A Rage for Revenge

34 Bait

Forty-three days later (it would have been sooner, but Betty-John had to be sure), I was a father. It was one of the fastest gestations in recorded history, and one of the most fruitful: Tommy, Holly, Alec and Bear. That's what the papers said; three children, one stuffed animal.

Birdie administered the oath while B-Jay glowed proudly. The kids, scrubbed and shiny, stood solemnly by my side in new shirts and shorts (B-Jay had splurged for this occasion), not quite understanding what was going on, simply that it was important.

I had explained it to them very carefully. What it meant was that they were going to be living with me permanently now, and that I was going to be their Daddy and take care of them. Tommy nodded gravely at this, he accepted it without comment. Holly asked if that meant she was going to be the Mommy. I asked her if she wouldn't like to be the little girl instead, but she said no, she wanted to be the Mommy. I sidestepped that for a while. Alec, who didn't say anything at first, finally managed to gulp, "Bear too?"

"Of course, Bear too." And that was how Bear got adopted. Getting the papers approved hadn't been hard. Betty-John had begun preparing them after the third week, and Birdie had already, very surreptitiously, completed her interviews (and I thought she'd been honestly curious about the kids). The only one that caught me by surprise was the anti-dowry release; even though Congress had already approved the Inheritance Act, the rest of the bureaucracy hadn't yet caught up. I still had to swear that I wasn't marrying the kids for their money; even if they didn't have any now, they might inherit some later. Etc., etc.

I was already familiar with the adoption oath, but looked it over again for loopholes, zingers, hooks, and bear traps. Didn't find any and took it proudly. My "I do," was one of the gladdest things I have ever done in my life.

Only two things marred the day. One a little one, the other-well, it almost wrecked the adoption.

The little one first.

During a quiet moment in the afternoon, Betty-John came to me carrying a small box. She didn't look too happy.

"What's up, Fairy Godmother?" She didn't smile.

"These are for you and the kids."

"More presents'?"

"Not exactly-"

I opened the box. There were four little leather sacks, on neckstraps. "What are they?"

"Good luck charms." She wasn't smiling.

I tried to open one, but it had been stitched shut and further sealed with some kind of plastic glue.

"You'll be seeing them on all the kids before the day is over. They came in yesterday."

"Isn't this a little much-what with beepers, dog tags, medical records, trouble whistles, and all? I mean, haven't those kids got enough to wear around their necks? Why don't we get them flea collars too?"

"This isn't my idea, it's the government's. These are the worm charms I was telling you about."

"What's in them?"

Betty-John shrugged. "Top secret." Then she added, "Ground glass, cyanide, and sporulated bacteria, I'm not sure what kind."

"Huh? How do you know that?"

"One of them came open. Fortunately it happened in the medical lab while Birdie was looking at it in a steri-field."

"Oh," I said, then. "Hey, won't you be one short?"

"No, they sent extras. In any case, that was the one for Billy Jamieson."

Billy had died a month and a half before. He'd been one of the two babies on the same bus that delivered Tommy, Holly, and Alec. Pneumonia. There hadn't been any medicine available to save him.

I bounced the charms in my hand. "They're sealed awfully tight. I don't see how they're going to do much good."

"They're not for the kids, Jim."

"But the cyanide-?"

"Do you know a kid who'd take it? Uh-uh, I'm not giving L-pills to any kids. I certainly am not even going to try to explain to one why he should have an L-pill. We've got enough troubles already with boogey-men up in the hills-I don't want to have to deal with nightmares about Chtorrans too. The cyanide is for the worm, same as the bacteria and the ground glass. Any worm eats a kid wearing one of these, it'll be the last kid he eats. We hope."

I looked at her. I looked at the tiny pouches in my hand. I looked at her again. "It seems awfully callous . . .

"It's orders. If we want to receive government funding, then we have to protect our children. Someone in Denver suggested that we give them worm charms. The theory is that Chtorrans are not naturally man-eaters, but like tigers, occasionally one of them gets the taste. This is the 'Take one of them with you' theory. The kids are the bait."

"I, uh-I can see the logic behind it."

"You don't like it, do you?" B-Jay said.

I shook my head. "I'm not crazy about the implications."

She nodded. "Neither am I, but put 'em on your kids anyway, will you?"

I did, and then I went to my terminal and patched in to Central. I dug around until I found some of the preliminary reports on the charms. The material was classified, but I still had my Special Forces passwords. Whoever or whatever was supposed to be handling security wasn't doing a very good job, because the computer dumped it all onto my screen.

The worm charms had more in them than ground glass, cyanide, and tailored bacteria, but that was close enough. The theory was that the Chtorrans had awfully tough flesh, inside and out. The ground glass was to tear up the tissues. The tailored bacteria would then have a chance to get into the bloodstream and kill the beast.

But Betty-John had been wrong on one thing. It wasn't cyanide, it was nerve gas-and it was for the kids. Nerve gas doesn't have the same effect on Chtorrans as it does on human beings, it only makes them sick; but a Chtorran crunching into a kid's chest would release enough of the poison to put the kid out of his pain fast. They'd thought of everything. Now all we needed were Chtorrans considerate enough to make sure they bit the charm when they bit the kid.

There was a serious flaw in the logic of the report. Man-eating tigers had been roaming in India and Pakistan for years, but neither of those governments had ever had people start wearing tiger charms. There weren't enough man-eaters to justify it. The number of deaths per year was "acceptable." But that was the same comparison that our government was making about the Chtorrans: they aren't man-eaters and there aren't enough of them to be concerned about.

But then, why the charms?

Why charms on all military, civil, and government-supported personnel as mandatory regulations? And why charms sold at cost to civilians'? That said an awful lot about how serious the government considered the Chtorrans to be. And because the government was always at least two years behind the times, that said an awful lot about how serious the Chtorran infestation really was. The number of deaths per year was "unacceptable" and this was obviously a last-ditch desperate weapon.

The appendices were interesting too. The coiled springs with enzyme dissolvable binding threads had been discarded as possibly dangerous to the wearer. Likewise, the radioactive elements and the poison vectors. The old-fashioned methods, it seemed, were still the best. Although there were not enough live Chtorrans in captivity to test the charms on, the government expected that using a large segment of the population as a test lab would show which charms were most effective. Family was considered part of the Northwest Region. We'd been issued Formulation DSX-13. Terrific. I hadn't adopted three kids. I'd taken custody of bait.