A Day for Damnation

SEVEN

I FOUND Dr. Fletcher in her office. She looked up as I came in. "Oh, McCarthy-how are you? Thanks for staying awake this morning." She studied me curiously. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." I waved her off. "Just an upset stomach."

"Mm hm," she said. "A lot of people have that problem after they see a worm eat."

I let it pass. "I have a question for you."

"Me answer is, `I don't know.' What's the question?" She glanced at her watch.

"We gassed a nest of worms yesterday afternoon. Four of them. They were all tied together in a knot."

She nodded. "Your videos came in last night."

"Then you saw? Each time we pulled one off, they reacted as if we were breaking a connection."

She frowned, she pressed her lips together. Finally, she pushed back from her terminal and swiveled to face me. She leaned forward intently. "Exactly what did it look like to you?"

"It looked like-they were writhing in pain. They cried. It was an ... eerie sound. And two of them actually opened their eyes and looked at us. It was very disturbing," I admitted.

"I'll bet. What do you think was happening?"

"That's what I wanted to ask you."

"I want your observations first," she said.

"Well..." I said. "It looked like-I mean, the way they twisted and turned-it made me think of earthworms. Cut in half. Only this was a giant one, cut into four screaming pieces."

"Mm," said Fletcher, noncommittally. "Interesting."

"What do you think it was?"

She shook her head. "I don't. The best thought anyone around here has had is that it was something sexual. Some kind of mating behavior perhaps. And that's why they reacted so strongly. How would you react if somebody interrupted you?"

I blinked. "The worms have four sexes?"

She laughed, a short sharp bark. "Hardly. At least you can't prove it by their chromosomes. So far, all the tissue samples we've examined are genetic nightmares-we have no idea what they're modeling-but we can identify the chromosome structures, and they seem to be pretty much identical from one specimen to the next. No X or Y chromosomes-or equivalents. By that evidence, the worms have only one sex. It's convenient, I guess; it doubles the chances of finding a date for Saturday night, but-it sounds boring. Unless of course you're another worm."

"But-then that brings up another question-"

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

"I'm interrupting something?"

"Mm, sort of. I need to go into San Francisco-"

"Huh? I thought the city was closed."

"It is. To most people."

"Oh."

"But I'm on the Advisory," she explained.

"Oh," I said again, disappointedly.

Fletcher studied me speculatively. "Family member? Your mother? No-your father, right?"

"My father," I nodded. "We never heard one way or the other. And, uh-I know this is silly-"

"No, it isn't," she said.

"-but my father was always such a... survivor. I just can't imagine him dead."

"You think he's still alive somewhere?"

"I... just wish I knew for certain. That's all."

"Uh huh," she said. "The truth is, you want to go there and see for yourself. You think you can find him. Right?" She fixed me with a green-eyed gaze. Her manner was startlingly direct. It put me off-balance.

I shrugged. "Yeah," I admitted.

"Mm hm. You're not the first one, Lieutenant. I see it all the time. People don't believe until they see for themselves. Well, all right-"

"Huh?"

"You want to see San Francisco?" She rolled back to her terminal and started typing. "Let me get you a pass. McCarthy ... James Edward, Lieutenant-" She frowned at the screen. "When'd you get a purple heart?"

"Denver. Remember?"

"Oh, that."

"Hey!" I protested. "I've still got scars. And a bad knee! And besides, it happened the day after I was commissioned. It's legal."

"Hmp," she sniffed. "You ruined a perfectly good specimen."

"It lived, didn't it-?"

"Just barely," she said. "Have you ever seen a deranged worm?"

"Lots of times-"

"No. Those were normal. This one was deranged." Her fingers tapped at the keys-

"Huh?"

She stopped abruptly. "That's interesting."

"What is?"

"Uh-nothing really. I've seen it before. Part of your file is locked." She resumed typing.

"Uh-that's right." I had a hunch what that was. Something to do with Uncle Ira. Colonel Ira Wallachstein. The late Colonel Ira Wallachstein. But I didn't explain.

"All right," she said. "You're cleared-under my authority. So you have to behave yourself-and do what I tell you, all right?"

"Right. "

"Good. We'll make a human being out of you yet." She shrugged out of her lab coat and tossed it at a laundry bin. Underneath, she was wearing a dark brown jumpsuit. It matched the shade of her hair; it was good planning on either her part or the government's.

I followed her to an elevator. She flashed a key-card at the scanner. The door chimed and slid open. The elevator dropped us downward; I couldn't tell how many floors though, there were no numbers to watch.

Fletcher had to flash her card before two more doors, and then we were on a ramp leading down to the garage. "That one's mine," she said, pointing toward a jeep. How could she tell? They all looked alike to me. She walked around the front of the car while I climbed in the passenger side.

"Why all this security?" I asked.

She shook her head. "It's political, I think. Something to do with the Fourth World Alliance. We won't trade information until they open their borders to inspection teams. I think it's a mistake. In the long run, we're only hurting ourselves." She eased the jeep forward, and pointed it toward the exit. As we rolled out past the final security booth, she added in a quieter tone, "Things are very... cautious around here. Especially right now." She glanced over at me. "Mm, let me say it this way. The agency does appreciate the cooperation of the military-especially the Special Forcesbut, ah ... there is still a certain amount of individual chafing. The military has everything tied up a little too tight. We're all of us in a great big bag marked TOP SECRET."

I considered what she said. She was being remarkably candid. It was a compliment to me. I replied carefully, "It certainly doesn't make sense from a scientific point of view. We should be sharing information, not hiding it."

Fletcher looked like she wanted to agree. "It's Dr. Zymph's idea. She started out in Bio-War, you know; so her whole career has been about secrecy. I guess she still thinks it's necessary. But it makes it awfully hard to work." Abruptly, she added, "Sometimes I don't know what that woman is up to. She scares me."

Dr. Zymph was the chairman of the Ecological Agency. I looked at Fletcher, surprised. "I thought you admired her."

"I used to. But that was before she became a politician. I liked her better as a scientist."

I didn't reply to that. Fletcher's comments bothered me. I'd first seen Dr. Zymph in action in Denver-and I'd been impressed by her. It was ... disconcerting to hear this.

The road turned west and then northward. To our left was the metallic wash of San Francisco Bay. The sun was glinting oddly off the surface. The light struck colored sparks.

"The water's a funny color," I said.

"We had an episode of sea sludge," Fletcher said matter-of-factly. "We had to oil and burn it. The bay's still recovering."

"Oh. "

"We're waiting to see if it comes back. We think we may have licked it, but it's only a small victory."

"Um-you said something before. About the worm in Denver. You said it was ... deranged. What did you mean by that?"

"Well-wouldn't you be deranged if someone carved you up like that? You shot out its eyes, you turned its mouth, into jelly, and you broke both its arms. That does not make for a healthy world-view. And after its fur fell out, the poor thing went autistic-"

"Its fur fell out?"

"Oh, right. That report got squelched. You couldn't have seen it. As if its injuries weren't enough, the poor beast started throwing symptoms. We thought it was infected and put it on terramycin. Its fur came out in patches. It was an ugly sight; it really did look like a big red bristly worm."

"All the fur came off?"

She shook her head. "No, only the lighter-colored strands. You know that the fur is sensory nerves, don't you? We figured out what happened afterwards. Terramycin can damange human nervous tissue too. Apparently, the pink strands are extremely sensitive. Anyway-after that, the gastropede showed as much intelligence as a Terran earthworm. It just lay where it was and quivered and twitched." She shook her head again, remembering. "It was a very queasy thing to watch."

"How come we didn't see that report? That could be a weapon!"

Fletcher sighed and quoted, "`Information on ways to combat or resist the Chtorran infestation is not to be made available to any non-allied nations or their representatives.' That's the policy-at least until the Fourth World Alliance signs the Unification Treaty."

"That doesn't make sense."

"It does politically. When the worms-or whatever else-become too big a problem for the Fourth World member nations to handle by themselves, a signature on a paper might not seem too high a price for survival. Right now, they'd rather be right. Are you surprised?"

"And you agree with it-?"

She shook her head. "No, but I understand it. The Unification Powers are playing politics with the war. Did you expect us not to? Read your history. We have twenty years of grudges to work off. At least. So now, there are people who are willing to let the worms chew on the Fourth World Alliance for a while."

"And in the meantime, the infestation gets a more solid foothold-?"

"Right. Some people have their priorities way up their fundaments. Anyway," she added, "Terramycin would not be an effective weapon.

"Why not?"

"You wouldn't like the aftereffects. Two or three weeks later, the worm's fur started to come back in-only very dark. Mostly red and purple and black strands. That's when the worm started getting violent. The more dark fur came in, the more violent it became. Obviously, its perception of the world was shifting. We finally had to put it down, it was so badly deranged. We weren't sure we could contain it any longer." She clucked her tongue. "You think the worms are nasty now? Infect a few and see what happens."

I didn't answer. It was too much to think about. I'd known the fur was a kind of nerve. Our gas had been based on that fact. But why should the type of nerve cells make a worm peaceful or violent? "Do you have anyone studying worm fur?" I asked.

She shook her head. "I'd like to-but we're already overextended. There're about fifteen other areas we want to look at first."

"It seems to me that it's important to the question of tamability"

"Mm hm," she agreed. "That's why we're looking for albinos...."

The jeep was slowing as it approached the Oakland Bay Bridge. Fletcher flashed her card at a scanner and the barricades slid open for us. There was a huge advisory sign hanging over the empty toll booths: BY ORDER OF THE MILITARY GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA, THE CITY OF SAN FRANCISCO IS HEREBY DECLARED A BLACK ZONE RESTRICTED AREA. ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK.

"That's reassuring," I said as we rolled under it.

"It's safe," she said.

"What makes you so sure?"

"I told you. I'm on the Advisory Board. San Francisco is currently zoned as unfit for anything but politics."

"I beg your pardon?"

"It's another one of the Agency's good ideas. San Francisco could be a very good Safe City. It's surrounded on three sides by water. Unfortunately, there're a lot of ruins that have to be clearedand we've got militant preservationists second-guessing every lamppost. So, the governor locked them out. They pay me ten K a month to swear that the city's still a plague reservoir."

"Is it?"

"The truth is-yes, it is." We reached the crest of the bridge then and the city spread out before us-what was left of it. The sight was ghastly. San Francisco was a skeleton. The city had been gutted. The stump of the Transamerica Tower gaped like a broken tooth. Coit Tower still stood, but it was blackened by fire. I didn't recognize many other buildings. Where they should have been there was rubble and ruin. "Oh, my God-" I choked on the words.

"I know," she agreed.

"I've seen the pictures," I gasped. "But-I had no idea-this is horrible."

"It gets everybody that way, the first time. I still get a tight throat when I come across the bridge."

"There's... nothing left."

"Firestorm," she said. The single word explained everything. Fletcher unlocked the steering wheel and pulled it into position before her, putting the jeep back on manual control. Autopilots were fine on paved roads. They had problems with rubble. We rolled down off the bridge in an eerie silence.

"Do you remember City Hall?" she asked.

"Uh huh. There was a big plaza in front."

"It's still there," she said. "But not much of City Hall."

She steered carefully through the steel and brick canyons of lower Market Street. The fires had burned themselves out here. But even so-there were places where the buildings looked blasted, even melted from the heat. I noticed a sign that said, SAN FRANCISCO WARLOCK ADMINISTRATION-and wondered if there were any warlocks left in California at all.

We'd thought the plagues were over. We'd come down from the hills, out of our hiding places. We thought we had vaccines. The government said it was safe. We had all the best excuses to return to the cities.

But the plagues weren't over, and the vaccines only worked sometimes, and the cities still weren't safe. The plagues came back stronger than ever. There was panic. There were fires. There was a firestorm. And when it was over, San Francisco was gone. It was like driving through a graveyard.

"I thought you said the military was working over here," I said.

"Most of the work is still off the corridor," Fletcher said. "And a lot of it is being done by robots." Suddenly, she pointed. "Look, there-"

"What?" And then I saw. She was pointing at a zombie. She slowed the jeep.

He was papery and thin-naked, except for a ragged blanket he wore like a poncho. There was almost no flesh at all on his bones. He looked like he was a hundred years old; it was impossible to guess what his real age might have been-he was gray and gaunt; his white hair hung down to his shoulders in a greasy mat.

The zombie's face looked mechanically animated; the expression was curiously empty, but the features were in constant motion. The mouth worked continually. The jaw floated up and down, releasing a thin dribble of spittle. The blackened tongue stuck out absently, like a retarded child's, then pulled in again. The cheeks sucked in and puffed out. The face moved as if no one wore it any more. It looked like a fish sucking at the glass wall of the aquarium.

The zombie turned and looked at us then-and for just an instant it was as if whoever might have once lived inside that body was struggling to animate it once again. The expression became momentarily curious, the eyelids fluttered like trapped moths. And then the gaze went confused again. He seemed to be fading in and out of focus-and he had trouble balancing himself as well. He caught himself on the front of the jeep and stared through the windshield, shifting back and forth between Fletcher and myself. He blinked and blinked again as he stared at us. His face wrinkled in puzzlement.

"He looks like he's trying to recognize us," I whispered.

Fletcher nodded. "He can't. He's lost his timebinding ability."

"Huh?"

"A zombie exists only in the present. He only knows something exists if he's looking at it."

As if in confirmation, the zombie's puzzlement was turning to pain. He looked like he wanted to cry but didn't remember how.

He fluttered his fingers toward Fletcher, then toward me-then abruptly he refocused on his hand, a gray claw-like thing on the end of his arm, as if he'd never seen it before. He forgot about us, blinking in confusion. His hand dropped. He turned and moved away without purpose, a soulless thing again. He shambled off toward the west.

"Is that it?" I said. "I've seen zombies before. That's what happens to the walking wounded when they sink to that place below despair. Once they hit the zombie level, you can't bring them back."

Fletcher looked like she wanted to say something in reply to that. Instead, she eased the car forward again.

As we moved up Market Street, we began to see other shambling zombies. Most were heading westward. All of them were thin and dirty. Most wore rags, or less. Their movements were disorganized, fragmented, and surreal. They looked like they'd wandered out of Auschwitz or Belsen or Buchenwald-except for their expressions. The concentration-camp survivors had at least had life in their eyes-an awareness of the horror and hopelessness of their situation. The zombies had nothing.

The zombies were ... detached. From the world, from everything-from their own bodies. They looked curious, and their eyes moved in quick, jerky glances; but they had no focus of attention. Their faces were empty. They moved like palsy victims.

Fletcher slowed the Jeep then to steer around the rubble. Most of the zombies were ignoring us. A dirty creature-male or female, it was impossible to tell-shambled by us. It trailed one hand across the hood of the car. Its expression was ... almost happy. "That one looks stoned," I said.

"Mm hm," Fletcher nodded. She angled the Jeep between two piles of bricks and up a side street. I recognized the remains of Brooks Hall on the left. The ruined marquee said simply, SAINT FRANCIS WRITHES AGAIN. I wondered who'd put that message up.

We pulled up facing a wide dirty field. At the far end of it, what was left of City Hall loomed like a broken castle. You could still make out its broad stone steps. This had once been a great plaza; now it was a gray expanse of dust and broken concrete. Nothing grew here any more.

"Okay," I said. "Now what?"

"Now, we get out and look around."

"Huh?"

"It's safe." She patted my hand and climbed out of the Jeep. I had no choice but to follow.

There were ... people ... in the plaza. They were pinker and somewhat healthier-looking than the ones we'd passed on Market Street. Zombies? Not quite. Many of them were fairly young-in their twenties and thirties. There were some teenagers, only a few children. There were very few beyond middle age.

Most of the bodies were haphazardly dressed. Or maybe that should have been haphazardly undressed. They moved without regard for their clothing. It was as if somebody else had hung clothes on them, or they had draped themselves with whatever was handy. What clothing they did have seemed to be for warmth, not modesty.

"So?" I turned to Fletcher. "I've seen this before too. These are walking wounded."

"Are they?" she asked.

"Well, sure-" I started to say. And then stopped. I looked at her. "They're something else?"

"Go find out," she pointed. "Try talking to them." I looked at her as if she were crazy. Talk to them? "It's safe," she reassured.

I turned back and studied the milling bodies. They moved without purpose, but they didn't shamble. They just sort of... moved. I picked out a young male. Maybe he was sixteen. Maybe he was twenty-five. I couldn't tell. He had long brown hair that hung past his shoulders. He was wearing an old gray shirt, nothing else. He had large dark eyes. He'd been very attractive once.

I walked up to him and touched his shoulder. He turned toward me with a halfway expectant expression. His eyes were bottomless. He studied my face for a puzzled moment, then-not finding anything-started to turn away.

"Wait," I said. He turned back. "What's your name?" He blinked at me. "Your name?" I repeated.

His mouth began to work. "Nay-nay-nay ... ?" he said. He was trying to imitate my sounds. He smiled at the noises he made. "Nay-nay-nay-nay-nay-nay-" he repeated.

I put my hands on his shoulders. I looked into his eyes, trying to create a sense of relationship through eye contact. The boy tried to look away-I pulled his face back to mine and stared into his eyes again. "No. Stay with me," I said firmly.

He blinked at me uncertainly. "Who are you?" I asked him.

"Bub," he said.

"Bub? Bob?"

"Bub-bub-bub-" He smiled happily. "Bub-bub-bub-bub-"

"No," I said. "No." I pulled his face back to mine again. "No-no-no..." he said. "No-no-no...." And then, "Bub-bub-bub ... bub-bub-bub. . . . "

I let go of his shoulders and let him wander away, still bubbling. I turned back to Fletcher. "All right. What?"

She shook her head. "Uh uh. Keep going."

This time, I chose a little girl. She was wearing only a pair of panties. What was it about these people and clothing anyway? She was very thin, very underdeveloped. She could have been a boy.

I stopped her and looked into her face. She was as blank as the others.

"Who are you?" I asked. "What's your name?"

"My name... ?" she said. "My name?" She blinked. Like the boy, her expression was uncertain and puzzled.

"That's right. What's your name?"

"My name, my name ... is Auntie Mame. My game is fame, my game, my name, my name-" She babbled happily at me, smiling with delight at the sound of her own words. She'd figured out the game. "The game is name is fame is lame-"

I let go of her and turned her back toward the crowd.

"All right," I said to Fletcher, "I got it. They're not zombies. You can interact with them. But they've lost most of their sense of speech, so they're not walking wounded either. They're an intermediate step. Is that all?"

"Part of it," she said.

"What is it?" I asked. "A plague effect? Brain burn fever?"

"Brain burn fever is fatal," Fletcher said grimly. "If this is a plague effect, it's something we can't identify. See that fellow there?" She pointed at a tall beefy man. "He used to be one of the sharpest biologists at the university. He was at the South Pole when the plagues broke out. He was never exposed. He was fully vaccinated before he returned. If it's a plague effect, it's a mental one."

"How did he ... end up here?" I asked.

She lowered her voice. "He was studying them-" She waved her hand to indicate the wandering bodies. "He thought he could see patterns of herding-something like the Emperor Penguins. He spent a lot of time living with them, moving among them. One day, he didn't come back. When we finally got worried, we came down here and found him wandering around with the rest of them. He couldn't talk much more than they could. He'd become one of them."

I thought about that. Before I could ask the question, Fletcher said, "We're not in any danger. It takes prolonged exposure."

"Oh," I said. I was not reassured.

There were several hundred bodies in the plaza now. I stood there for a moment, watching them, trying to figure out why they seemed so... interesting.

"There's something about them," I said. "I can't figure it out, but there's something going on here. The minute you look at them, you know that they're not normal. What is it?" I asked Fletcher. "What's the signal I'm picking up?"

"You tell me," she said. "Tell me what you see?"

"I see bodies. Pink bodies. That's part of it, isn't it? They don't wear much clothing."

"By summer, they'll all be naked-but that's not it either. San Francisco Plaza has seen crowds of naked bodies before. The average Freedom Day Festival has less clothing than this."

"I wouldn't know. My dad never let me come."

"Too bad. Anyway, nudity is only part of it. What else?"

"Um-their skin. When I touched them, their skin felt slick. Not quite oily. Kind of smooth. Different."

"Mm hm, but that's not the cue either. You don't go around touching people to see if they're different."

"Right." I studied the milling crowd again.

"I'll give you a hint," she said. "What's missing?"

"Missing? Mmmm. Talking. There's not a lot of talking. A few of them are babbling to themselves, but it's not loud and offensive, not like a street lady. They're babbling like babies amused with the sounds they're making-wait a minute." A thought was beginning to form. "What's missing is... intensity. They have a quality of innocence. They're like children, aren't they? It's as if they've given up all the stuff they've ever learned about how to be a grownup so they could go back to the innocence of children. Right?"

"Go on," she encouraged, but she was smiling. I was on the right track.

"They can feel pain or anger-but they don't carry it around with them. Adults do. We get hurt or angry and we carry it around with us for weeks, handing it out to everybody we meet. Did you ever watch Aroundabout on TV? One time they did nothing but photograph faces at random on a city street. Almost every single person they showed looked like they were wearing a mask. Their expressions were all pinchy and tight. But these ... people-I guess that's what I should call them-these people, their faces are relaxed. They've given up the pain-"

I realized something else and shut up suddenly. "What was that?" Fletcher asked.

"Um, nothing really. I was just realizing how sad it must be to have to give up your intelligence to be free from pain." I looked at her. Her face was hurting with the same realization. Her eyes were moist. "Is this what you wanted me to see?"

"Oh, no," she said. She swallowed and looked uncomfortable. "It hasn't even started yet."