Slaughterhouse World

by Ardath Mayhar

  At last he ordered Cleery and Helen into hiding among a tangle of waterweed and willow-like growth. There was a spike of stone just beyond that spot, and he wrapped a fursnake around his neck and began shinnying up its weathered column. The animal seemed not to object, but when he reached the top he understood why it had been so upset.

  Over a large stretch of scrub bushes, several acres in extent, stretched a thick webbing, binding the scrub together into a lumpy carpet. Occasional huge lumps of pearly stuff were visible through the web, and near every one of them was a bulk that was disturbing in its resemblance to a human figure.

  Clinging to the column, though sheltering his body behind it and peering around one side, Joel watched the web closely. Motion at the farther edge alerted him, and he shivered as a Knacker, this one more bulgy than the warrior Knackers, picked its many-legged way into the complex, seemed to choose a spot, and began laying eggs. This was a damn Knacker hatchery! Even as he stared, the female completed her laying and began spinning layers of webbing over the eggs. Then she retreated beyond the web, only to return with a stiff human body that she sealed into her offspring’s silky cradle.

  She seemed completely unaware of his presence as she completed her task and retreated cautiously beyond the limits of the webbing. Once she was gone, Joel descended the column and knelt beside his companions, who listened, wide-eyed, as he described his discovery.

  “Surely we can manage to destroy this batch,” he concluded. “But I don’t see how. I have a feeling any twitch on that web is going to bring a bunch of Mamas scurrying to defend their young.”

  Cleery was looking thoughtful. “What about the fursnakes? They seem to hate the critters a lot. Why not aim one or two at the web and see what they do?”

  Joel nodded. “Might work, and if it doesn’t we’re no worse off. I thought of setting fire to the web, but those men are in there—they might still be alive, just enough to know they were burning to death. I’ve read about spiders on other worlds that sort of paralyze their victims and leave them alive to feed the young.”

  Cleery volunteered to creep close enough to let the fursnakes make up their minds. Joel, however, was unable to remain behind, and Helen refused to stay alone. So they were all together, hidden by both rocks and shrubbery, when the fursnakes sensed the hatchery and bristled along their entire furry lengths.

  One headed toward the middle of the field, one to the left, one to the right. In a moment they were gone, without disturbing a strand of the webbing that lay much higher in the bushes than the level along which they could travel.

  No sign of struggle, no hint of motion flexed the web. Joel began worrying that the creatures had been trapped, somehow, in the Knacker hatchery. There was nothing to do but wait, and together the three hid, while the sun moved overhead and began descending toward the looming lip of the cliff.

  Before its shadow quite reached their hiding place, the first fursnake returned, limp and exhausted. Joel took it up and discovered that much of its length must be a poison gland ending in its fangs, for the animal was thinner by a third than it had been earlier. Joel noticed a fluid about to drip from a fang, and he caught it on a leaf. From that he transferred it into a vial from his pack. Having a sample of the fursnake poison might well help him persuade his superiors that it would be impossible to force the creatures to obey human commands.

  Obviously the animal and its fellows had spent these long hours biting Knacker young, still encased in their eggs. When the others returned, they, too, were thinner and very weary. All of the creatures slithered away into the rocks, where they evidently found some source of nourishment. They returned at dark, sleek and renewed.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  With most of a day of rest to sustain them, the group moved forward in darkness, helped along by the glimmer of the vast star field above and the reflection of stars in the water beside them. It was best to be far away before the Knacker nursery-keepers found that their charges—at least some of them—were dead.

  They traveled desperately for two days, keeping always near the cover of bushes or boulders. At last they faced a long stretch of river running almost straight toward the peak that was their goal. The eastern shore was now rising, trapping them between its increasing high wall and the water. There was no concealment other than the stream itself, which ran fast and deep between ridges of stone.

  “We’d better run like hell, once it’s dark,” Cleary said. “I don’t like the looks of this one little bit. If anything flies over, or if the Knackers keep watch from that peak up there, we’re in deep trouble.”

  Helen nodded, and Joel grunted. “You’re dead right, Corp. If we’re to get past that peak, we’ve got to make time like never before. And here we are worn to the bone, getting hungry, boots wearing out—those that have them,” he amended, looking down at Helen’s feet, which she had wrapped in strips cut from the all-purpose blanket.

  Again the sun was behind the far edge of the Rift, though the sky was still filled with sunlight and distant, circling birds. “As soon as the shadow is deep enough, we’d better start. We’ll rest now, and eat whatever is left, because we’re not going to have any time to stop until we get beyond that peak.” The shadow seemed to creep across the river, edging toward them with terrible slowness. They had slept for a while, eaten what they could, but Joel was too near his goal to relax for long, and the others had the same problem. Long before it was dark enough, they had the packs ready, Helen’s feet wrapped in fresh folds of blanket, and the fursnakes coiled in pockets and inside shirts.

  Twice distant shadows across the sky marked the passing of Knacker shuttles. There was no way to know what had really occurred back in the nursery field, or how the caregivers reacted. Did Knackers have any feeling for their young? Joel pushed away the thought.

  When they moved out at last, it was one at a time, Cleery going first, finding a deep shadow in which to crouch, and waiting for Helen to join him. When she arrived, Cleery went forward, then Helen, and Joel came behind, keeping a watchful eye on the rear. He had a feeling that something was behind, following, but there was never any sound or sign of a pursuer.

  They moved surprisingly fast, for once it was fully dark they didn’t hide but went on, single file, skirting the water’s edge, avoiding the water-rounded stones. The peak, dark against the spangle of stars, disappeared behind the adjacent cliff, and only when they at last came to a double-bend in the watercourse could they see its sharp points again.

  Joel measured their distances with anxious accuracy, trying to pinpoint the spot mentioned as the pickup point. He wasted his time, for when they reached it he knew it at once. On the side of the river that was now northeast, a flat bowl, hollowed by some past whirlpool and then raised by the movements of the strata beneath, promised easy access for a shuttle.

  It was almost concealed, even from the top of the mountain beyond the cliff. Once they were within its deep curve, the three felt themselves hidden from observation.

  Joel gestured to Cleery, who unpacked the Com unit and sent news of their arrival crackling into space. Then they huddled under the riverward lip of the bowl and waited again.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The fursnakes began hissing furiously. Joel readied his weapon, hearing Cleery do the same, while Helen moved back against the rocky wall. The scritch-scratch of Knacker feet came to Joel’s ears, as one of the spider-creatures stalked into the other side of the cup and sank amid its knees, as if to wait. The fursnakes slid away, invisible in the dimness, but Joel felt sure they were moving toward the Knacker. He watched closely, but until the enemy kindled some kind of blue-white flare he could not see them at all. Even then, they were only ripples of unobtrusive motion, until they reached the Knacker’s hairy feet.

  Then they were visible indeed. They swarmed up the many-jointed legs, converging on the man-shaped body. The Knacker convulsed, struggled, quivered, danced...and settle
d slowly to one side like a sinking ship. Dead, it seemed to sink in upon itself, a heap of dust-colored wisps instead of the huge consumer of human flesh.

  The fursnakes reappeared silently, but Joel knew he must send them away. The dead Knacker would be all the reason he needed for keeping the possessors of such virulent poison away from the forces of humankind.

  He wondered if analysis of his sample and of that corpse’s biochemistry might supply humanity with one weapon useful against this enemy. That would be enough for the fursnakes to contribute.

  He took up the lithe creatures, one by one, stroked them, then flipped them over the lip of the cup. As the last one disappeared, the pickup shuttle settled quietly into the depression, and Cleery and Helen ran toward it.

  “In! In! Hurry!” snapped the voice of the sergeant in charge. “Troopers—two. Check. Female human, former prisoner. Check. Alien creatures? Where are they?” he grated.

  Joel paused at the ramp. “Look over there. You’ll want to take that Knacker back to the labs. The alien beings just killed it a couple of minutes ago. They took off, and we didn’t feel we could stop anything that can kill a Knacker with one bite.”

  The Sergeant stared at him for an instant. Then he sent two men to gather up the remains in a body-bag, though it took quite a lot of folding and bending to make it fit.

  “Tough customers, eh?” he asked, as the shuttle sighed into the air and headed for the third moon.

  “Very,” said Joel. “Helpful but dangerous, if you get my drift.”

  The sergeant looked grim. “HQ wanted to see those critters. They won’t be happy about this.”

  Cleery leaned forward, his eyes gleaming in the light from the telltales. “They better check out that poison first. We got another sample, too, right here.” He grinned at Joel and Helen, who sat together opposite him. “Not the sort you can bully, those little guys,” he said.

  The sergeant squinted at them, his experienced gaze taking in much that was unsaid. “Like that, eh?” he asked.

  “Like that,” said Joel Karsh, before settling back as comfortably as possible and considering the possibility that he might live for a few months more.

  Now he and Cleery knew things about the Knackers and their local enemies that would be valuable. They had traveled the Rift, which the Knackers seemed to consider impassable terrain. And Headquarters had a poison that killed Knackers and a body to analyze to learn its vulnerable points.

  It might be that their failed sortie had resulted in enough new information to begin tipping the balance in this unsought and miserable war. He hoped so. Then he dropped off to sleep, completely relaxed for the first time in days. Maybe he would live to buy that farm, after all.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  The author of seventy books, more than forty of them published commercially, Ardath Mayhar began her career in the early eighties with science fiction novels from Doubleday and TSR, and Atheneum. Changing focus, she wrote westerns (as Frank Cannon) and mountain man novels (as John Killdeer), four prehistoric Indian books under her own name, and historical western High Mountain Winter under the byline Frances Hurst. Many of her novels and collections are being reprinted or published by the Borgo Press Imprint of Wildside Press.

  Now eighty, Mayhar was widowed in 1999, after forty-one years of marriage, and has four grown sons. She works at home, writing short fiction and nonfiction, and doing book doctoring professionally. Her web pages can be found at:

  w2.netdot.com/ardathm/

  and

  http://ofearna.us/books/mayhar.html