by Larry Niven
Behind him someone made a doglike yipping sound. He didn't turn to look.
Chapter 4
RAINY NIGHT
Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And Secrecy the human dress.
WILLIAM BLAKE, Appendix to the "Songs of Innocence and Experience: A Divine Image"
Six weeks after the incident at the coops, a mild eruption on the northwest side of the island shook the ground. Three days later threadlike wisps of ash still drifted from the air. The mists that enshrouded the mountain peaks had dropped in a gray blanket, diffusing the light of Tau Ceti.
Streamers of light flashed within the cloud banks, and thunder echoed distantly onto the plain. Cadmann slipped his tractor into neutral and watched the clouds cautiously. The engine's hum strummed his spine.
"Don't worry," Mary Ann called to him. "That's just a little mountain storm. It doesn't care about us." She moved between knee-high rows of plants, checking the slender soil-meter rods for moisture and pH.
The alfalfa replanting was being cautiously hailed as a success. Failure of the first crop was attributed to the thorn trees which had once dominated the plain. When the trees were burned away their taproots remained alive underground, leaching moisture from the soil. Alfalfa, with a potential yield of ten tons per acre, requires tremendous amounts of water. Omar Isfahan and Jon van Don, two of the Colony's engineers, had planned and installed a more extensive irrigation system.
"We could use the water, either way. But if it's going to rain, I'm wasting my time up here."
"Practice. Practice. We all take rotation in the fields." Mary Ann's smile was as brilliant as her hair, and it warmed him. They had grown closer in the weeks since his talk with Sylvia aboard Geographic.
Hibernation Instability. He saw her differently now. She wasn't bright... and yet she had been. Wounded in the war to capture Avalon; wounded in his war.
The electrified fences had been expanded and strengthened. When there was no additional trouble, the animals were turned out into the northern pasture. Some of the older lambs and calves were already grazing contentedly.
No additional trouble...
Cadmann liked the sound of that, even if there was a part of him that didn't quite believe it. (Didn't want to believe it?)
He had returned twice to Geographic. He liked that. Checking the embryos was sheer routine; but one side of the crew lounge was a wide window. Cadmann could sit and look up at Avalon, and feel peace.
So beautiful. Spirals of white storm, blazing white of polar caps, the spine of jagged white-capped mountain range along the single continent.... white against the rich blue of a water-and-oxygen atmosphere, a world that men could take and tame.
Zack had been right. Their grandchildren would conquer this world, and the first hundred and sixty colonists would be remembered for all time.
Immortality.
At what price? A century of sleep? Brain damage for a few; Ernst and
Mary Ann and Carolyn and, yes, Terry, were paying the price for all. But for the rest: bruises and sprains, and maybe a few bad dreams? He had to laugh. The pilgrims who had founded the American continent had paid far more dearly to accomplish less.
Tau Ceti Four's colonials had it easy.
The air was suddenly cold. Raindrops spattered against his hands and the hood of the tractor.
"Shit-oh-dear," Mary Ann said, gazing up at the clouds. They coiled angrily in the sky like a vast heap of coals: black around the edges, fire flickering in the core. The lightning flashes were brighter and closer, and the thunder was no longer a distant rolling explosion.
"So much for the weather report, Mary Ann." The wind was whipping the rain into sheets, and he turned up his collar. "Come on, hop aboard-I'll give you a ride back to the shed."
She clipped a handful of green sprouts and stuffed them into her blouse pocket. She hunched her shoulders and clopped through the broken ground, climbed up behind him on the tractor and wrapped her arms around him. He felt her shiver as her breasts pressed into his back.
He said, "We'll just have to have Town Meeting early. Good. I want that damned current turned back on. I'm sick of hearing about how I'm overreacting." He lifted the digging tool from the ground and headed back toward Civic Center.
She squeezed him tight, in a special rolling way that she had. It took the edge off his ire, but he grumbled on. "Well, it sure as hell isn't the power. We've got all the power we need, rain or shine."
"Everybody says it's a lot of trouble just to stop a dog."
"Right. A dog." He sighed. "All right. They're entitled to their opinion. I'm entitled to mine."
Her voice was muffled against his back. "You're not alone. You have me, too. But we're just two."
The rain was still fairly light as he drove the tractor into the shed. The other farming equipment was being brought in, and the colonists were beginning to gather, heading for the meeting hall. Cadmann shut down the tractor and squeezed water from his hair.
"I'll be in in a minute," she called, hopping down from the back of the tractor. She paused at the doorway to turn up her collar, then ran out in the direction of the corral.
Maybe Mary Ann was right. His was a minority opinion. Madman Weyland sees bogeymen in every corner-while crops grow, animals thrive and tame earthworms enrich the soil with their bodies and their wastes.
When he thought of these things, he should have thought of life, instead of a dog that had never come back, and a mangled chicken cage . .
.
It loved a rainy night.
It could always move about on land, slowly, lazily, and tolerate the heat for hours at a time; but movement at hunting speed required a quick kill, then a frantic race to the river to shed the terrible heat within. Night and rain extended its time on dry land.
It had changed when it became an adult. Its mind and senses adapted for life out of water; but from birth it had been intensely curious. Frustratingly, there had been nothing for its curiosity to chew on. Birds and swimmers were its world, a prison for its starved senses, until the intruders introduced it to the world beyond the rock wall.
They were so strange! They built angular nests. They tottered on their hind legs or attached themselves to creatures with hard, weirdly scented, tasteless shells. Sometimes they would let themselves be swallowed up by them, much like swimmers would. They lived with creatures even stranger than themselves.
On the first night it had killed a four-legged thing. The dog had run after it rather than fleeing. It had played with the dog, dancing around it and watching its antics. When the game grew tiresome, it tore out the animal's throat. The blood was thick and hot and delicious.
Afterward it had felt overheated. It had hooked its tail spines into the dog's throat and dragged the corpse back toward the river, where it could cool itself and eat at leisure.
Sport! Swimmers were never such fun. The flying things that sometimes fed on them were too much of a challenge. It thought about that night, and pleasure rippled through its body.
There had been another night when it broke through prickly barriers, following a tantalizing scent.
The nest of wood and thin tough vine had resisted only for a moment, and then it was among them, one thick paw and its wedgelike head squeezed into the box. What noise they had made! They had tried to fly, but badly. None were fast, none could fight. It was not even sport. It was only feeding... but feeding was its own reward, and anything that didn't taste like a swimmer was food for thought.
That was days past. Now it watched something that looked to be good sport.
A single invader was walking out by the rows of thorned vines that protected a group of four-legged grass-eaters. The invader looked frequently up at the clouds, no doubt enjoying the fall of rain, and shook water out of the dark fur on its head.
The invader never looked behind the tarpaulin-sheltered jeep parked to the side of the grazin
g land. The man walked to within ten feet of it, leaned against the fence with one arm outstretched and spoke to one of the grass-eaters.
The grass-eater walked clumsily to the fence and licked something out of the man's hand. The man turned and took a step toward the jeep.
The creature's limbs trembled, tingled, its blood singing with anticipation. Come. Just another step...
Disappointment washed through its mind as the man turned at the call of another of its kind and ran torpidly back toward the lights.
Ah, well. There was still the grass-eater.
It was near the thorned vines, chewing at something on the ground. It was plump-more than twice as large as the dog, almost as large as the creature itself-but that was no worry. It could feel that the grass-eater was no fighter.
The creature crawled forward until its flat, roughly triangular head peeped from behind the jeep. A raindrop spattered directly into its eye, and its ocular covering thickened momentarily.
The calf chewed the handful of alfalfa sprouts Mary Ann had brought it. The rain was just beginning to chill its skin, and soon it would head for the metal-roofed shelter in the corner of the pasture to huddle for warmth with its brothers and sisters.
There came a rippling cooing sound from beyond the fence, and the calf pressed against the wire until it felt the first touch of pain. It lowed plaintively. It shuffled at the fence, afraid to press forward, reluctant to retreat.
The shape was a massed shadow flowing around the curve of the jeep. A squat, flattened shadow with disklike, unblinking eyes and a dolphin's smile.
The creature burbled happily.
The calf backed away. Sudden, uncomprehending fear pumped adrenaline into its system, sent it stumbling backward toward the shelter. The creature waddled with almost comic clumsiness up to the fence, sniffed at the wire, bit at it experimentally, drew back.
The other calves had picked up the scent of fear, and two of them poked their heads from the shelter, looking out through the rain, making deep braying sounds. Calling for the protection of the herd, for the adults, for the bull! But there were only calves.
The rain had grown into a downpour now, and Tau Ceti, already low on the horizon, had disappeared behind massive, inky clouds. The wind whipped the droplets almost sideways. The young grass was pelted down and mired itself in the mud. Back in the camp, one of the lights flickered, dimmed, then strengthened again.
Lightning arced jaggedly in the sky, and the calf saw, without comprehending, that the wire was broken, curled back inward, shivering in the wind.
A thick shadow squatted in the grass a few feet ahead of the break. It had eyes that glistened, hypnotically vast.
It crept slowly forward, even as the calf loped toward the shelter. There were eight of them beneath the sheet metal, packed against each other now, the shared heat of their bodies no match for the wind or the rain or the sudden, crippling fear.
The shadow was closer now, very close, immediately in front of the shelter. Great webbed claws landed pad first, then hook-nailed toes gripped the ground to pull it along the grass on its belly. Rain pelted against its skin and unblinking eyes as it seemed to evaluate them, choosing.
They crawled over each other, bleating their terror to the wind and the night. Two of them began chewing at the wire at the back of the enclosure, ignoring the pain in their lips and gums, thinking only of the thing that crept in the darkness, eyes wide, unceasing grin opening to reveal rows of chisel teeth.
Cooing to them, it sprang.
It landed among them, lashing out with claws and teeth. The screams, the smell of alien blood, the terrified eyes that rolled, flashing white in the darkness: it would remember all of these things, and study its memories later, analyze the prey's habits and its own mistakes. Its ancestors had needed such caution. The prey they had evolved to hunt were more devious, more dangerous than any calf.
It snapped and tore at them in the confines of the shelter. Despite their weight it smashed them out of the way, flicking its tail with stunning force, ripping wet strips of flesh from the bone. Finally it fastened its teeth deeply in one warm neck, worrying until the skin and cartilage parted and blood spurted warmly into its mouth. The calf trembled. Its last sound was a strangled bleat of despair.
The others fled the shelter, escaping through the break in the wire, running out in all directions.
The calf's chest heaved as it lay on its side, heart struggling to beat, to stave off the shock of pain and massive blood loss. Its killer folded its legs and lay down next to it, peering into its eyes as it died, watching them film, the lids falling for the last time.
It barbed the grass-eater by the neck and dragged it out of the fenced enclosure. Exertion caused heat to build up in its body. Without the cooling rain it would have had to run for the river.
The rain quenched the inner fire and the calf's flesh, warm and rubbery-slick in the darkness, eased the fatigue.
The aroma of roast turkey mingled with fresh green vegetables, homegrown onions and spices that had traveled ten lightyears to give up their pungency.
The walls of the communal dining hall were alight with color: newsreels, technical briefs and documentary, personal messages and listings of the material to be found in condensed form, whenever the colonists had the time or interest to decode their messages from Earth. Despite the riot of shape and shade, almost no one was watching: dinner had stolen the show.
For the first time in years (or decades!) the majority of the food was not freeze-dried or powdered or syruped. Mary Ann bit into a forkful of fresh green salad and savored the explosion of mingled flavors. The lettuce, tomatoes and mushrooms were all fresh and crisp. Tau Ceti Four bugs seemed uninterested in Earth vegetables; no pesticide had been used.
The milk, the salad dressing, the cheese cubes and the bacon bits had been reconstituted. But soon...
Beside Mary Ann, Cadmann poured gravy over sliced turkey and stuffing. Across from them, Ernst had done serious damage to an entire turkey drumstick, handling it one-handed. All around them were the sights and sounds of a healthy community, and she leaned her head against Cadmann's shoulder and felt totally satisfied.
Out of the corner of her eye she caught his expression, an absent, crooked smile. The tastes and scents and fellowship had driven his concerns into a corner for the time being.
There was a ringing thump in the front of the room, and Zack stood, his cheeks stuffed with mashed potatoes.
"My fellow citi-" He got that far before the words were muffled on his food, and his wife Rachel whacked him heartily on his back. He pinched her cheek firmly. "Take two! We have almost everybody here at the same place and the same time, and although the rain rules out a lot of the work-"
Mary Ann leaned over and pouted. "Can't go out checking the fences tonight, mister man. You're all mine."
Cadmann smiled absently. Often he would do that, or not respond at all. She knew better than to let it bother her... intellectually.
"-it doesn't rule out all of it. So the group will be splitting up as soon as the meal is over. This is a good time for a general progress report."
Rachel handed him up a clipboard, and Zack flipped through it, hawing to himself. "All right. As most of you know, the Cliftons' baby, April, came out of intensive care, and is doing fine in the nursery-"
"Wrong again, Zack!" Gregory Clifton nudged his wife, Alicia, and she stood, Avalon's first baby asleep in her arms. The colonists applauded roundly. April woke, looked puzzled.
Mary Ann watched mother and baby covetously. The child seemed so peaceful, the mother so happy. There was jealousy and happiness mingled there, because Alicia was one of the nightmare cases. Sleep trauma and some loss of memory had made her one of the colony's liabilities. Thank God she was a healthy mother. The genes were good, and the child would be smarter than her mother.
Without conscious design, she found herself leaning closer to Cadmann, brushing his skin.
Zack continued. "We're expecting three
more babies next month, so let's everyone pitch in and give those ladies a hand. We haven't had a single miscarriage or accident, and we want to keep that record clean.
"Agriculture... Mary Ann? Do you have anything to say?"
She wiped her mouth hurriedly and stood. "We've having no more trouble with the, um, alfalfa. The soybeans and the rice are both doing fine. The bees are happy. We'll wait for a young queen before we try them on any of the native plants. And let's have a hand for the hydroponics team-it's their tomatoes we're eating tonight, not mine!" There was more applause, and Mary Ann started to sit down, then said "oh!" and popped up again. "The fish are doing fine, both in the breeder ponds and in the rivers-the catfish are doing a little better than the trout, but that's to be expected. The big news is that turkeys have been spotted as far as a hundred kilometers away!"
Zack grinned. "It looks to me like we can forget that seeding expedition. Let's have a vote on that-all in favor of dropping the idea?"
He did a quick scan of the forest of hands that sprouted. "That ain't no majority. I think you're just giving Agriculture a picnic day, but I guess they deserve it. Now-before we get on with the newest broadcasts, is there any more business?"
There was. There were complaints about living space, work duty for postnatal mothers and completion schedules for the fusion plant. Then Cadmann stood, and there was an undercurrent of groans in the room.
He waited it out. Mary Ann saw the pain in his face, saw him decide to laugh it off as best he could.
"Listen-I know that I keep getting outvoted about security, so I'd like to try something different. I know that everyone is up to their ears in work, but a few volunteers, working in shifts, could really beef up security."
Terry Faulkner stood, and Mary Ann watched Sylvia's face closely. Sylvia was a nice lady-bright, hard-working, friendly-but Sylvia and Cadmann shared something that made her feel shut out. Not sex; she was sure of that. But she knew that Cadmann had secrets with Sylvia, secrets he wouldn't share with anyone else, not even his lover.
