"Background!" I shouted, mike off. "Dr. John Guyer. Harvard Research."
"It's already working," Lizard said. "Stand by-"
The metal voice of the LI cut her off. "Dr. John Guyer, Harvard Research Mission. Disappeared ten months ago. Amazon exploration. Body and voice characteristics, seventy percent match."
A window opened up in my vision. Dr. Guyer as he looked two days before he disappeared. Handsome. Tall. Curly light brown hair. Blue eyes. Laughing. Smiling. His eyes twinkled. He was standing in a garden, wearing T-shirt and shorts, holding a hoe. He was talking to someone off camera, whistling and making ludicrous whooping noises. Finally, he waved us off and turned back to his hoeing.
The window closed, and I was looking at Dr. John Guyer as he looked today-smaller somehow, bent and hunched, but still grinning; the smile was the same. The eyes were bright. He bobbed and bounced and cackled gleefully. His hands clenched and unclenched like little claws. The lines that swirled up and down his body gave his skin a rough and scaly appearance—lizard-like, reptilian. The red fur that hung off him was a patchy fringe. Ben Gumm! His curly brown hair was gone; the quills on his head made him look like a mohawk. He circled Siegel, poking at him curiously. "Where be your stripes? What be your nest?" Something about his posture. Something about his eyes
"He's blind!" I said abruptly. "Or he's drugged to the gills. Or both."
"Bring him up?" Siegel asked.
A pat on my shoulder from Lizard. Yes.
"Do it," I advised. "Spray him if you have to."
Siegel was pointing to the basket over and over. "Come with us, Dr. Guyer. We're here to save you." The image panned quickly around the corral-all the children were gone; rising up into the sky. One last basket waited. Something outside the corral was screaming. One of the spiders fired a missile. Something exploded. There was an orange flash, a thud, and a pattering of small rocks.
Guyer looked alarmed. Frightened. His eyes went wild. He hunched and swiveled his glance from side to side. "The king will not like this!" he screamed. "Frenzy! Frenzy! Run and hide! Hide!" He scampered for the wall, started climbing his way up it.
The image jerked as Siegel ran after him. I heard the sound of the spray. Guyer kept climbing, laughing and screaming in terror, almost made it to the top, climbed halfway over-Siegel leapt, grabbed his leg, pulled him back this way. He toppled, fell on top of us, pinning us for a moment.
"Goddamn-" Siegel said.
Something on the other side of the wall was screaming purple epithets. Siegel rolled Guyer off him and pulled the now-limp goblin-form toward the last basket, perched lopsidedly in the middle of the corral. He lifted Guyer with difficulty, toppling him into the basket, just as a giant red worm came battering its way through the wall-not enough aerogel had been sprayed to stop this one; it trailed smoke along its entire body; both aerogel and flames-it was on fire too!
The basket jerked as Siegel fell into it, and we rose upward. Screaming and laughing.
"We got him! Go!"
The airship was already rising away from the Japuran nest. We could see things falling out of all the hatches as we rose into its silent belly.
The question arises almost immediately-who digs these tunnels and chambers and reservoirs? What agency of the infestation is responsible for the removal and transportation of such large amounts of soil?
The assumption until now has been that the gastropedes themselves are responsible for the construction of the extensive subterranean nests. But this assumption is mostly inaccurate. A gastropede family is responsible only for the initial construction phases of its nest. This includes the dome entrances, some corrals, the primary chambers and their connecting tunnels, and occasionally even the first of the spirals that will corkscrew down to the large reservoir that will eventually appear at the bottom of the nest.
But very quickly, as the family establishes itself within its nest, expanding and growing into a tribe, a new symbiont appears-one that seems specifically designed for tunneling and maintenance. For lack of a better name, the creature is called a "jellypig." It has been described as "an obese, blobby thing with a mouth on one end and not much else in the way of distinguishing characteristics."
In actuality, the jellypig is a fat gray slug with many rudimentary feet. It resembles nothing so much as a hairless gastropede mounted on a millipede chassis, leading some observers to suggest that it is closely related to either one or the other of these species. If either of these cases is true, then it is most likely a metamorphosed millipede. Some evidence exists to validate this possibility.
—The Red Book,
(Release 22.19A)
Chapter 67
Sameshima
"You can believe anything you want. The universe is not obligated to keep a straight face."
-SOLOMON SHORT
—yanked the headset off and ran for the hatch. The retrieval crew-all wearing safety lines-slid the basket sideways onto the Il<nm of the bay. The hatch doors were already sliding shut. Strong vibrations rattled underfoot. The airship engines were shifting to maximum thrust, lifting us up and away.
The baskets were unloading. The children, some of them still crying, were being carried or led to detox. Siegel and Lopez carried Guyer between them-this close, and in the flesh, he was even a more startling apparition. Cadaverous. Something out of Poe. "The Masque of the Red Death."
I stopped myself at the red line, tracked with them while they walked their burden to the showers. "Get him monitored. Full pack. Give him to Shreiber. She does people. This is her specialty. I'll catch you on the other side."
Lopez flashed me a thumbs-up, and the three of them disappeared into the detox tube.
Turned back to Lizard, grinning. "We got 'em!"
She looked pleased, but not triumphant. She didn't have to say It aloud. Her expression was enough. But did we get them fast enough? Are they infected? We wouldn't know until we got the lab monitors into them.
She held up one hand to silence me. She was listening to her phone. "Yes, Captain? No problem. I'll give the orders immediately. Thank you, Captain Harbaugh." She closed the phone and clipped it back to her belt, raised her eyes to mine. "That was a very expensive operation. You don't want to know how much helium we lost."
"Code Blue?"
She nodded grimly. "I want you to run with the starboard team. Manage them! Nose to tail. Every cabin. Dump everything. Beds. Chairs. Terminals. Refrigerators. Lamps. Bathtubs. Sinks. Cabinets. Clothing. Roll up the carpets. Floorboards. Wall panels. The stewards have the tools for pulling down the living quarters. They've already started. As soon as we secure here, I'll send more people to join you. Twenty minutes per cabin, Jim. No more. Keep them moving as fast as you can. This is going to be close."
"I'm on my way, I love you-!"
"I love you too!"
Up the stairs as fast as I could run. On the slidewalk, running anyway. Stitch in side, clutching chest. Jogging. Swearing. Is it my imagination or is this ship tilting upward?
Caught up with the team, just as they were finishing the second cabin. Didn't get in their way, followed them into the third cabin. Still gasping for breath, helped them with the couch. Used it as a battering ram to break the railing of the balcony, then shoved it out and over the jungle canopy. Watched it fall, end over end, down into the terrible trees below. It crashed down into the green foliage, sending startled birds up into the sky.
Jumped out of the way as chairs came flying after. Lamps, a table, a mattress-
Someone shouted, "You here to work or watch?"
Didn't try to explain or apologize. Still clutching chest, I turned and started helping the team roll up the carpet. Sideways. Can't roll it out the window. Too wide. Roll it into a cylinder and battering ram the cylinder straight out after the couch.