A Day for Damnation twatc-2 Page 25

  Fletcher checked that the passage was clear, then closed the panel behind Tiny. Lucky was now alone in the chamber. It twitched its hands impatiently-the same gesture that Tiny had used the first time I'd been here. The big worm slid up to the panel that concealed the rabbit puzzle and waited.

  "You want to notice what Lucky's doing now," said Fletcher. "Every time we change the puzzle, we also put it behind a different panel. Lucky already knows exactly where this one is going to appear."

  Lucky looked up at the glass then and issued a rapid, highpitched trill. There were chuckles in the auditorium. "That's as clear a hurry-up as I've ever heard," someone remarked. Lucky repeated its cry, then returned its attention eagerly to the panel.

  "What you're seeing now," said Fletcher, "is a very clear indication that the worm has learned not only to anticipate, but to actually enjoy these tests."

  She opened the panel for Lucky then. The puzzle had been reset, this time with a spotted black-and-white rabbit. The rabbit was trembling in the cage.

  Lucky burbled in delight and moved immediately to the panel. It unfolded its arms from its upper back, reached forward over its eyes, and began to work the knobs and switches of the puzzle with a swift deliberation. There was no uncertainty in the animal's movements.

  Almost immediately, the puzzle chimed and the glass case popped open. There were gasps in the auditorium. Fletcher looked satisfied. So did Lucky. The worm grabbed the rabbit and popped it into its mouth. Again, the wet slobbery crunching.

  Fletcher opened the passage to Lucky's cell, waited to see that Lucky was returning to its cage, closed the panel, and then closed the curtains of the theater. She paused for just the briefest moment, as if studying her notes, then looked out over her audience. The scientists looked excited. The soldiers looked grim. I could understand both reactions.

  "There you have it," Fletcher said. "A very clear demonstration that the worms do communicate." She added, "I want to stress the importance of what you've seen here. Without this demonstration, a very good case could be made that a large part of the behavior of these creatures is instinctive and ritualized. We now have proof that they're capable of a lot more. How much more, we're still investigating.

  "We do know that the communication between the two specimens-the transmission of information about the puzzle-occurs in the communion state. When the worms have visual and auditory access to each other, but are prevented by physical barriers from achieving communion, the transmission of information does not occur. It only occurs in the presence of communion.

  "But. . ." and she paused to consider her next remarks carefully, "we still don't know what the mechanism of transmission is. We have extensively analyzed the chirps and trills of the creaturesand there is not enough patterning or modulation in the cries to indicate even a rudimentary language. At most, the chirruping calls are emotional indicators. We have identified a few calls to which we have assigned values corresponding to curiosity, interest, delight, impatience, anger, rage, anguish and despair; but we have not found any calls, patterns of calls, phonemes or patterns of phonemes, that are ever repeated with any correspondence to events in the physical universe.

  "We have tested for chemical communication. The gastropedes have a very sophisticated set of pheromones which vary with their moods-but again, there is no pattern, and the bandwidth of the channel is too narrow to carry the necessary transmission. You don't send stereovision images by Morse code.

  "We have measured the radio emissions of the worms, and the gastropedes are low-level transmitters. While the bandwidth of this particular channel is wide enough, all that we have been able to detect so far is static and noise. It may be that worms in the wild are capable of radio transmission, but these specimens are unconscious to it. We've tried broadcasting signals to them, but the only effect we've been able to produce is a nervous rigidity. It looks like-but we're not yet willing to say it is-a kind of insane terror."

  She looked up at someone in the back of the room. "No-hold your questions for a minute. This may answer some of them. We wondered ourselves why the worms would have this potential if they don't use it. Our best guess is that it's a byproduct of the way the creature's nervous system is structured, and that it's too recent an evolutionary event for the species to have turned it into either an advantage or disadvantage. Just because the Chtorrans have a half-billion-year evolutionary head start on us doesn't mean that their evolution has stopped. In fact, we are very likely seeing their ecology in a state of severe chaos as it tries to adapt to this world. "But I've strayed from the subject-the mechanism for communication. We've noticed that the worms begin every communion by touching their antennae at some point. We're not sure what this means either, but we've monitored the electrical pulses at the creatures' antennae and found some patterning-but again, it's not a communication pattern. It's too rhythmic and there's not enough variation. It looks a lot like an alpha wave.

  "But we do know that communication is occurring during communion. We've attached sensors to both animals and discovered that all of their body cycles synchronize during the act. When that moment of synchronicity occurs, the creatures demonstrate a rigid and frozen posture. Our best present hypothesis is that the mechanism of gastropede communication is multi-channel. The trilling cries might indicate the context of the information to be transmitted. The radio noise might contain some modulation we've missed. The physical gestures may mean something, as might the creatures' pheromones. We really don't know."

  A hand from one of the scientists went up. "If you could identify the channel of communication, would it be possible to jam it in some way?"

  Fletcher shrugged. "Maybe. It depends on the channel. We've identified the problem here. We're still a long way from the answer. "

  "Can you give us a time frame?" asked one of the general's aides.

  "No, I can't," Dr. Fletcher replied.

  The general, with a thick Southern accent, spoke up then. "We wuh told, Doctuh Fletchuh, that you had infuhmation to present heah today that could be of vital military importance. Was that it? The wuhms talk to each othuh?"

  "Yes, General, that was the point of the demonstration." She met his gaze with equanimity. "Was there something else?"

  "Ah'm sorry, ma'am, Ah guess Ah would have preferred somethin' of real military importance. Like a weapon."

  That was a mistake. Fletcher's eyes flashed angrily. "General," she said, looking directly at him, "I know you're here for answers. I wish I'had them to give to you. But right now, the very best this section can do is give you intelligence about the enemy; there's still too much we don't know about the worms; we still have a long way to go before we can start suggesting ecological countermeasures."

  She raised her voice to include the rest of the room. "Listen, the purpose of these demonstrations is to give all of you a better idea of what you're up against." And then she focused on the general again. "I don't claim to be knowledgeable in military procedures. I'm a scientist. But I asked you to be here because I think this could be important for you to know that our enemy is capable of a very sophisticated level of information transmission. It may be possible for the worms to spread the word about our procedures almost as fast as we disseminate our information about theirs."

  The general smiled broadly, and a little too easily. He stood up and bowed a gentleman's bow. "Ma'am," he said with a shade too much graciousness, "Ah was raised to nevah ahgue with a lady. So ah'll just accept all of that at face value. Ah'm sure that the wuhk you're all doin' heah is very important to the war effort. Ah guess ah just wanted to see somethin' a little more immediate, a little more he'pful to mah own needs. So if there's nothin' else you want to show us, we do thank you for yoah time, but we do need to be gettin' back to ouah desks-" The man was smarmy. He'd just blown her whole demonstration right out of the water. He nodded politely and started for the exit. His aides followed quickly-as did most of the other men and women in uniforms. Several of those in lab coats assumed the session was
over then and also started up the aisles.

  Dr. Fletcher looked annoyed and frustrated. "If there are no further questions-" she began, but nobody was listening any more. Most of the audience was already filing out the door.

  She switched off her console, took a long breath, and said, "Shit!"

  THIRTY-SIX

  DUKE HAD once given me a very interesting compliment.

  It was after a burn, after the debriefing, after the usual bull and beer session; he and I had retired to the office to "hoist a jar" privately.

  Duke didn't usually say much after a burn; he just sat and sipped. This time, however, he looked like he had something on his mind, so I nursed my drink and waited.

  He had turned his chair to face the window and put his feet up on the little filing cabinet. He was holding his glass against his forehead, as if he had a headache and was enjoying the coolness of the ice.

  "You know," he said, "you really impressed me this afternoon."

  "Uh-thanks. What'd I do?"

  "Amy Burrell."

  "Oh," I said. "Yeah." I'd been wondering if he was going to say anything about that.

  "You did right," Duke said. He lowered the glass from his forehead and glanced over at me.

  I shrugged. "If you say so."

  "I do say so," he said. "You didn't have a choice. You've known it for months that she's your weak link. I've seen it in your planning. And you knew it this afternoon. You did what you had to do."

  "But I still feel bad about decking her."

  "If you hadn't, it would be worse next time. Or it would be someone else. Think you can knock down Jose Moreno?"

  "No way."

  "Well, you'll probably never have to," Duke said. "Not now. Not after today."

  "I hope so," I said. I shook my head. "But I keep seeing the look on her face-"

  "You mean the tears? That's just the racket she runs on men. That crap doesn't work on officers."

  "No, I mean when I jerked her back to her feet and shoved her at the dome. If she'd been carrying a weapon instead of a camera, I'd be dead now."

  "That's precisely why she's carrying a camera instead of a gun. Because she can't be trusted with one." He sipped at his drink thoughtfully, then added, "Let me tell you something about integrity, Jim. It's like a balloon. It doesn't matter how good the rubber is; the air still goes out the hole."

  "Uh ... sure," I said. I still wasn't sure where he was going with this.

  "Integrity means airtight. No leaks. No holes in the balloon. A hundred percent."

  "So, what you're saying is-?"

  "What you did was appropriate. You closed up a hole. It was a good lesson for all of them. You showed them that there's no alternative to doing the job. Your team will be a lot tighter the next time out. You'll see the difference."

  "Thanks," I said, and I meant it. "But the truth is, I did it without thinking. I just got pissed off at her continual whining."

  Duke raised his glass in my direction. "Absolutely. And you administered the appropriate response. I congratulate you. I salute you." And he drank to my health.

  I remembered that now. I wondered what kind of a salute Duke would give me if I punched out a general.

  Well ...

  At least, I could think about it.

  I strode down to the front of the room and said, "Hi."

  Fletcher looked up at me with a weary smile. "Hi, yourself." I plunged right in. "I have a question for you."

  "The answer is probably `I don't know.' What's the question?"

  "Well, your demonstration here was very impressive-despite General Whatsisname's reaction-"

  "General Poole."

  "That was General Poole? I didn't know they were so hard up for generals."

  Fletcher allowed herself a hint of a smile. "What's your question, James?"

  "Well, I was remembering something you said before, about the gastropedes' fur. You said it wasn't fur."

  "Right. It's nerve endings."

  "Well-that's my question. When two worms go into communion, isn't it possible that they're experiencing direct nerve-to-nerve contact?"

  She nodded. "They very definitely are."

  "Well-couldn't that be your mechanism? Maybe they're passing nerve impulses directly from one to the other."

  She raised an eyebrow at me. "You think so?"

  "You don't think much of the idea, do you?"

  "As a matter of fact," Fletcher admitted, "I like the idea very much. It would explain a lot of things."

  "But-?" I prompted.

  "But-" she agreed, "it was one of the first things we tested for when we started putting Lucky and Tiny together. And it was one of the first hypotheses we had to discard. We kept finding arguments against it. Too many arguments."

  "Really?"

  "Really." She glanced at her watch. "All right, I'll have to give you the brief version. Here's what we know. Most of the Chtorran nerve-strands are sensory receptors of one type or another. We've identified at least seventeen distinct types of nerve-strands-different functions, different shapes of cross section, different colors, and so on. Each of those types are further divisible into categories of shade, length, and specialization of function. So far, we've identified over five hundred different sub-categories of nerve-strand. We presume that there is considerable overlap of function among the strand types, but we don't have the people available to do the necessary research.

  "We do know that most of the strands are sensory receptors of one type or another-but maybe one strand in a thousand is a `tickler nerve.' It's a little transmitter; it can trigger any nerve it touches. That accounts for the tingly feeling of the fur. So, yes-it does look like a very good mechanism for communication. Pat yourself on the back for recognizing the possibility. Now here's the bad news. It can't possibly work. Do you want a minute to figure it out yourself?"

  I thought about it. "It's a connection problem?"

  "Not quite. The worms have no problem connecting. When they're in communion, they're connecting at least twenty percent of their surface area. But you're on the right track. It's a networking problem."

  "Huh?"

  "When you plug one computer into another, how many lines are you connecting?"

  "Just one-oh, I see what you mean. There are one thousand and twenty-four individual channels in a standard lux-cable."

  "Right. Now suppose you were working with wires instead of light and you had to connect each wire by hand-and suppose also that you didn't know which one went where. What are the chances of you plugging each of those lines into the right socket?"

  "None, and less than that," I said. "There're billions of wrong combinations, and only one right one."

  "That particular problem," she said, "would take longer than the life of this universe to solve. Now, raise it to the power of itself, and you have the odds against two worms forming a direct nerve-to-nerve contact for communication. Don't take my word for it," she added. "Run a simulation on the nearest terminal."

  "No, it's all right. I'll take your word for it. But couldn't the worms have some kind of internal decoding?"

  "We thought of that too," Fletcher said. "We had two fellows from the Minsky Foundation looking into that very problem. They said it was possible only if the creature was almost entirely brain and very little else. So far, we haven't found the evidence of that. Have you had the opportunity to see any of the photo-isotomographs?"

  "I've seen the demonstrations, but I haven't had the opportunity to poke around on my own." A photo-isotomograph was a three-dimensional map. Easy to make. You thin-slice a frozen worm, taking a picture of the cross section after each slice. You store all the pictures in a computer-the computer holds the data as a three-dimensional array that can then be explored as a visual display. You can examine any part of the worm's body, inside or out, from any angle. With a joystick you can move around through the entire body, tracing the paths of blood vessels, nerves and other structures. So far, most of what we'd seen still fell into th
e category of "other structures." There were organs inside the worms with no apparent function. Were they evolutionary leftovers, the equivalent of the human appendix-or were they something else, on biological standby and still waiting to be activated?

  "I'll get you lab time if you want," Fletcher said. "If you can prove they have the computing power to do that kind of encoding, I'll dance naked with a big pink worm."

  "You're that sure, huh?"

  "I'm that sure, yes."

  "Hm-" I said. "But that still raises another question-"

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

  I said, "If not for communication, then what are the tickler nerves for?"

  Fletcher smiled. "Stimulation. Very intense stimulation. Probably very sexual. Communication is a kind of hug. The density of the strands, plus the tickler nerves, must make it a very intense experience. You saw the rigidity of their `climax,' didn't you?"

  I nodded, but I asked, "Now is that one a theory or a fact?"

  A flicker of annoyance crossed her face. I was immediately sorry I'd asked the question; it was the kind of thing General Poole might have said. But Dr. Fletcher let it pass. "It's an extrapolation," she corrected. "In our own ecology, we know that as life-forms become more sophisticated, the sexual experiences become more intense. So do the rituals, so do the mechanisms of communication. Humans are the best example of all. The worms may be a good halfbillion years further down the evolutionary line than anything that's evolved on Earth, but it doesn't mean they're necessarily more intelligent; it does imply several orders of magnitude of adaptation. Who knows? The worms could be what Terran earthworms might evolve into. You ought to know that sexual reproduction not only encourages evolution, it also self-selects for more sexuality in the species. "

  I grinned. "Okay, I concede the point."