9
A Rhyme for Jason?
"A limerick is a primitive art form; it starts with a pair o'dactyls."
-SOLOMON SHORT
The problem was, I couldn't find a second rhyme for Jason. Basin? Pacin'?
Just south of the Dixon and Mason?
No. This was obviously not going to be one of my more noteworthy efforts.
Disgracin'? Maybe:
- but I doubt that he would be chastened.
Dammit. Why couldn't Delandro have been named Chuck? Chuck, I could rhyme.
This was the worst part of being captured. The waiting. The boredom. At least Loolie had a coloring book to keep her occupied.
I had given up trying to keep track of where we were going. We had wound around through so many twisty back roads, up and down so many rumpled brown hills, that I was beginning to wonder if we were still in California-or even on Earth. Large patches of ground were covered with red ivy-like creepers and purplish vines hung from many of the trees we passed. Blue and white tufts of something furry clustered in shady patches. The higher we climbed into the spiny mountains, the more pronounced the Chtorran vegetation became. There were stiff black spiky things, growing tall and slender; their trunks were smooth and naked-looking; I couldn't name them. There were tall puffy mounds dotting a mottled pasture-nests of nerve-burners; bright red insect-things the size of crabs. There were fields of mandala bushes and broad slopes of tall gray grass. There were curling hedges of purple and orange thorns. And there were bat-like things the size of eagles gliding high in the sky. We were leaving the human world behind.
It almost could have been pretty, except-somehow, the Chtorran life forms looked stark and malevolent; their growth was malignant. Cancerous. Where the infestation was at its thickest and reddest, the landscape looked diseased; it looked sick. The alien ecology leeched at everything it touched: the purple vines encircled the trees with spiky tendrils and sucked at the life within, the red ivy on the ground was bordered with brown patches of dying grass, and there were dead cows lying in a field of rust. Pink puffballs the size of tumbleweeds rolled across the hills, bounced across the highway.
The disaster was complete. The sky was yellow and smoky. Even the clouds were tinged with blood. The air smelled sulfurous---except when it was worse. As we climbed higher, the pungent and cloying odors that came in through the windows of the van were so thick as to be nauseating.
After a while, I couldn't look any more.
I closed my eyes and tried to make up limericks. They might control my body, but I was still in control of my mind.
There was an old witch, name of Jessie
whose crotch was all smelly and messie.
Um....
Jessie was even harder to rhyme than Jason.
No. I had to find a rhyme. I wouldn't be defeated. My sanity might depend on this. I had to have a way to resist.
She enjoyed a good squirm with an alien worm
But if I used that, I'd have to make up something else for Jason. Jessie. Jessie. What rhymes with Jessie?
- and got stains all over her dressie!
All right, so now what could I do with Jason?: What I really wanted to do was kill him, Painfully. With my bare hands, if I could.
I thought about that for a while.
It was much more satisfying than limericks. For a while.
The convoy jolted off the pavement onto a dirt road that twisted impossibly through dirty black brush. It was almost dusk. We'd been traveling half a day.
"We're almost there!" said Loolie. My gut began to tighten again.
It was the not knowing that was driving me crazy. Were they going to torture me? Feed me to the worms? Put me in a sensory deprivation tank? I'd heard stories about the Tribes.
We rattled across a wooden bridge over a dry gully, up an incline and down into a sheltered bowl of land, shadowed by leafy willows and black oaks. The only obvious sign of Chtorran infestation were purple and red veils hanging from some of the trees. They looked like cobwebs, or silk. They had a shimmery look where the sunlight still sparkled off of them.
As we circled down into the clearing, I could see that the camp itself was a ragtag collection of vehicles, motor homes, trucks, trailers, and collapsible dwellings scattered around the parking lot of an old abandoned motel. Some of the buildings showed signs of recent repair work.
The Tribe was already pouring out of the woods and the buildings, shouting and rushing to greet us. It was joyous pandemonium! I heard someone calling, "Come on! The young god is back!" A pack of children and dogs came scrambling and running out ahead of the rest, all screaming and yelping like wild baboons-and there were chittering bunnydogs, and those other naked-bunnydog things too, bouncing and careening along with them-followed by at least thirty or forty adults and teenagers, many of them carrying weapons.
The children were dirty, and many of them were naked, but none of them looked hungry or unhappy; they varied in age from toddlers to pre-teens. They came charging like warriors, the dogs barking and yapping around them. The dogs were a mixed assortment of unpleasant-looking canines; they looked like leftovers from the pound, the dregs of the species.
The various bunnydogs and bunnydog-things were just as varied; there were at least a dozen of them caught up in the rush, waddle-hopping like crazy as they tried to keep up. They bounced across the ground like an avalanche of rats and rabbits, yipping and squealing and gobbling like the children, but no two of them shared the same size, shape, or color. They ranged from a deep ruddy brown to a pale, almost-white shade of pink; there were even a couple of blue-purple and orange-yellow bunnydogs. Some were as small as toddlers; others were at least as large as six-year-olds, a meter or more. Most of them looked like parodies of the bunnydogs I had met last year. There were several small weasely-looking ones and a couple of very fat drunken-looking ones, and one in particular-a ghastly red, ratty-looking creature, half the height of a man-looked like a cat's nightmare.
And the humans too were just as assorted: tall, short, fat, thin, black, white, yellow, old, young.
Even before the convoy had come to a full stop, the chattering people and animals-and things-were already surrounding the vehicles, clustering excitedly to help unload and hear the news. All of them were abuzz with questions-but first they backed up politely to give Orrie room to dismount. The back of the truck slapped down into the dirt to make a wide ramp and Orrie flowed down and into the cheering crowd. They surged in close, oohing and aahing and patting at him affectionately.
"Whhhhrrrr!" said Orrie. "Whhrr-whhhhrrrrrr!"
It almost sounded like a purr. I'd never heard a worm make that sound before; but then, I'd never seen a worm that had acted like this one either. Delandro jumped down out of the truck next and the crowd surged in to hug him and kiss him too, men and women alike. Loolie and Jessie and Marcie burst happily out of the van to join them. I stayed where I was, trying as hard as I could to be invisible.
"All right, all right," said Jason, caught up in the crush, laughing with delight at being the center of so much attention, "let's get some of this gear unloaded first, okay!" But his words were swept away in the roar of greetings.
The younger children were all squealing in delight. I heard cries of "What did you bring us?" and "Did you get any candy?" The adults were also shouting back and forth, exchanging greetings and good-natured jibes.
I wanted to be afraid, but I couldn't. Mostly, I felt-left out. Most of the people here looked disappointingly mundane, and they acted as solid as a community of New Christian farmers. Many of the men wore beards, and most of the women had their hair pulled back in neat efficient ponytails, or close-cropped like the men. They all wore jeans and T-shirts, or jeans and flannel shirts, or jeans and sweatshirts, or jeans and no shirt at all-but all the adults looked clean. For some reason, that seemed important. The other two worms were climbing down from their truck now. The crowd greeted them enthusiastically too. Their affection and respect was obvious; but it was equally obvious that Orrie was held in special regard.