by Larry Niven
Cadmann grinned. “Yeah.”
“That’s better,” Zack said. “We’ll make it. Look, we all know this won’t be cut and dried. So what? Before we left Earth we didn’t know what we’d face. Now we know the worst, and it’s not as bad as some of us thought it would be! They are just animals.”
Carolyn giggled hysterically. Everyone could remember Carolyn and four others standing outside the corrugated-metal building, four generic warriors firing into a single demon.
“We just have to trust each other. We’re each proficient in at least two vital skills. Some of us can handle three or four. I expect you to keep a running assessment of your emotional and physical reserves. Pitch in and help anyone beginning to fade. When you’re fading yourself, first find a replacement, then go somewhere and have hysterics.”
“But get permission from Cadmann first,” Carlos said. “Hysteria without permission is strictly forbidden.”
“Enough, then,” Zack said. “Staff meeting in half an hour. The rest of you go pack.”
♦ChaptEr 28♦
marabunta
There’s a price for too much arrogance,
a price for too much greed,
And in complacent ignorance
we’ve sown the whirlwind seed!
—Don Simpson, “Serpents Reach” (song)
Changes came with disorienting speed. Everything about the swimmer’s new world was stimulation and strangeness.
There was a heat within its body. Its mouth ached. Its balance had changed, become awkward. Swimming was clumsier now.
There was nothing to eat. The green strands it had eaten all its life no longer smelled like food. In all of the swimmer’s life, it had thought of eating nothing else. The question had never even arisen. Now, confusingly, the flavor had gone flat.
The water itself had gone flat. Something was missing. Some feeling—powerful, dominant, a discomfort growing to panic and pain—was driving it out of the water.
It found itself trying to swim across mud.
The mud flat swarmed with its siblings.
It writhed in place. New muscles flexed and compressed, released, and fire flowed into its new lungs. The panic receded.
The fins which had grown clumsy now revealed new purpose. With great effort, what had been a swimmer thrust against the ground and rose up on unsteady legs, balancing. Its sides heaved, pulling air in and out. It looked at the world above the water.
This place was totally foreign to a swimmer’s world of suspension, of placidity and constant pressure. Smells were different, weaker, stranger. Its tear ducts ran with oily fluid, keeping its eyes moist. It found the squeeze that would change its vision, and infinity jumped into its sight.
It felt the pressure of its own weight for the first time in its life. How could it feel weaker and more powerful at the same time?
Something even stranger happened. It turned, humping its body sideways in sudden alarm. One of its siblings was coming, dull black eyes fixed hungrily. It smelled wrong . . . smelled right. There was no image, no feeling to match this smell, but something within the swimmer began to flare. It felt suddenly weightless, no longer clumsy . . .
Its sibling lunged forward.
All thought was overwhelmed by its instinctive response. The swimmer flopped to the side, and the strike of its sibling caught only air. The swimmer’s head whipped around and it sank new teeth into its attacker’s flank.
Never before had it fought one of its own. The only memory of survival stress was the struggle to evade the Big One, the One who ate swimmers. Many times the Big One had come, and the swimmer had moved swiftly. More swiftly than many of its siblings, because this swimmer had survived.
Once, the Big One had hung quiescent in the water, exuding a different smell. The swimmer had drawn closer, closer, unable to retreat. So close that the Big One could have caught it easily if it wished.
There followed a moment of such intensity that the swimmer could not clearly remember what had happened. This moment held similar intensity: fear and rage and the taste flaring in its mouth and brain.
The sibling tried to retreat now, but the swimmer was suddenly ravenous. It had tasted something more delicious than all of the green muck in the world. It struck again and again. Around it, other siblings were joining in. They ripped and tore. The smell of blood filled its senses. The death agonies of its hapless sibling quieted, until at last there was nothing but the feast . . .
♦ ♦ ♦
Tau Ceti wavered in the mist, stared out at Cadmann like a bloodshot eye. Vanished behind a strand of horsemane trees. Back, then gone again as the Skeeter skimmed the stream.
The swamp below him swarmed with grendels. He couldn’t see individuals yet, but he saw darting streaks everywhere. Trees and brush and shrubbery shook, churned and chewed by the horde.
Carlos touched his shoulder. “Amigo. Cómo está?”
“Bien. Y usted?”
“Jitters. Cramps.” Carlos gripped at his stomach. “The stress is not sweet. But I think I will make fewer mistakes.”
“That’s the picture. And from here on out, we can’t afford any mistakes at all.” Cadmann brought the Skeeter down closer to the river. Now he could make out individual grendels. They crowded the water like catfish in the breeding pond, writhing and biting at each other. Two chased a third up a horsemane tree. The leader was too slow, too clumsy. It lost its grip and fell; the others snapped at it as it passed, and the three fell in a writhing cluster.
“Carlos, you’re more the mathematician than I am. What is the minimum survival population for our colony?”
“We worked that out. I read a paper on it once. Minimum genetic diversity, minimum skill spread. We took the minimum in adults, with three times that many in fetuses. But if one has faith in the Good Book, one man and one woman could repopulate a planet.”
“Times like this, faith isn’t a terrible idea.” Cadmann grinned bleakly. He directed the Skeeter’s camera to the knot of writhing grendels beneath them.
“Feeding frenzy. They trigger on their own. Let’s see what Jerry’s idea does.” Carlos clipped the wire fastened just inside the door. One of the weighted sacks hanging from the side of the Skeeter dropped. Calf blood spilled into the water.
The grendels went crazy. They bit at nothing, drunken with blood lust. The water churned black.
“Damn, they’re stupid.”
“Yeah, but they’re infants. The ones who survive will be smarter—and we don’t have an unlimited supply of calf blood. The reflex is there, though. That’s encouraging. We have a pretty creative group. Someone will come up with something even better.”
They died by the hundreds. Chewed corpses floated belly up, choking the surface. Others moved in to feed.
“They are no longer fighting,” Carlos said.
“No. Enough to eat? Something. Still, we got a lot of them.” Cadmann’s smile was grim. “Come on. We have work to do.”
As they pulled up over the Colony, Minerva Two rose from the dam on a column of foam and mist. Cadmann hovered there, as thousands of gallons of water cascaded back into the lake with a thunderous roar. Waves crashed out in concentric rings, pounding at the dock.
The two friends watched the craft climb. It had vanished into the mist before the sound changed from one kind of thunder to another as the nuclear ramjet lit.
“I don’t think I want to be behind a Minerva when it takes off,” Carlos said.
“Nor I. How can we entice grendels to cluster there?”
“That’s what I was thinking—”
“When you think of a way, be sure it’s safe. Without the Minervas we’re dead.”
They circled the camp. Its fortifications lay spread out below like a tabletop model.
The electric fence had a new, larger twin within the moat of mines. The outer fields had been harvested, the grain shipped up to the Bluff. Tractors under remote control chugged slowly in the barren fields. Cadmann could distinguish the flame-thrower nozzles welded t
o the fronts of the cultivators and irrigators.
The welding lasers, the torches, the plasma drills were all arrayed as weapons now. Virtually every tool from engineering had been modified to the defense of the Colony.
He could see the gunmen too, but he knew where they were beforehand: stationed at the corners of the fence, ready to fire along its length. Skeeters moved about, swooping to fire at grendels. There were not so many grendels yet, but they all had to be stopped before they reached the fences.
“I still say it’s chancy,” Cadmann murmured.
“Eh?”
“Both Minervas in flight. No power for the fences while they’re both up. Lose both and we’re dead.”
“So why did you let them both go up?”
“Schedule. Sometimes you just have to take chances. It doesn’t mean I like it.”
They circled over stacks of thornwood faggots stacked at intervals, wired for ignition at command. “I hope it works,” Cadmann said.
Carlos shrugged. “Jerry and Marnie swore by this. Do you trust them?”
“I trust the logic. Add heat to an already overheated grendel and watch it cook. I trust them. I’m just not sure I believe it.”
The cattle and horse pens were empty. Cadmann could see the occupants moving uphill, horsemen and horsewomen on the outskirts of the herds: old movies played through his mind. We’ve got rustlers like you never dreamed of, Duke.
Cadmann settled the Skeeter lightly to the pad. As he unbuckled his safety belt, Zack opened the door.
“I thought you’d be aboard Geographic by now.” Cadmann pulled the tape cartridge from the camera.
Zack said, “Nope. Not yet. I don’t really want to go, you know.”
“Yeah, and I don’t really want to stay. People like you and me don’t get a whole lot of choice in life. How is everything going?”
“Rachel says that the workshifts were implemented just fast enough. Everyone’s so tired that the shock hasn’t had a chance to sink in yet. When it does . . . ”
“By the time that it does, this will be over, one way or the other.”
A loud, miserable bray from the center of camp caught Cadmann’s attention. “Damn!”
“Huh?”
“The horses. Let them go. The grendels aren’t fully mature. The horses may be able to outrun them. A few may survive.”
“Bloody unlikely.”
“Yeah, but as the man said—the grendels are running for their lunch—”
“The horses are running for their lives. Got it. Besides,” Carlos said soberly, “I’m sure they would rather die on the run than trapped in a pen.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “They would have a better chance if someone went with them. To guide them. Take them as high as possible.”
Cadmann said, “Too right. But who? Someone not much use in a fight—Carolyn. She rides. Let her take the horses.”
“She tends to panic,” Zack said. “Oh—”
“Exactly. No room for her in Geographic. She’s not a lot of use in a fight. But she can run. Send her.”
“I will tell her,” Carlos said.
“Why you? Oh. Well, okay. How’s the big surprise coming, Zack?”
“We have a thousand liters of liquid hydrogen in each of the four storage tanks. It isn’t enough, but it’s all we can spare. We’ll have to wait and see.”
“What’s the situation on the grendels?”
“Up to ten an hour. Best guess is that will double every couple of hours until the wave hits. When Minerva Two comes down, she stays down. We should power the fences soon. The main wave hasn’t found us yet, but one grendel got through the north fence half an hour ago.”
“Being fixed?”
“Already done. Now, you hook up Minerva Two for power, but you load the cargo too. Those fences can’t hold up forever—”
“Soon as the fences go, the Minerva goes too. We’ve been through this. You’d better get over to the dam.” Cadmann shook Zack’s hand hard, then glanced up as a hypersonic shriek split the sky: Minerva One, returning for another load.
Zack sighed. “You know, Cadmann, there’s just been no time. No time at all. I . . . you could have taken the Colony away from me, and we both know it.”
“That’s bullshit.”
Zack seemed to be searching for something else to say. He gave up and turned, leaving Cadmann and Carlos.
“Virtues of the warrior,” Carlos murmured.
“What are you babbling about?”
“The virtues of the warrior, since ancient times: Protection of the Innocent, Courage in Battle. The greatest of them was Loyalty to the King.”
“The king.” Zack’s dejected figure reached the dining hall and disappeared inside. “I guess he’s the only king we have, at that.” Cadmann laughed. “Come on. We’ve got a lot more to do before we’re through today.”
The communications shack was busy. Marnie and Jerry were monitoring communications, coordinating thermal graphs from Geographic. Wedges of color showed the forward progress of the grendels.
There was no “wave.” There was a growing density of heat sources along all the streams on Avalon, ruby red along the Miskatonic, with a gap around the Colony. The gap was filling in as grendels moved into open territory.
“How long now?” Carlos asked soberly.
Marnie switched her throat mike off to answer. “Twenty hours tops.”
Jerry nodded optimistically. “It’s going to get right down to the wire, but I think we can hold that long.”
Gunfire sounded: several guns at once. Carlos watched one of the video screens. Baby grendels danced in the corn stubble—three, four.
We won’t have bullets forever.
Carlos looked sour. “They’re getting larger.”
“They would be,” Jerry said. “Ye gods, the growth rate—I worked it out myself and didn’t believe it.”
“They’ve got a hell of an incentive to grow.”
Cadmann broke in on the chatter. “Get the Bluff for me, would you?”
“No problem.” The holostage cleared, and Jerry answered the line.
Cadmann clicked on his throat mike. “Is Mary Ann there?’
“One minute.”
The stage was blank for about thirty seconds, and then Mary Ann was on. “Cadmann.” She looked tired, but not depressed, not frightened.
“Mary Ann. This may be the last opportunity. Tell me again you won’t go back to Geographic?”
“No one knows the Bluff like I do. I’ll have to show everybody where things are. If Sylvia takes care of Jessica, I’ll be happy.”
“Yeah.” He paused. “I’d feel better if you got out of there.”
“No. No. They need me here to show them where things are. If the grendels kill everybody here, there won’t be anything to come back to. I’d rather be here.”
“All right. I just had to ask.”
“I just had to answer.” She chuckled. Cadmann clicked the line off.
Outside the communication shack, the smell of fear and smoke and baby grendels roasted by flame throwers mingled. The stench hung in the air like a shroud.
He and Carlos walked over to the fence above the Miskatonic. Carlos pointed at a black form wiggling up from the water below them.
It twisted its head slowly, questing, as if it could smell them. It tried to climb the rise, but slid back down into the rushing waters.
Over to the south, fire lashed from a Skeeter. A meteor raced at ground level toward the river, lost direction and finally stopped.
“Cadmann? Carlos?”
Sylvia. The wind stirred her hair ever so gently, and it ruffled in a halo around her face. She seemed so incredibly young, so beautiful. She turned, exposing the papooseka backpack that held Jessica.
Terry glided along beside her, carrying Justin in his lap.
She stepped back, framing the four of them with her hands as if taking a holo.
Cadmann closed his eyes and felt the old hunger race through him. The very real p
ossibility that he might never see her again made it almost unbearably intense.
She hugged Cadmann, then reached up and kissed him gently. “For luck,” she whispered.
Carlos stood quietly, his hands at his sides. Sylvia had to take his arms and put them around her. She whispered something to him that Cadmann couldn’t hear, and then kissed him hard.
Cadmann turned away, embarrassed. Terry studiedly held Justin. Their eyes locked, and Terry raised his eyebrows.
When she had finished, she took Justin from Terry and stepped back again. “My three favorite men in all the world,” she said soberly. “God bless and keep you. Keep each other.”
She knelt by Terry and kissed him. At first it was a peck, then it became desperately hungry. Justin began to cry.
Sylvia pressed the child to her chest. Tears streamed freely down her cheeks. Without another word, she turned and ran to the Skeeter pad.
Cadmann hesitated, then said, “I’d like to ferry her over myself. Do you mind?”
“Not at all.” Terry’s voice shook. He stared at the ground and wiped at his face with an unsteady hand.
Stu was running the Skeeter shuttle. Cadmann grabbed his arm and swung him to the side. “Stu—why don’t you do us both a favor and grab a cup of coffee?”
“S’all right, Cad. I can keep going for a while—” He glanced at Sylvia, and then back again. “Oh. Right.”
Cadmann held the door for her, then hurried around to the pilot’s side. He performed all the checks and instrument adjustments automatically. She made no sound until they lifted off, then sighed audibly.
“I might have known that it would be Carlos,” he said.
“You understand, don’t you?”
“How could I not? I just wish . . . ”
“Don’t say it, Cad. We’ve been through all of it already.”
They could see Camelot clearly from their perspective. The angles and swirls, the rectangles of the home lots, the rolling parks. The schematics of their dream. A dream that had become a nightmare.
“Cadmann. Are we going to make it? I mean, any of us?”
“The answer is yes. We’ve made mistakes, bad ones. Not surprising—no one has ever dealt with an alien ecology before.”
