A Matter for Men.

by David Gerrold.

Acknowledgments.

The following people have provided valuable support and made significant contributions to this book: Dennis Ahrens Jack Cohen Diane Duane Richard Fontana Harvey and Johanna Gla.s.s Robert and Ginny Heinlein Don Hetsko Rich Sternbach Tom Swale Linda Wright For Robert and Ginny Heinlein, with love Chtorr (ktor) n. 1. The planet Chtorr, presumed to exist within 30 light-years of Earth. 2. The star system in which the planet occurs; a red giant star, presently unidentified. 3. The ruling species of the planet Chtorr; generic. 4. In formal usage, either one or many members of same; a Chtorr, the Chtorr. (See Chtor-ran) 5. The glottal chirruping cry of a Chtorr.

Chtor-ran (ktor-en) adj. 1. Of or relating to either the planet or the star system, Chtorr. 2. Native to Chtorr. n. 1. Any creature native to Chtorr. 2. In common usage, a member of the primary species, the (presumed) intelligent life form of Chtorr. (pl. Chtor-rans) -The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Century 21 Edition, unabridged

ONE.

"MCCARTHY, keep down!"

"Yes, sir."

"-and shut up."

I shut. There were five of us climbing up the slope of a spa.r.s.ely wooded ridge. We angled diagonally through high yellow gra.s.s so dry it crunched. July had not been kind to Colorado. A spark would turn these mountains into an inferno.

Just before each man reached the top he sprawled flat against the slope, then inched slowly forward. Duke was in the lead, wriggling through the tall weeds like a snake. We'd topped five hills this way today and the heat was getting to me. I thought about ice water and the jeep we'd left back on the road.

Duke edged up to the crest and peered down into the valley beyond. One at a time, Larry, Louis and Shorty moved up beside him. I was the last-as usual. The others had thoroughly read the land by the time I crawled into place. Their faces were grim.

Duke grunted. "Larry, pa.s.s me the binoculars."

Larry rolled onto his left side to unstrap the case from his right hip. Wordlessly, he pa.s.sed them over.

Duke inspected the land below as carefully as a wolf sniffing a trap. He grunted again, softly, then pa.s.sed the binoculars back.

Now Larry surveyed the scene. He took one glance, then pa.s.sed the binoculars on to Louis.

What were they looking at? This valley looked the same to me as all the others. Trees and rocks and gra.s.s. I didn't see anything more. What had they spotted?

"You agree?" asked Duke.

"It's worms," said Larry.

"No question," Louis added.

Worms! At last! I took the gla.s.ses from Shorty and scanned the opposite slope.

A stream curled through ragged woods that looked as if they had been forested recently. And badly. Stumps and broken branches, ragged sections of trunk, huge woody slabs of bark, and the inevitable carpet of dead leaves and twigs were scattered unevenly across the hill. The forest looked as if it had been chewed up and spit out again by some rampaging, but finicky, prehistoric herbivore of gargantuan proportions and appet.i.te.

"No, down there," rumbled Shorty. He pointed.

I put my eyes to the gla.s.ses again. I still didn't see; the bottom of the valley was unusually barren and empty, but-no, wait a minute, there it was-I had almost missed it-directly below us, near a large stand of trees; a pasty-looking igloo and a larger circular enclosure. The walls of it sloped inward. It looked like an unfinished dome. Was that all?

Shorty tapped me on the shoulder then and took the binoculars away. He pa.s.sed them back to Duke, who had switched on the recorder. Duke cleared his throat as he put the gla.s.ses to his eyes, and then began a detailed description of the scene. He spoke in soft, machine-gun bursts-a rapid monotone report. He read off landmarks as if he were knocking items off a checklist. "Only one shelter-and it looks fairly recent. No sign of any other starts-I'd guess only one family, so far-but they must expect to expand. They've cleared a pretty wide area. Standard construction on the dome and corral. Corral walls are about ... two and a half-no, make that three-meters high. I don't think there's anything in it yet. I-" He stopped, then breathed softly. "d.a.m.n."

"What is it?" asked Larry. Duke pa.s.sed him the binoculars.

Larry looked. It took a moment for him to find the point of Duke's concern, then he stiffened. "Aw, Christ, no-"

He pa.s.sed the binoculars to Louis. I sweated impatiently. What had he seen? Louis studied the view without comment, but his expression tightened.

Shorty handed the gla.s.ses directly to me. "Don't you want to look-" I started, but he had closed his eyes as if to shut out me and the rest of the world as well.

Curious, I swept the landscape again. What had I missed the first time?

I focused first on the shelter-nothing there. It was a badly crafted dome of wood chips and wood-paste cement. I'd seen pictures of them. Close up, its surface would be rough, looking as if it had been sculpted with a shovel. This one was bordered by some kind of dark vegetation, patches of black stuff that clumped against the dome. I shifted my attention to the enclosure "Huh?"

-she couldn't have been more than five or six years old. She was wearing a torn, faded brown dress and had a dirt smudge across her left cheek and scabs on both knees, and she was hopskipping along the wall, trailing one hand along its uneven surface. Her mouth was moving-she was singing as she skipped. As if she had nothing to fear at all. She circled with the wall, disappeared from view for a moment, then reappeared along the opposite curve. I sucked in my breath. I had a niece that age.

"Jim-the gla.s.ses." That was Larry; I pa.s.sed them back. Duke was unslinging his pack, divesting himself of all but a grapple and a rope.

"Is he going after her?" I whispered to Shorty. Shorty didn't answer. He still had his eyes closed.

Larry was sweeping the valley again. "It looks clear," he said, but his tone indicated his doubt.

Duke was tying the grapple to his belt. He looked up. "If you see anything, use the rifle."

Larry lowered the binoculars and looked at him-then nodded. "Okay," said Duke. "Here goes nothing." He started to scramble over the top "Hold it-" That was Louis; Duke paused. "I thought I saw something move-that stand of trees."

Larry focused the binoculars. "Yeah," he said, and handed them up to Duke, who scrambled around to get a better view. He studied the blurring shadows for a long moment; so did I, but I couldn't tell what they were looking at. Duke slid back down the slope to rest again next to Larry.

"Draw straws?" Larry asked.

Duke ignored him; he was somewhere else. Someplace unpleasant.

"Boss?"

Duke came back. He had a strange expression-hard-and his mouth was tight. "Pa.s.s me the piece" was all he said.

Shortly unshouldered the 7mm Weatherby he had been carrying all morning and afternoon, but instead of pa.s.sing it over, he laid it down carefully in the gra.s.s, then backed off down the slope. Louis followed him.

I stared after them. "Where're they going?"

"Shorty had to take a leak," snapped Larry; he was pushing the rifle over to Duke.

"But Louis went too-"

"Louis went to hold his hand." Larry picked up the binoculars again, ignoring me. He said, "Two of 'em, boss, maybe three."

Duke grunted. "Can you see what they're doing?"

"Uh uh-but they look awfully active." Duke didn't answer.

Larry laid down the binoculars. "Gotta take a leak too." And moved off in the direction of Shorty and Louis, dragging Duke's pack with him.

I stared, first at Larry, then at Duke. "Hey, what's-"

"Don't talk," said Duke. His attention was focused through the long black barrel of the Sony Magna-Sight. He was dialing windage and range corrections; there was a ballistics processor in the stock, linked to the Magna-Sight, and the rifle was anch.o.r.ed on a precision uni-pod.

I stretched over and grabbed the binoculars. Below, the little girl had stopped skipping; she was squatting now and making lines in the dirt. I shifted my attention to the distant trees. Something purple and red was moving through them. The binoculars were electronic, with automatic zoom, synchronized focusing, depth correction, and anti-vibration; but I wished we had a pair with all-weather, low-light image-amplification instead. They might have shown what was behind those trees.

Beside me, I could hear Duke fitting a new magazine into the rifle.

"Jim," he said.

I looked over at him.

He still hadn't taken his attention from the sight. His fingers worked smoothly on the controls as he locked in the numbers. The switches made satisfyingly solid clicks. "Doesn't your bladder need emptying too?"

"Huh? No, I went before we left-"

"Suit yourself." He shut up and squinted into his eyepiece. I looked through the binoculars again at the purple things in the shadows. Were those worms? I was disappointed that they were hidden by the woods. I'd never seen any Chtorrans in the flesh.

I covered the area, hoping to find one out in the open-no such luck. But I did see where they had started to dam the stream. Could they be amphibious too? I sucked in my breath and tried to focus on the forest again. Just one clear glimpse, that's all I wanted The CRA-A-ACK! of the rifle startled me. I fumbled to refocus the binoculars-the creatures still moved undisturbed. Then what had Duke been firing at-? I slid my gaze across to the enclosure-where a small form lay bleeding in the dirt. Her arms twitched.

A second CRA-A-ACK! and her head blossomed in a flower of sudden red- I jerked my eyes away, horrified. I stared at Duke. "What the h.e.l.l are you doing?"

Duke was staring intently through the telescopic sight, waiting to see if she would move again. When she didn't, he raised his head from the sight and stared across the valley. At the hidden Chtorrans. A long time. His expression was . . . distant. For a moment I thought he was in a trance. Then he seemed to come alive again and slid off down the hill, down to where Shorty and Louis and Larry waited. Their expressions were strange too, and they wouldn't look at each other's eyes.

"Come on," said Duke, shoving the rifle at Shorty. "Let's get out of here."

I followed after them. I must have been mumbling. "He shot her-" I kept saying. "He shot her-"

Finally, Larry dropped back and took the binoculars out of my trembling hands. "Be glad you're not the man," he said. "Or you'd have had to do it."

TWO.

I ENDED up in Dr. Obama's office. "Sit down, McCarthy."

"Yes, ma'am."

Her eyes were gentle, and I couldn't escape them. She reminded me of my grandmother; she had had that same trick of looking at you so sadly that you felt sorrier for her than for yourself. When she spoke, her voice was detached, almost deliberately flat. My grandmother had spoken like that too, when there was something on her mind and she had to work her way around to it.

"I hear you had a little trouble yesterday afternoon."

"Uh-yes, ma'am." I swallowed hard. "We-that is, Duke shot a little girl."

Dr. Obama said softly, "Yes, I read the report." She paused. "You didn't sign it with the others. Is there something you want to add?"

"Ma'am-" I said. "Didn't you hear me? We shot a little girl."

Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "I see. You're troubled by that."

"Troubled-? Yes, ma'am, I am."

Dr. Obama looked at her hands. They were folded politely on the desk in front of her, carefully manicured, and dark and wrinkled with age. "n.o.body ever said it would be easy."

"You didn't say anything about shooting children either."

"I'd hoped we wouldn't have to."

"Dr. Obama, I don't know what the explanation is, but I can't condone-"

"It's not for you to condone!" Her face was suddenly hard. "Duke pa.s.sed you the binoculars, didn't he?"

"Yes, ma'am. Several times."

"And what did you see?"

"The first time, I saw only the shelter and the enclosure. The second time I saw the little girl."

"And what did Duke do then?"

"Well, it looked like he was going to rescue her, but then he changed his mind and asked for the rifle instead."

"Do you know why he asked for the rifle?"

"Louis said he saw something."

"Mmm. Did you look through the binoculars again to check him?"

"Yes, ma'am-but I looked because I was curious. I'd never seen worms-"

She cut me off. "But when you looked, you saw them, didn't you?"