David Gerrold - A Matter for Men

"That's great!" I said, "It really is-I wonder if anyone else has realized that yet."

"Oh, I'm sure they have-"

"But I'll bet that's part of the answer. We're dealing with crazy Chtorrans! And I like your other idea too-about something keeping their blood sugar permanently low. I just wish I had a good biological justification for it." I scribbled it into my notebook. "But it fits in with something else. Here, look at these-" I went rummaging through the mess on the desk behind me and came up with a folder marked UGH. I pulled out a sheaf of color eight-by-tens and passed them across. He stood up to take them. He leaned against the table and began to leaf through them. "When did you take these?"

"This morning, while you were on the terminal. I finally found my close-up lenses. There's some real high-power stuff there. Look at the structure of their mouths."

He grimaced. "They look like worm mouths."

I shrugged. "Similar evolutionary lines, I guess. What else do you see?"

"The teeth are like little knives."

"You notice anything else? The teeth are slanted inward. Here, look--compare these two pictures where he's eating the cigar. When the mouth is at its widest, the teeth are pointing straight up and down and just a little bit outward; but as the mouth closes, they curve inward. Here, see how they mesh? Once a millipede bites something, the teeth not only cut it, they push it down the throat. A millipede can't stop eating-not until the object is finished-because he can't let go. Every time he opens his mouth, he automatically takes another bite; every time he closes, he pushes it down his throat. That's why his teeth have to grind and cut and slash--otherwise, he'd choke to death."

"Um, I doubt that last," he said. "I don't think they're capable of choking. With a mouth arrangement like that, they wouldn't have a swallowing mechanism that could so easily kill them. It would be self-defeating. I'd guess that the arrangement of the teeth is so they can get a good hold on their prey and, if nothing else, get one good bite out of it-like Louis."

"Have it your own way, Perfessor-but I watched him eat the cigar, and that's the way he used those teeth."

"But, Jimbo-that doesn't make sense. What happens to the little bastard who gets stuck to a tree?"

"He eats or dies," I offered. "Remember what you learned in school: `Mother Nature doesn't give a shit.' "

"Um," Ted said, shaking his head. He continued paging through the photographs. "How did you shoot this one?" He was staring down the wide-open mouth of one of the millipedes.

"Which one? Oh, that. I shot that through a pane of glass. There's a spot of grease smeared on it; he's trying to bite it off. The focus isn't so good because of the grease, but it was the only way I could look down his mouth. They learned real quick that they couldn't get through the glass, so they stopped lunging at it when I held up a finger. That's why the grease. Here, this one's sharper-this was before he scratched the glass."

Ted peered close. "Hand me that magnifying glass, will you? Here, look-what do you make of this?"

"Hey! I didn't notice that before-a second row of teeth!"

"Mm," said Ted. "I wonder if he ever bites his tongue."

"Those are molars!" I said. "See? They're not as sharp. The first row is for cutting; these are for grinding. And look-do you see anything farther back?"

"Uh, I'm not sure. It's awfully dark down there."

"We can digitize this and bring up the resolution, but doesn't that look like a third row?"

"I can't tell. It could be."

I looked at him. "Ted, maybe these things have teeth all the way down their throats. That's why they can eat so much, and so many different things. By the time the food reaches the stomach, it's been ground to pulp. They'll still need strong stomach acids, but now the food has a lot more surface area exposed to the action of the enzymes."

"Well, this makes them a little more . . . believable." Ted grinned. "I find it very hard to trust any kind of creature that eats tennis shoes, wallpaper and baseballs, not to mention bicycle seats, clotheslines and Sergeant Kelly's coffee."

"Ted, give me a break. Please."

"All right-they wouldn't drink the coffee. That's probably what the Chtorrans use in that corral fence to keep them from getting out-Sergeant Kelly's coffee grounds."

"Oh, no," I said. "Didn't I tell you?" He looked up. "What?"

"You should have guessed. What's the one thing the millipedes won't eat-the one organic thing?"

He opened his mouth. He closed it.

"That's right," I said. "Used food. No creature can live in its own excrement-those are the things its metabolism can't use. And that's what the worms put between the double walls of their corral. As soon as the millipedes sense it, they back away."

"Wait a minute, boy-are you telling me the worms are going around gathering up millipede droppings for fence insulation?"

"Not at all. I didn't say anything about millipede waste. I just said it was waste"-he opened his mouth to interrupt; I didn't let him-"and it's not terrestrial waste either. Remember we were wondering why we never found any worm droppings? This is why. Evidently, the worms have been using it to keep their `chickens' from escaping. The worms and the millipedes must be similar enough so that it doesn't make any difference. What a worm can't use, neither can a millipede. The tests on the droppings from the enclosure and the specimens we've got here show a lot of similarities. Mostly the differences are dietary, although a lot of the special enzymes don't match up. If I had more sophisticated equipment, I'd be able to spot the subtler differences."

Abruptly, Ted's expression was thoughtful. "Have you written any of this down?"

"I've made some notes. Why?"

"Because I heard Duke talking to Dr. Obama about you-about us. He wants Obie to send us to Denver."

"Huh?"

Ted repeated it. "Duke wants Obie to send us to Denver. With the specimens. On Thursday."

I shook my head. "That doesn't make sense. Why should Duke do any favors for us?"

Ted perched himself on the edge of the table. The three millipedes looked at him with patient black eyes. I wondered if the mesh of their cage was strong enough. Ted said, "Duke's not doing us any favors. He's doing it for himself. We don't belong up here and he doesn't want to be a babysitter. And after what happened with Shorty-well, you know."

I sat down again. I felt betrayed. "I thought ... I mean . . ." I shut up and tried to remember.

"What?" asked Ted.

I held up a hand. "Wait a minute. I'm trying to remember what Duke said." I shook my head. "Uh uh-he didn't say anything. Not about this. I guess I just thought I heard-" I stopped.

"Heard what?"

"I don't know." I felt frustrated. "I just thought that we were going to be part of the Special Forces Team."

Ted dropped off the table, pulled the other chair around and sat down opposite me. "Jim boy, sometimes you can be awfully dumb. Listen to your Uncle Ted now. Do you know where these Special Forces Teams came from? I thought not. These are-or were-top-secret crack-trained units. So secret even our own intelligence agencies didn't know they existed. They were created after the Moscow Treaties. Yes, illegally-I know-and you used a flamethrower last week, remember? It saved your life. Guess what the Special Forces were for-and a lot of other innocuous looking institutions. Too bad you slept through history, Jim, or you'd understand. Anyway, the point is, these men have lived together and trained together for years. And they're all weapons experts. Have you ever seen Sergeant Kelly on the practice range?"

"Huh? No-"

"Well, you should-or maybe you shouldn't. You'd be too terrified to complain about her coffee. These people think and act as a family. Do you know what that makes us? Just a couple of local yokels. We're outsiders-and there's nothing we can do that will change that. Why do you think Duke gave us this labpractically shoved it on us? Because he wants an excuse to send us packing. And this is it. He'll be able to say we're too valuable as scientists to be risked out here in the field."