A Day for Damnation

FIFTY-ONE

THE FINAL meeting of the presentation team took place at eighteen hundred hours.

Colonel Tirelli, Dr. Fletcher, Dr. Larson, three staff members I didn't recognize, the two women on the audio-video team, five observers, three mission specialists, six pilots, two programmers, two spider handlers, and the weapons team. I almost felt crowded.

There wasn't a lot of business that needed to be handled. Even Dr. Fletcher admitted that. We checked the weather forecasts, narrowed our choice of target sites-we'd make the final selection tomorrow morning-and then opened it up for questions. There weren't a lot.

Colonel Tirelli took over then and asked if anyone wanted to reconsider their decision to participate. This was a strictly volunteer operation and if anybody present wanted to drop out, they could do so now-or they could see her privately if they preferred. "You have until-" she looked at her watch, considered, and said, "-twenty-one hundred hours. There are backup people available, I assure you-so don't feel that you have to do this. The operation is dangerous, so do consider your participation carefully. If I don't hear from you by twenty-one hundred hours, I will assume that you have made a complete and total commitment. Did everyone understand that?"

Affirmative nods.

"Well, then-that seems to be it. Does anyone here have anything else to add?"

No. No one.

"Good. Thank you-and good night! Get yourself a good dinner, get to bed early, and get a good night's sleep!"

Most of the team headed for the doors. I headed for the front of the room. Colonel Tirelli was conferring softly with two of her pilots, so I waited politely to one side. When she finished, she looked up and saw me. "Yes, McCarthy?"

"May I talk to you privately?"

Her eyes shaded. "You want to drop out?"

"No! It's just-"

"If it's not about the mission tomorrow-"

"It's something that could affect the mission tomorrow." I said it as pointedly as I could.

"Mm hm. Wait a minute-" She handed her clipboard to one of her aides and then took me out into the hall, around the corner and into a deserted office. She closed the door behind us and leaned back against a desk, leaving an uncomfortable distance between herself and me. "What is it?" she asked. Her expression was polite, curious-and very very cold.

I felt myself flushing. "I-I guess this is a personal thing," I started. "But it's really getting to me. I mean, what's going on?"

She blinked as if she didn't know what I was talking about. "I don't understand."

"We had a date planned, remember? You and I and the biggest lobster on the west coast, remember? I mean, you said some things in the chopper-and I don't know if that was for serious-or if it was just... well, you know, real casual, or what?"

Lizard noticed an ink smudge on her palm. She rubbed at it with her thumb. She wasn't looking at me as she remarked, "That's what I like, a question with a lot of certainty in it." She shoved her hands into her pockets and looked up at me. "Listen, McCarthy. Everything I said to you in the chopper was true. You're cute. You're probably fun in bed. And you're also a lieutenant. One thing I know about lieutenants is that they have permanent erections. It's convenient at times. Most of the time it's not. Your problem is that you're trying to think with your erection. Please don't. It wasn't designed for that."

I stared at her. I wanted to ask, "Who are you really and what have you done with Lizard Tirelli?" Instead, I merely opened my mouth and said, "Is that it-?"

"For now." She looked at her watch. "Don't you have one more meeting tonight?"

"I have some kind of counseling session, yeah-"

"Well, I suggest you get to it." Her expression was impassive. I could see that even being confused would be a waste of time here. I shook my head and stepped past her to the door. Halfway through it, I turned back to her. "This does not make sense to me. And it sure doesn't make me confident about tomorrow."

"I'm sorry, McCarthy-but that's the way it has to be."

"Yeah, sure." I closed the door behind me. Colonels! I'd never understand them.

I found Fletcher back in the meeting room. "Listen, about this counseling session-"

She shook her head. "I'm not your counselor, James. I have nothing to do with that."

"Well-listen, I just want to skip it. I don't feel-"

Fletcher's face hardened. "You do and you don't go tomorrow. You get your ass downstairs, right now!" She turned to one of her assistants. "Jerry--will you escort Lieutenant McCarthy down to the basement? Make sure he gets there."

I remembered Jerry Larson from Denver. He'd lost some weight and cut his hair; it made him look more intelligent than I remembered.

He led me down three flights of stairs (it was faster than the elevator), past the holding tanks (four worms), and into the specimen section, through the greenhouse.

The air smelled overpoweringly sweet. On either side, behind thick glass walls, I could see banks of purple and red plants.

"See that one?" Larson pointed to a shapeless black bush as tall as a man. Its leaves were ragged and shaggy. Whatever form or structure the plant had was impossible to see; it looked like a big pile of dirty laundry. "That one walks. Very slowly. We call it a shambler. It feeds on carrion. It's probably a scavenger. I don't think it kills-but we've got it isolated just in case."

"What're these?" I pointed to the opposite side. The plants there were more colorful. Banks of red and yellow blossoms cascaded across the tables.

"Oh-" said Larson. "We call those mandala vines. You have to look at them close up. You see those blossoms? Each one is made up of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miniature blossoms all clustering together."

"They're gorgeous-" Even from this side of the glass, I was dazzled. The blossoms were pink and scarlet and purple; but they were speckled with yellow and orange and white.

"Here-you can see this one a little better." Larson pointed to one of the smaller vines, hanging against the glass.

He was right. The miniature blossoms were easier to see. They gathered in groups to form clusters. Each little cluster had its own bright pattern of colors, lightest at the center, brightest and gaudiest at the edges.

Lower down on the vine, I could see how the clusters expanded and gathered around a central one. "I see where it gets its name," I said, grinning. The vines were beautiful; the clusters of clusters formed a dazzling mandala. There was even a sense of a pattern. "How big does it get?"

Larson shrugged. "We don't know. We haven't got the room to let it grow. I'll tell you this-it drives the bees crazy."

"Is that its danger?"

"We don't know. It's here. We're observing it. It's pretty, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it really is."

"You should smell its perfume-it smells like all the good things in the world all rolled together. Honeysuckle, fresh bread, the inside of a new car, you name it; it smells different to everybody."

I followed Larson through two sets of double doors, out of botany and into biology. We moved through a vast white warehouse full of cages and terrariums. The air was full of dark animal smells. I couldn't identify any of them.

"We discovered something very interesting about the meeps," he said.

"Meeps-those are the weaselly-looking red-brown things, aren't they?"

"No, you're thinking of libbits. A meep is a mousy pink furball. Here-these are libbits."

I looked into a large glass enclosure. The libbit looked like a small polite worm, except it had no eyes, no arms, and only the finest coat of downy brown fur. It was about the size of a mole or a badger. There were four of them in the terrarium.

"They burrow," said Larson. "They eat small rodents: rats, mice, chipmunks, bunnies and meeps. Here-up here. These are meeps." He pointed at a row of cages.

"Oh, right-we saw some of those on the chopper windshield. Kinda cute. What about 'em? I bet they breed like crazy, right?"

Larson shrugged. "We don't know yet. This is what I wanted you to see. We put three of 'em into a cage with a mamma rabbit and her litter. Mamma rabbit rejected her own babies to nurse the meeps instead."

"You're kidding!"

"Nope. The same behavior has been repeated with a dozen other rabbits. If the babies are small enough, the meeps will eat them, but they prefer to nurse on Mamma."

"Yick. I wish you hadn't told me that."

"Oh, you haven't heard the worst of it. The meeps will nurse a mamma rabbit to death." He added somberly, "And she doesn't appear to object, either. She dies happy."

We passed out of the specimen section into a storage area; we walked past bags and bags of various animal feeds. The air was fresher here.

"Listen," I stopped him. "I want to apologize for shooting down your plan. I guess I came on a little strong-"

"You want to hear my theory about the bunnydogs?" Larson asked. He looked me straight in the eye. "I think they're like the meeps-only for humans. The bunnydogs are so cute, they're irresistible. The first time people see those videos, they all go, `Awwwww.' Especially women. They all want to pick the bunnies up and cuddle them. I'll bet a woman would put her own baby down to cuddle a bunnydog. I'll bet tomorrow you'll find out just how friendly the bunnydogs really are-"

"Thanks. I think I can find the rest of the way myself," I interrupted him deliberately.

"It's just down there." Larson pointed. "Past those steel doors. Follow the red stripe to the security section."

"Security?"

"It's an isolation block. It sits on springs. It's earthquake-proof and self-contained. That's where we control the whole operation. All our files are stored there. It can be locked down tighter than the Iron Mountain. It's got an independent air supply, power supply, and a six-month supply of food. It's safe against the entire electromagnetic spectrum, including lasers, masers, xasers, all kinds of radiation, magnetism, and television reruns. It's blanketed by scrambler fields. Nothing goes in or out without permission. Oh-and you'll have to decontaminate too."

I looked at Larson. "Isn't all this a little extreme for just a counseling session?"

He shrugged. "It's the best place in the world for privacy." He turned and headed back the way we'd come.

I followed Larson's directions: through the steel doors, past a security scan, detoxification, through a security tube-through a triple airlock-then through another security tube and a final scanning station.

The robot at the desk directed me down a hall to a corridor of personal apartments. Room fourteen, please.

I knocked on the door politely.

A woman's voice: "Door's open. Come on in."

I pushed it open. The first thing that struck me was the smell of lilac perfume.

And then, Colonel Lizard Tirelli came out of the kitchen wearing an apron and an embarrassed smile. "Come on in, Jim."