Harker looked it over. It appeared as shallow as he said, but you never knew about this kind of river. They had deep spots, and treacherous eroded stuff just beneath the surface that could cut you to ribbons. Often the bottoms were quagmires, too, sucking you down if you tried walking even in the shallows.
It was a good kilometer across to the next solid anything; in between were fingers of mud and rock piled up here and there as the big river slowed before finally emptying into the sea.
“What about a raft?” Kat Socolov suggested. “If we can make something out of the driftwood or something here, we could pole across.”
“Possibly,” Harker responded. “But I’m not sure I like trusting myself to something cobbled together and held by these vines. One sharp rock below and you’d be in the middle of a disintegrating and possibly dangerous bundle of sticks. Flotation is a good idea, but on a one-to-one personal level, I think. Not one big raft, but a lot of little things that float.”
Next to dinner, that was the highest priority. There were few clues to what they might use floating down the river itself, so they used what light was left to test various pieces of wood, particularly those that looked as if they had floated down a fair piece.
As this was going on, they walked upriver along the riverbank, looking mostly down for a couple of kilometers, after it was clear that there was a significant bend there that might trap flotsam and jetsam. Harker found himself in the lead, and he rounded the curve and suddenly stopped dead still in his tracks. He put up a hand that silenced those coming behind him, and they approached with a lot more stealth.
Mogutu got to him first. “What is it?” he barely whispered.
Harker gestured. “Up ahead, maybe fifty meters. Look at the mud.”
It was fairly flat and soaked through, pretty much like the part they were walking on, and it didn’t take a moment for first Mogutu, then the others to see what had spooked Harker.
Just as they had left footprints in the wet mud behind them, there were footprints in the mud just ahead. Footprints that ended at just about the fifty-meter mark, stopped, then turned and walked back diagonally and into the brush.
“Think they’re new?” Kat asked him apprehensively.
He nodded. “This close to the sea is tidal. The area gets washed over now and again. I’d say those tracks aren’t much older than ours. It’s possible that they were coming toward us and heard us.”
Mogutu nodded. “If they’re still here, they’re very good,” he said, continuing the whisper. “I can’t see anything at all ahead and I’m a damned good hunter.”
“They’re there,” the colonel breathed. “Don’t ask me how I know, but I’ve stayed alive this long by sensing such things. We’re being watched right now. I can feel their eyes. Just in the grass.”
“Want me to flush ’em, sir?” Mogutu asked him, tongue licking his lips in tense anticipation of a real bit of action at last.
“No, you wouldn’t be able to,” N’Gana replied. “They would just pull back into what could be an infinite field of grass until they suckered us into a trap on their ground. No, Sergeant, let’s make them come to us.” He straightened up and added in a more normal tone, “Sergeant, cover our back. Harker, take the edge of the grass. Doc, I want you and the Father, here, behind me. Don’t look around or give them any sense that we know where they are.”
“If they attack?” Mogutu asked him.
“Then we defend ourselves. Otherwise, we go back to a point on the other side of the highway ruins and dig in there. Anyone coming at us will have to do so in the open.”
“Or wait until night, or the predictable storms,” Kat Socolov added worriedly.
“Cheer up, Doctor,” the colonel said. “If they don’t kill us or run from us, you might just get your first chance to use your skills in native contact.”
She shook her head. “I’d bet on them running. If they’re as primitive as I think they are, they won’t want any strangers around. Remember the rule? Draw no attention to yourself. Why risk a fight? Besides, Colonel, no offense meant, but the ethnic population here was entirely Greek and what was called Near Eastern and Caucasian, because that’s where the ethnic roots came from. There might have been some Hamitic types from Ethiopian Coptic stock, which Sergeant Mogutu might be taken for, but most likely they’ve never seen anyone who looks quite like you, Colonel.”
“She’s right, Colonel. There were diplomats and traders, certainly, but no native Australian, African, or Asian types outside the city trading centers and spaceports, and they’d have gotten out.”
The colonel grinned. “So I’m a monster, am I? I kind of like that. It starts us off with some fear and respect, I think. That’s if they really saw me, though. Hard to say. Some of your skin flaps and other oddities might make you seem a bit odd, too, come to think of it. I think, though, that we’ll play games and go back and forth, but I doubt that these people want contact. I didn’t sense that there were very many of them. Two or three, perhaps. Four tops. Hardly a hunting party or a tribe.”
Still, none of them would get the sleep they had been looking forward to only a little earlier. Not this night.
Mogutu was thoughtful. “You know, Colonel, we could use that storm. How about it?”
“Just what do you have in mind?” N’Gana encouraged him.
“I could get up and around, using the storm for cover, then, when they’re still drying out, I could make a godawful demonstration that might panic them right toward you.”
“Possible. Equally possible is that these people, born and raised in this environment, will do the same to us instead, or simply come after you with everything they’ve got including knowledge of the terrain, weapons, their numbers, your position, and so forth. Not a good option. Still, I shouldn’t like them on our back if we have to cross that damned river and swamp combo. I keep giving mental commands to my combat armor and deploying my heat and motion detectors.”
Harker smiled slightly when he heard that. He’d been doing the same thing.
Finally, Kat Socolov cleared her throat. “Um, Colonel? You and your bloodthirsty sergeant here keep treating these people as if they are lions in some imaginary ancient jungle. Have you considered speaking to them instead?”
N’Gana looked completely baffled. “Speak to them? What the devil do you mean?”
“You know—talk. Like we’re doing now.”
“But these people are—are...”
“Stone Age primitives? Probably, but it’s also true that, even in a worst-case scenario, they are only a few generations removed from us. From the Helena of The Confederacy and Father Chicanis. Knowledge can die with frightening suddenness, and ignorance can march in a heartbeat, but, Colonel, changing your language takes a lot longer than this. Conquered nations held on to their native tongues even if they had to learn the speech of their conquerors, and those languages survived even when there was a conscious effort to suppress them. You came from this highly civilized background a couple of worlds removed from your ancestry, yet what was the language spoken in the streets of your homeland during your youth?”
“Uh—well, around the house they always spoke Tuareg, a Berber language. Of course, we all spoke English.”
“And you, Sergeant?”
“Well, it was a dialect of Ethiopian, actually, although everyone also spoke French because there were so many dialects and nobody would ever standardize on one. Yes, I begin to see what she means.”
Even the usually quiet Hamille, whom they tended to forget most of the time, was in tune with this concept. “My people speak—” It gave a series of sounds no human could ever utter. “There are many other tongues on my world. No one speaks human speech except to humans.” Socolov looked at Harker, who shrugged. “I always talked like this,” he said.
“Well,” said the anthropologist, “as someone who speaks both Ukrainian and Georgian, I think I’ve made my point. Father, what would they speak around here? Greek? Turkish? Confederacy Standar
d, which is really a form of English although they never admit that?”
“Why, Greek was common, but everyone used Standard, too, because the fact was that this was an attempt to recreate an ideal of a rich family’s past and they came from Greece. Still, there were a number of ethnic languages even on Helena, so Standard was everywhere. I feel certain that they would understand it, at least if you didn’t use any words or terms that might be outside their experience. I suspect much of our technological jargon would be meaningless to them, but if you kept it basic, I see no reason why, using your logic, they wouldn’t understand something. And, if it’s Greek, I can certainly help there.”
“So can I,” she told him. “You simply can’t get a degree in my field without Greek and Latin even if you intend to excavate the ruins of the third moon of Haptmann circling Rigel.”
“I think we are elected then,” the priest responded, ignoring N’Gana and Mogutu. “We’re also probably the least threatening.”
“That is why one of us must accompany you,” N’Gana told her. “If they attack—remember the man who sent the message that brought us here!—someone who will react without hesitation is necessary. Harker, why don’t you go? You’re—nonthreatening but capable, I think.”
“Thanks a lot,” Harker sighed. “But if we’re going to do it, we’d better move. I doubt if we’ve got a half hour’s light left.”
Feeling a little like targets in spite of the moral certainty of their position, the pair walked cautiously back out along the riverbank and up toward where the footprints had been seen. As they did, the trio of military men spread out and, from whatever concealment they could muster, they slowly closed in on the same spot to give the pair some invisible cover.
Kat Socolov was suddenly wondering if this was a good idea after all. What if they were some sort of savages, the survivor dregs who had kept going by killing off and preying upon the other, weaker groups?
Although feeling some doubt himself, Father Chicanis repeated some favored prayers and decided that it was his job to initiate contact. If, of course, anybody was still there.
There was no reason why anyone should or would wait around the place. It didn’t have a great deal of food, the water was far too muddy to be of practical use, and there was a dead end for most who reached its shore. Still, both of them felt eyes watching them, eyes that were not a part of their own group, eyes that studied and calculated their every move.
They stopped near the footprints they’d left before and looked ahead and to the right into the brush.
“Hello!” Kat Socolov called in what she hoped was a confident but nonthreatening voice. “If you can hear me and understand me, please speak to me! We mean you no harm.”
Father Chicanis frowned. “What the devil is that?”
She shook her head. “I dunno. Sounds like clicking. I’d say it was insects only we’ve been here long enough and nothing I’ve heard sounds like it. Sounds almost like... code.”
He nodded. “What would make sounds in code? And why? Surely this isn’t something of the enemy!” He projected his voice. “I am Father Aristotle Chicanis! I was born and raised near here, but I was not here when the world was conquered. I return bringing the hope and faith of God to my native soil!”
Still no reaction, but more clicking.
“How many do you think there are?” she whispered to him, not taking her eyes off the brush.
“I can’t tell,” he admitted in the same low tone. “Certainly no more than three. If they are going to make a move, though, they better do it. I don’t think we should stand here and risk sundown with our backs to the water.”
It was growing dim. “One last chance, then we back off,” she hissed.
“Look! Come, be friends with us! We only wish to learn from you and we will help you with your needs if we can! Please! It is now or we must leave for the night!”
More clicking. They were moving around, whoever or whatever they were, but slowly, as if positioning themselves in a semicircle. That was clearly a hostile formation; they didn’t need it to protect or defend.
“I think we back out now,” she said to the priest, teeth clenched. “There’s already one behind us. I want to do a slow but steady back-out. Ready?”
“I believe you are right,” he answered, and together they both began to back up, slowly, hoping that the others in the team would cover their backs.
In the bush, the experienced Mogutu had zeroed in on the nearest one, the one moving to cut off the retreat of the pair on the riverbank. He was good at his job, and he’d crept to within no more than a few meters of the one closest to them and the camp.
What he saw startled him. It looked like the back of a young girl, hair long and wild and tangled, the body so thin that it seemed emaciated, yet there was strength in it, and the toughness of weather-beaten skin. She was making the clicking sounds, and getting responses from others, but he couldn’t see what she was making them with.
Suddenly she froze, and he sensed at the same instant that she was now aware of him. It was difficult for him to feel threatened by such a tiny waif, but he also knew that small size meant nothing if one were an expert knife thrower or had other weapons.
He crouched there, watching tensely, waiting to see her move. Suddenly, with an animal-like agility he would have thought impossible, she whirled, turning in midair while hurling herself in his direction. The movement and the sight of her face and hands startled him, so unexpected and horrible were they, and he was a split-second slow in responding and rolling right. Her left foot struck his shoulder with great force; she hit the ground and with catlike agility flipped, rolled, and was back at him.
They all heard Mogutu scream, and this was taken by the others in the bush as an attack imperative. They launched themselves out into the open, toward the pair on the riverbank, and so agile and catlike were the moves and so terrible the visage the two Hunters presented to them that Kat Socolov screamed and Father Chicanis uttered a cry of dismay.
With the bodies of young girls, the faces were a mixture of human and animal. The mouths were wide, somewhat extended, and seemed full of sharp pointed teeth, while the eyes glowed with a feline fire in the reflection of the setting sun on the river. Most awful were the hands, whose fingers were not of flesh but of long spikelike claws twenty or more centimeters long, and not only pointed but barbed as well.
One bounded for the anthropologist as she turned and ran in panic back toward the ruins of the old road. Clearly Socolov was going to lose the race, but suddenly, from out of the grass, a large, long, rounded shape hurled itself with the same force as the Hunters and aimed right at the Hunter as she was within centimeters of driving her claws into Kat Socolov’s back.
The Hunter was taken aback, barely realizing that she was being attacked until the Pooka struck her directly in the belly—and kept on going, literally drilling a bloody hole straight through the attacker with a whirling motion and a very different kind of toothed action.
The Hunter still made no sound although she was now thrashing about in agony and striking at the alien form that penetrated her. She was dying, yet she flailed away at the back end of the creature and even tried to get to her feet with the thing still in her while staring, with hate-filled eyes, at Kat Socolov.
The anthropologist saw that the Pooka that had saved her was now in need of saving itself, and although almost transfixed by the single-minded violence in the Hunter, she ran toward her attacker, steel gun barrel in hand, and lashed out, striking first one of the clawed arms, then reaching the head. The thing kept trying to get at her, which so terrified Socolov that she continued swinging at the head until finally the only motion coming from the Hunter was from Hamille trying to get all the way through.
Father Chicanis hadn’t had as good a rescuer, and the Hunter had actually reached him and dug her claws into his left arm. With his right arm, he brought up his gold-plated cross and used it as a club. It wasn’t very effective, but it slowed her just enou
gh for Gene Harker to swing another gun barrel at full strength right into the back of her head. So great was the force he used that part of the Hunter’s skull caved in, yet, stunned and badly wounded, she nonetheless turned on him and attempted to claw and bite him with fanatical fury. Only his own hand-to-hand combat training and reflexes had saved him from also being badly slashed, and once the Hunter was down he brought the barrel down again and again and again until she finally twitched in the mud and lay still.
“Father? You all right?”
“Hurts like the very devil!” Chicanis responded. “My God! She’s peeled some of the flesh away from my arm! Oh, Lord! How it hurts’.”
“Let me check on Kat and then I’ll tend to it,” he said, running a few meters farther on, where Hamille had finally managed to get out of the Hunter’s middle from the other side and now lay there, its whole center length undulating up and down as if breathing hard.
Kat Socolov knelt in the mud and just stared at the figure of the Hunter lying dead in the mud, and she was crying uncontrollably. Harker went to her, knelt down, and asked, “Are you hurt? Kat! Were you wounded?”
She was simply too far gone to respond, but his quick examination showed only some scratches and what was going to be a whale of a bruise in a day or so.
Satisfied that she was all right, at least physically, and unable to tell if the Pooka was or not, he returned to Father Chicanis, removed the vine belt from his waist, and began using it as a tourniquet on the arm. It looked ugly, but it could have been worse.
“Come on, Father! We’ve got to get back to the road! It’s almost dark! We’ve still got some basic medicinals, I think. Come! Can you walk?”
“I—I think so. Please—help me to my feet.”
The priest was unsteady, but he managed, and they walked back to Kat Socolov, who was just staring now, apparently all cried out.
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