by Larry Niven
“He’ll bring it back.”
“Did he tell you that?”
Sylvia laughed. “Don’t I wish. No, but he will. He hasn’t any use for a Skeeter, Zack. He isn’t out to hurt the Colony. He just wants—anyway, you watch, he won’t take more than his share.”
“Yeah. I guess I always knew that. Goddamn him!” Zack exploded. “Hell, Sylvia, it isn’t the stuff he took! It’s him. We need the son of a bitch.”
“And if you’d—”
“And if I’d said it loud enough and early enough he’d still be here. Yeah. Thanks for reminding me.”
The Skeeter returned eight hours later. It landed two kilometers from the camp. Everyone came outside, but no one wanted to go closer. After a moment, Cadmann creakily levered himself out of the cockpit. One of the dogs leaped out of the cabin after him. It bounded around his feet, as if unable to understand why his new master moved so slowly when there was so much to do, so much to see. Together they walked north.
The last Sylvia saw of him was a tiny, lonely figure climbing into the pass, disappearing into the distance and the mist.
♦ChaptEr 12♦
dinosaur killer
He that goeth about to persuade a multitude,
that they are not so well governed as they ought to be,
shall never want attentive and favorable hearers.
—Richard Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity
“Save it!” Sylvia screamed as lights flickered throughout the camp. Jerry’s hands flew over the keyboard. Cassandra’s memory banks had just begun saving when the entire camp plunged into darkness. Shadows flashed back as the sizzling flare of arc welders beyond the communal dining hall created brief lightning storms in the Avalonian midnight.
Jerry shouted out the window to the welders. “Goddamn it, you could warn us!” There was no answer. He sighed. “What did we lose this time?”
“Maybe nothing.” Sylvia glanced at her watch. “Know in a minute. I’ll be glad when they get the power plant rebuilt.”
“Yeah.” He tapped idly at the keyboard. “They say you can get used to hanging if you hang long enough, but I’ll never get used to the power going out.” A brief flare of light, and Jerry’s face was outlined in the darkness as he lit a cigarette. “Have one?”
“You know better than that.”
He shrugged. “Good time to start.” He put the stiff foil package away.
This was a bad time, miserable in almost every way that Sylvia could think of. If Cassandra hadn’t been damaged by the monster, her automatic power backups would have allowed them to continue the process of collating the satellite data. If she hadn’t been damaged, all data would have been automatically backed up. If the power plant hadn’t been damaged, there’d be no need to run cables from one of the two Minerva shuttles. There would have been a smooth, uninterrupted flow of electricity to the camp.
They were lucky to have power at all. The solar collectors uphill didn’t collect enough power, and the storage capacity was tiny. And they had dynamite. How do you get power out of two hundred kilos of dynamite? They’d found an answer: they’d dynamited a cliff to dam the river. Now the river featured a long, narrow lake downstream from the camp, a landing field for the Minerva, and now the Minerva’s motor could be brought within reach of cables from the half rebuilt power plant.
“There she goes,” Jerry said as the lights winked back on.
“I don’t know how much more of this I can handle,” Sylvia said, wiping moist fingers on her pants.
“All that it takes,” Jerry answered bluntly.
Cassandra booted back up almost at once, and they breathed a paired sigh of relief: none of the data had been lost. Sylvia spoke softly. “Cassandra. Correlate and evaluate: optical-infrared scan, North Sea.”
“Acknowledged.” The computer continued its cross-referencing of the data it received from the geosynchronous satellite above the campsite and the transient data gathered by the lower, faster-moving Geographic.
“Northland is heavily populated.” Jerry’s voice held irritation now. The two were like an emotional seesaw. “Conclusive signs of aquatic life. How in the hell are we going to zero in on something like our monster coming over?”
“Data, Jerry. There’s an answer for everything that happened, but right now we just have to correlate data. We can’t even say exactly what we’re up against. If the protein spectrophotometer can be repaired, we’ll get a look at the thing’s DNA. Until then, we’re doing autopsies on a corpse made of charcoal.”
“There must be a pattern. This island is underpopulated. We know that. Not enough differentiation. Samlon, plants, and those damn pterodons high up in the mountains, and they all look alike. It’s—”
“And insects—”
“Okay, insects. All tiny. All flying things, no crawlers, and all these empty ecological pockets. It’s like . . . maybe . . . Sylvia? It’s like the Earth must have been after the Dinosaur Killer. Nothing big. Most of the species wiped out. O—kay. Let’s start looking for iridium in the soil, shall we? A layer of vaporized asteroid, buried, but not deep. And maybe the satellites can find us a fresh crater.”
“Dinosaur Killer—Jerry, could that be it? A big asteroid strike, long winter, planetary die-off—when? A thousand years ago? Five thousand? The plants have all come back, but not the animals?”
“Even half a million wouldn’t be too long.” He frowned. “There are other answers, though. Something regular, something that breaks the reproduction cycle. Something subtle . . . maybe it doesn’t even show up for two or three generations . . . ”
She felt momentary fear. Then she patted her bulging abdomen and laughed. “Ugly thought, but no. We’ve had three generations of chickens, and four generations of mice. Go for the Dinosaur Killer.”
Her fingers flew over the keyboard, bringing to the screen the endless biological sets they had worked out: animal to vegetable kilotonnage, animal populations in the various temperature gradients. In the varying altitudes. In the dry climes. The wet. And on. And on, as they had for four days now. She remembered sleeping until she was entirely slept out, one Saturday following three college exams. She remembered this as she had once remembered hot fudge sundaes while dieting.
The answers were always the same. No hostile life on the island. There couldn’t be. Nothing for it to live on. A simple, near-pastoral ecology. We’re missing something obvious. Something I ought to remember. Is this what the—others—Mary Ann and Ernst and the others felt like? Something I ought to know, and I don’t. She laughed suddenly.
“What?” Jerry asked.
“Nothing. Jerry, I like your Dinosaur Killer. I think you’ve got it.”
Jerry carefully blew his smoke in the other direction. “Do you think that an expedition will really go out now?”
“No. Zack won’t approve it.”
“He’ll be lucky if anyone listens a damn to what he has to say after this mess.”
“Greg spoke for everyone? You included?”
“Not you?”
She paused. “I think Zack made an honest mistake, one that any of us might have made, and most of us did! Zack’s a scapegoat. The fact that Cadmann was right doesn’t necessarily mean that he was right for the right reasons. He’d been looking for something to go wrong right from the beginning—”
“I would have expected a comment like that out of Terry.”
“No—this isn’t a putdown. As far as Cad is concerned, somebody has to play Devil’s Advocate.”
The program purred on quietly and efficiently by itself. “Cadmann. What are we going to do about him?” The room lights dimmed again. “Shit! Cassandra, save!”
The power didn’t come back for fifteen minutes. Enough, Sylvia thought. “I quit, Jerry. You should too. ’Bye.” She didn’t wait for his answer.
Early dawn, but the camp was a hive of activity. The wreckage had been cleared away. New buildings sprouted, bare skeletons rising into the chill morning air. Three work crews in overlapping ten-hour sh
ifts kept the jobs humming along smoothly. Everyone got just enough time to sleep, but not enough to grouse.
One monster did this. How many are there?
Dinosaur Killer. It just could be. The idea was exciting. She was already too tired to relax. She chose to walk the long way home. A chill breeze came from Spaceport Lake, and she wrapped her coat more tightly as she neared the power plant.
The engineers were rebuilding without tearing down the original structure. At this stage it had no shape or symmetry, only a chaos of crumbled walls and hastily erected scaffolding.
The power plant was one of the first buildings on Avalon. About half a year ago, she thought idly, and nodded to herself in satisfaction because she’d thought of it as half a year, not just over one Earth Standard. Avalon was home whether they liked it or not. Better learn to think so.
The power plant had flown down on a solidly packed one-shot cargo vehicle. A small solid-fuel rocket had dropped it from orbit to glide down on triangular wings. The engine was Minerva-compatible; in fact the whole package had looked a lot like one of the shuttles, with a Minerva’s wing and belly. Motor, wings, hull, all were spare parts for the shuttles. And damned near all we have, too. What’s left?
A Skeeter hovered over the power plant. A thin girder dangled from its underbelly. Omar Isfahan waved a handlamp, guiding the pilot, until the girder clicked down, was fitted and epoxied into place. Omar, tallest man in camp by three inches, looked tired. His fleshy cheeks drooped, his tight khaki shirt was dappled with sweat. Elsewhere in the structure men were soldering electric cables. When the Skeeter lifted away again someone yelled “Now!” and the lights flared back to life all over the camp. The glare stole the faint stars from their twinkling positions in the morning mist, but one of the twin moons still glimmered, a tiny dim crescent above the horizon.
Sylvia felt suddenly, unaccountably lonely. She wanted to go back to her hut and curl up next to her husband. Knowing that Terry would respond, would hold her with what strength he had. Knowing that if she began to cry, he would say what comforting things he could.
If only . . . if only his new depth of understanding weren’t accompanied by a complete failure of his lower body.
But she was pregnant, and he was sick, crippled, and her need for lovemaking seemed both selfish and unworthy. It didn’t help that she still thought of Cadmann—not his face, and nothing so crude as a sexual image, only a memory of the breadth of his shoulders. The curve of his upper arm, where the muscle showed most clearly, the unmistakably male smell of his body and breath . . .
She held herself, watching the construction on the power plant, barely noticing when Zack emerged from the shadows.
“Sylvia.”
He seemed about ten years older, but there was strength in that maturity. In the faces and manners of so many of them, now. “How are you?”
“Tired, but making progress, I think.”
He nodded without speaking. He was staring out toward Mucking Great Mountain, and she didn’t need to ask what he was thinking. If a camp vote had been taken the day after the disaster, Zack would have been ousted and Cadmann elected to the post in a moment. Take the vote soon enough after the disaster, and Zack himself might have led the electoral parade. Not now. Now he’d fight.
“We’re surviving,” he said. “We’re going to keep surviving. We paid our price for this goddamned planet. It’s all we’re going to pay.”
“I hope you’re right, but how can you say that? Anyway, we all made our decision when we left Earth. We knew the risk—”
“What happened just shouldn’t have happened.” There was absolutely nothing of the old Zack in his tone. She wanted to back away from him. The flash of the arcs and welding lasers cast hard shadows on his face. His eyes were bright.
“We don’t know if there are any more of those things on the island,” she said, as gently as she could. “It’s going to take time.”
“We have time. Those things don’t have any time.” He turned the collar of his coat up. “You’re going to hear talk, Sylvia. Maybe you’ve heard it already.” His breath came in short white puffs when he spoke. “They say that I’m too soft. That this wouldn’t have happened if . . . someone else was in charge. Had been in charge. I can’t say about that. Whatever’s fair is fair. I can tell you this, though. It isn’t happening again. Whether I’m in charge or not.”
Sylvia remembered the image of shadow whipping through the courtyard to leave unbelievable carnage and stinking blood slicks on the tarmac. The Avalonian equivalent of tiny, flying insects still hovered in the courtyard, picking sustenance out of the cracks although they hosed it clean again and again.
“Keep looking,” he said. “Harry Siep’s calibrating Geographic’s telescope. Coordinating the satellites. All three will be monitoring the island and the strait. We’re going to train a second team to do the evaluations you and Jerry have been running, so that we’ll have continuous coverage until Cassandra is up to full strength again. I’m working out a new security program. Every foot of this island is going to be re-photographed—” He looked at her suddenly. “Have you seen the latest pictures?”
“No. You’ve found something!”
“Not what you’re thinking, not more of the damn monsters. We found Cadmann.”
A great sigh ran through her, as if she had been waiting to hear that for a week, unable to admit how important it was. “Thank God. Where?”
“Halfway up MGM mesa. Campfire traces three days running. He won’t answer any radio signals, but it’s him all right.”
She paused, waiting for him to go on. When he didn’t, she said it. “Are we going after him?”
“Why? He obviously doesn’t want anything to do with us. He didn’t take anything that wasn’t his—regardless of what a couple of assholes said.”
There was real confusion in Zack’s voice. Muddied, mixed emotions. Sure. He knows what he owes Cad. He also knows that right now Cadmann could snatch the Colony from him.
“What do you want to do?”
Zack thrust his hands deeply into his pockets. “I don’t feel that an official delegation would be welcome. A few of his friends, on the other hand—people who cared about him and just wanted to make sure that he was all right—that might be appropriate. Can you think of anyone who might fit that description?”
She nodded silently.
“Good. I was hoping. Well, I’ve got things to do. Good night, Sylvia.”
Zack walked off the way she had come, toward the rebuilt veterinary clinic.
There aren’t any heroes here, she reminded herself. Just survivors. The heroes died two weeks ago. Or were crippled. Or broken.
Except for one man who we’ve shamed and betrayed. We owe him something.
Terry was awake when she came to bed. What medical skill could do had been done. There was no need for him to be in the infirmary—the hut was like a personal hospital room, and since the accident, he seemed to need her more than ever before.
If only . . .
“Sylvia,” he said sleepily, throwing a warm arm over her as she slipped between the covers.
She helped him roll over; he hadn’t quite gotten the knack of doing it with just his arms. He was working out in the communal gym to improve the strength of his upper body. Already she could feel the renewed tautness in his shoulders. In short months, he might double his strength. From the waist up, he would be more muscular than he had ever been in his life. A fine figure of a man, those rippling corded arms pushing his balloon-tired wheelchair around the camp.
She squeezed her eyes tightly, trying not to cry. He would taste the tears.
He pulled her close to him, and as he did now, kissed her closed eyes, his slender fingers kneading her back. “How did work go?”
“We’ve actually classified four different life-forms on the main continent. Two are just huge, the size of brontosaurs. The others travel in packs. Fast. In sprints. Our monster might have been a stray from a pack like that.”
“What about the expedition?”
“No word. You might still lead it, you know.”
Except that we don’t have any sophisticated prosthetics. So you could stay in the Minerva we send over, and watch while other men and women do the exploring. Maybe Cadmann would like to lead it now? How would you like that, Terry? Maybe we’ll wait until I’ve had the baby, and I have my figure back. Then Cadmann and I can go over there together. What would you think of that, Terry?
Not too fucking much.
“Just problems. Manpower. We only have one totally free Minerva. If we need both Minervas somewhere else, the camp is without power. There just isn’t going to be any exploration if the satellites and the telescope aboard Geographic can do the job,” Sylvia continued.
“I suppose that makes sense.”
Sylvia tried to identify her husband’s voice in that comment. Like everything else in the camp, he had changed.
For a time, she just listened to his breathing in the dark. Then she leaned forward to kiss her husband, kiss the father of her unborn child. His mouth tasted of sleep, but not unpleasantly. He pulled away from her embrace a few inches. “Sylvia—what news is there of Cadmann?”
“Mucking Great Mountain, halfway up.”
She felt him nod in the dark. “Go up there,” he said finally. “Talk to him. He’s got to come back.”
He strained with his arms to bring his hips closer to her, and even in the darkness she could see that tears glistened on his cheeks.
“Terry . . . why?”
He ran his hands down her body to the gentle swell of her stomach. “Because of this. We’re going to have a child soon, and this planet will be hers.”
“Hers,” Sylvia whispered.
“I can’t protect her. Cadmann can help make this island safe. I helped drive him away. I think you can bring him back.”
She didn’t say anything, just kissed him again, remembering a line from somewhere, That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
