A Day for Damnation

THIRTY-SIX

DUKE HAD once given me a very interesting compliment.

It was after a burn, after the debriefing, after the usual bull and beer session; he and I had retired to the office to "hoist a jar" privately.

Duke didn't usually say much after a burn; he just sat and sipped. This time, however, he looked like he had something on his mind, so I nursed my drink and waited.

He had turned his chair to face the window and put his feet up on the little filing cabinet. He was holding his glass against his forehead, as if he had a headache and was enjoying the coolness of the ice.

"You know," he said, "you really impressed me this afternoon."

"Uh-thanks. What'd I do?"

"Amy Burrell."

"Oh," I said. "Yeah." I'd been wondering if he was going to say anything about that.

"You did right," Duke said. He lowered the glass from his forehead and glanced over at me.

I shrugged. "If you say so."

"I do say so," he said. "You didn't have a choice. You've known it for months that she's your weak link. I've seen it in your planning. And you knew it this afternoon. You did what you had to do."

"But I still feel bad about decking her."

"If you hadn't, it would be worse next time. Or it would be someone else. Think you can knock down Jose Moreno?"

"No way."

"Well, you'll probably never have to," Duke said. "Not now. Not after today."

"I hope so," I said. I shook my head. "But I keep seeing the look on her face-"

"You mean the tears? That's just the racket she runs on men. That crap doesn't work on officers."

"No, I mean when I jerked her back to her feet and shoved her at the dome. If she'd been carrying a weapon instead of a camera, I'd be dead now."

"That's precisely why she's carrying a camera instead of a gun. Because she can't be trusted with one." He sipped at his drink thoughtfully, then added, "Let me tell you something about integrity, Jim. It's like a balloon. It doesn't matter how good the rubber is; the air still goes out the hole."

"Uh ... sure," I said. I still wasn't sure where he was going with this.

"Integrity means airtight. No leaks. No holes in the balloon. A hundred percent."

"So, what you're saying is-?"

"What you did was appropriate. You closed up a hole. It was a good lesson for all of them. You showed them that there's no alternative to doing the job. Your team will be a lot tighter the next time out. You'll see the difference."

"Thanks," I said, and I meant it. "But the truth is, I did it without thinking. I just got pissed off at her continual whining."

Duke raised his glass in my direction. "Absolutely. And you administered the appropriate response. I congratulate you. I salute you." And he drank to my health.

I remembered that now. I wondered what kind of a salute Duke would give me if I punched out a general.

Well ...

At least, I could think about it.

I strode down to the front of the room and said, "Hi."

Fletcher looked up at me with a weary smile. "Hi, yourself." I plunged right in. "I have a question for you."

"The answer is probably `I don't know.' What's the question?"

"Well, your demonstration here was very impressive-despite General Whatsisname's reaction-"

"General Poole."

"That was General Poole? I didn't know they were so hard up for generals."

Fletcher allowed herself a hint of a smile. "What's your question, James?"

"Well, I was remembering something you said before, about the gastropedes' fur. You said it wasn't fur."

"Right. It's nerve endings."

"Well-that's my question. When two worms go into communion, isn't it possible that they're experiencing direct nerve-to-nerve contact?"

She nodded. "They very definitely are."

"Well-couldn't that be your mechanism? Maybe they're passing nerve impulses directly from one to the other."

She raised an eyebrow at me. "You think so?"

"You don't think much of the idea, do you?"

"As a matter of fact," Fletcher admitted, "I like the idea very much. It would explain a lot of things."

"But-?" I prompted.

"But-" she agreed, "it was one of the first things we tested for when we started putting Lucky and Tiny together. And it was one of the first hypotheses we had to discard. We kept finding arguments against it. Too many arguments."

"Really?"

"Really." She glanced at her watch. "All right, I'll have to give you the brief version. Here's what we know. Most of the Chtorran nerve-strands are sensory receptors of one type or another. We've identified at least seventeen distinct types of nerve-strands-different functions, different shapes of cross section, different colors, and so on. Each of those types are further divisible into categories of shade, length, and specialization of function. So far, we've identified over five hundred different sub-categories of nerve-strand. We presume that there is considerable overlap of function among the strand types, but we don't have the people available to do the necessary research.

"We do know that most of the strands are sensory receptors of one type or another-but maybe one strand in a thousand is a `tickler nerve.' It's a little transmitter; it can trigger any nerve it touches. That accounts for the tingly feeling of the fur. So, yes-it does look like a very good mechanism for communication. Pat yourself on the back for recognizing the possibility. Now here's the bad news. It can't possibly work. Do you want a minute to figure it out yourself?"

I thought about it. "It's a connection problem?"

"Not quite. The worms have no problem connecting. When they're in communion, they're connecting at least twenty percent of their surface area. But you're on the right track. It's a networking problem."

"Huh?"

"When you plug one computer into another, how many lines are you connecting?"

"Just one-oh, I see what you mean. There are one thousand and twenty-four individual channels in a standard lux-cable."

"Right. Now suppose you were working with wires instead of light and you had to connect each wire by hand-and suppose also that you didn't know which one went where. What are the chances of you plugging each of those lines into the right socket?"

"None, and less than that," I said. "There're billions of wrong combinations, and only one right one."

"That particular problem," she said, "would take longer than the life of this universe to solve. Now, raise it to the power of itself, and you have the odds against two worms forming a direct nerve-to-nerve contact for communication. Don't take my word for it," she added. "Run a simulation on the nearest terminal."

"No, it's all right. I'll take your word for it. But couldn't the worms have some kind of internal decoding?"

"We thought of that too," Fletcher said. "We had two fellows from the Minsky Foundation looking into that very problem. They said it was possible only if the creature was almost entirely brain and very little else. So far, we haven't found the evidence of that. Have you had the opportunity to see any of the photo-isotomographs?"

"I've seen the demonstrations, but I haven't had the opportunity to poke around on my own." A photo-isotomograph was a three-dimensional map. Easy to make. You thin-slice a frozen worm, taking a picture of the cross section after each slice. You store all the pictures in a computer-the computer holds the data as a three-dimensional array that can then be explored as a visual display. You can examine any part of the worm's body, inside or out, from any angle. With a joystick you can move around through the entire body, tracing the paths of blood vessels, nerves and other structures. So far, most of what we'd seen still fell into the category of "other structures." There were organs inside the worms with no apparent function. Were they evolutionary leftovers, the equivalent of the human appendix-or were they something else, on biological standby and still waiting to be activated?

"I'll get you lab time if you want," Fletcher said. "If you can prove they have the computing power to do that kind of encoding, I'll dance naked with a big pink worm."

"You're that sure, huh?"

"I'm that sure, yes."

"Hm-" I said. "But that still raises another question-"

She glanced at her watch again. "It'd better be a short one."

I said, "If not for communication, then what are the tickler nerves for?"

Fletcher smiled. "Stimulation. Very intense stimulation. Probably very sexual. Communication is a kind of hug. The density of the strands, plus the tickler nerves, must make it a very intense experience. You saw the rigidity of their `climax,' didn't you?"

I nodded, but I asked, "Now is that one a theory or a fact?"

A flicker of annoyance crossed her face. I was immediately sorry I'd asked the question; it was the kind of thing General Poole might have said. But Dr. Fletcher let it pass. "It's an extrapolation," she corrected. "In our own ecology, we know that as life-forms become more sophisticated, the sexual experiences become more intense. So do the rituals, so do the mechanisms of communication. Humans are the best example of all. The worms may be a good halfbillion years further down the evolutionary line than anything that's evolved on Earth, but it doesn't mean they're necessarily more intelligent; it does imply several orders of magnitude of adaptation. Who knows? The worms could be what Terran earthworms might evolve into. You ought to know that sexual reproduction not only encourages evolution, it also self-selects for more sexuality in the species. "

I grinned. "Okay, I concede the point."

She looked at her watch once more, looked annoyed, but didn't leave-not yet. "Listen, James-" she said to me. "You're asking all the right questions. If you ask enough of the right questions, you'll probably retrace most of the steps we've taken in the last eighteen months. Right now, we're bang up against this communication thing-and I'm terribly afraid we're overlooking something so obvious that even a lieutenant could see it." She gave me a speculative smile. "Have you been noticing anything?"

"Well..." I began cautiously, "there is something. Um-you've seen our videos, haven't you? The ones from the chopper?"

"I have, yes."

"Did you notice anything about the bunnydogs and that little dance they did?"

"You mean, did it remind me of the herd?"

"Then you recognized it too."

She said, "It's an obvious comparison."

"I think it's more than that. You were the one who gave me the clue. Remember what you called the clustering phenomenon in the herd? You called it an `enrollment process."'

"It's a lot more than that," Fletcher said. "It's an essential way for the herd to mortar its identity. It's the glue that holds the members there."

"Yes, of course-but to someone who isn't a member of the herd, it's something else. It's an... invitation."

"All right. So?" And then it hit her. She looked up at me in surprise. "The bunnydogs?"

"Uh huh. Exactly. I'm thinking that their dance was an invitation to Colonel Tirelli and myself to come out and join them?"

A thoughtful expression appeared on her face. "Wait a minute." She unclipped her phone from her belt and punched a number. "Jerry? Fletch. I'm going to be late. Can you handle-?" She listened a moment. "Oh, good. All right. Thanks." She refolded the phone and reattached it to her belt. "All right-you've obviously been thinking about this. Give me the rest."

"Well, while I was in the hospital, I did a lot of reading. I looked up Dr. Fromkin's essays on communication." She frowned when I said the name. "Is there something wrong?" I asked. "I thought you were one of his students. You once told me that you'd done the Mode training."

"Yes, I did-and I got a lot out of it-but... I don't like what it's become. I don't like the- Never mind. Go on with what you were saying."

"Well-the point of his study seemed to be that human beings don't very often experience true communication. In fact, most of us don't even know what true communication really is. If you look it up in a dictionary, communication is defined as an exchange of agreed-upon symbols. Fromkin says that's an inaccurate description of communication. He goes on at some length to demonstrate this-"

"I'm familiar with the essays," Fletcher interrupted. "You don't need to do the whole recap."

"All right, well-Fromkin makes the point that true communication is actually the transmission of experience. If I could take a feeling out of my head and pour it directly into yours, that would be true communication. He says if we could function with that kind of communication, our perception of ourselves, the universe, everything, would be transformed. A race like that would be like gods. That's why I was thinking about the worms."

Fletcher nodded. "We went down that tunnel. So far, we haven't found any cheese. But go on."

"Well, that was only my first thought. The thing that really blew me away was what Fromkin said about language. He said that language is ineffective for transmitting experience. A language is really just a set of concepts-so while it's terrific for describing the physical universe, it's totally inappropriate for describing the personal universe; that is, the universe of individual experience. I mean, try to describe love, right? The best that language can do is evoke experience. That human beings do so well is testament to our commitment to communication more than our ability.

"WlIat he said absolutely has to happen before a transmission of experience can occur is a relationship of communication. Communion. Right? Well-that's what the herd clustering is, isn't it? A relationship? It's a willingness to be together. And that's what the bunnydog clustering is too, I'll bet." I studied her face eagerly. "What do you think?"

She said slowly, "I think... you've done very well." She took my arm. "Come on, let's go for a walk. I'll buy you a cup of coffee. Real coffee. My office."

"Uh-? Sure." I was a little puzzled. Usually she answered a scientific question right away.

She made small talk as she brewed the coffee. "Remember those eggs you brought in to Denver, the ones that hatched into millipedes?"

"Yeah?"

"We kept them alive because they were the only red-bellied millipedes we'd ever seen-at least until recently. The ones up north all had red bellies. Do you take milk? Sorry, I don't have any sugar. Anyway, you might be interested to know that the redbellies aren't as voracious as their black-bellied cousins. They grow a lot slower too. And-if you'll accept an undocumented opinion-I suspect they're also smarter. We were going to do some maze tests, but we never had the chance, what with the hassle of moving the whole operation here. I think we brought your three bugs-I'd have to check-if you want to see how they're doing." She handed me a heavy white mug.

"Later," I said. "What about my idea about the bunnydogs?"

She sat down opposite me. "Is the coffee okay?"

I tasted it politely, then started to ask the question again-then stopped and looked back into the mug. The aroma was heavenly. I inhaled deeply. "Mmmm-this is terrific. Thank you." I decided to shut up and just enjoy the terrific smell.

There were loose strands of hair hanging down over Dr. Fletcher's forehead. She brushed them back and I realized how tired she looked. There were tiny lines around her eyes. She must have been under a lot of strain these past few weeks.

She sipped at her coffee and said, "We've been planning another mission, James-up north, the same area-specifically to try to establish contact with the bunnydogs. We think there's a chance that we're looking at the next step here-we're not sure. There's been a lot of discussion about that clustering dance and what it might mean. We've spent a lot of time looking at those videos." She paused, swirled her coffee mug, took a careful drink, and then said, "And we've covered a lot of the same ground you have.. . ."

I could feel my balloon deflating. "So-this isn't news, is it?"

She shook her head. "No, it isn't. The thing about the dance being an invitation, though-that's very interesting. We hadn't realized that." She studied my face.

I sighed and looked into my lap. I rolled my coffee mug between my two hands. "You're trying to let me down easy, aren't you?"

"Not at all. The fact is, you not only saw the resemblance-you also did the appropriate research, and you came up with a pretty damn good hypothesis. It makes more sense than even you may realize." She scratched her head bemusedly. "I think I'd better offer you a job, James."

"A job?"

"Mm hm," she nodded. "We're going to need a mission specialist. I think you might be right for the position-"