by Larry Niven
What fun they had had! Watching the black and red ants swarming through each others’ tunnels, fighting as each sought to protect their swollen egg-laying queen, or attack the enemy matriarch.
And while their father had caught Anton and Mikhael, ending the fun before the conclusive battle, he had never forgotten the cramped, lethal battles, red and black insects tearing each other to pieces in the cramped spaces.
And now, a hundred and forty years later, he was crawling through tunnels hunted by reptiles instead of insects . . but that old memory, something that had not crossed his mind in a hundred and thirty of those years, was close at hand.
The branching tunnels, the frantic flight. He was the ant. And something that his father had said about the sanctity of life, about not deliberately causing more pain than the world forced upon us came to mind.
He and his long-dead brother Mikhael had inflicted war upon the ants, death in the glowing blue tunnels. How ironic that he would probably die scuttling like an insect on a planet far from Earth.
The last of the humans had scrambled out of the tunnel, up the ridged floor crawling on hands and feet. Rather than widening, the tunnel had narrowed, so that the last of Tsiolkovskii’s power-suited soldiers were forced to stay behind. One had been able to strip himself out of his armor and wiggle ahead, but the others were trapped, bottling up the tunnel until their ammunition was exhausted. Would they be trapped there, indefinitely? Would the grendels respect a wall of shattered corpses, their dead brothers and sisters, as had the ravaging red ants? Of course not. They’d chew their way through to reach the humans trapped in now-useless armor.
“Lindsey?” Tsiolkovskii asked, speaking into his communicator with a kind of deliberate calm. “Can you hear me?”
“I hear you, sir.”
“What is your situation?”
“I . . I’m out of ammunition, but was able to use the suit’s mech servos to collapse the tunnel around me.”
Tsiolkovskii’s hands tensed. “Who’s with you?”
“Tanaka and Ives, I think. I think . . I think those bastards got Al Asad. He was below me.”
“How did they kill him?”
Lindsey seemed to swallow. “Peeled him out of the armor. He was jammed up against Tanaka, and Tanaka was . . is . . pushed up against me.”
Lindsey was scared. It was easy for him to admit that, now. In fact, he almost seemed to be afraid to the precise degree that, prior to this moment, he had felt invulnerable in the armored suit.
He had never served in the United Nations force, but had worked in security for several corporations, and had been involved in enough high-stakes “events” that the Godsons had considered him to have the equivalent of actual military service.
And that, in combination with his other qualifications and longstanding good behavior reports within the organization itself, had led him to being chosen for this mission. To travel across the galaxy, to seed the stars!
What an honor. The ultimate honor. No human activity, from the building of the pyramids to the splitting of the atom, was a fraction as important.
When he’d seen the power armor, he’d known he’d found his calling. The very first time he’d put it on, he’d felt a surge of power unknown to him, or any previous human beings.
Invulnerable. Irresistable. He was told that the armor could resist most small-arms fire and even a light armor-piercing round. That it had a resistance of 5500 psi, stronger than the jaws of a Nile crocodile, the strongest bite or grip of any earthly creature.
So he’d felt comforted, pursuing the Starborn. Traveling though the flooded tunnel on filtered recirculated air had been an adventure. Emerging into the caves he felt like the aggressive predator he was, a god of war raining death on the transgressors who had dared resist him.
That conviction had only swollen when they trapped the colonists, and then offered them terms of surrender. That thing . . that thing in his head that had swollen with joy to have the opportunity to hunt resented that. He heard a voice: Don’t I get to finish this? Don’t you want me to . . . want me to . . .
Finish it.
A better, softer word, than kill.
It was simple human nature that the more you enjoyed something, the more you would practice it, and think about it. And the more you practiced and obsessed about something, the better at it you became. So . . if there were security forces tasked with protecting the Speaker and his flock, it made sense for them to actually enjoy the hunt. The kill.
And Lindsey did.
Howling through the tunnels, hounding the terrorists, all good.
And even seeing them submit, knowing that a mistaken twitch of a finger could send bullets tearing through their flesh . . still good. He began to cool down, forced his way back from the edge of the abyss, and took pleasure in that, too. See? I’m in control.
He’d been called to help the major open that door, and the tickle of danger was delicious. He hadn’t had the chance to kill an Avalonian life form much bigger than a terrestrial dragonfly, hadn’t gone on the now notorious grendel-hunt. He craved an opportunity to face one of these creatures that had so terrified the Starborn and their parents.
So when something had exploded out of the water, and dragged down one of his companions, he had been momentarily frozen in place. What was this creature, why was it dangerous, how could it be lethal to an armored human?
He’d not believed it. Couldn’t believe his senses. This simply couldn’t be happening . . .
When he believed, he fled.
Firing back at the horde of swarming creatures was such a confusion to him, fear and primal hunger mingled, and not an emotion he had ever experienced, or been trained to deal with. Through the city and into the tubes, at first, what? Lava tubes? Water erosion? Something wide enough for two men to fight side by side, then narrowing so that he had to fire over Tanaka’s shoulder. Then they were just fleeing, discipline broken. A feeder tunnel branch joining with theirs and yielding another refugee, a Jordanian named Al Asad, his panicked face telling them without words that there was no safety to be found in its darkness.
There were three of them running, and then crouching, and then crawling as the tunnels narrowed, and then to his horror he was caught, squeezed, trapped in the very metal that had protected him. Al Asad screamed and screamed as the grendels peeled him out of his armor and stripped him to the bone from the feet up, eeling their way through the bloody scraps of metal, and went to work on Tanaka.
Lindsey panicked. He hit the emergency breach command on his suit, and the shoulders and faceplate parted, giving him just enough room to begin to wiggle out of the power suit.
By the roar of machine pistols and the flash of rocket launchers, the Godsons fought a retreating battle through the twisting, coral-colored spires of the abandoned alien city, wasting shells on a flood of creatures completely undeterred by the gunfire. They didn’t dodge, perhaps not even relating the flashes of fire to the exploding bodies around them, or even their own pain.
And the armor? Incredibly, the armor didn’t help. Not enough. The creatures slammed into his compatriots and bowled them over, and chewed and chewed until the metal shredded into splinters under the pressure and speed of the biting, and human meat was revealed within the rigid shell, a meal for monsters.
The sounds of their shrieks still resonated in his ears.
Tanaka had stopped screaming.
Lindsey, crawling loose, felt his abandoned armor wiggle under his foot. He reached back and pulled. Without him in it, the armor had shrunk in on itself. It slid loose.
Pulling the armor behind him, he pushed further ahead: if the tunnel narrowed he was dead, just dead. The armor would slow him, but it was too much a part of him to be abandoned. And now he wasn’t blocking Tanaka. “Get out of your suit!” he screamed behind him, knowing Tanaka was dead.
Where the tunnel widened, he crawled back into the suit, begrudging every moment it slowed him.
The cthulhus were smaller or
more flexible than men in suits, and as he put all his power into smashing into one of the walls, it finally crumbled. He had broken through to a parallel tunnel. He scrambled forward as the tearing sounds behind him grew louder, and the hiss and snap of monsters signaled the beginning of nightmare.
Lindsey clawed his way into a larger tunnel, scrambled around and fired at the walls behind him, creating a cave-in, and then laid back and felt his heart hammer in his chest, knowing that the creatures hunting him would get through, in time.
But for now he was still alive, and that was enough.
When the last of the main group made it into the cave, Cadzie regretfully weighed the cost of human lives if he left the tunnel open, compared to sealing it now. When the first grendels began to emerge, it was no decision at all.
“Seal the tunnel!” Cadzie screamed. “Blow the roof!”
The men fired six explosive shells into the ceiling, bringing it down.
“Back! Back!” Joanie screamed.
As the dust settled they could hear something scrabbling behind the fall of rock, but prayed that it was a grendel and not a desperate human being.
“Will this hold?” Tsiolkovskii asked. The man seemed like a golem. Heavy-muscled. All potential energy. Or by that did he mean violence?
“Depends on a lot of things,” Cadzie speculated. “For instance: is there another way in? How badly do they want to reach us? I don’t know, but there are others I’ve not thought of.”
“And meanwhile,” Tsiolkovskii said, “we’re trapped here.” The cave was about a third the size of the main cavern, but still large enough to have an impressive array of stalactites and stalagmites.
“Can you reach your people?”
“I don’t think so. Not with our communications gear.” He checked his gauges.
“Then yeah, we’re trapped here.”
A few human beings were backtracking and finding their way through branching tunnels heading up toward the surface, but whether by instinct or intent, or accident, so were grendels.
Major Stype emerged into a cave the size of a mansion, surprised to see the man Lindsey whom they thought they’d heard die, crouching beside a stream twenty meters away. But when grendels zip-slithered through the tunnels right behind her, she reacted instantly, firing explosive rounds into the tunnel ceiling to seal them.
A ton of crashing rock later, there they were, trapped.
“At least we have running water,” Shaka said, with little real enthusiasm.
After they had circumnavigated the cave, studying it for potential sites of egress, two dozen survivors settled into groups, sharing supplies of food and scooping water from the stream. The two armored humans took turns guarding the sealed tunnels, or kept an eye on the stream. Something deadly might emerge.
Cadzie felt utterly exhausted. He was cleared of a crime, and sentenced to death. This was just priceless. Tsiolkovskii squatted next to him. On his heels, perfectly balanced, as if he was a statue who could pose like that for a hundred years.
They had recognized each other at once, out of the two converging groups. Eyes met, then they’d continued their inspection of their refuge/prison. A moment’s rest, now.
Tsiolkovskii broke the silence. “You’re Cadmann Sikes.”
“Yes. Colonel T?”
“Why did you do it, Cadmann? It was just cold sleep. You’d have come out . . .”
“With ice on my mind, in time for reeducation? No thank you. Risk hibernation instability?”
“What?” The Russian seemed genuinely surprised.
“Hibernation instability. There’s a ten percent chance on first awakening, and that risk doubles with every refreezing.”
“What are you talking about?”
“They didn’t tell you?” Cadzie said, incredulous. “They woke you up, and you seem all right.”
“Yes. But this isn’t our final stop. I’m . . we were supposed to awaken in rotations.”
“And I suppose they did, until they heard from us.”
Tsiolkovskii considered carefully. Then he began to speak. “If you’re telling the truth, then I was spared awakening during the journey, but will have to go back to sleep and be reawakened when we reach Hypereden.” This cold, calculating man’s face tightened. A brief moment of fear.
“I’ll be damned,” Cadzie said. “You’re human.”
The news seemed to have rocked the older man. “I’m not crazy. I can’t go back to cold sleep.”
“Surprise surprise surprise,” Cadzie said. And it was not the best part of him that enjoyed Tsiolkovskii’s dismay.
♦ ChaptEr 60 ♦
ice
“What do we do now?” Cadzie asked glumly. He picked up a chunk of stone and sailed it out across the water.
“Survive,” Tsiolkovskii answered.
“I don’t know any way out of this maze,” Cadzie said. “I . . .” He felt something cold and slippery in his throat. All his life, he’d been the golden boy. Prince of the colony, presumptive king, just step up. Gifts of physical and mental skill from the grandfather he’d never known, inheritor of all this world had to offer. Tapdancing his way out of everything. Accused of murder? Acquitted. Yanked to trial and railroaded anyway? Rescued.
Alone against bred warriors and super technology? Why, his parents died to give him a weapon strong enough to kill anything. And if the men from beyond the stars go berserk, why his friends would lay down their lives for him, follow him into hell.
Because he was Cadzie. And now, he’d run out of room to dance, and it was all ending. Everyone would die, because of him. No answers.
And soon there would be no questions, either. Just . . death.
And then . . .
A black and glistening something rolled up out of the water. Cadzie froze, only his eyes moving as he affirmed that no one else in the cave was seeing what he was seeing.
He locked eyes with Joanie, and moved them toward the water. “Shhh.”
Unmistakably now, a black, eyeless, squid shape, like something formed out of wet leather.
“What the hell is that?” Tsiolkovskii asked.
“That . . .” Shaka said as he came to his feet, “is a cthulhu.”
Its tentacles curled and uncurled, seemed to be beckoning to them.
“Is it intelligent?” Then it hit him. “They built the city?”
“We think so, yes.”
“What does it want?”
It dove down. Came back up, dove again. He’d seen dolphins do the same. “Maybe for us to follow it?” Cadzie said.
“Are you insane?” Tsiolkovskii asked.
“If he isn’t,” Joanie said, and started stripping down. “I am. I’ll go.”
Tsiolkovskii was beyond doubtful. “Those things breathe water. It doesn’t know that you don’t.”
“We’ve observed them. They’ve observed us. I think they know what we are. And . . what we aren’t.”
Joanie stripped down, sleek and muscular in her shorts.
“I’ll go,” Cadzie said.
“And I just trust that you’ll come back?”
“I’m not being held for anything, Colonel.”
The Russian tensed and then relaxed, knowing that his former enemy was right.
Joanie and Cadzie followed their host.
They traveled the tunnel until their lungs were bursting. They swam with light-sticks in either hand, their alien guides leading the way and then nudging toward an air pocket above them. They swam for it, and broke the surface in an eight-inch gap between water and roof.
“Thank God,” Joanie gasped, her forehead brushing the rock ceiling.
“Were you about to explode?” Cadzie asked.
“Just about. You?”
“I think I could have held out another ten seconds or so.”
“Think about it,” Joanie gasped. “They knew just how long we could hold our breaths.”
“Hope to God. Where do you think they’re taking us?”
“I don’
t know,” Cadzie said.
They dove back down into the water. Twice more, they surfaced and breathed in air pockets. And then . . .
Emerged in a chamber that was bitterly cold. They splashed the light around and it reflected back from icesheathed walls. A second squid shape waited there.
“An ice cave?” Joanie asked. “We’re in the high desert . . I guess that’s possible. Still seems strange, though.”
“Why did they bring us here?”
The ceiling was very high. Almost a hundred feet away. But stunningly, and beyond any doubt . . in the very center of the roof above them glowed an open circle of sunglazed white clouds.
“Oh my God,” Cadzie said. “It’s the sky.”
“Could you get up there?” Joanie asked. Freedom. Safety, shimmering just beyond their reach.
“Maybe,” Cadzie said. “If I had to.”
“We could get a message out. We could get our people out.”
“If we could get up there.” He paused, calculating in his head. “I think I can do it. Listen. You think you remember where those air pockets are?”
“I’d better,” she said soberly.
“You go back and get the others. At least one of the armored boys—they have com links built into their gear. Lead them here. Leave light sticks at the air pockets. Either I can rig up to get us out through the top, or we can at least collapse that tunnel.”
“Last stand?”
“If that’s what it takes,” Cadzie said.
“And you?”
“I’m going to try to find a way to climb up. Get going.”
Cadzie approached one of the two cthulhu. It waited until he came close, close enough that its dark, wet-leather flesh trembled visibly, as in some form of respiration. “I don’t know if you can understand me, but . . thank you.”
A third appeared, this one carrying something in its mouth. Something slender and flexible, and when he recognized it he almost laughed. And then he did laugh.
The creature spat rope out onto the ground, a three-foot length trailing back into the water. When he bent to pick it up, the creature fluttered back away.
