Dreamcatcher

Now they were all looking at him with those big doe eyes, and Henry felt a moment of surpassing despair. Why couldn’t he just have had a nice quiet suicide?

“I’ve got Ripley Prime,” he said. He unknotted the tee-shirt. None of them would do more than glance at the rip in Henry’s snow-powdered jeans, but Henry took a good big look for all of them. The wound made by the turnsignal stalk had now filled up with byrus. Some of the strands were three inches long, their tips wavering like kelp in a tidal current. He could feel the roots of the stuff working in steadily, deeper and deeper, itching and foaming and fizzing. Trying to think. That was the worst of it-it was trying to think.

Now they were moving toward the shed door, and Henry expected them to bolt as soon as they caught a clear whiff of the cold air. Instead they paused. “mister, can you help us?” Marsha asked in a trembling child’s voice. Darren, her husband, put his arm around her. “I don’t know,” Henry said. “Probably not… but maybe. Go on, now. I’ll be out of here in half an hour, maybe less, but probably it’s best if you stay in the barn with the others. “'Why?” asked Darren Chiles from Newton. And Henry, who had only a ghost of an idea-nothing resembling a plan-said, “I don’t know. I just think it is.” They went out, leaving Henry in possession of the shed.

6

Beneath the window facing the perimeter fence was an ancient bale of hay. Darren Chiles had been sitting on it when Henry came in (as the one with the dope, Chiles had rated the most comfortable seat), and now Henry took his place. He sat with his hands on his knees, feeling immediately sleepy in spite of the voices tumbling around in his head and the deep, spreading itch in his left leg (it was starting in his mouth, as well, where he had lost one of his teeth).

He heard Underhill coining before Underhill actually spoke from outside the window; heard the approach of his mind. “I’m in the lee of the wind and mostly in the shadow of the building,” Underhill said. “I’m having a smoke. If someone comes along, you’re not in there.” “Okay. “'Lie to me, I’ll walk away and you’ll never in your short life speak to me again, out loud or…

otherwise.”

“Okay.”

“How did you get rid of the people in there?”

“Why?” Henry would have said he was too tired to be angry, but that seemed not to be the case. “Was it some kind of goddam test?”

“Don’t be a jerk.”

“I told them I’ve got Ripley Prime, which is the truth. They scatted in a hurry.” Henry paused. “You’ve got it too, don’t you?”

“What makes you think so?” Henry could detect no strain in Underhill’s voice, and as a psychiatrist, he was familiar with the signs. Whatever else Underhill might be, Henry had an idea that he was a man with a tremendously cool head, and that was a step in the right direction. Also, he thought, it can’t hurt if he understands he really has nothing to lose.

“It’s around your fingernails, isn’t it? And a little in one ear.” “You’d wow em in Vegas, buddy.” Henry saw Underhill’s hand go up, with a cigarette between the gloved fingers. He guessed the wind would end up smoking most of that one.

You get Primary direct from the source. I’m pretty sure Secondary comes from touching something that’s growing it-tree, moss, deer, dog, another person. You catch that kind like you catch poison ivy. This isn’t anything your own medical technicians don’t know. For all I can tell, I got the information from them. My head’s like a goddam satellite dish with everything beaming in on Free Preview and nothing blocked out. I can’t tell where half of” this stuff’s coming from and it doesn’t matter. Now here’s some stuff your med-techs don’t know. The grays call the red growth byrus, a word that means “the stuff of life”. Under some circumstances, the Prime version of it can grow the implants.”

“The shit-weasels, you mean.”

“Shit-weasels, that’s good. I like that. They spring from the byrus, then reproduce by laying eggs. They spread, lay more eggs, spread again. That’s the way it’s supposed to work, anyway. Here, most of the eggs go dead. I have no idea if it’s the cold weather, the atmosphere, or something else. But in our environment, Underhill, it’s all about the byrus. It’s all they’ve got that works.”

“The stuff of life.”

“Uh-huh, but listen: the grays are having big problems here, which is probably why they hung around so long-half a century-before making their move. The weasels, for instance. They’re supposed to be saprophytes… do you know what that means?”

“Henry… that’s you, right? Henry?… Henry, does this have any bearing on our present-”

It has plenty of bearing on our present situation. And unless you want to own a large part of the responsibility for the end of all life on Spaceship Earth-except for a lot of interstellar kudzu, that is-I advise you to shut up and listen.”

A pause. Then: “I’m listening.”

“Saprophytes are beneficial parasites. We have them living in our guts, and we deliberately swallow more in some dairy products. Sweet acidophilus milk, for instance, and yogurt. We give the bugs a place to live and they give us something in return. In the case of dairy bacteria, improved digestion. The weasels, under normal circumstances-normal on some other world, I guess, where the ecology differs in ways I can’t even guess at-grow to a size maybe no bigger than the bowl of a teaspoon. I think that in females they may interfere with reproduction, but they don’t kill. Not normally. They just live in the bowel. We give them food, they give us telepathy. That’s supposed to be the trade. Only they also turn us into televisions. We are Grayboy TV.”

“And you know all this because you have one living inside you?” There was no revulsion in Underhill’s voice, but Henry felt it clearly in the man’s mind, pulsing like a tentacle. “One of the quote-unquote normal weasels?”

“No.” At least, he thought, I don’t think so. “Then how do you know what you know? Or are you maybe just making it up as you go along? Trying to write yourself a pass out of here?” “How I know is the least important thing of all, Owen-but you know I’m not lying. You can read me.” “I know you think you’re not lying. How much more of this mind-reading shit can I expect to get?”

“I don’t know. More if the byrus spreads, probably, but not in my league.”

“Because you’re different.” Skepticism, both in Underhill’s voice and in Underhill’s thoughts.

“Pal, I didn’t know how different until today. But never mind that for a minute. For now, I just want you to understand that the grays are in a shitpull here. For maybe the first time in their history, they’re in an actual battle for control. First, because when they get inside people, the weasels aren’t saprophytic but violently parasitic.

They don’t stop eating and they don’t stop growing. They’re cancer, Underhill.

“Second, the byrus. It grows well on other worlds but poorly on ours, at least so far. The scientists and the medical experts who are running this rodeo think the cold is slowing it down, but I don’t think that’s it, or not all of it. I can’t be positive because they don’t know, but-”

“Whoa, whoa.” There was a brief cupped flame as Underhill lit another cigarette for the wind to smoke. “You’re not talking about the medical guys, are you?”

“No.”

“You think you’re in touch with the grayboys. Telepathically in touch.”

“I think… with one of them. Through a link.”

“This Jonesy you spoke of?”

“Owen, I don’t know. Not for sure. The point is, they’re losing. Me, you, the men who went out there to the Blue Boy with you today, we might not be around to celebrate Christmas. I won’t kid you about that. We got high, concentrated doses. But-”

“I’ve got it, all right,” Underhill said. “Edwards, too-it showed up on him like magic.” “But even if it really takes hold on you, I don’t think you can spread it very far. It’s not just that catchable. There are people in that barn who’ll never get it, no matter how many byrus-infected

people they mingle with. And the people who do catch it like a cold come down with Byrus

Secondary… or Ripley, if you like that better.”

“Let’s stick to byrus.”

“Okay. They might be able to pass it on to a few people, who would have a very weak version we could call Byrus Three. It might even be communicable beyond that, but I think once you got to Byrus Four you’d need a microscope or a blood-test to pick it up. Then it’s gone.

“Here’s the instant replay, so pay attention.

“Point one. The grays-probably no more than delivery-systems for the byrus-are gone already. The ones the environment didn’t kill, like the microbes finally killed the Martians in War of the Worlds, were wiped out by your gunships. All but one, that is, the one-yeah, must be-that I got my information from. And in a physical sense, he’s gone, too.

“Point two. The weasels don’t work. Like all cancers, they ultimately eat themselves to death. The weasels that escape from the lower intestine or the bowel quickly die in an environment they find hostile.

“Point three. The byrus doesn’t work, either, not very well, but given a chance, given time to hide and grow, it could mutate. Learn to fit in. Maybe to rule.”

“We’re going to wipe it out,” Underhill said. “We’re going to turn the entire Jefferson Tract into a burn-scar.”

Henry could have screamed with frustration, and some of that must have gotten through. There was a thud as Underhill jerked, striking the flimsy shed wall with his back.

“What you do up here doesn’t matter,” Henry said. “The people you’ve got interned can’t spread it, the weasels can’t spread it, and the byrus can’t spread itself. If your guys folded their tents and just walked away right now, the environment would take care of itself and erase all this nonsense like a bad equation. I think the grays showed up the way they did because they just can’t fucking believe it. I think it was a suicide mission with some gray version of your Mistuh Kurtz in charge. They simply cannot conceptualize failure. “We always win,' they think.”

“How do you-”

“Then, at the last minute, Underhill-maybe at the last second one of them found a man who was remarkably different from all the others with whom the grays, the weasels, and the byrus had come in contact. He’s your Typhoid Mary. And he’s already out of the q-zone, rendering anything you do here meaningless.”

“Gary Jones.”

“Jonesy, right.”

“What makes him different?”

Little as he wanted to go into this part of it, Henry realized he had to give Underhill something.