The noise of it was composed of many different parts, all of them hideous-glass breaking, metal bending, metal screaming, great structures of support twisting and turning as the airship collapsed into the treetops like a crippled cloud, towering gasbags ripping and tearing open, mylar curtains falling in sheets and folding across the uneven terrain of the jungle canopy, everything rippling into rumpled, broken shapes. From below, we heard the sounds of the jungle screaming and protesting; the sound of branches breaking, being stripped and torn from the trees, the roaring havoc of a great forest slowly bending, resisting, crunching, ripping, toppling, crashing, smashing under the ponderous and inexorable weight of the giant airship easing itself down toward its horrible final resting place.
We came down and down, and still we kept on coming down and dowrr. The metal shrieked as it bent. The trees shrieked as they died. Everything was being crushed. The floors creaked and cracked, and then they twisted and broke and exploded with a series of sudden loud bangs as the panels began shattering out of their frames. They cartwheeled across the intervening space-one of them caught Clayton Johns, slicing him nearly in half. His blood spurted like a flood.
And then the airship really lurched. It tilted crazily on its side, and everything went sliding rapidly down into the port side of the bay, now the bottom; the last few chairs and tables, all the last remaining crates of equipment and supplies and devices we still needed. A writhing prowler scrabbled for purchase, leaping from the top of one box to the next, all the time screaming mechanically, sounding exactly like a wounded horse, clawing its way futilely upward. I grabbed a strut and hung on tightly, reached for Siegel-he lunged for me and missed and slid away in the madness. A crate came sliding after him, I didn't see him after that.
And still, the airship kept on crashing!
The roar of it was deafening. The tumultuous confusion flashed with shades of red and black and purple. Something below us exploded with a bang, and the terrible jagged spike of a treetop came thrusting rudely up through the open hatch, pushing people and machines aside like so much paperwork, puncturing all the way up through the ceiling, ripping it asunder and revealing a tiny patch of open sky beyond. A gasbag was escaping incongruously up into the blue serenity.
The lower wall of the bay imploded, crunched inward by the pressure of the forest beneath it; it came collapsing upward toward me, pushing rubble and debris and furniture and machines in a mighty thrust before it. I pulled myself around, began climbing upward to escape
Something slammed against me, yanking the strut from my grasp-I fell and hit the floor, which was now a wall. I slipped and skidded, sliding toward the gaping wound that was all that remained of the access hatch. I scrabbled for purchase, all knees and elbows, but the wall grew steeper and I fell sideways and outward-slammed against a concrete tree, bounced backward off of it, grabbed for a broken branch and missed, banged it with my face instead, there were vines and webs pulling at me; my leg caught, twisted, and popped, and then I fell again, toppling downward, banging through eternity
Above me, the flashing pink glare of the Hieronymus Bosch still twinkled brightly as it fell away into the sky. It was still coming down relentlessly-all of it-still smashing, toward me, but I was crashing downward even faster.
Except I wasn't-
I was already on the ground, lying on my back and staring upward at the fluttering silk remnants of the skin of the Hieronymus Bosch and wondering why it was still so loud, why everything was still making so much noise everywhere around me. How long would this continue? Crunching and popping and breaking and falling and crying! And now I began to hear other sounds as well, new sounds, purple sounds, red sounds, growing louder-the sounds of voices screaming, cursing, yelling for help. If anyone was shouting orders, I didn't hear it yet. Things were roaring and exploding. People were running. Choppers clattered overhead. The ground thudded with the distant whumppp! of a daisy-cutter bomb clearing a space in the jungle for helicopters to land. And pieces of the twinkling circus canopy still kept drifting downward to blow across my face. They fluttered like pennants.
I couldn't move. I couldn't feel anything. I just stared at the pretty pink sky and wondered why it was all so fucking bright.
Considerable dirt removal remains necessary in the nest, and this function is performed by a bizarre partner/predator relationship with the millipedes who are invariably to be found living in any Chtorran settlement. The millipedes in the nest will prey on the various congestions of jellypigs found throughout the tunnels of the nest, usually devouring those that fall away from the main body of the cluster. Occasionally, the gastropedes in the nest will also seek out a congestion of jellypigs and dine at length, often decimating the pack in the process.
Because most of the jellypig's mass at any given moment is the soil in its intestinal tract, the millipede ends up carrying the jellypig's burden; so does any gastropede that has gorged itself on jellypigs. In this way, most of the soil carried by the jellypigs finds its way out of the tunnel and ultimately to the surface of the mandala.
Gastropedes always wait until they have exited the nest before defecating. Gastropedes often use their feces, a substance with the consistency of tar, in the construction of the walls of their domes and corrals.
—The Red Book,
(Release 22.19A)
Chapter 71
Dial M for McCarthy
"A telephone is dike a rash. It demands attention."
-SOLOMON SHORT
My phone beeped.
Without thinking, I fumbled around for it. Surprise. It was still on my belt. I unclipped it and lifted it up to my face, thumbing it on curiously. "Hello?"
"Jim!" It was Lizard. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," I said. And wondered why I'd said that. I wasn't fine. I couldn't move. I could barely speak.
"Are you sure? You sound funny-"
"Oh, I'm right here. I think."
"Where's here? Where are you?"
"Um, I'm-" I turned my head. "-at the bottom of the tree. Where are you? I'll come and get you."
"Stay where you are. Don't move."
"Okay," I whispered. "No problem." My voice started to fade away. "I'll just rest awhile."
"Good. You stay there-leave your phone on. Keep talking. Will you do that?"
"Uh-huh. Where are you?"
"I'm still in the ship. The lounge got all twisted sideways and crushed. I'm in a corridor. I think I can-yes, I can climb up to the top. It's quite a crawl, but I can make it." Her voice was very controlled. "Do you hurt anywhere?"
"I don't-think so."
"Can you move?"
"I answered my phone, didn't I?"
"Jim?"
"Yes?"
"Listen to me, I'm going to put you on hold for a minute, so I can put a tracer on you. Don't go away, okay?"
"Okay."Promise?"
"I promise: Can you hurry?"
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing. It's just-I think I do hurt a little."
"Where?"
"Everywhere. It hurts to breathe, I think. It hurts to swallow. Can you bring me some water?"
"Hold on. I love you-" There was a click and she was gone. She was gone for the longest time, and I lay on the shimmering jungle floor and listened to the sounds of things crunching in the distance and dropping through the treetops and thudding softly in the muck. Some of the things were screaming, and somewhere off in the dark emerald gloom someone was calling for help.
"Anyone? Is anyone there?"
"I'm over here," I said. But I didn't have the air to say it very loudly. "Over here."
-sudden bright-insect buzzing in my face, a whisper of brightness that I can't brush away, a distant chorus, a soft wall of voices, can't make out the words, only the meaning, Jimbo, stay awake, we're coming, and then a sensation of being lifted up into the arms of something strong and comfortable, secure and golden-pink, angelic, masculine, a smell of sweat and glory and pine, distant voices muttering incomprehensible status reports of blood-sugar levels and pain thresholds and damping levels, a mess, something about a kneecap-