A Season for Slaughter

Chapter 23 In Deeper

The dust rose around them in clouds.

The worms came sliding through the bright pink drifts like snowplows, throwing billows of rosy powder to either side. The clouds of it fluffed up into the air, leaving a hazy slow-motion tail behind each of the creatures.

They spread out as they approached the van, circling it cautiously. The three beasts went around and around the vehicle, until they had flattened most of the drifts into a dirty red sludge. We could hear the ground crunching wetly under their immense weight. Already the dust was collapsing into a gummy muck. Soon it would harden to a brick-like surface. Shortly, they were rubbing up against the vehicle itself, tasting it with their fur.

"They've brushed a lot of the dust off the sides," reported Reilly.

"Tell 'em not to forget the windshields," called Siegel.

"What are the chances of getting unstuck?" I asked.

Reilly studied an ancillary display. He looked unhappy. "Does the word adobe mean anything to you?"

I scratched my ear. I was beginning to itch for a bath. Soon I would start to ache.

Reilly looked up at me. "What? No funny answer?"

I shook my head. "I guess I'm not in a funny mood."

I sat down at the rearmost work station and tapped the screens to life. The worms had stopped circling the van. They were staring at it curiously. One of them, the largest, slid up to the starboard side and began running its claws up and down the surface of the metal. The raspy, scraping sound echoed loudly in the cabin. Willig looked at me with wide eyes.

"Not as much fun as you thought, is it?" I asked.

She didn't answer-and I resisted pointing out that the repartee shortage in here was becoming critical.

The scraping continued. The sound was slow and painfully drawn out, as if the creature wasn't quite sure what it was feeling. Uncertain, it kept scratching. Inside the van, we stared at each other's faces. The noise was abrading our nerves like aural sandpaper.

"Everybody keep calm," I whispered. I noticed that Reilly had popped the red cover off the arming switch for the guns. I reached past his shoulder and carefully removed his finger from the switch, and closed the safety cover again. "It's just being curious. We're not in any danger."

Reilly didn't look convinced, but he acknowledged me with a nod. He deliberately folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. Outside, the worm kept probing-only now, it expanded its repertoire of funny noises to include a rapping, tapping sound. It seemed to come from almost directly above us.

"What the hell is that-?" Lopez asked, turning to stare at the ceiling.

"Reilly, roof camera," I said.

He brought it up on his main display; the view was awkward, but we could see the worm flicking at the top of the van with the tips of its claws. They stretched up and around like the necks of disjointed birds. Between them, the worm's eyes were goggled upward, like a muppet peeking over the edge of a table.

"Kilroy was here," I whispered. Willig giggled-it had to be nervous tension; the joke wasn't that funny.

At last-finally-the worm lost interest and slid back down the side, of the tank. It backed away, puffing up the dust behind it in a ruffled drift, then turned and approached its companions. The three of them exchanged muffled purple sounds, then angled back up the slope toward the grove of shamblers.

The exhalations of relief within the van were tremendous; it was as if the entire crew had sprung simultaneous leaks.

"Okay, okay," I said. "Don't get confident. We're not out of the woods yet-"

"Cap'n? Look at this-"

Reilly was pointing to his screen. The worms were investigating the track of our prowler. Sher Khan had left a clean-edged furrow through the delicate powder, and the three creatures were studying it with intense interest. Now they began following it across the slope of the hill toward the shambler grove.

"What do you think?" asked Willig.

"I dunno. They seem agitated."

"Do you think they're smelling the prowler's scent?"

"No," I said, realizing the truth even as I spoke. "I think they're smelling the scent of the nest on the prowler's track."

"They don't look happy," Willig said.

"Maybe they're guardians of the grove?" Reilly suggested.

I thought about it. "If that's so, then Sher Khan is in big trouble. These fellows aren't likely to appreciate any interlopers, are they?" I called forward, "Siegel, put the prowler on standby alert. If the worms head down the hole, go to red. But don't take them down unless Sher Khan is specifically attacked."

"Aye, aye, Captain," Siegel acknowledged.

Reilly was busy at his keyboard. The screens in front of us began popping up new pictures of the worms. We'd planted a full set of probes above-ground. Most of them were up in the branches looking for tenants, but we'd put a few at eye level and ground level too.

The screens showed the worms moving out of the dazzling pink sunlight into the glowing magenta shadows of the grove. The dappled light of morning gave them an enchanted appearance. Their fur sparkled with pink frost and silvery highlights. Their large black eyes swiveled this way and that, squinting against the glare-sput-phwut-peering inquisitively into the dark blue gloom of the twisted shambler roots.

One of the worms paused abruptly, its eyes turning around and around, as if trying to pinpoint the location of something, a sound or a smell or a niggling pinpoint of light. Abruptly, it focused, and peered directly up at one of our probes. The unit was anchored only halfway up a shambler trunk; the worm was able to approach it quite closely; the view was horrifying. It stared at us, directly into the eyes of the remote for a long excruciating moment; then, its curiosity still unsatisfied, it slid half its bulk up the columnar trunk of the tree to bring its curious gaze even closer to the remote camera. Its huge eyes filled the screen. The view from a second unit mounted high on a tree on the opposite side of the grove showed a fat pink worm blinking at a tiny dull gray nugget.

"Why is it so curious?" Lopez asked. "Those units are supposed to be inconspicuous."

"It must be seeing into the infra-red-or worse, maybe it's seeing the radio emissions."

"Want me to shut it down?"

"No, let's see what it does. Maybe we'll learn something." Abruptly, the worm lost interest in the probe and hurried to join its colleagues. The other two gastropedes were far more interested in the track of the prowler. Reilly glanced up at me with a questioning look.

"Well-" I said. "We just learned that this worm has a very short attention span."

"Look. They're going into the roots." Willig pointed.

"Well, we left a clear enough trail-"

The three Chtorrans moved single-file into the purple shadows and the maze of sprawling shambler roots. They proceeded slowly, but without visible effort. It was as if this twisted mass was the most natural of all Chtorran environments.

"Think they'll go down into the nest?"

I shrugged. "It all depends on the relationship between worms and shamblers-on the relationship between these worms and these shamblers," I corrected myself. "Maybe these worms are guardians, maybe they're homesteaders, or invaders."

"They've found the entrance," reported Reilly.

The gastropedes had followed the trail of the prowler directly to the opening of the tunnel. The mouth of the nest beckoned. The dark hole was deep and red and wet-looking; it was surrounded by a tangle of limp brown vines. The worms cocked their eyes at each other and chittered noisily.

"That's gotta be a language," muttered Reilly.

"If it is, it's a language with large pieces missing," I said. "Oakland's never been able to assign any but the most rudimentary emotional indices to these noises."

"Still-" said Reilly.

"For what it's worth, I agree with you. There's obviously some kind of communication at work here."

"Telepathy?"

"That's too easy an answer," I said. "I think we're missing the obvious. Maybe they have ultrasonics or something-I don't know. But you might as well say it's magic as telepathy; it's a catch-all answer that closes the door on every other possibility."

Reilly's response was a noncommittal grunt. He scratched his ear unhappily. He could be sourly unpleasant when he was frustrated-I could see it happening. We weren't getting any answers here, only more questions.

"Uh-oh. There they go," said Willig.

Three fuzzy pink worms, their fur sparkling like velvet, slid smoothly into the soft red lips of the nest. The sexual symbolism was inescapable. I found myself simultaneously intrigued and repelled.

"Siegel, watch your screens. All three worms are on their way down."

"No problem. Sher Khan is armed and ready."

"Don't fire unless you're attacked. I want to see how the worms behave at the bottom of the nest."

"I heard you the first time, Captain," Siegel replied.

"I know you did. I also know how eager you are to score your first kill." I straightened up and looked around the cabin of the van. "This applies to all of you-we've got an opportunity here to learn more about the Chtorrans in one mission than we've learned in the past five years. Let's not screw it up. Let's have this be a textbook case on how to do it right. All that machinery out there and down in the nest, that's expendable. Unless our own lives are directly in danger, I don't want us doing anything hostile. We've got an EMP-charge in the prowler. We'll detonate it only after we've been picked up-"

I knew they didn't like what they were hearing. The fact that I felt it necessary to make such a speech implied superiority, distrust, disrespect, and a perception that they didn't fully comprehend the responsibility of their jobs. What they didn't know, was that I was speaking more for the benefit of the autolog module in the tank's black box than for theirs. But I couldn't tell them that. Not here, anyway. Maybe later.

In a softer tone, I added, "Personally, I'd much rather monitor this nest for a few months to see how the things inside it develop, but we don't have the luxury of that option. You all know what our standing orders say. 'You are directed to destroy any and every concentration of alien infestation that presents either an immediate or long-term ecological threat'-that means everything Chtorran." I quoted the other half of the orders: " 'All investigations of the Chtorran ecology, all studies, all observations, can only be undertaken where such actions do not interfere with the military mandate of the mission.' In this situation, we have that opportunity. Let's please make the most of it. In the long run, it could be the most important thing we do here. Any questions?"

There were none. Good. "Reilly?"

"The worms are nearly halfway down. We have a remote in the tunnel to monitor traffic. We should be seeing them pass any minute now … Uh-huh, here comes the first one. Uh-oh-" Reilly clucked his tongue unhappily at the display. "-Shit. The bastard found the probe." One of the gastropedes had picked up the remote in its mandibles. We were looking straight down a Chtorran maw. It looked like concentric circles of teeth all the way down the creature's throat.

"This is not a view I want to see more than once in my lifetime," Reilly remarked.

"It's not a view you're likely to see more than once," I replied. "Hit the taser button," I suggested. "See if it drops the unit."

Reilly tapped his keyboard-the image flickered once, then the screen went suddenly blank. He checked the system analysis display with a sad shake of his head. "The unit's dead," he reported. "Crunched."

"Mm," I said thoughtfully. "I hope that worm bit the probe in anger. I'd really hate to discover that Chtorrans consider high voltage shocks a delicious spice."

"Maybe it's the same response we saw in the slugs-" Siegel suggested over the comlink.

I adjusted my headset. "Say again?"

"The slugs in the nest. When startled or distressed, attack. The probe hurts the worm, the worm bites it. Maybe these things don't have fear. At least, not as we know it. They don't know how to panic and run, all they can do is bite."

"Hm. Now that's an interesting thought. I wish we had more statistical evidence. Underline that in the log, will you? It merits a lot more investigation."

"Will do."

Reilly pointed to the schematic of the nest. The worms were moving down the tunnel again. "They're almost to the bottom."

"Now we find out if they're tenants or landlords or whatever-" The displays in front of us changed to show the interior of the nest. The first of the worms came sliding wetly down out of the tunnel. Most of the pink frosting on its fur had rubbed off on the way down; only a few sticky streaks remained on its sides, leaving the colors of its stripes showing bright and clear. The worm was flaring an angry red. Acrimonious patches stippled its sides; strident orange clashed with violet and purple intensities. It looked furious. It came thrashing down into the main chamber of the nest, an enraged horror. The second worm poured in after it. It too wore the same violent colors. The last gastropede-the smallest of the three-was not quite as vividly striped, but the combination of colors painted across its sides was essentially the same.

"Not a happy-looking group of campers, are they-?" Reilly said.

Before I could answer-