Nothing for me to manage. The stewards are self-organizing. I keep out of their way and grab and carry as much as I can. Bathtub came unbolted easier than I thought. Sink too. Shaun and I carried it out to the balcony and pushed it over. Be careful, he said. Don't fall.
Armloads of clothes. I recognize the blue nightgown. It flutters away. Oh. This was our cabin.
No matter. The bar follows. All those bottles. All that liquor. I want to cry.
Wall panels. Lightweight. Almost too light to do us any good. But it all adds up. They flutter and turn and spin into the dark green sea of vegetation. Already the mandala is far behind us.
How fast are we going?
We're taking too long! The next room and the next. We're six minutes behind schedule!
Siegel and Lopez join the team, with two of the new kids right behind them. We split into two teams; the first to start a room, dumping the easy items, furniture and clothes; the second to roll up the carpets, dismantle the bathtubs and sinks, take down the walls. We start catching up.
My phone beeps. Jim, please come forward to the captain's garden
Oh shit. Sameshima's beautiful little slice of heaven! I take off at a run, terrified of what I might find.
The garden is gone. Instead, an empty cavern. The forward window… gone. Everything just pushed out. Everything. The koi ponds. The banana palms. The purple wandering Jew. The white poinsettias. The bridges. The gazebo. Everything is gone.
Alone, in the center of the empty warehouse-sized space… is Harry Sameshima. Wearing only a loincloth. Sitting on a mat. Facing his sword. Shiny-bright death. Chanting to himself.
Lizard sitting opposite him. Talking. Captain Harbaugh watching.
"-Harry, listen to me. The garden isn't gone. Only the physical manifestation of it has been discarded. The real garden lives on, in here." She touches her heart. He ignores her. "It still lives here." She touches his naked heart-
He pushes her hand away, keeps chanting. Lizard looks back, sees me. Her expression is helpless. What do I do now?
I remember Foreman in the training. Ruthless compassion. Without stopping to think, I walk over to them. "We don't have the time to waste on this," I say to Lizard.
I step between them. I kick the sword aside, the mat as well. I grab Harry by the arm and yank him to his feet, slapping his face. Hard. As hard as I can. Probably dangerous-but I'm too elevated with adrenaline to worry about the risk.
"You goddamn little coward-" I shout in his face. "Just because you lose a few water lilies you think it's the end of the world and you're ready to throw yourself overboard. Well, I'm glad we found this out now before we trusted you with any real responsibility." I drag him toward the gaping front window. "You want to die? Yes or no?" I hold him out over the edge. The wind tugs at both of us. "Quit wasting valuable helium. Let's settle this right now-shut up, Lizard!" She hadn't said anything, but Captain Harbaugh had started to protest. "Yes or no, Harry?" I turned him so he could look down at the blighted Amazon.
Harry Sameshima retched. A thin strand of spittle drooled from his lips. Whipped away into the darkening jungle below.
I yanked him back inside. "I thought not," I said with all the disgust I could muster. "Fucking coward! Won't pull your weight. Run and hide. Crying like a puny little girl. You're a disgrace. I should throw you overboard. You're a useless little Jap-"
That was the one. It happened so fast that everything blurred, and the next thing I knew I was nailed to the floor with Sameshima's knee on my chest and his angry hand quivering stiffly in front of my eyes. The flat edge of his palm is a dangerous weapon. My throat is exposed. My nose. My eyes. He could kill me with a single blow.
I look past his hand and meet his angry glare. I manage a grin. "So-you don't really want to die after all. Do you?"
And abruptly he got the joke. Leaned back. Relaxing. Releasing. Tears rolling down his cheeks. Tears of relief and terror as well. I rolled sideways, up onto my elbow. Lizard ran to Harry. "Are you all right?"
He nodded, as if nothing at all had just happened here. He shook her off. "I have work to do. Excuse me."
Captain Harbaugh helped me up. "That was a damn fool stunt-"
"It worked, didn't it?"
"Yes, but-"
"He wanted to be talked out of it. He wanted someone to hold his hand. You and Lizard bought into the whole performance. But we don't have the time. When this is over, we can all hold hands then-"
Lizard was looking at me with surprise and admiration. She followed me toward the door. "How did you know?"
I didn't want to answer, but I did anyway. "I've been there," I said. "Remember? You had to blow up the road in front of me just to get my attention."
"Oh," she said. She grabbed me by the shoulders and kissed me quickly. "Thank you, Jim."
"We both have work to do." I broke the kiss off several weeks sooner than I wanted to. "I love you. Now I gotta go find some elephants to throw overboard."
Jellypigs are one of the first symbiotic forms to appear in a Chtorran nest. They appear only as a few individuals at first, but within a very short time, there are hundreds of jeliypigs in the nest, living together in oily congestions.
The creatures exude a kind of slime that functions not only as a lubricant for the entire congestion, but also gives each congestion its own identifying smell. Jellypigs will follow trails of their own slime, and it is believed that this is the way the gastropedes direct their tunnel building.
—The Red Book,
(Release 22.19A)
Chapter 68
Shiny! Shiny!
"There are some things a gentleman doesn't discuss. He only drops hints."
—SOLOMON SHORT
Somehow, in all the madness, the mission continued.
Even as the monitors were being pulled from their frames and thrown out of the hatches, the technical teams strove to carry on. I pushed my way through the debris-littered corridors to the medical observation bay. Dr. Shreiber had installed "our most interesting specimen"-that was her term for him-in the number-one theater. A polite term for a padded cage. Not becaase they were afraid of him, but because-so she said-she didn't want him to hurt himself. "He's a human being," I said grumpily.
"You haven't spoken to him," she replied.
"That's what I'm here for. I want to interview him."
"He's deranged. He's…" Shreiber shook her head. She didn't have the words. It unnerved her. "Listen to me. He's scared, he's dysfunctional, he's turned into something alien."
"I still need to see him."
"I think you should leave him alone-"
"He knows things," I said. "He's been there. He's lived with them. He can answer questions that nobody knows."
"You're not going to get any answers." She was angry-as if I were challenging her expertise, not just her authority. "I'm the expert on this one, Captain McCarthy."
"Yes, you are," I agreed. "But I'm the guy who has to make the report to Uncle Ira." I lowered my voice. "Please don't interfere."
She stepped out of my way. "Don't say I didn't warn you."
I pushed into the theater.
Dr. John Guyer of the Harvard Research Mission was sitting naked on the padded floor, playing with his penis. He was giggling quietly to himself at some private hallucination; his voice had a high, edgy quality. I approached slowly, taking my time to study his appearance carefully.
His skin was sun-brown and leathery. The dark red lines that illuminated his body were furrowed ridges. They curled up and down his arms and legs, all over his back and belly, his neck and face and skull, like a full-body tattoo. They were hardened scars or scales-I couldn't tell. The quills growing out of his head were feathery things. Alive!