A Day for Damnation twatc-2 Page 5

  The chime sounded. The cage popped open. There were gasps in the room.

  "Forty-three seconds," Dr. Fletcher said dryly. Tiny was already eating the rabbit. The sound was hideous. I remembered the feeding room in Denver. And the dogs. And the people who liked to watch.

  Dr. Fletcher waited in silence until Tiny was finished, then touched another button on her podium and opened the passage back to its cell. The worm slid obediently into it. She remarked, "We've found Tiny to be surprisingly cooperative. It seems to appreciate the discipline." She checked that the passage was clear, then closed the panel-and then the curtain.

  She looked calmly out over the room. "I think that pretty well answers the question: how intelligent is a worm? The answer is very. And they learn fast. As you have seen, incredibly so. Our tests with the second specimen confirm that Tiny's responses are not atypical. The other worm is even faster than Tiny-and as other specimens become available for testing, we expect to see the same facility in them as well.

  "We're beginning another set of tests next Monday, this time with a completely different type of problem. We're going to further explore the worms' ability to conceptualize. Conceptualization is the key to communication. We're clear that if the worms can conceptualize, they can communicate. But let me caution you, don't confuse conceptualization with sentience. Even a dog can conceptualize; Pavlov proved that. And I think most of you will grant that a dog is capable of a certain rudimentary level of communication. When I talk about communication with the worms, I'm talking about that dog-level of communication. I'm talking about taming.

  "And in fact, that's the very next question that has to be answered. How can we create a relationship with a worm so that it's willing to communicate? In other words, how do we domesticate a worm? Your consideration of this particular problem will be much appreciated." She glanced at her watch. "The discussion part of this session will take place this afternoon at fifteen hundred hours. Dr. Larson will be mediating. I thank you for your time and your attention."

  I went straight to the men's room and threw up.

  SEVEN

  I FOUND Dr. Fletcher in her office. She looked up as I came in. "Oh, McCarthy-how are you? Thanks for staying awake this morning." She studied me curiously. "Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine." I waved her off. "Just an upset stomach."

  "Mm hm," she said. "A lot of people have that problem after they see a worm eat."

  I let it pass. "I have a question for you."

  "Me answer is, `I don't know.' What's the question?" She glanced at her watch.

  "We gassed a nest of worms yesterday afternoon. Four of them. They were all tied together in a knot."

  She nodded. "Your videos came in last night."

  "Then you saw? Each time we pulled one off, they reacted as if we were breaking a connection."

  She frowned, she pressed her lips together. Finally, she pushed back from her terminal and swiveled to face me. She leaned forward intently. "Exactly what did it look like to you?"

  "It looked like-they were writhing in pain. They cried. It was an ... eerie sound. And two of them actually opened their eyes and looked at us. It was very disturbing," I admitted.

  "I'll bet. What do you think was happening?"

  "That's what I wanted to ask you."

  "I want your observations first," she said.

  "Well..." I said. "It looked like-I mean, the way they twisted and turned-it made me think of earthworms. Cut in half. Only this was a giant one, cut into four screaming pieces."

  "Mm," said Fletcher, noncommittally. "Interesting."

  "What do you think it was?"

  She shook her head. "I don't. The best thought anyone around here has had is that it was something sexual. Some kind of mating behavior perhaps. And that's why they reacted so strongly. How would you react if somebody interrupted you?"

  I blinked. "The worms have four sexes?"

  She laughed, a short sharp bark. "Hardly. At least you can't prove it by their chromosomes. So far, all the tissue samples we've examined are genetic nightmares-we have no idea what they're modeling-but we can identify the chromosome structures, and they seem to be pretty much identical from one specimen to the next. No X or Y chromosomes-or equivalents. By that evidence, the worms have only one sex. It's convenient, I guess; it doubles the chances of finding a date for Saturday night, but-it sounds boring. Unless of course you're another worm."

  "But-then that brings up another question-"

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

  "I'm interrupting something?"

  "Mm, sort of. I need to go into San Francisco-"

  "Huh? I thought the city was closed."

  "It is. To most people."

  "Oh."

  "But I'm on the Advisory," she explained.

  "Oh," I said again, disappointedly.

  Fletcher studied me speculatively. "Family member? Your mother? No-your father, right?"

  "My father," I nodded. "We never heard one way or the other. And, uh-I know this is silly-"

  "No, it isn't," she said.

  "-but my father was always such a... survivor. I just can't imagine him dead."

  "You think he's still alive somewhere?"

  "I... just wish I knew for certain. That's all."

  "Uh huh," she said. "The truth is, you want to go there and see for yourself. You think you can find him. Right?" She fixed me with a green-eyed gaze. Her manner was startlingly direct. It put me off-balance.

  I shrugged. "Yeah," I admitted.

  "Mm hm. You're not the first one, Lieutenant. I see it all the time. People don't believe until they see for themselves. Well, all right-"

  "Huh?"

  "You want to see San Francisco?" She rolled back to her terminal and started typing. "Let me get you a pass. McCarthy ... James Edward, Lieutenant-" She frowned at the screen. "When'd you get a purple heart?"

  "Denver. Remember?"

  "Oh, that."

  "Hey!" I protested. "I've still got scars. And a bad knee! And besides, it happened the day after I was commissioned. It's legal."

  "Hmp," she sniffed. "You ruined a perfectly good specimen."

  "It lived, didn't it-?"

  "Just barely," she said. "Have you ever seen a deranged worm?"

  "Lots of times-"

  "No. Those were normal. This one was deranged." Her fingers tapped at the keys-

  "Huh?"

  She stopped abruptly. "That's interesting."

  "What is?"

  "Uh-nothing really. I've seen it before. Part of your file is locked." She resumed typing.

  "Uh-that's right." I had a hunch what that was. Something to do with Uncle Ira. Colonel Ira Wallachstein. The late Colonel Ira Wallachstein. But I didn't explain.

  "All right," she said. "You're cleared-under my authority. So you have to behave yourself-and do what I tell you, all right?"

  "Right. "

  "Good. We'll make a human being out of you yet." She shrugged out of her lab coat and tossed it at a laundry bin. Underneath, she was wearing a dark brown jumpsuit. It matched the shade of her hair; it was good planning on either her part or the government's.

  I followed her to an elevator. She flashed a key-card at the scanner. The door chimed and slid open. The elevator dropped us downward; I couldn't tell how many floors though, there were no numbers to watch.

  Fletcher had to flash her card before two more doors, and then we were on a ramp leading down to the garage. "That one's mine," she said, pointing toward a jeep. How could she tell? They all looked alike to me. She walked around the front of the car while I climbed in the passenger side.

  "Why all this security?" I asked.

  She shook her head. "It's political, I think. Something to do with the Fourth World Alliance. We won't trade information until they open their borders to inspection teams. I think it's a mistake. In the long run, we're only hurting ourselves." She eased the jeep forward, and pointed it toward the exit. As we roll
ed out past the final security booth, she added in a quieter tone, "Things are very... cautious around here. Especially right now." She glanced over at me. "Mm, let me say it this way. The agency does appreciate the cooperation of the military-especially the Special Forcesbut, ah ... there is still a certain amount of individual chafing. The military has everything tied up a little too tight. We're all of us in a great big bag marked TOP SECRET."

  I considered what she said. She was being remarkably candid. It was a compliment to me. I replied carefully, "It certainly doesn't make sense from a scientific point of view. We should be sharing information, not hiding it."

  Fletcher looked like she wanted to agree. "It's Dr. Zymph's idea. She started out in Bio-War, you know; so her whole career has been about secrecy. I guess she still thinks it's necessary. But it makes it awfully hard to work." Abruptly, she added, "Sometimes I don't know what that woman is up to. She scares me."

  Dr. Zymph was the chairman of the Ecological Agency. I looked at Fletcher, surprised. "I thought you admired her."

  "I used to. But that was before she became a politician. I liked her better as a scientist."

  I didn't reply to that. Fletcher's comments bothered me. I'd first seen Dr. Zymph in action in Denver-and I'd been impressed by her. It was ... disconcerting to hear this.

  The road turned west and then northward. To our left was the metallic wash of San Francisco Bay. The sun was glinting oddly off the surface. The light struck colored sparks.

  "The water's a funny color," I said.

  "We had an episode of sea sludge," Fletcher said matter-of-factly. "We had to oil and burn it. The bay's still recovering."

  "Oh. "

  "We're waiting to see if it comes back. We think we may have licked it, but it's only a small victory."

  "Um-you said something before. About the worm in Denver. You said it was ... deranged. What did you mean by that?"

  "Well-wouldn't you be deranged if someone carved you up like that? You shot out its eyes, you turned its mouth, into jelly, and you broke both its arms. That does not make for a healthy world-view. And after its fur fell out, the poor thing went autistic-"

  "Its fur fell out?"

  "Oh, right. That report got squelched. You couldn't have seen it. As if its injuries weren't enough, the poor beast started throwing symptoms. We thought it was infected and put it on terramycin. Its fur came out in patches. It was an ugly sight; it really did look like a big red bristly worm."

  "All the fur came off?"

  She shook her head. "No, only the lighter-colored strands. You know that the fur is sensory nerves, don't you? We figured out what happened afterwards. Terramycin can damange human nervous tissue too. Apparently, the pink strands are extremely sensitive. Anyway-after that, the gastropede showed as much intelligence as a Terran earthworm. It just lay where it was and quivered and twitched." She shook her head again, remembering. "It was a very queasy thing to watch."

  "How come we didn't see that report? That could be a weapon!"

  Fletcher sighed and quoted, "`Information on ways to combat or resist the Chtorran infestation is not to be made available to any non-allied nations or their representatives.' That's the policy-at least until the Fourth World Alliance signs the Unification Treaty."

  "That doesn't make sense."

  "It does politically. When the worms-or whatever else-become too big a problem for the Fourth World member nations to handle by themselves, a signature on a paper might not seem too high a price for survival. Right now, they'd rather be right. Are you surprised?"

  "And you agree with it-?"

  She shook her head. "No, but I understand it. The Unification Powers are playing politics with the war. Did you expect us not to? Read your history. We have twenty years of grudges to work off. At least. So now, there are people who are willing to let the worms chew on the Fourth World Alliance for a while."

  "And in the meantime, the infestation gets a more solid foothold-?"

  "Right. Some people have their priorities way up their fundaments. Anyway," she added, "Terramycin would not be an effective weapon.

  "Why not?"

  "You wouldn't like the aftereffects. Two or three weeks later, the worm's fur started to come back in-only very dark. Mostly red and purple and black strands. That's when the worm started getting violent. The more dark fur came in, the more violent it became. Obviously, its perception of the world was shifting. We finally had to put it down, it was so badly deranged. We weren't sure we could contain it any longer." She clucked her tongue. "You think the worms are nasty now? Infect a few and see what happens."

  I didn't answer. It was too much to think about. I'd known the fur was a kind of nerve. Our gas had been based on that fact. But why should the type of nerve cells make a worm peaceful or violent? "Do you have anyone studying worm fur?" I asked.

  She shook her head. "I'd like to-but we're already overextended. There're about fifteen other areas we want to look at first."

  "It seems to me that it's important to the question of tamability"

  "Mm hm," she agreed. "That's why we're looking for albinos...."

  The jeep was slowing as it approached the Oakland Bay Bridge. Fletcher flashed her card at a scanner and the barricades slid open for us. There was a huge advisory sign hanging over the empty toll booths: BY ORDER OF THE MILITARY GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA, THE CITY OF SAN FRANCISCO IS HEREBY DECLARED A BLACK ZONE RESTRICTED AREA. ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK.

  "That's reassuring," I said as we rolled under it.

  "It's safe," she said.

  "What makes you so sure?"

  "I told you. I'm on the Advisory Board. San Francisco is currently zoned as unfit for anything but politics."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "It's another one of the Agency's good ideas. San Francisco could be a very good Safe City. It's surrounded on three sides by water. Unfortunately, there're a lot of ruins that have to be clearedand we've got militant preservationists second-guessing every lamppost. So, the governor locked them out. They pay me ten K a month to swear that the city's still a plague reservoir."

  "Is it?"

  "The truth is-yes, it is." We reached the crest of the bridge then and the city spread out before us-what was left of it. The sight was ghastly. San Francisco was a skeleton. The city had been gutted. The stump of the Transamerica Tower gaped like a broken tooth. Coit Tower still stood, but it was blackened by fire. I didn't recognize many other buildings. Where they should have been there was rubble and ruin. "Oh, my God-" I choked on the words.

  "I know," she agreed.

  "I've seen the pictures," I gasped. "But-I had no idea-this is horrible."

  "It gets everybody that way, the first time. I still get a tight throat when I come across the bridge."

  "There's... nothing left."

  "Firestorm," she said. The single word explained everything. Fletcher unlocked the steering wheel and pulled it into position before her, putting the jeep back on manual control. Autopilots were fine on paved roads. They had problems with rubble. We rolled down off the bridge in an eerie silence.

  "Do you remember City Hall?" she asked.

  "Uh huh. There was a big plaza in front."

  "It's still there," she said. "But not much of City Hall."

  She steered carefully through the steel and brick canyons of lower Market Street. The fires had burned themselves out here. But even so-there were places where the buildings looked blasted, even melted from the heat. I noticed a sign that said, SAN FRANCISCO WARLOCK ADMINISTRATION-and wondered if there were any warlocks left in California at all.

  We'd thought the plagues were over. We'd come down from the hills, out of our hiding places. We thought we had vaccines. The government said it was safe. We had all the best excuses to return to the cities.

  But the plagues weren't over, and the vaccines only worked sometimes, and the cities still weren't safe. The plagues came back stronger than ever. There was panic. There were fires. There was a firestorm. And when it wa
s over, San Francisco was gone. It was like driving through a graveyard.

  "I thought you said the military was working over here," I said.

  "Most of the work is still off the corridor," Fletcher said. "And a lot of it is being done by robots." Suddenly, she pointed. "Look, there-"

  "What?" And then I saw. She was pointing at a zombie. She slowed the jeep.

  He was papery and thin-naked, except for a ragged blanket he wore like a poncho. There was almost no flesh at all on his bones. He looked like he was a hundred years old; it was impossible to guess what his real age might have been-he was gray and gaunt; his white hair hung down to his shoulders in a greasy mat.

  The zombie's face looked mechanically animated; the expression was curiously empty, but the features were in constant motion. The mouth worked continually. The jaw floated up and down, releasing a thin dribble of spittle. The blackened tongue stuck out absently, like a retarded child's, then pulled in again. The cheeks sucked in and puffed out. The face moved as if no one wore it any more. It looked like a fish sucking at the glass wall of the aquarium.

  The zombie turned and looked at us then-and for just an instant it was as if whoever might have once lived inside that body was struggling to animate it once again. The expression became momentarily curious, the eyelids fluttered like trapped moths. And then the gaze went confused again. He seemed to be fading in and out of focus-and he had trouble balancing himself as well. He caught himself on the front of the jeep and stared through the windshield, shifting back and forth between Fletcher and myself. He blinked and blinked again as he stared at us. His face wrinkled in puzzlement.

  "He looks like he's trying to recognize us," I whispered.

  Fletcher nodded. "He can't. He's lost his timebinding ability."

  "Huh?"

  "A zombie exists only in the present. He only knows something exists if he's looking at it."

  As if in confirmation, the zombie's puzzlement was turning to pain. He looked like he wanted to cry but didn't remember how.

  He fluttered his fingers toward Fletcher, then toward me-then abruptly he refocused on his hand, a gray claw-like thing on the end of his arm, as if he'd never seen it before. He forgot about us, blinking in confusion. His hand dropped. He turned and moved away without purpose, a soulless thing again. He shambled off toward the west.