Lizard said, "That was when Captain McCarthy put a prearranged pickup signal into the network and I pulled him out of Colorado."
The general did not look convinced.
It didn't matter. The president spoke then. "Captain," she said. "May I ask you a question?"
"Ma'am?"
"You've given us the bare bones, but I know that there's a lot more to it than you've told us. I've been looking over your file. It's obvious that you've been through a great deal of personal anguish here. Is that correct?"
"Yes, Ma'am. That is."
"Thank you. Now, I'm going to ask you something, and I want you to try to put aside your personal feelings. As difficult as that may be, it's necessary. I need you to be an impartial observer of your own experience, so you can give me an accurate answer."
"I'll do my best, Ma'am."
"I'm sure you will. Here's the question, Captain. In your experience, are the renegades still human'?"
"Um . . . Ma'am, I've seen them in all different kinds of situations. I've seen them celebrate birthday parties for their children, giving the kids worm-back rides. Have you ever seen a worm in a party hat? If that was all I'd seen, I'd say yes, the renegades have found a way to preserve their humanity and incorporate the worms into their lives. But that isn't all I've seen." I stopped and cleared my throat. "May I have a glass of water please?"
An aide provided a pitcher and a glass. She filled the glass and handed it to me.
"Thank you," I said.
She smiled quickly and then got out of the way.
I continued. I said, "The other things I've seen-I'd prefer not to talk about. I'd prefer not to think about them. I'd prefer not to even have them in my head. But they are in my head, and I'm afraid they always will be. I've seen humans directing worms against other humans as if they were military weapons. I've seen humans sorting children into pens for use as food for worms. I've seen-" My throat tightened then, and my voice choked. I put my hand up to cover my mouth, then my eyes. "I've seen my own children-"
And then the tears came.
Lizard handed me a tissue. I turned away from the table for a moment. I could feel her hand on my shoulder. "It's all right, Jim. Let it out," she said. "It's all right."
After a moment, I turned back. "Madam President. You've asked me to be impartial. That's almost impossible for me. From what I've seen of the renegades-I'd have to say this: There's a point at which their identification with the worms is so complete that they've lost touch with the rest of humanity.
"When we captured the tribe that invaded Family, the question that we needed to resolve was not one of guilt. That wasn't in doubt. It was the question of response. What do we do about it? And what it boiled down to was this very question: Do we treat the renegades as human or worm? The answer we came up with at family was that by the very act of collaboration, the renegades had turned in their humanity. I don't know if that's the answer you want, but it's the one that was true at Family. And it's still true for me today. I don't think that traitors to the human species deserve any better than any of our other enemies."
I sat down.
"Thank you, Captain. I think you've definitely made your point." The president looked uneasy. Lizard sat down again too. She turned back to me, put a hand on my knee and whispered, "You did fine."
I shook her hand away and stared at the floor and wondered what I had done. Who had I betrayed this time?
62
A Small Piece of Truth
"Those who abhor history are compelled to rewrite it."
-SOLOMON SHORT
"Come on," said Lizard. She poked me out of my chair. "I'll buy you dinner." She pushed me quickly toward the door.
Two of the men in uniforms started toward us on an interception course, but Lizard just shook her head and kept on guiding me out. "Colonel Tirelli!" one of them called. She let the door cut him off.
They followed us out into the corridor. "Colonel!"
"Just keep moving," she said to me.
They were hurrying to catch up to us. General Wainright was sixtyish, red-faced, overweight, and out of breath. He spoke in exclamation points. The colonel looked like he'd been stamped from a mold.
The general said, "You're not going to get away with this, you know!"
"I don't know what you mean, sir. Now, if you'll excuse us, I have another appointment."
"You cooked that conference. You stacked the deck." The colonel grabbed her arm and stopped her where she stood. Lizard looked at his hand on her elbow.
"Should I deck him?" I asked. I was already stepping forward.
"You do and you're a dead man," the colonel said.
"I'm already dead," I replied; he didn't understand.
Lizard touched my arm. "I'll handle him, Jim." She looked at the man. "Colonel? How many of those fingers do you want broken?"
The general nodded at his aide. "Let go of her."
The colonel did so. The general said, "We know what you did. We know how you scheduled your flights. You've been pulling teams out of Colorado for a year. You deliberately allowed certain areas of infestation to get beyond manageable limits. You wanted to go in there with the nukes, didn't you?"
Lizard looked at him. "General, I've said everything I have to say to the President of the United States."
"You might be able to fool her!" blurted the colonel. I was sorry I wasn't going to be allowed to hit him. "That old grandmother's just a flunky for the Agency anyway."
"She's the commander in chief! By the highest law of this land. Maybe that's something you don't understand," Lizard said. She turned to the general. "This man-" She jerked her thumb at the colonel, "-is dangerously close to talking sedition! If you don't report him, I will!" Her eyes were blazing. She turned and stalked down the hall. I hurried to fallow after.
As we stepped into the elevator, I glanced back to see if they were following. They weren't. The elevator doors slid shut and Lizard burst out laughing.
"Huh? What's so funny'?"
She was punching the top button. "Everything. The worms are in the suburbs of Denver. General Wainright wants to drop the bomb-so do we-and we're at each other's throats because neither side wants to be left holding the bag if it doesn't work."
"Do we want to drop the bomb?"
"No," said Lizard. "We don't. It's just the only thing left that we haven't tried. After that, all we have left are fallback plans, and the president has authorized those too. We might have to abandon the whole planet."
"Huh? How-?"
The elevator doors opened and we came out into the security cage. Lizard put her palm on the clearance panel and the doors slid open. As we took the escalators down to the parking garage, Lizard explained, "If we have to, we can evacuate to the moon and the LS stations-by the way, Alpha was eighty-five percent complete when the plagues hit; it won't be too big a job to make it livable. It already holds ten percent atmosphere. We just have to send up enough gas to bring it up to livable pressure. It's doable. We know that there are still a hundred and eleven survivors in the Lunar stations. I don't know how they're hanging on, but they are. We can learn a lot from them. We estimate we can salvage maybe ten to fifteen percent of our ecology, plus germ plasm of maybe another ten or fifteen percent. Figure we'll lose the rest. We've already begun to evacuate the World Ecology Bank. We may do that if we evacuate the planet or not."
"How many people?" I asked.
"About five hundred thousand. And sperm samples from ten million more. The species' genetic heritage will be saved."