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Some of the children resisted. They ran from the giant white strangers who dropped from the sky-whale. The soldiers sprayed them, caught them as they collapsed, carried them back to the baskets.
A wild laugh behind me like a cold hand on my neck-a hand on Siegel's shoulder jerked us around. A man's voice. English accented. "Are you feeding the sky? Where are you taking the Irrrtttt?" The image focused. A tattooed brown face. Vertical quills rising up out of his head like a topknot. I thought of Queequeg, Melville's mysterious alien in our midst. The image cleared. The lines on the face were ridges under the skin. As if it had been plowed or burrowed or chewed. The face tilted sideways, curiously, as if the being behind it couldn't focus perpendicularly. It cackled. It pointed upward. "Who is your rrrlll
The first of the baskets was already rising up into the looming airship. Two more were dropping down. I couldn't see it, I could only feel it, but Siegel made a hand signal to the rest of the team to keep loading. "Who are you?" he demanded of the apparition that stood before him.
"Guyer, I be. John, Dr. Harvard tribe. Research nest." More wild laughter. The thing slapped its knee several times, as if this were the most amusing joke it had ever heard. "Research! Research!" it shouted. "I be research."
"Background!" I shouted, mike off. "Dr. John Guyer. Harvard Research."
"It's already working," Lizard said. "Stand by-"
The metal voice of the LI cut her off. "Dr. John Guyer, Harvard Research Mission. Disappeared ten months ago. Amazon exploration. Body and voice characteristics, seventy percent match."
A window opened up in my vision. Dr. Guyer as he looked two days before he disappeared. Handsome. Tall. Curly light brown hair. Blue eyes. Laughing. Smiling. His eyes twinkled. He was standing in a garden, wearing T-shirt and shorts, holding a hoe. He was talking to someone off camera, whistling and making ludicrous whooping noises. Finally, he waved us off and turned back to his hoeing.
The window closed, and I was looking at Dr. John Guyer as he looked today-smaller somehow, bent and hunched, but still gri
"He's blind!" I said abruptly. "Or he's drugged to the gills. Or both."
"Bring him up?" Siegel asked.
A pat on my shoulder from Lizard. Yes.
"Do it," I advised. "Spray him if you have to."
Siegel was pointing to the basket over and over. "Come with us, Dr. Guyer. We're here to save you." The image pa
Guyer looked alarmed. Frightened. His eyes went wild. He hunched and swiveled his glance from side to side. "The king will not like this!" he screamed. "Frenzy! Frenzy! Run and hide! Hide!" He scampered for the wall, started climbing his way up it.
The image jerked as Siegel ran after him. I heard the sound of the spray. Guyer kept climbing, laughing and screaming in terror, almost made it to the top, climbed halfway over-Siegel leapt, grabbed his leg, pulled him back this way. He toppled, fell on top of us, pi
"Goddamn-" Siegel said.
Something on the other side of the wall was screaming purple epithets. Siegel rolled Guyer off him and pulled the now-limp goblin-form toward the last basket, perched lopsidedly in the middle of the corral. He lifted Guyer with difficulty, toppling him into the basket, just as a giant red worm came battering its way through the wall-not enough aerogel had been sprayed to stop this one; it trailed smoke along its entire body; both aerogel and flames-it was on fire too!
The basket jerked as Siegel fell into it, and we rose upward. Screaming and laughing.
"We got him! Go!"
The airship was already rising away from the Japuran nest. We could see things falling out of all the hatches as we rose into its silent belly.
The question arises almost immediately-who digs these tu
The assumption until now has been that the gastropedes themselves are responsible for the construction of the extensive subterranean nests. But this assumption is mostly inaccurate. A gastropede family is responsible only for the initial construction phases of its nest. This includes the dome entrances, some corrals, the primary chambers and their co
But very quickly, as the family establishes itself within its nest, expanding and growing into a tribe, a new symbiont appears-one that seems specifically designed for tu
In actuality, the jellypig is a fat gray slug with many rudimentary feet. It resembles nothing so much as a hairless gastropede mounted on a millipede chassis, leading some observers to suggest that it is closely related to either one or the other of these species. If either of these cases is true, then it is most likely a metamorphosed millipede. Some evidence exists to validate this possibility.
—The Red Book,
(Release 22.19A)
Chapter 67
Sameshima
"You can believe anything you want. The universe is not obligated to keep a straight face."
-SOLOMON SHORT