The network of Harlie units, however, all interlinked together, was a different kind of symbology, not just a different world-a whole different paradigm, one without organic survival as an overriding concern; without the fear of death affecting judgment and vision, distorting and skewing all perceptions and results. It was an environment in which ideas could roam free and unbound, evolving, expanding, developing into grand and intricate structures of concept and detail; butterflies and dinosaurs of electric wonder; beings in the ecology of thought.
Only-who was there to start the process? Who was there to ask the initiating question: "Consider a butterfly. Or a dinosaur." Who was God?
Where was God in that universe?
I was terribly afraid that the new ecology of thought was empty. That would be the real disaster.
The computer beeped. The six months of patterns displayed on the screen had been made by only three worms.
Three worms?
Then where had the fourth worm come from?
The question gave me an uncomfortable chill. After a while, I remembered why.
The shambler tree is not a tree.
It is a colony of tree-like creatures and many symbiotic partners.
The tree part of the colony is a ficus-like aggregate of multiple interwoven trunks, forming a semi-flexible latticework of pipes and cables arching up to a leaf-festooned canopy. Additionally, every part of the shambler is almost invariably covered with symbiotic vines, creepers, and veils so thick that it is impossible to tell which is the actual shambler tree and which is the symbiotic partner.
At this point in time, the average height of observed shambler trees is between ten and twenty meters; occasional individuals have been documented as tall as thirty-five or forty meters. It may be possible that shamblers are capable of reaching even greater heights, but so far no specimens have been observed. Considering the relative youth of the Chtorran infestation, it is considered likely that, if allowed to develop unmolested, shamblers of much greater height could be possible.
Shambler colonies invariably produce leaves in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, making it difficult to identify a shambler individual based on appearance alone. Leaf appearance seems to depend on the tree's age, the height of the limb bearing the leaf, and the ultimate function of that limb-trunk, buttress, canopy, or crutch. Generally, however, we can say that shambler leaves tend toward black and purple shades, although silver, ocher, pale blue, icy white, and bright red are also common; the colors also vary depending on what kinds of tenants have taken up residence among the trunks, the vines, the branches, and the canopy.
—The Red Book,
(Release 22.19A)
Chapter 8
Badgers
"Love and death are antithetical. One can be used to cure the other. "
-SOLOMON SHORT
Two hours later, we rolled up short of the shambler grove and stopped.
Every camera and scanner on both vehicles popped out and swung around to focus on the silent trees. They stood motionless in the dry summer afternoon. The distant horizon was clear and blue; the morning breezes had blown away most of the pink haze, and we could see all the way out to forever. Contrasted with the desolation of the blood- and rust-colored landscape, the ominous foreboding of the deep and empty sky was oppressive. I wondered what was hiding behind it.
Inside the vans, we studied our screens and sweated. The long-range lenses revealed only shimmering waves of heat coming off the ground; the images shivered like melting reflections, but nothing else moved out there. Even the wind had crawled off into a corner somewhere and died.
We sat. We waited. We considered the situation.
I popped the hatch long enough to sniff the air. Then I sealed it again, returned to my console, and stared at my screens one more time. I leaned back in my chair, stretching my arms up over my head and interlocking my fingers. My vertebrae cracked in an exquisite spinal knuckle-crunch that reverberated all the way up to my fingertips. Then I exhaled and leaned forward again, letting the air out of my lungs like a deflating balloon. The screens in front of me remained unchanged. They glared like little neon accusations.
Finally, Willig swung down from the overhead observation bubble and perched opposite me. She was a chubby little thing, all scrubbed and pink. In an earlier age, she would have been too short, too old, too fat, and too compassionate to be in the army. Now it didn't matter. There were jobs to be done. Anyone who wanted to work was welcome. But Willig's appearance was a lie; the woman was all business. She wore her gray hair in a severe crewcut, and underneath her uniform she was turning into a block of solid muscle; if you got between her and the result she was committed to, you were likely to discover that the single most deadly human being on the planet was a ninja grandmother.
"Coffee?" she asked.
"I'd love some coffee," I replied. "But what's in the thermos?"
"Greenish-brown stuff." She poured me a cup anyway.
I sipped. This blend of ersatz was the worst yet. I grimaced and shuddered.
"Awful?" She was waiting for my reaction before pouring a cup for herself.
"It tastes like elephant piss. And the elephant was either sick or promiscuous."
Willig, despite her grandmother-from-hell demeanor, didn't flinch. I had to give her credit for that. She just blinked and said sweetly, "I had no idea you were such an expert on the taste of elephant piss. Where did you study medicine?" She poured herself half a cup, sipped, considered. "I vote for promiscuity. If the elephant had been sick, there would have been more flavor."
"That's what I like about you, Willig. You never let a joke die a natural death. You badger it unmercifully until it waves a white flag and surrenders."
"Badgers? Badgers?" she said sweetly. "We don't need no stinking badgers."
"You know," I said slowly, as I wiped greenish-brown stuff off my shirt with a disintegrating napkin, "I could have you court-martialed for playing with a loaded pun like that."
She sniffed. "If you aren't going to court-martial me for the coffee, then you certainly aren't going to get me for an innocent little joke."
"Innocent little joke? That's three lies in as many words." I put the mug in the holder next to the console and leaned back in my chair to think; it squeaked warningly.
"Okay, Captain." Willig dropped into the empty chair at the second station, and her voice became serious. "What are we looking for?"
"I don't know," I said honestly. "I don't even know if it's important. I hope it is-because that would justify our being out here. But I also hope it isn't-because if there's something going on that we don't understand, then we're at greater risk than we know."
"But you do have an idea, don't you? A wild guess?" she prompted.
"Yes and no. I have suppositions. I have possibilities. I have a pimple on my ass that needs scratching. What I don't have is information. Whatever I do, I'm not going to rush into anything." To her look, I added, "I'm not going to make any guesses. It's too easy to be wrong. This damn infestation keeps changing so fast, we can't assume that something is impossible because we've never seen it before. I think we know just enough to know how much we don't know. So before we do anything, I want to squirt a report back to Green Mountain. Just in case."
"Just in case," she echoed.
"Right."
"We are sending in probes? Aren't we?"
"Maybe." I scratched my beard. I hadn't shaved in two weeks, and my beard was just getting to that itchy-scratchy stage I hated. "But a probe might trigger the tenants, and that's what we don't want. It's the worms I need to see."
"Want to call down a beam? Sterilize everything. Then we go in and look at the bodies." She swiveled and tapped at her console. "There's two satellites in position right now. We could call for triangulation, flash them twice at the same time; they'd never know what hit them."