Lopez propped me back up again and looked at me angrily. Then she turned around and barked at Siegel. "You had to give him firewater, didn't you! Didn't anybody ever tell you about civilians?"

Siegel came over and looked into my face, tilting my head back so the lights dazzled my eyes. I squinted in reaction. He used his thumb and forefinger to force my left eye open.

"He'll live," he grunted. "I don't know what they're making officers out of these days-"

Lopez looked at him sardonically. "I do. And it ain't a pretty sight, amigo." She turned back to me. "You're going to have to talk, Captain. You're too drunk to sing."

"No, wait-I've got a better idea." I put on my best Irish accent and pulled myself sloppily to my feet. "I'm going to tell you the one about the leprechaun and the penguin." I climbed up onto a chair, thought better of that, and decided to just climb up onto the floor instead. "Siegel, you come back here." -I waggled my hand at him. "I listened to your story about Sweaty Betty. You have to listen to the leprechaun joke. Besides, it's a tradition. The new guys, they haven't heard it yet-"

Lopez took me by the arm. "No leprechaun joke, Captain. The Constitution of the United States prohibits cruel and unusual punishment."

"No leprechaun joke-?"' I asked plaintively.

"Don't you remember why you were asked to leave Ireland?"

"Actually, I don't remember much of anything right now-"

"Trust me."

"Hey! What was that you said about singing?"

"I didn't say anything about singing."

"Oh. I thought you did. Never mind." I hiccuped and said, " I have an idea. About the worms." They both looked at me abruptly. "Hey! Why the serious faces? This is supposed to be a party." I forgot what I was thinking and fumbled around for a glass. "Let's have a toast to my idea."

"You're toasted enough," Siegel replied. "What's your idea? Come on, talk to me, Captain."

Instead, I belched. I giggled, but I was coherent enough to realize I should be embarrassed as well. "I'm sorry-" I belched again. "Is that the sober-up?"

"More or less. Don't worry about it," said Lapez. "I already knew you were a pig. I just couldn't tell you before." She sat down across from me and held my hands in hers. "You said you had an idea."

"No. It's gone now. I had it on the tip of my mind, but I forgot it."

"Something about the worms-?" They both looked worried.

"Uh-uh." I shook my head in annoyance. "There's this feeling that keeps flirting with me, it's not really an idea yet, just a physical sensation, but if I could find the words for it, I think-I don't know. If I could just say it, I could know it. Damn all. There's something here I'm missing-"

"Just think about the feeling," said Lopez. "No. Don't even think. Just feel. Just feel the feeling and then look at what it feels like-"

"I know the exercise," I said, cutting her off. "That won't work here." I sat up straight, belching again. "That sober-up stuff is working too well. No, the feeling is completely gone. I've lost it. Maybe it wasn't important anyway. Maybe it'll come back to me." I sank back against the wall behind me, letting my body sag again. Lopez and Siegel sat opposite me, studying me warily. "Hey!" I said. "How come you guys aren't drunk?" They both looked abruptly embarrassed. "Uh-"

"Oh, I get it," I said. "It's the old bridegroom prank. Get him so drunk, he passes out on his wedding night."

Siegel shook his head. "No, not quite-"

Lopez interrupted. "Yeah. Exactly. Siegel thought it would be fun to get you drunk, Cap'n. Sort of a payback. Give you a chance to make a fool out of yourself. Be one of the guys. Then we remembered the stories we'd heard about the weird flashes of insight people get when they're suddenly flushed with Sober-Up, and we thought, well, we thought we'd try it on you, because you know so much about the worms, maybe you'd come up with something great-"

"You're probably pissed as hell, right?"

I barely heard him. "Y'know, that's not a bad idea-letting the drugs make us more creative than we really are. I'm sorry to disappoint you. Too bad it didn't work."

"You're not pissed?"

"Only physically," I said distractedly. "I was just thinking about the way the worms think. Something you said reminded me of one of the theoretical discussions we had when we were planning this mission. We were wondering what would happen if we could implant a worm. Like Dwan Grodin. Or like the members of the Teep Corps. The Teep Corps could listen in, could look out through the worm's eyes, could feel what a worm feels, could think like a worm thinks. And then they could tell us what's really going on. That'd be something, wouldn't it?"

Siegel and Lopez exchanged a glance, "It' d be great," Siegel said.

"Go on," said Lopez, intently.

"Well, we passed the suggestion upstairs, and there's a study group looking into it. I haven't heard if they've decided anything. There's a couple of reasons why it'd be tricky. I mean, not just the biological ones. For one thing, the worms don't have much brain. I mean, not real brain. What they have isn't much more than a clumping of overripe ganglia. As near as we can tell, most of their actual thinking-or whatever it is they do that passes for thinking-takes place in the rest of their bodies, in the network of quill-stuff that infests them. It's the same stuff as their fur, but growing inside. The big ones are just huge sacs of neural quills-they're great big hairbags. Cut one open, and it's like looking into a vacuum cleaner bag that's been used to sweep out a kennel. But that's part of why the big ones are so hard to kill What isn't muscle is brain."

"Yeah? So what's the tricky part?"

"Well, not tricky. Dangerous. What if the Teep Corps peeks out through a worm's eyes, and somehow the way that a worm thinks is so fascinating or infectious-like a virus-that the whole Teep Corps starts thinking that way and decides to turn renegade? Part of the problem is to construct an isolated Teep Corps. But then, the isolated Corps is going to know it's isolated, and that will affect its behavior. If it does get its thinking changed, maybe it'll try to hide that fact. How do we know how a worm's mind works? What are they really doing when they go into communion? Do we want even a small network of Teeps thinking like worms. And would it ever be safe to let the isolated Teep communicate with the parent?"

"You just realized this?" asked Siegel.

"No," I said. "The study group has been worrying about this for months. What I was thinking about was the way the worms think."

"What about it?"

"Worms don't think," I said abruptly. "They sing." I blinked at them. They both looked blank.

"You don't get it, do you?"

Lopez spoke first. "Well, of course, they sing-"

"No. That's just noise. They make noise and we call it singing, but that's not what they really do. What they really do is sing."

Siegel frowned. "I'm sorry. You're losing us."

"I can't explain it," I said. "But I can feel it. There's aulnething about the singing-dammit!-I don't have the language for it. This is what I was struggling with before." I took a deep breath and tried again. "It's the difference between me , belting out "Yankee Doodle" and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing the choral movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony-"

And suddenly something clicked. I stopped in midsentence, stunned.

Lopez saw it in my face. "What?"

"The herds. Have you ever been in a herd? Have you ever seen une close up? They sing too. The worms sing like the herds. No, that's not right. The herds sing like the worms-"

"Hold it, wait a minute," said Siegel. "Are you talking about the herds like the ones in San Francisco and Los Angeles and MazatIan?"

"Yeah. I spent a week in a herd one afternoon. There's this thing that happens, the herd starts humming. Everybody. It's like a cosmic 'ommmm.' Everybody who hears it gets sucked into it. It's the most amazing sound you've ever heard. Try it sometime, get a thousand people together and get them all to start going 'ommmm.' They'll all tune themselves to the same note, without knowing how or why-It's the most incredible sensation because it sucks you into it. You can't resist, you can't help but become a part of it. Even if you don't make any sound yourself, it still gets to you. All those people resonating together, the vibration rattles you and dazes you and fills you up and everything else just disappears. You disappear. You vanish into the herd. You're not there anymore, only the all-pervasive, incredible,  soul-filling sound remains. Everything is the sound. The world is filled with it, resonates with it. It's not something you can explain. You have to experience it. It's like a drug high, only it isn't. It's like touching God, only it isn't. It's like being God. Only-afterward, you walk around dazzled by this gorgeous sense of who you really are. It's singing. That's what the worms do." I sat back in my chair, finished, and relieved to have the thought finally out of my head.