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In this newsletter:
· Over 250,000 words finished on A Method For Madness!
· There will be a 6th Book!
· The Man Who Folded Himself is back in a brand new edition!
· The Martian Child is now out in trade paperback!
· The Quote Book of Solomon Short!
· Preview chapters of A Method For Madness attached to this letter!
Hello, Justin.A.Graham!
Yes, it’s been a over a year since I’ve written and sent one of these newsletters reporting on progress with The War Against The Chtorr. I apologize for that. Mea culpa, my bad, and I will go have myself flogged – as soon as I can find a red-haired dominatrix who owns a chocolate store. (I’m not even going to try to explain why it’s taken so long. But if you’re reading this, it means we finally figured out how to get mail-merge working in Office XP. If you’re not reading this, don’t worry about it….)
Welcome to the New Folks! We receive as many as a hundred requests a month from folks asking for information about the next book. I don’t have time to answer all the e-mails and I apologize for that. Please forgive. That’s why we started this occasional newsletter – so I could respond to all the e-mails and keep folks informed. I hope you’ll find it worthwhile; if not, let me know and I’ll remove your name from the list. (If you’re getting multiple copies, please let me know about that too.) To those of you who’ve been around for a bit, thanks for your patience as well as your enthusiasm.
As a way of saying thanks to everyone, I’m including a special preview of book five at the bottom of this newsletter. Some of these chapters were posted on my website, but I think this is more than anyone else has seen yet. We will have more preview chapters in future newsletters.
Progress on A METHOD FOR MADNESS: Since last year I’ve had three major writing spurts. The total number of words finished is now more than 250,000 words, not counting all the stuff that will go between the chapters. So this is already the biggest book in the series, and there’s still as much as 50,000 words left to write.
In this book, Jim gets to go deep down inside the Amazon mandala, not just what’s on the surface, but what’s underneath as well. And then, later on, he gets to discover what’s under Manhattan as well. The parallels and contrasts between the two sequences promise to be spooky. But of course it’s also a lot of work. Even though two-thirds of it is already written, I’m exhausted just thinking about the parts left to write.
So it looks like A Method For Madness could grow to 300,000 words or more. Oh yes, and there’s also this one sequence where Jim finally explains what’s really going on with the worms. That’s worth a couple of “Yikes!” It brought me out of my chair a couple of times as I realized some additional implications of the invasion. So I’ve given up trying to predict when it will be done. As long as I’m this enthusiastic, I’m just going to let it keep growing. It will probably be the equivalent of three ordinary novels. I hope you won’t mind.
Publishing Plans: A Method For Madness will be published in hardcover, but no date has been set yet. If I can finish the book before the end of summer, it will be published next year. Tor Books has also bought the rights to reprint the first four books, along with the fifth book. Right now, they’re talking about publishing A Matter For Men and A Day For Damnation as one volume, and A Rage For Revenge and Season For Slaughter as a second volume. They haven’t said whether they will do paperback or hardcover. If you want hardcover editions write to Tor books and let them know. I figure that if they know that there are several thousand folks ready to buy hardcovers that’s enough to justify the expense. (Tor Books, 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010-7703.) Don’t put my name on the envelope or they’ll forward it to me as fan mail. In fact, don’t even tell them I told you to write.
Book Six! The big news, of course, is that Tor has also written a contract for book six in the series, A Time For Treason, so that’s the book I’m going to start on as soon as I finish A Method For Madness.
The Man Who Folded
Himself: The first publisher of this book called it “the
last word in time travel stories” and a lot of readers seemed to agree.
It’s now considered a classic novel of science fiction and BenBella Books
has just published a trade paperback edition with a very nice introduction
by Robert Sawyer, and a very nice afterword by Goeffrey Klempner. It’s
a handsome package and BenBella even has some autographed copies for sale
on their website. (http://www.benbellabooks.com.) We’ll also be at Westercon
in Seattle.
The Martian Child: This is the novel-length version of the story that won the Hugo and the Nebula awards in 1995 – the nearly-true story of my son’s adoption. The book is now available in trade paperback and it is highly recommended by my publisher, my son, and the bank that holds my mortgage. The Martian Child might be a little hard to find in bookstores, so I recommend ordering it online. Some of the reviewers weren’t as warm to it as I’d hoped (It’s been called everything from charmingly neurotic to relentlessly honest to embarrassingly earnest. Go figure.), but quite a few readers seem to have taken it to heart. See if you can spot the references to the Chtorr in the book. Meanwhle, Sean just turned nineteen and he’s showing dangerous signs of turning into a human being, so somebody must have done something right.
The Dingilliad: Leaping To The Stars, the third (and final, I think) book in the Dingilliad series was published last April to generally favorable reviews. It was a tricky book to write because I was juggling about six different watermelons. (I did drop one, at least I think I did, but I won’t tell you which one, because nobody else seems to have noticed.) The first two books, Jumping Off The Planet and Bouncing Off The Moon, are out in paperback. You can order all of them at Amazon, of course. All three are also available in one volume, from the Science Fiction Book Club as The Far Side Of The Sky. Reviewers and readers continue to compare the books favorably to the classic Heinlein juveniles, which is a nice compliment, but a little inaccurate. Yes, there’s a Heinlein flavor, but it’s only a spice. I like to think that there’s a lot more Gerrold than Heinlein in these books. Read them for yourself and let me know what you think. (By the way, a favorite character from the Chtorr series has a very nice chapter in Leaping To The Stars.)
Worlds of Wonder: Writers Digest Books asked me to do a book on how to write science fiction and fantasy, so I took all the best lessons I’d learned from Harlan Ellison, Theodore Sturgeon, Samuel R. Delaney, James Blish, D.C. Fontana, A. E. Van Vogt, and others, and compiled them into Worlds of Wonder. It’s gotten some good reader reaction; if you want to know more about writing, or more about how I approach writing, pick up a copy. (The Science Fiction Book Club published World of Wonder as a recent selection, but didn’t send me any copies. If anyone has a copy of the Book Club edition they’d like to donate or trade, let me know please.) And yes, there’s a Chtorran chapter in this book too.
Personal News: In the past twelve months, I’ve had a (minor) relapse of my pneumonia, a severe bout of food poisoning, a computer-hacker attack, a hard disk crash, and a motherboard failure. Plus both my dog and my Dad died within three weeks of each other. And if that wasn’t enough, we ran into a bad batch of chocolate. Sheesh! That was when I went out into the back yard and shouted at the sky, “Enough already – go pick on someone who deserves it!!” The following week, I got strip-searched three times on a weekend air trip. I have hired a lawyer and we are filing a lawsuit against God for malfeasance. More about this later.
The Tip Jar: It costs us more money than we expected to maintain the website and do these newsletters. (We’re working on bringing our costs down shortly.) If you find the website useful, or would just like to make a donation to the Keep-David-Gerrold-Working-On-The-Damn-Book-Fund, you can log onto www.paypal.com and pledge/tithe/donate/subscribe/contribute whatever you feel like to [log in to unmask]. (Part of this will go to cover some recent unexpected medical expenses. Don’t panic, I’m fine now, but the dog needs orthodonture work.) It’ll help us continue the website and do some other useful stuff.
Sales: Almost as a joke, we printed up a little hand-made book compiling all the known quotes of Solomon Short. Every time we put it up for sale at a convention, it sells out. And one person at a recent convention was quite outraged that I hadn’t made copies available to folks on this list. My bad, I’ll go and have myself flogged, as soon as I can find a red-haired dominatrix who flies a chopper and owns a chocolate store. (If you fit three out of four of those qualifications, send me a resume.)
Anyway, if you’re interested, we have available for sale:
The Quote Book Of Solomon Short. (All the quotes by Solomon Short from the first four books, plus a few pages of quotes from book five.) This is a 32-page, self-printed book, nothing fancy, but a lot of fun, and every copy is autographed. $12. Shipping/handling is $6. (They go for twice as much on eBay.)
We’ve also put together a package of three Star Trek scripts for $50: “The Trouble With Tribbles”, “More Tribbles, More Troubles”, “Blood And Fire” (unproduced TNG episode.) You can drop a check in the mail to David Gerrold, 9420 Reseda Blvd. #804, Northridge, CA 91324-2932, or you can pay by credit card by logging onto www.paypal.com and making payment to [log in to unmask]. Individual scripts are $20 each. Shipping/handling is $6.
Auctions: Occasionally, folks write to me asking where they can find copies of my books. When we cleaned out the garage, we found a lot of extra copies. So we’re putting them up for auction on ebay. There are hardcovers, first editions, galley proofs, paperbacks, stuff you might have given up all hope of finding. We’re getting to the end on some of these items, so you’d better move fast. Our next round of auctions starts on Monday. Go to eBay and search on “Gerrold.”
THANK YOU! Okay, that’s all the important news this time out. Thanks for putting yourself on the newsletter list. Thanks again for your enthusiasm and interest. And thanks most of all for your patience.
David Gerrold
A Method For Madness
(selected preview
chapters)
2
Speed Bumps
“Ignorance is natural. Stupidity takes commitment.”
—Solomon Short
The chopper jerked in the air. The pilot pulled the machine around in a tight turn, nearly sliding us sideways out the open door. Lizard grabbed for me—a reflex. She clutched at my arm only for a moment, then pulled herself up, swearing like a longshoreman. Angrily, she began untying the restraints that still held her firmly in her stretcher.
We tilted hard then and I stared straight down at another chopper just dropping down out of the air, landing in the red-stained jungle below us—in a clearing carved by a daisy-cutter bomb, dotted with scattered tents and crates of supplies and the wreckage of the Hieronymus Bosch. The aircraft became the instant center of a scrambling cluster of soldiers and civilians.
We tilted again, righting ourselves this time, and I saw another chopper, orbiting the camp opposite us. Its guns were firing away at something in the distance. I became aware of the sounds—red and purple screeches, punctuated with the thudding blasts of explosions, both near and far.
“What are you doing?” Lizard demanded of the pilot.
“Orders. We have to orbit and provide covering fire until the chopper behind us gets off the ground. Then he’ll provide cover for the next one. And so on.” He grinned back at us. “Sit back and enjoy the ride. You’ll get the best view of the war yet. I guarantee you.” The pilot was a stocky kid with a ruddy complexion. He looked like he was having a terrific time. Probably, he was. Copilot was pointing at something and shouting. Behind us, the two gunners were launching cold-rockets, one after the other, with alarming enthusiasm.
Lizard and I exchanged a glance. It was amateur night. She looked annoyed as hell. Frustrated beyond words. I was sure she would have preferred to fly us out herself. The other passengers in this lifeboat looked equally unhappy. We’d lifted off with four GI’s, two torch-bearers, and a corpsman. I wondered what they’d been through. The torch-bearers looked exhausted. The others just seemed terrified—as if they’d had a glimpse down the mouth of hell. Probably they had. The corpsman had his eyes closed and was reciting his prayers.
We circled around the evacuation camp and I caught a glimpse of the pink skin of the Bosch sprawled across the jungle canopy. It stretched out for acres. Parts of it still ballooned upward like gigantic bulging breasts and stomachs and arms. Other parts sagged like the shrunken skin of a corpse. Here and there, metallic bones shone through, poking brokenly upward. I saw red maggots crawling across the body—
“All right, we’re clear,” the pilot called. I looked down as we banked and saw the other chopper lifting off. The next one came dropping down behind it.
Lizard had climbed forward, to stare past the pilot’s shoulder. Now, she reached forward and grabbed his shoulder. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “You’re heading south!”
“Wanna get a better look,” the pilot said. “Never seen worms up close before.” He pointed ahead. “Look—!”
By now, I had loosened the bonds on my stretcher, and dragged myself halfway forward too. Despite the splints, my knee still twinged with fire every time I moved. Behind me, the corpsman made cautionary noises about my leg. I told him to stuff it. After what I’d just been through, this was luxury.
Peering ahead through the clear dome of the vehicle, I could see what had excited the pilot. A fantastic river of huge scarlet bodies poured through the jungle. Thousands of Chtorran gastropedes from the Japuran mandala were pursuing the great sky-god that had passed across the roof of their world. Their song was audible even over the steady thwup-thwup of the chopper’s blades and the droning roar of its engines. The two young men in the cockpit seemed fascinated, almost to the point of being stupefied.
Lizard was shouting at them. “Don’t be stupid! Don’t you know the Chtorran ecology is hostile to aircraft engines!”
“Relax, honey,” the pilot said. “You’re in good hands. Let the men handle this.” Gently, he disengaged her hand from his shoulder. “I’ll drive.”
Copilot pointed downward. “Let’s get close-ups—”
“Right. They’ll be worth a fortune. What do you think Newsleak will pay?”
Lizard was unfastening something from her collar. One of her stars. She reached around and held it up in front of the pilot’s eyes. She waited until she was sure that he had focused and recognized it. “My name is not ‘honey,’” she said. “It is ‘General Tirelli, sir!’ And you will turn this fucking ship around and head north for Yuana Moloco, right now, or I will drag you out of that seat and fly it myself. That is a direct order. Acknowledge it now!”
I had to give the kid credit. He didn’t flinch. “Sorry, ma’am. I have standing orders to do a photo reconnaissance. You may be a general, but my commanding officer is an even bigger son-of-a-bitch.” He brushed her hand away. “You can threaten me all you want, but I’m still flying this rig, and if you interfere with my piloting again, I’ll file formal charges against you the minute we touch down.”
Lizard was tired and weak. Otherwise the expression on her face would have put him into the hospital. Or perhaps she knew she couldn’t win this argument. I crawled laboriously forward. “Who gave you those orders, Captain?”
It was the use of the word Captain that got him. He said, “Standard operating procedure for all Chtorran operations requires—”
“In North America, yes,” I agreed. “But not here. The general was right. There’s lumps in the air. Some of them big enough to hurt. What do you think brought down the dirigible?”
He didn’t answer. Not right away. He busied himself with buttons and knobs for a minute, pretending to be checking something. Suddenly he spoke in a whole other tone of voice, “Listen—every other goddamn son-of-a-bitch in the world is getting a chance to burn these mothers. And every other goddamn son-of-a-bitch in the world except me is getting rich off them. This is my chance to make some money, and not you, not anybody, is going to stop me. Understand?”
I lowered my voice. “I got it. Loud and clear. Just one more question. Is it worth dying for?”
He shook it away. “I know what I’m doing,” he said. “I’ve logged nearly a hundred hours in the simulator.”
I looked at Lizard. “Oh, god,” I said. “He sounds like me.”
She was too frustrated to appreciate the joke. Wearily, she repinned her star onto her collar. She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around me—taking care not to bump my knee. She was tired and her hug was feeble, but it meant the world to me. We pulled ourselves closer together and she rested her head on my shoulder. “Luna,” she whispered. “We’re going to Luna.”
“Why not one of the L5’s?” I whispered back. “We’d have Earth-normal gravity.”
“We can get a better salad on the moon. And there are no steaks on the L5’s yet.”
“Good point. We’d better go before you start showing. Can you arrange it in the next three months?”
“How fast can you pack?”
“I’m already packed. I have everything I want right here.”
“As soon as I can get to a phone—”
The chopper lurched then. Both Lizard and I glanced forward, but the pilot seemed unconcerned. “Speed bump,” he explained.
Lizard’s expression said it all. She didn’t believe him. She saw me looking at her and smiled reassuringly.
“Problem?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Just my overworked imagination.” But she held up a hand for silence while she listened intently to the sound of the engines. I couldn’t hear anything; they sounded fine to me, but Lizard narrowed her eyes at something.
She leaned forward again. “What’s that gleebling noise?”
The pilot replied in a laconic drawl. “Gleebling is normal for these frammis-whackers. If it were a greebling noise, however, then we’d have something to worry about.”
Copilot added, “‘Gleebling’ means ‘good evening’ in the Drunk-to-English dictionary.”
Lizard ignored them both. “What does the FADPAC[1] say?”
Both pilot and copilot looked up. Lizard looked too. The voice monitor was off.
“You assholes. Where’d you learn to fly? Disneyland?!” She reached up to switch the unit on—
The pilot slapped her hand away. “I’m flying this bird, lady!”
“Not very well!” she snapped right back.
“I don’t need a voice yammering in my ear—”
“Well, you got one now! Me!”
“Get in the back where you belong, goddammit!” He turned half-around in his seat, like an angry parent preparing to swing at an errant child.
Lizard had already unholstered her pistol. Now, she clicked the safety off and pointed it directly at his head. “Turn. The. Monitor. On.”
He froze.
Copilot reached up slowly and switched on the systems analysis unit. Immediately, the familiar synthetic-female voice of “Fay” began reporting, “Number 2 engine reserve deterioration 6 percent.”
Instantly, the pilot reached up and tapped the yellow panel of the device. This would give him a more detailed report. “Gas particulate limits exceeded. Non-recoverable performance loss.”
“What the hell—?”
“You’ve flown through something. That was the bump we felt,” I said. “Possibly a hovering cloud of stingflies. They’re invisible. They follow the worms.”
“I never heard of that—”
“Gee, that’s too bad,” I said sympathetically. “In that case, maybe we won’t crash. God grants dispensation if you have a good excuse.”
He didn’t answer. He was suddenly busy with his controls. So was the copilot. I looked to Lizard. She was watching them both intently. Absent-mindedly, she reholstered her pistol. She began offering suggestions. Suddenly, the argument was over and the three of them were working as a team, discussing their options. I couldn’t understand a word of their techno-jargon, but it was clear that all thoughts of the photo-mission had been forgotten.
“North?” asked the copilot.
“North,” confirmed the pilot. Already, he was swinging the bird around. He looked scared. I actually felt sorry for him. His delusions of immortality had just been shattered.
As if in confirmation, the chopper lurched again. It was a barely noticeable bump, but the blood drained out of their faces. Immediately, the voice of Fay was reporting, “Combined engine performance is now 86 percent. And dropping.” A moment later, she added, “Pressure failure in the primary set.”
“Shit!” said Lizard. “What’s the run-dry time on this bird?”
“We’ve got active-magnetic bearings.” The pilot was studying a performance projection. “We should be able to make it back—if we don’t hit anything else.”
Lizard looked to me. Her expression said it all. What else do we have to worry about?
I shook my head and shrugged.
Something above us chuffled. The rotors? Almost immediately, smoke began pouring out behind us. One of the gunners started screaming. Fay began yammering. Pilot and copilot were both suddenly very busy. Lizard shouted instructions. We lurched and bumped. I looked out my side of the chopper. I could see the smoke streaming away into the distance. There were burning flecks of something churning in the greasy black trail.
“Aww, God, no—” the pilot cried. He was fighting his controls.
Lizard shouted at him, she grabbed his shoulder, and pointed forward. “There!” A wide black streak of water cut through the dark shimmer of the jungle; on both sides, the forest canopy sparkled with orange. “Head for the river! Keep away from the trees.”
I glanced back. Both the gunners looked pale. The passengers were wailing. The wind grabbed the bird and pushed us sideways. Either it was the wind—or we were whirling out of control—
The jets were suddenly louder. Roaring! We lurched and bounced across the sky. I bumped my head against the roof of the cabin. Then we caught the air again and came swooping down and up in a wild roller-coaster ride through a dizzying starboard turn. We banked over and around and finally down toward a dark canyon of trees. Too far! -- Abruptly, we pulled hard left and up! Things went skittering sideways out of the bird, tumbling downward into the jungle.
The pilot was fighting for control and trying to follow the course of the water, swearing and yelling all at the same time. Copilot was hollering maydays into his mike as fast as he could, yammering like a monkey. The river straightened suddenly and just as improbably so did we, racing lower and lower toward the inky surface.
“Slow down!” Lizard shouted. “Watch for a sand bar—”
“I’m trying! I can’t control her! The goddamn intelligence engine is fighting me—”
“You’re fighting it,” she corrected. “Ease up! It’s trying to compensate for your panic!”
By now, we were perilously close to the black water below. We skated over shallow stretches of mud and sand and dark eddies with broken trees and branches sticking dangerously up out of them. Our reflection shimmered across the depths, flickering in and out of existence as we crossed the occasional sand flat. The spars in the water stretched up toward us like fingers.
Suddenly, we were stalling, sliding. We bounced! Sheets of water sprayed away from the chopper. We bounced a second time—a third! Something spanged against the bottom of the ship and we spun around, slipping sideways and turning, then abruptly came crashing to a sudden, jarring stop as something crunched in through the front window, shattering the Plexiglas in all directions, thudding up against the framework, catching the chopper in a tangled grip, holding us sideways and pulling us downward toward the wet stinking river. The water splashed and flooded upward into the cabin. The rotors shrieked and slammed to a sudden halt in the tangle of branches; they exploded in a fury off the top of the ship. The aircraft hissed and crackled. Foam began flooding up and over everything, cascading down the outside of the ship in thick white sheets.
We’d collided with a tree that had toppled into the river. The chopper was caught. And sinking fast.
3
The River
“That which does not kill us, often hurts us badly.”
—Solomon Short
We lurched, we slipped—and then for a moment, we held where we were, with the water half into the aircraft. Both my legs were submerged and caught. “Goddammit! Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!” I started screaming. “This isn’t fucking fair! Why can’t I ever land in one of these things the way the designers intended?” I couldn’t believe myself. We’d just fallen out of the sky—again—and I was making jokes. I must be in worse shape than I thought. “Lizard—!”
“I’m right here. I’m okay—” We were teetering at a precarious angle. She had to pull herself around so she could get herself into my field of view. “Can you move?”
“I’m caught, I think.” I craned around. “Are we all right?”
“We will be.” She began tugging at something under the water. I couldn’t see what she was doing.
Behind us, one of the gunners was missing; a bloody smear and broken branches marked where he had been. The other one was moaning uncontrollably and clutching his gut. He was bleeding profusely; apparently, his weapon had crunched backward into him at the moment of impact. Two of the GI’s were trying to free the third from where she was pinned by a broken limb. The fourth was nowhere to be seen. The corpsman looked dazed. He was still holding his kit on his lap. I didn’t see either of the torchmen. I wondered if I’d been unconscious.
“What about the pilot?” I asked.
Lizard glanced forward. I followed her look. The chopper had skipped across the surface of the river, bouncing and splashing until it was brought to a sudden halt by a tangle of sharp branches. A broken spar had punched not only through the Plexiglas windshield, but also through the pilot’s chest as well, impaling him in his seat. The branch was thicker than my leg and blood was flowing down its length. The pilot was still making sucking gurgling sounds. Even as we looked, they rattled into silence. I felt sorry for him—and angry at the same time. If it hadn’t been for his arrogant stupidity—
The copilot was still mumbling into his headset. “Mayday, mayday, we’re going down—we’re going down.”
Everything smelled peppermint. Drifts of foam blew past us, they whirled away in the river current. More of it dropped thickly into the cabin. It was supposed to be non-toxic, but I’d heard stories of people drowning in it. The chopper bumped and settled a little bit lower in the water. It rose up to my groin and I thought of something else to worry about. “Are there piranhas in this river?” I asked.
“I hope to God not,” Lizard said. “I think your stretcher is pinned. Can you feel anything?”
“My toes are cold,” I said.
“Can you wiggle them?”
I wiggled. “I think so.”
“All right—” She climbed over me to the corpsman. She pulled his kit from his hands and started rummaging through it. She came up with a nasty-looking knife and climbed back to me. “I’m cutting loose the straps.”
“Hurry,” I said, as the aircraft settled again, pushing the water up to my waist.
She didn’t answer. She was feeling around in the darkness. She took a breath and disappeared into the water beneath me. I glanced backward. The two GI’s were grunting and groaning, pushing at the branch that pinned their companion. She was moaning in pain. Every time they moved the branch, even a little, the chopper lurched and sank deeper into the murk.
“Stop that!” I said.
“Fuck you,” they explained. They kept pushing. The chopper creaked ominously.
“You’re sinking the ship—”
“We’ve gotta get her out!”
Lizard came up, took another breath, and disappeared beneath my legs again. I could feel her hands as she felt her way down the stretcher. I wondered what happened to her gun.
One of the torch-bearers stuck his head in the door above me. “I can’t find him,” he said. “I can’t find him!” He leaned his weight on the edge of the door frame, pulling that side of the chopper lower. The water crept up my belly. “I’ve looked all over. I can’t find him!”
“Who?” I asked. I looked around. The injured gunner had disappeared.
The torchman didn’t answer. A gobbet of foam dripped heavily onto his head, tufting like a whipped cream topping. He looked up in annoyance, then dropped away from the door. The foam kept dripping into the cabin like industrial-strength icing. It covered everything with a slippery-greasy film. Islands of it floated everywhere. Where was Lizard? The branches in the front of the aircraft cracked and the aircraft teetered abruptly. Oh god—what if she got pinned underwater? The river was up to my chest—
Lizard surfaced next to me, gasped for breath. “Almost—” she said. “Just a little bit more—” And vanished again. I glanced behind me. The trapped woman was screaming; her eyes were white with terror. The water was up to her chin. Her two friends were screaming in rage as they pushed futilely up at the tree. As hard as they pushed up, the tree pushed harder down.
The woman yelped for air. The chopper rocked alarmingly and the water swept coldly over her face; it receded for a moment, then swept in again. She gasped and choked and coughed. We lurched and sank another six inches—the water climbed toward my neck. It felt like we were going all the way down this time. The woman clawed vainly for air. The water frothed around her. I felt her rage. It wasn’t fair. And I was terrified that I was seeing a preview of my own death.
One of the men was screaming in frustration, pounding against the tree, kicking it as hard as he could. He pushed at it with renewed vigor. It didn’t do any good. The tree was levered into the chopper like a crowbar. If we went anywhere, it would be down. The other man gulped for air and ducked down into the black water to press his mouth against the woman’s, trying to ferry oxygen to her, one desperate gasp at a time. She was too panicked too cooperate. She must have struck at him. He came up, his nose bleeding profusely, his face scratched by her claws.
Just as I began to wonder again where Lizard was, she surfaced, took three quick gasps of air, and disappeared again. The water edged up toward my chin. A fat glob of foam drifted past; part of it caught on my cheek. I brushed it away. Something tugged at my legs. It rasped and scraped and then—just as the aircraft tilted deeper into the water—whatever was holding me broke free. I leapt backward and up, scrambling toward the open hatch, my leg screaming on fire, me screaming for Lizard. She came up gasping, reaching for me, climbing in the same direction. We pulled each other toward the hatch.
The others were coming too. The chopper kept on tilting and suddenly the five of us were swimming in a metal hole. We pulled ourselves up onto the frame of the door, scraping roughly over the edge, even as the machine sank away beneath us. The two GIs were dragging the stunned corpsman with them. One of them was retching.
I didn’t see the copilot. I didn’t know if he’d gotten out. The water was rushing into the open hatch of the chopper now, trying to push us back down into it. I almost lost my grip, but Lizard grabbed me by the ass and pushed hard! “Thanks—” I glubbed around a mouthful of stinking brackish water.
And then we were in the river itself, with dark water swirling all around us. We half-swam, half-staggered across a sandbar, then into a deeper rushing channel. I sank for a moment, touched bottom, pushed hard and came back up, coughing, choking, and spitting. My boots weighed me down. The aluminum splint on my leg reduced my mobility. I kept sinking—and thinking isn’t this a stupid way to die! Rescued and then drowned.
Lizard grabbed me by the arm and pulled. We struggled in the water, bouncing painfully off a sunken tree, scraping across the pebbled bottom of the river, and then suddenly ending up on our knees, puking our guts out on a sodden stretch of mud and sand and decaying vegetation. Lizard pounded me on the back until I begged her incoherently to stop. I collapsed face down on the ground, rolled over and looked at the sky and listened to my heart pound. The sky was still blue—deep and dark and brilliant, it blazed with pink tufts of clouds. A reminder of our precarious position. But we were still alive.
I turned my head to the left and saw only water. To the right, I saw the corpsman and one GI. I didn’t see the other one. Hadn’t he made it?
Gasping, Lizard collapsed next to me. “Stay with me, Jim—I need you.” I was racked with spasmodic coughs and she was nearly paralyzed with the exhaustion of her struggles. Both of us gulped for air. We lay in the mud and concentrated on our breathing. Periodically, she would reach over and touch me, my hand, my leg, my shoulder. Periodically, I reached over and touched her too, reassuring myself that she was still alive, still with me. I couldn’t believe it.
Finally, we helped each other sit up. I looked at her—it was like looking at a mirror. We were both so scared for each other. Lizard’s hair hung in wet strings, and there were tears running down her muddy cheeks, but we laughed with unembarrassed relief. “What is this—?” I asked. “Our third or our fourth air crash?”
“Third,” she said. “And we’ve got to stop meeting like this. The FAA is getting suspicious.”
Maybe we should have been more worried about the others. But first we were being selfish. We were taking care of ourselves. After all we’d been through—everything of the past few months as well as the past few days—we’d earned it. We’d both been hurt in the dirigible crash, both been trapped. I’d broken my knee, Lizard had been pinned in the wreckage, and I’d had to pull a gun on one officer and brutalize a retarded woman to get Lizard rescued by a remote-controlled prowler, just moments before a gastropede the size of a bus reached her. And then I’d had the hubris to think that we were finally safe, that we were finally getting out of the goddamned Amazon basin—
There’s no such thing as winter in the Amazon. It sprawls across the equator like a rumpled green bedspread with insects. There are only two seasons in the Amazon: hot and wet. During hot, much of the basin is under water. During wet, more of the basin is under water. Before the Andes were born, the river drained to the west; after plate-tectonics had done its work, there was a ten-thousand kilometer barrier all the way down the western side, in some places six kilometers high, so the river puddled up across the entire continent until it finally drained east. In some places, the river is so wide, you can’t see the opposite shore. In most places, everything squelches when you walk. Some people think the Amazon is beautiful.
Upriver, a bump in the black water outlined where the chopper had sunk. The current flowed over it like a drape. Nearby, part of a rotor blade stabbed up out of the water like an errant flagpole. Everywhere, the haze of gnats and buzzing insects.
The other torch-bearer—not the one who’d poked his head into the chopper, but the other one—was dragging something out of the water, a bright red box. Two other boxes were floating in the same shallow eddies. Survival and rescue kits. The copilot was sitting alone on the sand with a fourth box. He was holding his gut, rocking himself, and crying.
“Can you walk?” Lizard asked me.
“I don’t know, they wouldn’t let me try. Dr. Shreiber had me tied down and doped up and probably under guard as well. I don’t even know how bad my knee is. I never even saw an X-ray. I can tell you it hurts like hell, despite the local anesthetic.”
“We need to get to higher ground.” She stood up to wave. She shouted weakly at the others. “Here! Over here! He needs help walking.”
5
Survivors
“Everyone is innocent until proven stupid.”
—Solomon Short
Somehow, we gathered ourselves into a group. There were six of us; the GI, the torch-bearer, the corpsman, the copilot, Lizard, and me. The copilot had gone silent; he looked brittle and nasty, as if he’d been betrayed. As if he blamed Lizard for the crash. The corpsman was still in shock; he mumbled and staggered and had to be guided by the arm. The torchman’s expression was hard and uncomfortable; I recognized the look. He was expecting the jungle to erupt in purple horrors any minute. If he’d been part of the drop-team defending the evacuation site, he had ample justification to wear that look. The GI’s expression was unreadable, withdrawn; but he kept looking at me nastily. I knew he resented me for the death of the woman in the chopper.
Lizard looked beautiful to me. She was dirty and she stank of the river and her uniform clung wetly. Her hair was a stringy tangle of mats, her face was pale, and she looked weak. She moved slowly, as if every step was an effort, and her voice was hoarse and cracking. She was gorgeous.
Sitting up painfully, using only my arms, I tried to pull myself backward, higher up the shore, but my leg twinged with every movement. I wondered what further damage the crash might have done. Maybe the corpsman would be able to do something, but I doubted it. I was afraid to trust his judgment just now. The others stood around, waiting for someone to make a decision.
As weak as she was from her own ordeal, trapped three days in the wreckage of the dirigible, Lizard somehow found the strength to take charge. First, she ordered the GI and the torchman to carry me up to higher ground. The GI scowled resentfully; he didn’t like me—he barely touched me, he didn’t even want my arm across his shoulders. He held himself away, guiding me mostly and not letting me put any weight on him; but the torchman was bigger and better able to shoulder most of my weight anyway. He practically carried me. My leg screamed the whole way.
Everything stank. The air was humid and full of ripe unfamiliar smells. The heat of the sun turned the day into a steambath. The sweat rolled off us in dirty rivulets. There wasn’t much ground that was really higher, but we found a spit of land that was a little less muddy than the rest and slogged up onto it. Lizard had to lean on the copilot for strength, but she walked most of the way herself. The corpsman trailed along behind us, mumbling like a madman.
The torch-bearer lowered me carefully to a piece of ground that looked dryer than the rest, and Lizard sank wearily down next to me, breathing hard. I was worried about her; she looked like she was reaching the end of her strength. She noticed me worrying and reached over to pat my shoulder in reassurance, but the way her hand slipped away at the end betrayed her exhaustion. She didn’t have the same reserves of energy the rest of us did. She’d already used hers up before being loaded onto the chopper.
“Listen,” she said. “I know we’re all hurting. But we’ve got to—” She stopped to cough. I didn’t like the sound of that. “—we’ve got to get the emergency kits out of the river before they wash away.” She was amazing. In spite of everything she’d been through, she was still able to think and act like a commanding officer. She directed the GI and the torchman and the copilot to gather up all four of the red emergency kits and drag them over here to our temporary camp. The corpsman wandered around for a bit until she ordered him to sit down in one place and stay there. Surprisingly, he did. Despite the seriousness of her condition, she still had the presence of mind to watch out for the rest of us.
After the kits were secured, she sent the GI and the torch-bearer out again, this time on a quick lookaround to see if anyone else aboard the chopper had survived, or if any other usable gear or weaponry had somehow escaped the sinking of the machine. We didn’t really expect there to be any other survivors, we probably would have seen them by now if there were; but we didn’t have a confirmed death on the other GIs or the other torch-bearer and we had to give them every chance possible. They headed downriver first.
Lizard and copilot—his name was Kruger and he acted resentful—took immediate stock of our survival gear. She wouldn’t let me help, she was afraid I’d cause further injury to my knee. Instead, she made me wrap myself up in a mylar heating blanket and wait. I grumbled, but I followed orders and switched the blanket on. Despite the heat of the day, I was shivering. That wasn’t good.
Working together, the two of them quickly inflated three raft-tents and the communications buoy. Three silvery balloons puffed themselves full and rose straight up into the sky, lifting a long Mylar tether after them. I watched as they dropped away upward, until they disappeared in the high blueness. The tether was more than a kilometer in length with the balloons spaced equidistantly at the one-third, two-thirds, and topmost points. The topmost balloon had a transponder-beacon visible to satellites and skybirds, and the skins of the balloons were corner-dimpled to give them brighter-than-normal signatures; they’d reflect radar and laser beams directly back to the sender, showing up on anyone’s display screen as an urgent hot spot. The buoy hung high and invisible in the air above us, broadcasting its silent pleas for help. Lizard grabbed a military-issue clipboard from one of the kits and switched on the GPS; within thirty seconds, its display showed our location 40 klicks northwest of the Japuran mandala.
Tiny flying insects filled the air; we waved them away from our faces, the effort was useless. They were in our eyes and mouths and nostrils. We had no idea whether they were Terran or Chtorran. There wasn’t anything we could do about them anyway. The afternoon air dripped with humidity. Our clothes refused to dry out. They stayed wet and stuck to us like clammy parasites. Everyone’s boots squelched with every step. And all of us were sweating. We’d need salt tablets. And we’d need to boil water, lots of it, to avoid dehydration.
Lizard popped open cylinders of hot bullion for each of us; copilot had to help the corpsman drink, but at least he was conscious. The soup tasted more like medicine than soup—probably because it was more additives, vitamins, and antibiotics than anything else—but it had a strong restorative effect anyway. We were all of us beginning to feel a little better by the time the torchman and the GI returned.
I was lying just inside one of the tents, with the flaps open so I could see out. Lizard had ordered me into it over my protests, and then she’d settled down to rest just outside the entrance, watching while Kruger fiddled with the comm-link. He seemed to be having problems with it, but he was uncommunicative. He’d gone sullen again.
Lizard stood up shakily as the others approached, wiping her hands on her hips. They were alone. “We’ve got food,” she called, holding up a couple of bullion flasks. She was genuinely worried about them.
The GI didn’t answer. His expression told the whole story. He brushed past her to the opposite side of the camp. He crawled into the far raft-tent—where the corpsman still sat in shock—and pulled the flap shut behind him.
Lizard looked to the torchman with a question on her face.
He grunted. He was a big man; he looked like a football player. He took one of the flasks, popped the top open and began drinking, without even waiting for the soup to heat. He drank half the contents before he lowered it. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “We found one of his buddies,” he reported. “Floating face down. The river got him. Couldn’t even get to him to pull him out. The kid took it bad.” He nodded toward the tent. “He’s real shaky. He lost his whole team, one right after the other. And he’s never seen action before. So that’s gotta be real rough.” He sucked his teeth and spat. “He’ll get over it. We all do. And...at least, he has confirmation.” He turned and stared out at the oppressive green wall of vegetation, searching it with his eyes one more time. “My buddy just...disappeared.”
His buddy. The other torchman. The one who’d appeared for just an instant, shouting, “I can’t find him. I can’t find him. I’ve looked all over, I can’t find him.”
The river stank of decay. Parts of it were shallow and sluggish, while only meters away, deeper water swept by with alarming speed. Anything or anyone caught up in the rushing current would have been swept away in an instant. I wondered if I should say anything. Would it help? Would it make a difference? We’d lost the pilot, both gunners, three GIs, and one torch-bearer. Did it matter? I didn’t really feel like talking. I was beginning to itch all over.
“What about yourself?” Lizard asked. “Are you okay?” She sank down to the plastic mat in front of the tent again.
He finished the can of soup in one gulp and crushed the empty container in his hand. He tossed the can at the river and then squatted down opposite us. “I’m doable,” he said curtly, looking at us both.
There was something about the way he spoke—I studied him carefully, but I couldn’t see anything wrong. Nevertheless, his tone gave me serious hesitation. I looked to Lizard, but either she was too weak to notice, or she’d noticed and was giving no sign. “Thank you, Sergeant...?” she said/asked.
“Brickman,” he said, looking from Lizard to me and back again. “Everybody calls me Brick. I’m a burner. One of the best. You don’t have nothin’ to worry about.” He glanced to copilot and the communications gear. “How long till they pick us up?”
Without looking up from his screens, Kruger shook his head. “I don’t know. I can’t get through. All the channels are busy. I can’t read anything. It’s all coded. Something’s going on. I can’t even get a phone line.” This was the most he’d said to anyone since the crash.
“But the thing keeps transmittin’ till someone picks up the signal—don’t it?” Brickman asked.
Copilot grunted in confirmation. He turned his attention back to his displays.
Lizard added, “We’ll get out. Probably tonight. At worst, tomorrow.”
The corpsman came crawling out of the other tent then. We all looked at him with open curiosity. He was a thin man. He blinked in confusion, turning around slowly, running a hand through his hair and scratching, as if trying to remember where he was and how he’d gotten here. After a while, he stopped. He saw us and waved half-heartedly.
Abruptly, he remembered his job. He picked up his medkit from in front of the tent and staggered over to us with a vague expression on his face. He gave each of us a pressure injection of vitamin soup; then he looked at my leg, frowned, examined the splints, and injected more of the same local anesthetic that had let me come this far without screaming. Then he stumbled back to the other raft-tent and crawled back in. We had no idea if he had actually been conscious or just walking through the motions.
Lizard looked to Brickman. “Do you know any first aid?”
“A little, maybe.”
“The corpsman could probably use some attention—”
The torchman shook his head. “Best thing to do is let him sleep it off.”
“No, that’s not the best thing to do,” Lizard corrected. “He might have suffered a concussion.”
“He doesn’t look all that hurt to me.”
“Are you a doctor?”
“I been in combat. I seen guys go bugfuck before. He’s not hurt. He’s just stunned. Tomorrow he’ll have one helluva headache, but he’ll be doable.”
“Hmf,” said Lizard. Clearly, she didn’t share his views. “How’d you get out in one piece?”
“Didn’t.” The torchman explained, “I sorta jumped. Soon’s we got low enough. Figured I’d have a better chance. I was lucky. I guessed right. I hit the river hard though.”
“Can I ask you something?” I rolled up on one elbow so I could look out of the tent easier. “Do you have any trouble with kryptonite?”
“That’s the crunchy stuff, right?” The brick shrugged. “A little ketchup, some Tabasco, it’s fine.” I couldn’t tell if he was joking or serious. Abruptly, his expression grew harder. “We got worms nearby. I can smell ‘em.”
If he could, he was a better man than I—but I didn’t want to voice any more opinions on the Chtorran ecology. They wouldn’t be pretty and I didn’t think they’d be popular. And I might be right. Lizard was looking directly at me; she saw it in my face. She didn’t say anything either.
“Listen,” the brick said. “All I’ve got is this one torch. And it’s only half-full. It’s pretty banged-up, but it still works. I tested it. But I don’t think it’s gonna be enough. The worms’ll come for us tonight. They like to hunt in twilight, sometimes mornings. I think we should get outta here. Let’s push these raft-tents into the river. We’ll have a better chance.”
Lizard shook her head slowly. “Not yet. If we can get through,”—she nodded toward Kruger—”they can have a chopper here in an hour. Maybe less.”
“Eventually. Probably. Yes,” Brickman agreed. “But look at the time. What if we can’t get through? If I read the map right, we’re right in the path of the whole Chtorran column. If we get on the river, we can float downstream for a hundred klicks and then call for help.”
“Do you know these waters?” I asked.
“No. Do you?”
“That’s my point. This isn’t Disney World. As good as our maps are—and we’ve got some pretty good maps in that clipboard—there’s a lot they don’t show. There could be rapids, whirlpools, waterfalls, hostile tribes, panthers, water snakes, insects, crocodiles, piranhas—who knows what else? And that’s only the Terran stuff. We don’t know what kind of Chtorran bugs and critters are waiting downstream. I’ve seen tenant swarms. We couldn’t survive an attack.”
Kruger glanced up from his screens. He looked hostile. “That’s another question. What brought us down—?”
“Tempting fate,” I said, without thinking.
“Hey! Mathewson is dead,” Kruger shot back bitterly. “What do you want from me?”
Before I could answer, Lizard put her hand on my arm. “Just answer the question, Jim. Okay?”
I met her glance. She was asking me to be compassionate. We were all in this together. She was right. I shook my head sadly. “I don’t know what brought us down. But it was nasty.”
“Take a guess...?” Lizard suggested.
I shrugged helplessly. “Flutterbys probably. But I wouldn’t bet on it.”
“Flutterbys? What’s that?” asked Kruger. “Some kind of insect?”
“No. They’re not like anything on Earth. They’re metallic, kind of. They’re as tough as mylar. They could probably tangle your rotors or clog your jets.”
“They fly?”
“They float in the wind. They like to travel in swarms, but not always. They look like long silvery ribbons, but they’re parasites. They land on cattle and suck like leeches. Then they breed. They can be pretty ugly. If it was a swarm, you’d have seen it on the radar. Maybe—this is just a guess—maybe we hit a few stragglers following the worms. Or maybe.... “ Another thought, even less appealing, struck me.
“Or maybe what—?”
“Maybe the flutterbys are attracted to machinery somehow.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. But you should see them moving through the air. They ripple in perfect sine waves. They weave through the air at incredible speeds...thirty or forty klicks. And we know that they’re attracted to certain kinds of rhythmic sounds. Anyway, that’d be my best guess.” I rubbed my leg uncomfortably. It didn’t hurt, it itched.
In the distance, something chirruped with a bright red sound. Brickman stood up suddenly; he’d been rummaging through the P-rations. Now they lay forgotten at his feet while he listened to the echoes