by E. E. Knight
“Precisely. You and those like you made this settlement possible. Had this planet been in the relative state it was thirty years ago, or even fifteen, we would never have had such an opportunity. You certainly deserve our thanks, and more.”
“Thanks? No thanks,” she said. “Why are we being given up? I know your kind have died here, too. Isn’t there another—”
“Why do they want Earth? First, you humans are rich in aura, and you breed quickly under different levels of stress and deprivation.Second, they made a case that Earth, being one of the few direct portals to Kur, and yet also a portal to many other worlds, was an ideal route for invasion. Earth is their new castle gate. Holding Earth saves them a fight on other worlds.”
She felt like she was flailing. What would Val say? Some cool, long-ranged argument, she supposed. She pretended to be him for a moment: “And once life here is consumed to the bedrock, what then? Don’t you think they’ll come across those gates, ‘forever and absolutely’ or no? When they come, won’t they be stronger than ever?”
“We will be stronger, too,” the Lifeweaver said. “If it is a matter of being left, there will be some population transfers allowed. You have little to hope for on the new Earth. Your emigration could be arranged to one of the worlds reserved for us. There is a plan to settle some humans on Eheru to ensure the survival of your species. Of course, the climate will not be that of your native Midwest.”
“Leave my home, friends, the whole shooting match?”
“I do not say it will be easy, only that we can offer you a better future than you have if you remain on Earth.”
“Leave—my planet?”
“We respire and take in water much as you. You would find one of our worlds peaceful. ‘Idyllic’ is not too strong a word. It would be easy to forget you are an exile among your fellows. No problem about leaving, as long as it is done quietly. The Kurians are only too glad to be rid of as many of our children among men as possible.”
“You don’t think much of humanity.”
“I don’t? You are from the United States, once a refuge for those who abandoned their cousins and fellow citizens in some land that had gone to devils incarnate. Look just a hundred years ago in your own history, at the Laotians after Vietnam, the Persians after the Shah, the Poles who fled their beloved land. They built better lives in peace. You might do the same.”
She began to respond, but he held up a hand. “I am being told we are in no small amount of danger. If you’ll excuse me, we must remove ourselves.”
She ran to the windows of the second-floor concourse and looked out at the endless sunset of a Kokkola summer.
A sea of gray backs filled the street in front of the conference center. The bigger ones shoved the smaller out of the way to climb onto prominences like benches and the decorative border around the plaza fountain. They hooted and honked, making it sound like a traffic jam caused by a huge flock of Canada geese.
By instinct she joined Ahn-Kha, Pistols, and Sime.
“Are they dangerous on land?” Pistols asked.
“Very,” Duvalier said. She’d seen a little of what Big Mouths could do when she was in the Delta country south of New Orleans. “They can shoot across short distances in a blur. They don’t look like they can move any more quickly on land than a sea lion, right up to the point when they launch themselves like a missile.”
“There must be thousands of them,” Sime said in wonder.
Rolf, the Norwegian Bear, appeared with an old revolver in his hand. “The best I could get, at this point,” he said.
“The garrison won’t be able to do shit to them,” Pistols said, handing Rolf the Judge. He looked big enough to handle it.
They seemed to be just milling about, waiting, nudging one another, and squabbling over comfortable spots on the roads and verges and parkland about the conference center, rather than moving in for an assault.
“I hate those fucking things,” Rolf said in slow, unsteady English. “Trondheim was full of them in the summers. They bred them, fed them bodies for the giving of the taste of human flesh a fondness. In the end, they turned them loose in Trondheim, too.”
“How did you beat them?” Duvalier asked.
“Kill enough and they start eating each other. They are cannibals of the bad wounded and the fresh dead. Easier meal than chasing down men.”
“They will not harm anyone,” one of the security people was shouting. Others took turns yelling in different languages. “They are here as bodyguards for an emissary from Kur, a member of the Great Circle itself.”
Sime was standing in a knot of shorter delegates from the Butter faction, trying to calm them down.
“What is the Great Circle?” Ahn-Kha asked.
“Like I’d know,” Duvalier said.
“A Kurian is about to speak to the conference.”
“So much for our trip to warn security,” Ahn-Kha said. “I wish my David were here. Or perhaps not. He might go mad.”
“I can go plenty mad for both of us,” Duvalier said. “If one more person tries to tell me what great news this all is, I might turn into a one-woman mental asylum for manic-obsessive cockpunchers.”
Most of the delegates returned to the main auditorium. The curiosity of what a Kurian might say to them impelled them, and it was as good a place to make a last stand as any. The security staff waited at the now bolted and barricaded doors. No one was getting out, and hopefully not in, until the matter was resolved.
Duvalier watched from one of the upper-level concourse doors with Ahn-Kha and Rolf. Sime returned to his usual spot, and Pistols sat next to him in the half-empty auditorium.
The Kurian drifted out onto the stage. Unlike the others, he did not make an effort to appear to walk naturally; his legs hung down as though he were a body hanging from a dry-cleaner’s rack. While his form was human, his face was masked. Kurians, when they bothered to appear human, often hid behind some sort of helmet or mask. Perhaps trying to imitate human emotions was too taxing when what they really wanted to do was assess their surroundings.
He had four Reapers with him. Unlike the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, they appeared identical.
Still, it must be some kind of special Kurian, to go into a building full of potentially violent enemies. They were such a cowardly bunch that the only way even their trusted allies were usually able to speak to them was through a Reaper.
“I would like to thank the deputation for arranging our presence. I assure you, I mean no one here harm.
“We are not your enemies. The intelligent and resourceful have never had anything to fear from us. We appreciate the virtues of mankind just as much as your erstwhile allies do. I will not attempt to tell our side of the story, or take advantage of the fact that your so-called Lifeweavers are using you as pawns in their own game against us and disposing of you at need and to their advantage.
“The fact is, Earth is an important crossroads. I imagine many of you played a game called Risk at one time or another. As you recall, it is a game of dominating continents. There are only a few routes to move between continents, and if you remember, the old United Kingdom territories provided numerous ways to strike into continental Europe, as well as being a path to North America. Earth is like that piece of territory—it is a route to our home world and many others. We cannot be secure on Kur with your planet in the hands of our enemies. Therefore we have given up less important planets in exchange for this one.
“Once you come to terms with that unalterable fact, you can decide rationally how best to serve the people you are responsible for. While the Lifeweavers are still here you have some negotiating power. As they have told you, the best arrangement you can hope for can be achieved now, with their aid. After they depart, you lose your leverage, and offers will be less generous than this one. The longer this destructive insanity goes on, the worse your deal will be. Qu
estions?”
“When do you need an answer?” a delegate asked, fortunately for Duvalier in English.
“We would like a vote tonight,” the president said.
“They’re necessary for our security.”
“Time to choke a squid,” Duvalier said. “I need to go to the bathroom. Coming, Ahn-Kha?”
The mighty Grog flexed and broke off a chair leg. He handed it to Rolf.
Rolf tested the break. The hollow tube made the improvised stabbing spear look like a huge cardiac needle. “Not sharp enough.”
Duvalier took a little stiletto and shoved it into her tube-steel leg. “I think this’ll work.”
Ahn-Kha tried again with another chair. This time, he twisted the tube as he broke it. The break formed a sharp corkscrew.
“Much better,” Rolf said.
“Can we kill four? With these?” Duvalier asked.
“We just need to distract that Kurian,” Rolf said. “All we need are a few seconds of confusion.”
“Confusion is my middle name,” Duvalier said. “Give me a couple minutes, then come in like you’re security stopping a disturbance.”
She crept into the auditorium, discreetly, as though embarrassedly returning from a bathroom break, and found a seat next to Pistols and Sime.
“Don’t suppose either of you can sing backup?” she asked.
Standing up, she decided on an old number from her chanteuse days at the Blue Dome. It was way vintage pre-2022, but it always got a good response:
One way, or another, I’m gonna find ya, I’m gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha…
The “Q&A with a Kurian” sputtered out like a candle hit by a fresh breeze. The president looked at her in shock as she did a little hip grind and pointed at the Kurian. She tried to work up the courage to take off her shirt, like a surprise stripper gone terribly wrong.
“I’ll take care of her,” Ahn-Kha said, moving leisurely across a nearly empty aisle toward her. He’d acquired a security vest somewhere. Rolf moved toward her going down the stairs.
She took a few steps toward the Kurian, still singing the golden oldie. Sure enough, the Reapers moved up to form a protective wall between her and their Kurian.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, girl?” Sime shouted.
There was pandemonium all across the audience, with some standing to object, others tentatively moving to help, and still more diving for cover between the rows of seats.
Ahn-Kha, with one gentle vault of a long arm, made it to the edge of the stage, shielded somewhat by the piano.
In midline, with hands on shimmying hips, she drew and threw the stiletto in one smooth motion. She struck the midstage Reaper full in the eye.
Ahn-Kha hefted the piano and hurled it at two of the Reapers. The polished black wood shattered into a thousand sad little notes, the last the piano would ever play. The local pianist would have to import another instrument for the next Kokkola music festival.
Rolf leaped, used a chair to vault, and was on the stage in an instant. A Reaper moved to intercept, and he stabbed it hard enough with the improvised spear that the point came out black on the mid-back. He pried the dead thing off as Duvalier made it to the stage, ready to bury her teeth in the Kurian if she had to.
Ahn-Kha and Rolf were fighting the Reapers knocked down by the piano.
The Kurian was a diffuse blur, fleeing toward the stage door opposite the wreckage of the piano. But she was faster, and snatched it up by what turned out to be the crotch between two of its longer legs.
“Gotcha,” she said.
“You will all die,” the Kurian squealed. “Those creatures out there will not leave so much as an earlobe uneaten. I’ve called for them. You will die if you don’t release me.”
“I will die,” she said. “I’m mortal. You’re not, but I’m prepared to put the issue to a vote. All in favor of turning you into octopus salad? Sorry, fucker, the vote’s unanimous.”
The image blurred and she was left holding a writhing octopus shape. Tentacles lashed at her face, leaving painful welts that brought tears to her eyes.
She ran for the window. The Kurian managed to get a limb around her neck and it tightened. In turn she clenched her neck, bending her jaw forward to put space around her voice box.
A black curtain rose across her vision and the lights began to twinkle behind the curtain.
The snake around her neck gave one final yank and then released, taking some hair on the back of her neck and leaving a raw burn.
Rolf, bellowing in Norwegian, held the Kurian aloft above her, reminding her for a fleeting moment of a picture she’d seen in an old book of an ancient warrior with the head of Medusa. For a moment she thought he was going to make a Kurian kebab, but instead he burst out of the scrum and made for the lobby. She followed, knocking over a Lifeweaver who’d appeared out of nowhere blabbing something about diplomatic immunity.
Rolf went to the lobby windows and stabbed his chair-leg spear into a vast pane, breaking the glass out of the second-floor overlook on the courtyard. The Big Mouths, so tightly packed that their backs resembled a writhing, rock-covered beach, turned their toothy faces up at the noise. He tried to throw the Kurian, but it clung to his arm, chest, and face with a whipping mass of tentacles. Blood ran from the gory pulp of one of Rolf’s eyes. He yelled something in Norwegian and threw himself through the glass.
The Kurian let out a gassy hoot as they fell together.
Rolf flailed back and forth with the chair leg, breaking jaws and turning great-fish eyes to pulp with his blows. He fended the Big Mouths off with the Kurian wrapped about his arm. It flailed in all directions with its tentacles, now fewer in number, some having been bitten off by the snapping jaws all around.
A fitting end for the Last Bear of Trondheim.
Still, the Big Mouths crashed through the feeble barriers and the glass of the lower level.
The Finns worked in layers. Teams of men with shotguns gave short-range cover to soldiers with big support machine guns in slings. The crackle of gunfire was so intense it sounded like surf.
The machine gunners took Big Mouths down in rows. Then the shotgun men blew basketball-sized holes in the wounded with their open-choke riot models until they gave only an occasional twitch.
Rifle fire from the handlers was returned by snipers on the roof of the conference center. The Finns were as methodical and efficient with their weapons as they were with street cleaners, and once a couple were shot down the rest fled.
The Big Mouths, caught in a feeding frenzy, either died gorging themselves or followed their handlers back to the waterfront. Duvalier had no way of knowing it, but fast-moving “cavalry” on bicycles had already stormed the wharf—they were retreating to a slaughter-yard.
“Glad that’s over with,” she rasped. The words came out like they had been dragged across sandpaper. She extracted a hook from her neck, a claw the Kurian had left there when he was ripped from her grasp by Rolf. It was blackish and translucent at the edges. She’d never been one to take souvenirs of the dead—explaining why you had a chain of Reaper teeth could cause difficulties for a Cat—but she decided she’d keep this one, at least through the voyage home.
Looking in the bathroom mirror back at what was left of the hotel, she saw that she had so many marks on her neck from the Kurian’s suckers that it looked as though she’d been trying to win a hickey scavenger hunt.
What chance did humanity have, without the Lifeweavers? No Lifeweavers meant no Hunters, and no Hunters meant the Reapers had nothing to fear.
She’d known Christians who’d had a crisis of faith. Sometimes it was the little things that sent them into despair, a single death from disease rather than a trench full of corpses. The Lifeweavers, to her, always explained the inexplicable. They took the long view, saw temporary losses as just that. They never panicke
d at bad news or rejoiced in a victory.
If they had given up on Earth, what hope had anyone?
Maybe the delegates should have taken the deal.
Her stomach was killing her. She should never have had that roast. She should have kept her diet light, a little rice and soup would have done nicely.
A hot bath would relax her.
Her hair needed a little trim. The part where the Kurian had ripped out even her quite short hair had made everything uneven. Using her sharp skinning knife, she did her best to even things up a little. She accidentally cut her thumb in the process. It was a slice running perhaps a quarter inch deep at its deepest, and it bled profusely.
Sucking at the cut, she decided the pain wasn’t so bad.
God, she was closer to forty than thirty. How had she lived so long? Sooner or later the odds would catch up with her; they always did.
She should have investigated Von Krebs more carefully, gone to that house on the gulf better prepared. Were it not for fortune, the whole population of Kokkola might be working its way through those damn Big Mouth digestive tracts right now.
It was the easiest thing in the world to make a long cut in her arm, running parallel to the bones. She was used to creating wounds without the hesitation stabs of a novice. She admired the work, the brilliant red line as straight as a sure-handed surgeon would make.
As she settled into the bath, the water turned pink and then red. She felt more relaxed and peaceful than she had in years; even the pain in her stomach subsided.
She began to have the most dazzling, warm dreams, though she couldn’t describe them, beyond the sense that there was music all around. Exalted, perhaps for the first time in her life, her whole body glowed in satisfaction that was better than any sex.
Something intruded on the wonderful dreams. Pain. The singing faded, and she heard a slapping sound. It took her forever to connect the noise with the pain she felt in her cheeks.
She came back to half consciousness. A bronze-skinned man with a scarred face looked down at her. He had the devil’s eyes and they blazed with unholy fire. She tried to shut it out, but the devil kept calling her name.
