"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 rolled 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.