseminate our information about theirs."

The general smiled broadly, and a little too easily. He stood up and bowed a gentleman's bow. "Ma'am," he said with a shade too much graciousness, "Ah was raised to nevah ahgue with a lady. So ah'll just accept all of that at face value. Ah'm sure that the wuhk you're all doin' heah is very important to the war effort. Ah guess ah just wanted to see somethin' a little more immediate, a little more he'pful to mah own needs. So if there's nothin' else you want to show us, we do thank you for yoah time, but we do need to be gettin' back to ouah desks-" The man was smarmy. He'd just blown her whole demonstration right out of the water. He nodded politely and started for the exit. His aides followed quickly-as did most of the other men and women in uniforms. Several of those in lab coats assumed the session was over then and also started up the aisles.

Dr. Fletcher looked annoyed and frustrated. "If there are no further questions-" she began, but nobody was listening any more. Most of the audience was already filing out the door.

She switched off her console, took a long breath, and said, "Shit!"