‘Thanks. Heath’s okay, I guess. But he doesn’t seem the type to run an open bar on board.’
‘Oh, don’t be so hard on him, Dave. He’s not so bad. You were a bit of a jerk tonight, and he let you slide on that.’
‘He did,’ Dave conceded. ‘And I was.’
Another drink burned down even more smoothly than the first.
‘I’m sorry about your brother. Iraq, wasn’t it? I thought that was a bullshit war.’
‘They’re all bullshit. But yeah, you and me both. Thanks. So,’ he said, wanting to get away from the topic of his brother. He never really wanted to talk about Andy. ‘You know him well? Heath, I mean.’
‘Well enough.’
He filed that away next to Heath having told him that he was just an asset in place. That there was nothing special about his being here. The doc, he was glad to see, was a lady who could handle her liquor. There was no dainty sipping for her. She took a man’s measure from the bottle before recapping it and stashing the fifth back in her ski jacket. Wisps of cloud drifted across the face of the moon, but his eyes adjusted again. He could see well enough in the dark to make out the tiniest blemish where the bottle had smudged her lipstick.
‘I didn’t just mean about me before,’ he said. ‘When I asked what you thought was going to happen, I meant, you know, generally.’
She turned around from where she’d been leaning back on the rail, which put her a little closer to him. Close enough that their elbows touched. She didn’t move away, but after a while he did. It was just too awkward to be that close to her. To any woman, he suspected. Not that he wasn’t interested. Obviously. A woody reaching halfway to next week testified to just how interested. But Dave knew all about getting himself out of trouble and trying to tumble this woman into the sack was a gold medal start on getting himself
in
trouble. For one thing, she might be his only ally in this whole miraculous clusterfuck. Chief Allen didn’t count; he was more of a friendly snack machine.
If Ashbury noticed him distancing himself, she gave no sign of it.
‘It depends, Dave,’ she said. ‘Is this story going to break? Certainly. There’s just too many people who know, people outside their chain of command. The contact was too remote for them to shut down the site quickly but close enough to a major transmission vector that there was no chance of controlling the
. . .’
She stopped.
‘Damn. Look at me. Two drinks and I reveal my secret identity. Jargon Lady. But I guess you were asking whether it’s over. You know, besides your couch session with Ellen, and the
60 Minutes
special, and the whole upcoming Festival of Dave, and the overexposure of Dave and the inevitable vicious backlash against Dave, leading to the second coming of Dave, most likely on
Dancing with the Stars
. Can you dance, by the way?’
‘Sure. I’m a middle-aged white man. I got the moves.’
It was her turn to laugh out loud. It was a light, bright sound on the darkened mausoleum of the Longreach. When she was done, she said, ‘But I guess you mean is it over with those creatures?’
He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.
‘You’d know better than me,’ she said. ‘What’s your best guess? Are we done with them?’
Dave really wished he could have another shot.
‘Nope,’ he said. ‘I doubt it. I don’t like thinking much about it. Whenever I spend any time doing that, you know, going down the
. . .
memory hole
. . .
that thing opened up in my head, it feels like I might not come out.’
‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘If we didn’t have those ugly bastards on the slab downstairs, brains in a bucket, just like ET, you’d probably be locked up as a lunatic. But we do have them.’
She shivered and moved in close to him.
‘Anyway, I’m cold,’ she said. ‘And tired now. And a little scared. Walk me back to my cabin, would you? That’s not a come-on, by the way. I’m genuinely scared. And cold. And if I wanted to fuck you, I would tell you. I have Asperger’s Syndrome.’
Dave stopped mid-stride.
‘Shit? Really? I
. . .
thought
. . .’
‘What? That I wanted to fuck you? Or that I’m retarded now?’
Dave tugged his Annapolis hoodie down to conceal the raging hard-on as best he could, but he was pretty sure she spotted it. And every time she dropped an F-bomb it got worse.
‘No,’ he said, struggling. ‘I just thought
. . .
I thought. Okay. Yeah, I thought Asperger’s meant retarded. You sort of threw me with that.’
‘Well, it doesn’t. So fuck off with that idea. But walk me home anyway.’
She looped her arm through his and pulled him forward.
‘It’s dark,’ she added. ‘I don’t want to fall off this fucking oil rig. You’re the safety chap. It’s your job.’
He caught up with her, almost stumbling over his own feet.
‘So, since I’m doing you a favour here, you can do me one,’ Dave said.
She gave him a look.
‘Not like that,’ he added quickly. ‘Just what the fuck is wrong with your friend Compton?’
She shook her head. ‘He is not my friend. He is my boss at OSTP. When they need additional knowledge or help with a particular field, Compton is the one who contacts the best and brightest. As for what is wrong with him, that would be the US Army Human Terrain System.’
‘Again with that terrain thing? What is it?’
‘Using the tools of anthropology to understand the enemy in Afghanistan and Iraq,’ she said. ‘A big no-no in the discipline. He’s pretty much blacklisted from any academic position, tenure track or part time, forever. The non-disclosure agreement prevents him from writing a book on his work, so that avenue is closed to him as well.’
‘Don’t you have the same problem?’ Dave asked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I never went to Iraq or Afghanistan, and I don’t use my skill set in support of programs like Human Terrain. There’s always a berth for me somewhere. The space program is a lot more militarised than you’d imagine.’
‘I doubt that. I got a pretty lurid imagination.’
‘Besides, between guest speaking, medical research, and this job I get by quite well.’
‘So he’s frustrated?’ he asked.
‘Very much so,’ she said. ‘These days he couldn’t get hired as an adjunct if his life depended on it. The government pretty much owns him so long as he doesn’t piss too many more people off.’
They reached the bottom of the stairs and turned down a corridor.
‘They’re going to want to know everything, you know,’ she said as they left the mezzanine level of the stairwell. As soon as they were out in the breeze, the unseasonably biting cold became much more unpleasant.
‘Who? The media?’
‘No. Jesus for an engineer, you can be dense, can’t you?’ She punched him playfully on the arm again. ‘The government. Heath is a believer in you, Hooper. For a born again, he’s quite the empiricist, you know.’
‘I
think
I know what you mean by that,’ Dave said. ‘And Heath’s a God botherer, eh? Figures.’
‘No, it doesn’t. And I mean that the evidence out here, the accounts he’s gathered from other witnesses, and the time he’s spent with you, it’s all convinced him we’re in a genuine first contact situation. Just not one covered by the protocols. He’s feeling his way through, and one of the things he feels is that you’re telling it straight. Especially about downloading the creatures’ memories, or mind state, or whatever.’
Dave could smell meat cooking slowly down in the kitchen, but for once he wasn’t hungry. Not for food, anyway.
‘Really?’ he said. ‘Because I’m not sure I trust it or even believe it.’
She stopped, forcing him to pull up, too.
‘Why not? Memory is just encoded electrical signals. It’s a phase state, a hypercomplicated one but describable if you have the language, replicable if you have the technology.’
‘Which we don’t. Do we?’
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘But last time I checked, 38-year-old men didn’t go leaping a hundred feet into the air, either.’
‘Thirty-seven. I’m not that old.’
‘Congratulations. But back on topic. Last I checked, monsters didn’t chew up oil rigs. And magical hammers didn’t
. . .
Hey. That’s warm.’
She’d touched the head of the splitting maul and pulled her hand away quickly. Dave hadn’t noticed anything usual about
. . .
Lucille. Not since she’d given him that mild buzz a little earlier.
‘Do you mind?’
The prof carefully reached out and touched the brutal-looking axe head, running her hand over it and caressing the sledgehammer. It didn’t help Dave’s little problem.
Not so little
, he corrected silently.
Emmeline put her hand on his arm. ‘It’s like you’ve got your own hot water bottle there. No wonder you don’t feel the cold. Just one more thing to add to the list of inexplicable curiosities.’
She let her hand fall away.
‘I wouldn’t call what happened to you a gift, Dave. It feels like a burden. It’s not just about the miracle weight loss cure or cartoon superpowers. You have all this knowledge, too. What you don’t have is the knowledge
of
that knowledge, if that makes sense. You don’t know what you know. How far down it goes. How wide. How to catalogue it all. In the end, even if no more of these things come up, the government is going to want to make sure they know exactly what you know.’
Dave didn’t reply. He heard Allen approach long before the chief petty officer appeared, boots ringing on the steel decking. He looked agitated.
‘Found you,’ he said. ‘Hope you weren’t planning on going to bed,’ he said, oblivious to any double meaning. ‘We have to get back on shore now. Orders from JSOC.’
‘What’s happened, Zach?’ Ashbury asked.
‘More of Dave’s monsters. A heap of them, coming up out of the sewers in New Orleans. We’re taking half the marines we got here with us. There’s a big firefight under way. It’s confused. Cops. Gangbangers. Some crazy fucker with a crossbow, they say, like the one you killed after Raising Cane’s. And monster –’
‘Wait,’ Dave interrupted him. ‘Did you say a crossbow?’
‘Or a bow and arrow. One of the cops took a shot in the head.’
‘Sliveen,’
Dave said. ‘You want me along, don’t you?’
Allen’s eyes slipped to the splitting maul Dave carried on his shoulder.
‘Captain Heath insists. You, too, ma’am. And Professor Compton.’
‘He will be less than thrilled, but I’ll get him,’ Ashbury said, excusing herself to run back to her room to grab a backpack and ‘some things’.
‘Borrow a gun if you can,’ Dave called after her. ‘A big one.’
‘Come on,’ Allen said, tugging at his elbow. ‘Heath wants to talk to you before we fly out. And, hey, you know, sorry, dude.’
‘Sorry? Why?’
Allen smiled at him.
‘The doctor lady is kinda hot.’
19
T
he thresh ate well.
As large and powerful as the minion had been, it indeed had been slow and stupid after gorging greedily on its meal. It had grunted once as they flew out of the darkness and clamped their jaws onto the exposed nerve ganglion bulging at the rear of its neck. It was a heavy brute, and it had taken their combined strength to drag it back out of the uncomfortable light and into the familiar, reassuring darkness of the red-roofed stone temple. Oh, but it had been worth the effort. When they tore open the belly of the beast and ripped into its two stomachs, they were rewarded with a feast of pre-chewed, partly digested man meat. Their eyestalks were rigid with the pleasure of it. How smart they had been, they assured each other by quickthinkings, to have allowed the minion to bring down their prey and prepare it so well for them. Such a sufficiency of the achingly sweet delicacy did they recover from the minion’s digestive tract that they themselves were quite stupid and slow with feasting when yet another of the timid, slow-moving calflings arrived barking, holding some sort of black tool in its hand.
The thresh laughed. What a pathetic little thing. Oh, they would surely eat this one next or even keep it alive for the journey back to the UnderRealms.
This one, too, rode in some form of chariot that howled through the night, flashing cold blue and red fire that they now knew to be entirely harmless. Clad in a skin of white and painted in blue clan livery; the thresh had never seen such a thing. A strange scent was in the air, twice-burned flesh, perhaps. Having been hatched long after their kind had been banished from the Above, they supposed there were many things they had never seen. But race memories lived on long after those who had first known them were gone. Great was their pride in thinking out such a difficult and confusing think as the memory of the beast-drawn carts that Man had been known to ride. Try as they might, however, the related memory of how such a chariot might move without the power of a beast to pull it was beyond them. Such thinking was probably the preserve of a Master Scolari or maybe even the queen. It was possible, they supposed, that the creatures that powered it were inside the chariot, armoured and protected from thresh and minion alike.
The thresh wondered what these chariot beasts might taste like and whether it might be possible to crack open the shell in much the same way a swarm of thresh could strip the armoured skin from an old fallen Drakon.
Giddy with thoughts of carrying their news back down below where it might be thought on by intellects far greater than theirs and, it had to be admitted, a little slow-witted and drowsy because of the huge meal they had just gobbled down, the thresh did not react with any great speed or efficiency to the arrival of yet more food in yet another beastless chariot possessing the same howling call. This one also threw out great fans of light from its eyes without any of the telltale flicker of fire that men were known to use for their invidious purposes. With mouths so full of sticky shredded meat that their teeth could barely move along their jaw tracks, the thresh exchanged a few torpid thoughts on the matter without concluding anything.
Their own bellies were just as full as the minion’s had been, and so no hunger frenzy drove them, but they could not help idly speculating on what a fine meal this prey would have made had it arrived before the others. It couldn’t be a calfling. No, this prey was easily twice their size and wrapped in the most fetchingly dark hide, which must surely be all the sweeter to the fang. They could smell and even sense its fearful thinkings over the considerable distance that separated it from them, and they languidly attempted to grow that fear in the hope that it might paralyse the creature, thus keeping it for later consideration. The old memories spoke of men who neither fought nor ran when confronted, instead soiling themselves most deliciously with their own juices and pastes. What rewards might await them, they thought to each other, were they able to make this one baste itself thus before taking it below to the nest.
When it evacuated the contents of its stomach, the rich smell of fermenting bile, burned meat, and some unknown but powerful sweetness reached their scent receptors almost immediately. The man was joined by a second one, this one pale in the forearms and face yet wearing a black robe of sorts as well.
The thresh’s forest of eyestalks, which had been drooping, went rigid again.
Oh, we must have them now, they decided.
The thresh launched themselves at the prey. There could be no question of leaving these creatures to wander off of their own accord. They had no idea how that unique combination of scents and tastes had arisen, but it was imperative that the meal not be allowed to escape. Why, it was even possible they might present the repast directly to the queen herself without the usual pre-chewing and digesting customary for tribute feasts. She would want to taste this meat in its natural state, they thought. To allow the flesh to speak for itself without a lot of unnecessary tearing and rending and cooking in the acids of the blood pot.
Unfortunately, they were no more able to move with the speed and agility of a freshly hatched carver daemon than the minion had been when it was full of tasty man meat. No sooner had the thresh determined to charge back into the strange, cold, harmless light to disable the large man with the pleasingly dark hide than one of them tripped on the ruined masonry that lined the red-roofed building, falling face-first to the ground. This village seemed large for one that had fallen to ruin. There were snares and pitfalls all around, large holes filled with brackish water, and a veritable blizzard of fragile containers, skins, and pouches was strewn about.
The blow all but rendered the stricken thresh unconscious, and its nest mate tumbled over as it attempted to arrest its own flight forward lest the quickthinking link between them be severed by distance. How fortunate that no other nest mates or minion were around to witness their embarrassment. The thresh that had not been knocked nearly insensible reached out with its thoughts to soothe and revive its mate and had only just regained a proper bond when the most awful, unthinkable thing happened.
A flash of light.
A thunderclap.
As the grumbling, injured thresh put one claw to its head to rub at the spot where a large bump was already rising, its skull burst apart in a shower of gore. It dropped dead amid the rubble and detritus of the ruined village.
The surviving thresh stood frozen in place, its jaw hanging open with long tendrils of man meat and minion innards still swinging from its fangs. And then it screamed. A long, hideous psychic scream that was completely inaudible to anything but a fellow dweller in the UnderRealms.