I wouldn't, of course. I was too professional to do that. First, we had to finish this mission-this wild, reckless adventure that I had flown off on, that nobody had authorized, which would probably discover nothing at all, and would only end up adding more fuel to the emotional firestorms raging at home.
If I got killed here, she'd never know.
Best not to get killed then.
Almost immediately the mechanical part of my mind popped out an answer. I could put an Event-of-Death message into the network. That would do…
Right. But the thought of writing it made me queasy. I sat down on the bottom step of the van and put my head in my hands. Maybe Willig was right about the war. If it hadn't been for the Chtorrans, I'd still be a fat and selfish teenager-no matter how old I grew. But if it hadn't been for the war, I would never have met Lizard.
She meant so much to me, and all I had done was make her unhappy. I didn't deserve her. It would serve me right if she told me she never wanted to see me again.
Shit.
The shambler tree is a slow-moving giant; its mobility varies with the terrain.
The average range of a shambler in soft soil is less than a kilometer a day. Shamblers prefer to move during the cooler hours of dawn and early evening. They are most active when the weather is wet and can often be found around lakes, swamps, marshlands, and river deltas; but they are not averse to crossing arid areas if necessary.
A shambler can survive for several weeks without direct access to the water table. An individual tree has multiple storage bladders throughout its circulatory system; plus, it can extract additional fluids and nutrients from the internal droppings of its tenants.
Because shambler herds carry much of their own personal ecology with them, they are extremely resilient and adaptable; but at the same time, the individual shambler ecology also requires a great deal of energy to survive. Because the shambler is a hunting-feeder, it tends to exhaust an area quickly. The shambler must migrate continually to find new resources to feed upon; it must regularly find fresh soil and fresh prey.
Shamblers generally migrate within a region in great spiraling patterns, first outward, then in again. These spirals can be as much as fifty to a hundred kilometers in diameter. The shambler is always looking for arable soil, water, and animal matter for its tenants to feed upon. Shamblers will farm an area until it is decimated, then they will arc off on a new tangent and begin a new "great circle."
A shambler doesn't really walk as much as it resists falling in the direction it is walking; time-lapse imagery reveals that the shambler is continually pulling its rearmost legs forward, dropping them ahead, and leaning its weight against them to keep the rest of the structure from toppling over. A shambler will grow as many legs or trunks as it needs. On average, a shambler will have over a hundred separate trunks.
Shambler roots also play a considerable part in shambler locomotion. Young roots can be seen at the base of the tree, springing out like tube feet between the spines of a sea urchin; older roots sprawl like creepers and vines. The mature roots of the shambler will be strewn across the surface of the surrounding area in a seemingly haphazard fashion, where they serve as both physical anchors for the height of the tree, as well as feelers to determine the condition of the surrounding soil. Experiments have demonstrated that shamblers will move in the direction of the most "interesting" chemical tastes in the soil. The more complex the molecule, the more interesting it is to the shambler. (Appendix IV; Section 942.)
As the shambler progresses, it is continually growing new roots to replace those that break off as it pulls away. The abandoned roots do not die; but neither do they become full-grown shamblers. Instead, they continue to survive and play host to other Chtorran organisms. A migrating shambler leaves behind itself a growing webwork of root fibers, vines, and creeper nerves, all of which quickly become independent of the parent organism. Eventually these shambler trails form paths of communication and migration for herds of shamblers, and many other Chtorran species as well.
It is currently believed that shamblers are one of the major vectors of expansion for the Chtorran infestation.
—The Red Book,
(Release 22.19A)
Chapter 9
Prowlers
"Never buy anything with a low serial number. "
-SOLOMON SHORT
But after a while, that got old, and I had a job to do, so I waved again to the other van and climbed back into my own vehicle. I secured the door slowly and thoughtfully. Willig glanced over at me curiously, but said nothing. Despite the cold breezes from the air-conditioning vents, I was sweating profusely.
I thumbed my communicator on. "Okay, put two birds in the sky and warm up a prowler. We'll need a wideband uplink to the network, all channels. And let's buy multiple coverage on the ground between here and there, flames and explosives both. Second van covers the first. Questions?"
"Just one-" That was Siegel. "What are we doing?"
"Can't guarantee it, but I think there's a worm nest under that shambler grove. Yes, I know-that would represent a significant departure from recorded behavior, but there's enough satellite evidence to give me confidence in the possibility. I want to send a prowler down. If we get pictures, we'll flash the nest. If not-"
"Can we suit up and go hunting?" Siegel asked as he climbed past me on his way to the rear lockers.
"Siegel, are you really that eager to see what the inside of a worm looks like? Let me save you the trouble. It's very dark in there."
"I want a Chtorran-combat ribbon. The red will match my eyes."
I sighed. "Reilly, when you get a moment, will you please tell Siegel how you got your plastic leg?"
"Captain McCarthy bit off the real one," said Reilly. "He said he was a taster for the worms."
"And my point is-?"' prompted Siegel.
"Don't get overeager."
"All right, can the chatter. Let's get those birds up and that prowler out. Pronto. Andale! Andale! Arriba! Arriba!"
Siegel was already settling himself at the rear console. He adjusted his glasses on his nose, then yanked the overhead virtual-reality helmet down close; but he didn't pull it down over his eyes and ears yet. His fingers danced across the keyboard as he double-checked the status of the birds.
As soon as they were powered up and showing green, he popped the outer hatch on the launch bay, and they bounced down onto the ground, where they wavered uncertainly for a moment, shifting their weight as they tested their footing. One of the units flapped its wings for balance, then settled itself quickly. Its long gossamer wings were as pale as dawn. The heads on both the birds turned this way and that, sliding back and forth in quick snakelike movements.
The spybirds cocked their heads and listened; they studied everything that moved with the precision awareness of clockwork predators. If it hadn't been for the alien cast of their eyes, they would have looked like shining elongated swans. Their necks stretched forward like snakes, as flat and menacing as cobras-but the lidless orbs that englobed both upper and lower sides of their heads were glittering hemispheres of clustered black lenses. They stared out at the world with a dispassionate, terrifying insect-like demeanor. To meet their dreadful gaze was to know the terror of intelligence without a soul behind it.
I admired the technology. I couldn't love it. Not like some people did. Not like Siegel. To me, mechanimal technology was a horror. These creatures were even more alien than the worms. The worms, at least, acted as if they had souls. Or maybe-I just wanted to believe that they had souls because they were organic. It didn't matter. The birds and the prowlers and the spiders and all the other titanium-ceramic creatures we had assembled and turned loose upon the world seemed less accessible in understanding than anything that had come from Chtorr. Was that just my own prejudice? Or was it something else-? I could appreciate the aesthetics. But I couldn't feel affection.