David Gerrold - Chtorr1 - A Matter for Men

The War Against the Chtorr

Book 1

?

A Matter for Men

?

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 Glass

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 sparsely wooded ridge. We angled diagonally

through high yellow grass 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, pass me the binoculars."

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

Duke inspected the land below as carefully as a wolf sniffing a trap. He grunted again, softly, then passed

the binoculars back.

Now Larry surveyed the scene. He took one glance, then passed 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

grass. 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 glasses 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 appetite.

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

I put my eyes to the glasses 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 passed them back to Duke,

who had switched on the recorder. Duke cleared his throat as he put the glasses 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. "Damn."

"What is it?" asked Larry. Duke passed 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 passed the binoculars to Louis. I sweated impatiently. What had he seen? Louis studied the view

without comment, but his expression tightened.

Shorty handed the glasses 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 glasses." That was Larry; I passed 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. "Pass me the piece" was all

he said.

Shortly unshouldered the 7mm Weatherby he had been carrying all morning and afternoon, but instead of

passing it over, he laid it down carefully in the grass, 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 anchored 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 hell 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. "Nobody 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 passed 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?"

"I saw something . . ." I hesitated. "I couldn't be sure what it was."

"What did it look like?"

"It was big, and it was purple or red, it was hard to tell."

"The Chtorr have purple skin and varicolored fur. Depending on the light, it can look red, pink, magenta

or orange. Was that what you saw?"

"I saw something purple. It was in the shadows, and it kept moving back and forth."

"Was it moving fast?"

I tried to remember. What was fast for a worm? "Kind of," I hedged.

"Then what you saw was a fully grown Chtorr in the active - and most dangerous-phase. Duke

recognized it, so did Larry, Louis and Shorty. They signed the report."

"I wouldn't know-I've never seen a Chtorr before. That's why I'm here."

"If they said it was a Chtorr, you can be sure it was-but that's why they passed the binoculars, just to be

sure; if Duke had been wrong, one of the others would have been sure to spot it."

"I'm not arguing about the identification-"

"Well, you should be," Dr. Obama said. "That's the only reason you could possibly have for not signing

this report." She tapped the paper on her desk.

I eyed it warily. Dad had warned me about signing things I wasn't sure of-that's how he had married

Mother. Or so he'd always claimed. I said, "It's that little girl we shot-I keep seeing her skipping around

that pen. She wasn't in danger; there was no reason to shoot her-"

"Wrong," said Dr. Obama. "Wrong, twice over. You should know that."

"I shouldn't know anything!" I said, suddenly angry. "I've never been told anything. I was transferred up

here from a reclamation unit because somebody found out I had two years of college-level biology.

Somebody else gave me a uniform and a rule book-and that's the extent of my training."

Dr. Obama looked startled, resigned and frustrated, all at once. Almost to herself-but loud enough so I

could hear it too-she said, "What the hell are they doing anyway? Sending me kids. . . ."

I was still burning. "Duke should have shot at the Chtorr!" I insisted.

"With what?" Dr. Obama snapped back. "Were you packing artillery?"

"We had a high-powered rifle-"

"And the range to the Chtorr was more than seven hundred meters on a windy day!"

I mumbled something about hydrostatic shock. "What was that?"

"Hydrostatic shock. It's what happens when a bullet hits flesh. It makes a shock wave. The cells are like

little water balloons. They rupture. That's what kills you, not the hole."

Dr. Obama stopped, took a breath. I could see she was forcing herself to be patient. "I know about

hydrostatic shock. It doesn't apply here. You're making the assumption that Chtorran flesh is like human

flesh. It isn't. Even if Duke had been firing point blank, it wouldn't have done any good unless he was

lucky enough to hit one of their eyes-or unless he had an exploding cartiidge, which he didn't. So he had

no choice; he had to shoot what he could." Dr. Obama stopped. She lowered her voice. "Look, son, I'm

sorry that you had to come up against the harsh realities of this war so quickly, but-" She raised her

hands in an apologetic half-shrug, half-sigh, then dropped them again. "-Well, I'm sorry, that's all."

She continued softly, "We don't know what the Chtorr are like inside-that's why we want you here.

You're supposed to be a scientist. We're hoping you'll tell us. The Chtorr seem to be pretty well armored

or segmented or something. Bullets don't have much effect on them-and a lot of good men died finding

that out. Either they don't penetrate the same way, or the Chtorrans don't have vital organs that a bullet

can disrupt-and don't ask me to explain how that one's possible, because I don't know either. I'm just

quoting from the reports.

"We do know, though-from unfortunate experience-that to shoot at a Chtorran is to commit suicide.

Whether they're intelligent or not-as some people think-makes no difference. They're very deadly. Even

without weapons. They move fast and they kill furiously. The smartest thing to do is not to shoot at them

at all.

"Duke wanted to rescue that child-probably more than you realize-because he knew what the alternative

to rescue was. But when Louis saw Chtorr in the woods, Duke had no choice-he didn't dare go after her

then. They'd have read him halfway down the hill. He'd have been dead before he moved ten meters.

Probably the rest of you too. I don't like it either, but what he did was a mercy.

"That's why he passed the binoculars; he wanted to be sure he wasn't making a mistake-he wanted you

and Shorty and Larry to double-check him. If there was the slightest bit of doubt in any of your minds, he

wouldn't have done what he did; he wouldn't have had to-and if I thought Duke had killed that child

unnecessarily, I'd have him in front of a firing squad so fast he wouldn't have time to change his

underwear."

I thought about that. For a long moment.

Dr. Obama waited expectantly. Her eyes were patient. I said, suddenly, "But Shorty never looked at

all."

She was surprised. "He didn't?"

"Only the first time," I replied. "He didn't look when we saw the child and he didn't look to confirm it was

Chtorr."

Dr. Obama grunted. She was writing something on a note pad. I was relieved to have her eyes off me

even for a moment. "Well, that's Shorty's prerogative. He's seen too many of these-" She finished the

note and looked at me again. "It was enough that he saw the enclosure. But it's you we're concerned with

at the moment. You have no doubt, do you, that what you saw was Chtorr?"

"I've never seen a Chtorran, ma'am. But I don't think this could have been anything else."

"Good. Then let's have no more of this nonsense." She pushed the report across the desk. "I'll take your

signature on the bottom line."

"Dr. Obama, if you please-I'd like to know why it was necessary to kill that little girl."

Dr. Obama looked startled again, the second time since the interview began. "I thought you knew."

I shook my head. "That's what this whole thing is about. I don't. "

She stopped. "I'm sorry ... I really am sorry. I didn't realize - No wonder I couldn't sandbag you. . . ."

She got up from her desk and crossed to a filing cabinet. She unlocked it and pulled out a thin folder-it

was lettered SECRET in bright red-then returned to her seat. She held the folder thoughtfully in her

hands. "Sometimes I forget that most of what we know about the Chtorr is restricted information." She

eyed me carefully. "But you're a scientist-"

She was flattering me, and we both knew it. Nobody was anything anymore. To be accurate, I was a

student on leave, temporarily contracted to the United States Armed Services, Special Forces

Operation, as a full-time exobiologist.

"-so you should be entitled to see these things." But she still didn't pass them over. "Where are you

from?" she asked abruptly.

"Santa Cruz, California."

Dr. Obama nodded. "Nice town. I used to have some friends just north of there-but that was a long time

ago. Any of your family still alive?"

"Mom is. Dad was in San Francisco when it-when it-"

"I'm sorry. A lot of good people were lost when San Francisco went under. Your mother still in Santa

Cruz?"

"I think so. Last I heard, she was helping with the refugees."

"Any other relatives?"

"I have a sister near L.A."

"Married?"

"Yes. She's got a daughter, five." I grinned at the thought of my niece. The last time I had seen her, she

had been barely beyond the lap-wetting stage. I went sad then, remembering. "She used to have three.

The other two were boys. They would have been six and seven."

Dr. Obama nodded. "Even so, she's very lucky. So are you. Not many people had that many members

of their family survive the plagues." I had to agree with her.

Her face went grim now. "Have you ever heard of a town called Show Low?"

"I don't think so."

"It's in Arizona-it was in Arizona. There's not much left of it now. It was a nice place; it was named after

a poker game-" Dr. Obama cut herself short; she laid the folder on the desk in front of her and opened it.

"These pictures-these are just a few of the frames. There's a lot more-half a disk of high-grain video-but

these are the best. These pictures were taken in Show Low last year by a Mr. Kato Nokuri. Mr. Nokuri

apparently was a video hobbyist. One afternoon he looked out his window-he probably heard the noise

from the street-and he saw this. " Dr. Obama passed the photographs across.

I took them gingerly. They were color eight-by-tens. They showed a small-town street-a shopping

center-as seen from a third-story window. I flipped through the pictures slowly; the first showed a

wormlike Chtorran reared up and peering into an automobile; it was large and red with orange markings

on its sides. The next had the dark shape of another climbing through a drugstore window; the glass was

just shattering around it. In the third, the largest Chtorran of all was doing something to a-it looked like a

body-

"It's the last picture in the bunch I want you to see," said Dr. Obama. I flipped to it. "The boy there is

only thirteen."

I looked. I almost dropped the picture in horror. I looked at Dr. Obama, aghast, then at the photograph

again. I couldn't help myself; my stomach churned with sudden nausea.

"The quality of the photography is pretty good," she remarked. "Especially when you consider the subject

matter. How that man retained the presence of mind to take these pictures I'll never know, but that

telephoto shot is the best one we have of a Chtorran feeding."

Feeding! It was rending the child limb from limb! Its gaping mouth was frozen in the act of slashing and

tearing at his struggling body. The Chtorran's arms were long and double-jointed. Bristly black and

insectlike, they held the boy in a metal grip and pushed him toward that hideous gnashing hole. The

camera caught the spurt of blood from his chest frozen in midair like a crimson splash.

I barely managed to gasp, "They eat their-their prey alive?"

Dr. Obama nodded. "Now, I want you to imagine that's your mother. Or your sister. Or your niece."

Oh, you monster- I tried not to, but the images flashed across my mind. Mom. Maggie. Annie-and Tim

and Mark too, even though they were seven months dead. I could still see the boy's paralyzed

expression, the mouth a silent shriek of why me? startlement. I could see that expression superimposed

on my sister's face and I shuddered.

I looked up at Dr. Obama. It hurt my throat to swallow. "I-I didn't know."

"Few people do," she said.

I was shaking and upset-I must have been white as a scream. I pushed the pictures away. Dr. Obama

slid them back into the folder without looking at them; her eyes were studying me. She leaned forward

across her desk and said, "Now, about that little girl--do you have to ask why Duke did what he did?"

I shook my head.

"Pray that you never find yourself in the same situation-but if you do, will you hesitate to do the same

thing? If you think you will, take another look at the pictures. Don't be afraid to ask; any time you need to

remember, come to my office and look."

"Yes, ma'am." I hoped I wouldn't need to. I rubbed my nose. "Uh, ma'am-what happened to Mr.

Nokuri, the photographer?"

"The same thing that happened to the boy in the picture-we think. All we found was the camera-"

"You were there-?"

"-the rest of the place was a mess." Dr. Obama focused on something else for a moment, something very

far away. ". . . There was a lot of blood. All over everything. A lot of blood. ... " She shook her head

sadly. "These pictures-" She straightened the folder on her desk meaningfully. "-an incredible legacy. This

was our first real proof. The man was a hero." Dr. Obama looked at me again and suddenly snapped

back to the present. "Now you'd better get out of here. I have work to do-oh, the report. Take it with

you and read it again. Bring it back when you've signed it."

I left. Gratefully.

David Gerrold - Chtorr1 - A Matter for Men

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