His hue projected sadness, but reflected sympathy. “You know we can’t do that. Bar. It would be even worse for them, and worse for us. They’d starve. Bar, or undergo the Change and tip off the government that we’re about. They’re infected now. Already the virus has touched them, through our air, through the webbing. Already it is duplicating, doubling and doubling again, forcing out the stuff it replaces. See the golden mist about them, even through the flight suits? That’s the water carrying the fluids and molecules out through the pores as the virus dominates their cells. Within hours, no more, they’ll be as biologically nonhuman as we. Put them downstairs and they’ll start to eat, start to change into us. It’s in the programming of the virus.”
He was right, of course, as usual. The only problem I could see with it, though, was the chance that they would go mad. The only hope that I had was that they were either more stable personalities than we had a right to expect, or that they were so immunized by Creatovision that they’d simply accept it as they would a new programming idea. I adjusted the computer for lower register speech. “All right, all right, take it easy,” I soothed as best I could, wishing I could tie George into the computer. How often I’d wished that! “Just relax and I’ll explain what this is all about.”
There was a muffled sob from one, I couldn’t tell which, but the one I’d talked to initially spoke, terri-
131
The Web of the Chozen
fied, upset, nervousbut not mad. It was a good sign.
“Whowhatare you?” she gasped.
“We are the Choz,” I responded. “And, yes, you’re right, we are not human.”
“What happened to the scout who originally flew this ship?” she asked, the question doubling as an invitation to tell her her own fate.
“I am the pilot, the original one,” I responded. “Once I was as human as you are. As I became one of them, not through choice although now I prefer it, so will you.”
“I won’t become a monster!” the other one screamed. Bad sign. She might be trouble.
I sighed, choosing my words carefully.
“There was a world called Patmos,” I began, and then told them the story, or rather, the story as George and I had told it to Ham and Eve.
“The virus is in you now,” I concluded. “There’s no way to stop it. Let it run its course. Don’t resist. Believe me, this existence is not at all bad or unpleasant. It’s just different. We’re sorry we had to involve you, but we had no choice. They have destroyed our world, made it unfit for life. We are the last.”
“Turn up the lights,” Marsha asked. “Let us see what you look like.”
“Monsters!” the other murmured.
I turned the lights up slowly.
“Monsters, yes, I suppose, by human definition. But you must forget human definitions now. The navy forced us to this, human action forced us to trap you.”
Although the light meant nothing to me, it did allow .the colors to come into sharp relief.
I heard Marsha gasp as she saw me.
“Oh, my God!” she gasped. “You were never human!”
I attempted a shrug. The Choz gesture was meaningless to them.
“You’ll see. You have three choices, and only three. I will honor whichever of the three you want. First,
132
The Web of the Chozen
you can accept the situation, go through the Change which is already starting within you, cast your lot in with us. Because of the virus within youand now throughout both ships, in the atmosphereyou can never return to your past lives.”
“And the other choices, then?” Marsha prompted.
“You can choose to die,” I responded as emotion-lessly as I could. “The Choz don’t die. The virus can repair almost any damage, fight every infection, make new cells that are as good as the original to replace the old. I suppose we’ll die someday, when our brain cells go, but that could be a long, long time. But, right now, we could kill you, we could flush you out into space as soon as we come out of the jump.”
“Let us go!” the other pleaded. “Drop us at a bea-con! The Corporation will find a cure for us!”
“Which one did you work for?” I asked sharply.
“Seiglein,” they both answered, making it a sort of litany. Their faith in my old employer was somehow sadly touching.
“So did I,” I told them. “This is a Seiglein ship. It was Jerry Seiglein himself who tried to kill us, almost certainly blew up the beacon that I used, and destroyed our planet. No, citizens, it’s easier for them to kill you than to cure youif they could, which I doubt.”
“You said there were three choices,” Marsha said. “What is the third?”
“You can resist, refuse to accept what happened, and go mad,” I replied.
They were silent for a minute, mulling over what I’d just told them. The one, Marsha, seemed to be pretty stable. She might make it. The otherwell, I didn’t know about her.
Finally, Marsha asked, “Can we be released? Can we get somewhere and think about this?”
The computer symbolically cleared its throat, reflecting my unease.
“I’m afraid that dissolving the webbing isah, a
133
The Web of the Chozen
messy chore, and one that must wait on circumstances. We’ll release you as soon as we can.” I turned to the others, waiting expectantly, not knowing how to act or what to do, unable, at the moment, to join in the conversation although able to listen to it.
“Ask them about themselves,” Eve prompted. “We should know something about them. Wow! They look so weird, so strange! I never thought humans would look like thatso little, so soft, so weak.”
I chuckled. First impressions from a one-hundred- percent alien creature.
“Ham?“T prompted. “Any comments?”
“If that’s what humans are like,” he replied firmly, “praise God I’m a Choz!”
“George?”
“May as well do what Eve says,” the biologist responded. “After all, they may well be part of the family soon. Besides, they’have a big advantage over usthey’re younger, I think, and they know what’s happening and what’s going to happen, even if they haven’t accepted it yet.”
I nodded. “Look, while we wait, tell us about your-selves. Youyour name is Marsha? Mine is Bar Holliday. The others here, who cannot now speak with you, are George Haspinol and our two children. Ham and Eve.”
“Why can’t they talk?” Marsha asked apprehensively.
“Choz speech is ultra-high-frequency audio, beyond the range of human hearing,” I explained. “Don’t worry, you’ll hear them later.”
“So that’s why your voice sounds so strange and disembodied!” Marsha exclaimed. “I’m really talking to the ship’s computer!”
“To me through the computer,” I acknowledged.
“For now, anyway.”
They were silent, then the other one said, so softly it was hard to be heard, “This isn’t happening. This
134
The Web of the Chozen
does not happen. Not to people, not to anybody, most of all not to me.”
I ignored her. “So who are. you, Marsha?”
“Marsha 47-3856-27 VonderhaU,” she said. “I’m twenty, and I qualified as a ship’s pilot only eight months ago.” I nodded. That fit. The milk runs were the first commands assigned to new graduates.
I introduced myself again, and gave her some of my background. That seemed to have a soothing effect simply because she was hearing something familiar.
“And you,” I said, addressing the other one. “Who are you?”
“I don’t have to tell you nothin’,” she responded.
“You don’t indeed,” I admitted, “but a name at least would be helpful. It’s a lot better than ‘Citizen’ or ‘Hey! You!’”
“Oh, shit, this isn’t happening anyway,” she said, more to herself than to me. “Nadya. Nadya 38-7632- 01 Yamato.”
“Okay, Nadya, I think I can free you both now. I warn you, though, that we have more webbing, that it’s almost impossible for you to overpower us or hurt us much, and that you’d better do as we say or elect to be dumped.”
They both nodded, still scared. When I explained how I was going to dissolve the webbing, they were even more upset. I didn’t blame them; I didn’t much like getting pissed on, either.
“Bar!” George said suddenly. “This may be what we’re waiting for! I just thought of it! Marvelous! They’ll have to be downstairs anyway, near the food. We can take samples. Bar! Samples as things go along! Watch how the virus works, its patterns, what molecule chain does what! Their change might give us the key!”
I nodded. George’s basic problem was that he had been working with stable samples. The virus was a normal part of our and the plant’s cellular structures. Now we could see it operating in high gear.
135
The Web of the Chozen
I finished, and was putting up with nasty comments from the two women as well as with their overall revulsion. But I’d gotten the bulk of the webbing; the rest was mostly covering their one-piece jumpsuits, which were soon, going to be superfluous anyway.
“Look,” I explained to them as they slowly rose, trying to wipe away the sticky stuff, “George is a biologist. We are trying to solve the riddle of this virus, to control it. You can help, if you will.” I was trying to remember the sequence of my own Change.
“God! I’m starving!” Nadya exclaimed suddenly.
I nodded. The Change was starting.
Let’s see, I thought. First day was the internal change in the digestive system. Well and good. Second day some external changes, the hair, longer arms. Only by the third day did the hands become useless.
For the first two days they would be able to do something we couldn’tmanage a syringe, take blood samples that involved more than just cutting yourself and wiping it on a slide.
“Move down the ramp,” I ordered them, trying to keep my tone normal, conversational, slightly friendly. They looked around at uswe were standing there, poised and ready, with huge muscles and tough skin and complied. Ham and Eve preceded them, George and I followed.
Marsha gasped as she saw the main lounge. The whole floor was a jungle of tall grass, the fixtures, old furniture, and lab stuff rising incongruously out of it.
“We’re herbivores, plant-eaters,” I told them, and this information seemed to reassure Nadya a little. I considered it-frankly, in their position I might have thought about being eaten, too. “This little garden is our food supply.”
“Can’t we get some chops from our ship, then?” Nadya pleaded. “I’m starving!”
Marsha said nothing, but the mention of food produced an unconscious reaction in her.
“Look down in the grass, at the base of the blades,”
136
The Web of the Chozen
I told them. They bent down and looked curiously at the tubers. “Try one,” I suggested. “You’ll find they aren’t bad at all.”
“I’m not going to eat your alien stuff!” the older woman protested. “It might poison me! We have plenty of food in our ship.”
“Eat the tubers or starve,” I said flatly. “It’s the quickest way.”
“To what?” Marsha asked nervously.
I sighed. “You know for what.”
They thought for a while, and sat down in the grass. Marsha cut herself on the sharp blades.
“Watch the cuts,” I told her. “Just keep watching them.”
She looked puzzled, but did as she was told. I knew what she was seeing, too. The blood stopped, then a scab formed, almost visibly.
“It’s healing over!” she breathed. “The sting’s gonel”
“See?” I said. “You’re already on the way.”
They just sat there for a while, Marsha staring at her cuts, Nadya looking uneasily around the lounge.
“Smells like shit in here,” the older woman said.
I shrugged. “What do you think fertilizes plants?” I responded lightly. “You’ll get used to it.”
We were looking over slides and checking things out sometime later; Ham and Eve were idly grazing, keeping watch on the two prisoners, whose hunger was growing by the hour. Still, they resisted the tubersand that took willpower, I knew.