A Season for Slaughter

Chapter 41 Brownian Motion

It was a long walk.

Halfway there, I started singing to myself. And dancing. A silly old song. I felt so good, I couldn't hold it in.

"Oh, I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy. Yankee Doodle is my name. A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam, born on the Fourth of July. I've got a Yankee Doodle sweetheart. She's my Yankee pride and joy-oh, Yankee Doodle went to town, a-riding on a pony-I arr that Yankee Doodle boy-"

I tap-danced my way happily along the metal catwalk. I was delirious with giddy abandon and totally oblivious to-

Two heavyset men in yellow jumpsuits were lounging at an intersection of two walkways. They were leaning against two stanchions, arms folded, and apparently not doing anything at all. They were nearly identical, stamped from the same beefy mold. I came to an out-of-breath and very embarrassed halt almost directly in front of them. They looked at me curiously. I had the distinct feeling that it was no accident that they were chatting idly in this exact location. There was a narrowness of expression in their eyes.

"Uh-" There was no way to recover my dignity. I wasn't even sure I wanted to. I put on my best foolish grin, took a breath, and made as if to continue.

Both of the men straightened. The taller of the two took a single step sideways, blocking my way. "Sorry, sir. Passengers aren't allowed up here." He spoke with quiet courtesy. "I'll be happy to show you the way back." It was the kind of courtesy that left no room for disagreement.

The other man had the preoccupied look of someone listening to a faraway voice. Abruptly, he said, "Wait a minute. May I see your ID, please?"

I thumbed the updated card out of the transparent pocket on my shirt and passed it across. He glanced at it, glanced at me, then read off the validation number. The voice in his ear must have responded affirmatively, because he nodded and handed the card back to me.

"Thank you, sir. Sorry to have troubled you."

"No trouble at all." I slipped the card back into its pocket.

"Just keep on heading aft," he pointed. "The catwalk ends at a big staging platform. There'll be someone waiting for you there."

"Thanks," I said. "Uh-" There was no nametag on his jumpsuit. He followed my stare. When I met his eyes again, he just smiled and shook his head. "Well, thanks anyway." I headed aft, wondering. More blue fairies?

I had to laugh and shake my head. Why can't people just tell the truth? It'd make all of our lives a whole lot easier. Foreman had said something about this once. In the Training. He'd said, "The ultimate cause of every single problem in the world is a breakdown in communication. A breakdown in communication." And then he'd grinned at us impishly with a delicious sense of anticipation; it was that look of his that we'd learned always portended a truly evil punch line. He paused for effect, looking slowly around the room, until he was satisfied that we were all hanging impatiently on his every word; then at last, finally, he dropped the other shoe. "Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you. Godot called. He'll be late."

Some people never got the joke. Those who did never stopped laughing.

And then I had to laugh again. Because the joke was on me. It was always on me. The smile slid easily across my face. Yesterday at this time, I'd been threatening to throw myself out the window of this airship. And then… I had just given up and let the universe do whatever it wanted to do. What it wanted, surprisingly enough, was almost exactly the same thing I wanted.

That was the joke. It's amazing how well things can work out for you if you just stop fighting them

There was a thought.

If you just stop fighting them

I hadn't considered that idea in a while. Dr. Fletcher had thought it might be possible. Jason Delandro knew it was. I still didn't believe it. The price was too high. But I wondered-maybe the nagging voices were right. Maybe the only way the human race was going to survive was by carving itself a niche in the Chtorran ecology. I didn't like the idea, but the alternatives were extinction or a continual state of warfare. There was no fourth alternative. Well… no, there was. Abandon the planet. Move to Luna. Move to Mars. Move to the asteroid belt. Maybe someday scourge the Earth and start again? But no-if we did that, we'd always be in a state of retreat; we'd have admitted our vulnerability to the Chtorran infestation, and no matter where we went or what we built, we would always know that we could only stay there until the Chtorrans showed up and decided they wanted that world too.

There had to be a way for humanity to-to what? What did we really want?

If we could figure that out, then we could begin to draw a line from here to there. We could try to follow that line. We couldWe couldn't do anything. We were working in the dark. It wasn't that we didn't have the wisdom. We didn't have the light. We didn't know what we could do because we didn't know what was possible. That's what this mission was supposed to resolve. "Oh, I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy-

The song kept running through my head. My brain was trying to do two things at once. Three, if you counted walking. Sing. Think. Walk. Dance. The catwalk stretched for days in front of me. Behind me.

Sink. Thing. Want.

Echos.

Resonance.

Something.

Songs.

What was that other thought? Who said it? I didn't remember. But I remembered the words. "What we need is someone who can think like a worm." No, not worms. The intelligence behind them. We need something that can think like the Chtorr. An Intelligence Engine? Maybe. But how do you program it? What's the model? Before you can think like a Chtorr, you have to be a Chtorr. Bingo.

Something that isn't a Chtorr has to be a Chtorr. Long enough so that it can think like one. And then it has to stop being a Chtorr so it can report back and tell humanity what we were really up against. But how do you become a Chtorr-and how do you unbecome a Chtorr?

No. That wasn't quite it. Something about identity

"Oh, I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy; Yankee Doodle is my name-"

The thought eluded me. My mind kept stumbling into inappropriate questions.

"-I am that Yankee Doodle boy!"

What kind of a song would a Chtorran sing? We already knew the answer to that question. It was a long, low purring vibration, the kind of sound a three-ton kitten on LSD might make. A weird . sound. Oddly tranquilizing, but very unmusical.

You had to ask yourself, why do Chtorrans sing? For that matter, why do humans sing? Something about identity…

The songs let us know who we are? Hmm. That was a thought.

But it was wrong.

I knew who I was. I had a name, I had an identity card, I had a job, I had a problem to solve. I even had a mate. My identity was resolved without songs. I could be stone-deaf and still have the same identity. No. The songs were something else.

"Yankee Doodle went to London, riding on a pony… '

And then I arrived. All my questions were going to have to go unanswered a little while longer.

The walkway came to a platform large enough to hold a small housing tract. Part of the platform had slid aside to reveal… the distant ground sliding silently beneath us. The access was large enough to lower or raise an airplane; indeed, there was a Batwing-9 light-armament recon flyer hanging from the loading crane. Several more men in yellow jumpsuits were just raising the plane into position. They barely glanced at me.

As soon as the hatch slid shut beneath the plane, the foreman of the team came striding over to me. He was another one with coiled danger in his eyes. "McCarthy?"

I nodded.

"This way, please." He led me toward the far end of the platform, underneath the tail of the flyer, to a floor panel that looked just like every other floor panel. He didn't do anything that I could see, but the panel slid aside to reveal a narrow stair leading down. He stepped aside, out of my way; obviously, I was expected to descend. I thought about making a joke about the airship's wine cellar being very inconvenient, then thought better of it and just shrugged and stepped down into the darkness. The floor panel slid quickly shut above me.