by Larry Niven
Everyone was cheering now, and it grew riotous as the image switched from one perspective to the other; the gap between the boats narrowed, and the race finally became nose to nose. The river narrowed as it sluiced through a gap between, two towering slabs of rock, and Carlos narrowly held his lead, Elliot coming up fast.
Then, as they came out of it, and the way widened again, Elliot rammed Carlos from the rear. La Donna squealed as their boat hit a rock and lurched in a drunken circle. Elliot cursed fluidly as Carlos's craft shot past.
Elliot's boat spun twice, dipped and swung perilously and then finally stabilized.
The hologram switched to Carlos's craft and a triumphant Bobbi shaking her fist at Elliot as they widened the distance.
Carlos gunned the motor fully, and their boat rose in the water and shot north toward the ocean. Far behind them now, Elliot opened his throttle and skimmed along the surface, churning the water into white as he roared in pursuit.
Rock walls flashed by. Cadmann's heart thundered as he remembered the sheer speed of the boats, their near-hydrofoil design that kept a minimum of prow in the water, minimizing drag.
Fast!
But then...
"Switch back!" someone yelled, and suddenly they were with Carlos's boat, and it was in trouble. Something was terribly wrong, and the boat was spinning—
Another rock? But Carlos's face was distorted, and he was grabbing for Bobbi, screaming something unintelligible. The boat seemed to be collapsing, the holoimage buckling and blurring. The last image that they had was of rocks and water and churning foam, and a brief glimpse of Bobbi tumbling through the foam toward the rocks, thrashing her hands frantically as she disappeared beneath the surface of the water.
Chapter 16
ON THE CLIFF
All men think all men mortal, save themselves.
EDMUND YOUNG, Night Thoughts
First there was a humming. Mama was a good distance from the water, and her mouth was full of blood and feathers. She looked for insects swarming. If she found the nest she would eat it whole...
But the swarm sound was louder now, and too uniform, and there were no dark clouds that could be insects. Something strange, in unfamiliar terrain. Mama made for the water, not yet fast but already wary.
The humming was louder as she reached the water.
It came around a bend upstream. She couldn't see the intruder's shape; it was too distant yet. But it moved on the water, not through it. Moved fast.
Finally. Mama's eyes were above the water. The snorkel between her eyes drew air; her lungs heaved. There was rage in her, and something else: sphincter muscles relaxed back of her neck, speed began dripping into her blood, and her entire body began to fizz. The vulnerable snorkel withdrew into her head. She watched the intruder come—not quite toward her, she hadn't been seen yet—then why was the intruder already fast?
But Mama was fast now, and she moved.
This was her territory now. She knew it that well, she had been here that long. Mine. She too was almost above the water as she reached the intruder. She struck from the side. For a bare instant she knew that she had won.
Skin with a thin taste, a taste like metal but not as strong, ruptured on impact and tore in her jaws. No meaty texture, no taste of blood. Not won: lost! Tricked! And where was her enemy?
The metallic skin filled with water and began to sink. Confusing tastes drifted in its wake. Things thrashed the water in slow motion, beasts caught between fighters. She ignored them. Where was her rival?
Still fast, Mama streaked for her cave before she could be blind-sided. At the underwater mouth she turned. She couldn't be attacked now except from the front.
Now there was time. Mama lifted her eyes above the water and watched two beasts thrashing. If meat were suddenly snatched beneath the surface, she would know that her enemy was below. But the prey were swept downstream, thrashing, trying to reach the river's edge. They reached shore unmolested, and scrambled from the water unmolested.
Mama had been tricked. She had bitten something, but it wasn't meat, and where was her enemy?
There! Just like the other, it skimmed across the water, almost toward her. It swerved away as Mama streaked toward it. The intruder was fully on speed, and young. Mama thought. She herself had never moved so fast... but its turn was too slow. She was on it, and her teeth closed with terrible strength—
On thin, tough, tasteless skin, and flesh that ruptured and bone that broke—fragile bone, prey blood, prey meat, with no taste of speed. Not at all the flesh of her own kind, and she'd been tricked again!
She had barely slowed. She kept moving, fleeing the site of her kill, curving toward safety, sliding across the bucking surface of the water. Where is my enemy? Where?
Behind her, meat thrashed in the water, then subsided. More prey was climbing the cliff, unmolested, and that was hardly surprising. In the middle of a duel one does not pause to dine.
How may I lure my enemy?
My enemy's territory, my enemy's prey: Challenge!
Carlos Martinez was shaking: with cold, with shock and pain from the fractured cheekbone and the flap of scalp torn away when he wrapped himself around Bobbi's unconscious body to shield her from the rocks.
She lay curled on her side, flat stomach spasming, river water still trickling in a brown stream from her mouth, eyes glazed, but open and wandering blindly. (Alive, vivo! flashed insanely into his mind, alive, vivo!, scrambling his thoughts.) She was in shock, and probably concussed, but all that really mattered for the moment was that she was alive.
He gripped his head tightly, fighting the ringing and the pain. In a few moments they quieted, and he massaged Bobbi's rib cage firmly as he looked about him.
Later in the year, when the snow from the northern mountains melted, the spot he stood on and another thirty meters of tumbled rock would be submerged. In another ninety days there might not have been a place for them to crawl onto. He and Bobbi might have been dashed against steeply sloping walls of naked rock. A few hundred meters north or south the water dashed against sheer cliff. As bad and barren as this shelf was, it still represented something very near a miracle.
He would have to fight rapids or climb to get off the beach. He managed a quick prayer of thanks that he wouldn't have to try. Rescue would come soon. Thank goodness for the holo links! The camp would have seen exactly what happened.
His head throbbed. He kept up the steady, gentle massage on Bobbi's rib cage.
Her eyes fluttered open weakly. "Carlos... what happened?"
"We hit a rock." That had to be it. That was all that it could be. So why was there a wet red flag on part of the memory? Something trying to hide from him and warn him at the same instant?
Carlos ripped his shirt off and wiped her face with it. She seemed flushed. He bundled the shirt and tucked it under her head. Not long now. Elliot Falkland would be fighting upriver even now. He managed a smile to think of the rotund engineer piloting his way through the rapids. Bobbi would have treatment within the hour, and tomorrow they would be able to laugh about this.
The Colony would already be sending out Skeeters.
He thought that he could hear the hum of a distant engine. "I'll be right back, chiquita," he said, and kissed her softly. Her lips felt bruised and flushed.
She reached for him, gripped at the wet cloth of his shirt. "No. Don't leave me. Please."
There was help out in the river. It tore him, but he pried her fingers loose. "Shh. Shh. I love you. I'll be right back, I promise. O.K.?"
Shaking, unconvinced, she nodded her head.
Carlos scrambled over the rocks to the south, to a higher point where he could see the bend in the river. All he could see was the rush of the water, silver-white with dark patches as it exploded over rocks and took sudden dips and turns. To either side the mountain walls were steep, at least forty near vertical meters of iron gray, roughly weathered rock. The crusty gray was interrupted by bands of lighter color. High tides?
Geological separations? His mind wasn't working properly yet.
From the new vantage point, he heard nothing, could see nothing, and that puzzled him. Where was Elliot? Then he saw.
He's been wrecked too! Dear God.
Elliot lay inert on a patch of rocks by the far shore. He must have been thrown clear. The second boat was no more than a few dark shreds of fabric which still fluttered, wedged into rocks. There was no sign of La Donna.
A dark, spreading stain grew from beneath Elliot's head and dripped down into the rushing water. Carlos's stomach went sour and tight. I've got to help him—
And then Carlos saw it. The thing ripped through the water like a black torpedo. That was what his subconscious had screamed to him. He had caught a bare glimpse of that dark juggernaut churning through the water, smashing through the side of the boat...
The foam suddenly churned, and the black thing erupted from the water, flashing up into Elliot with the speed of a striking snake. Elliot's body jerked once, massively, and disappeared into the waves.
Something that felt like a cloak of cold slime swept over Carlos, numbing him. But in its wake his mind began to work. His first conclusion was inescapable: If he did not think very clearly, Bobbi was going to die.
What was there to do? The monster would find them. He'd be insane to assume anything else. They couldn't hope to outrun that creature under the best of circumstances. With Bobbi barely conscious, it would take a miracle to escape.
Do something. Odds don't matter. Act! In half an hour, no more, we'll be rescued. The camp is better prepared now. They were watching the race! They must already know what they're up against.
And Cadmann's back in camp.
Carlos scrambled back down to Bobbi. She wound her arms around his neck weakly, and her black hair streamed back over her shoulders like seaweed. "Carlos? What?"
"We've got to move."
"Why?" Her head lolled back as if her neck were fractured. She coughed wetly. "Why can't we stay here? I hurt. I'm so sleepy."
Lie, you bastard. "We need to be at a better vantage point for the Skeeters—if they're going to pick us up." He lifted her to her feet. She seemed a feather. "Come on, hon." He grunted as she found her feet. He bent, unknotted the pillow he had made of his shirt and slipped it over one arm.
He half pulled, half lifted Bobbi up over the first eastern row of boulders, then took the opportunity to reorient. They had to get away from the river—but another twenty-five meters up the rocks and they would be against the cliff. No hope there.
The mountain stretched above them, a splintered pale fortress carved from the primeval clay by ragged knife strokes. Above the ridge the clouds that had been fleecy and white an hour ago had darkened, were tinged with black as though heralding a sudden thundershower. The air had gone chill.
He might be able to climb that wall, but there was no way in hell that Bobbi could make it. And there was no place to make a stand here, nothing that would afford protection.
What it looked like, he thought grimly, was a damn good place to die.
There was an answer. Both of them could die, or one, or just maybe neither. But they had to separate.
Watching his footfalls carefully, he carried her along with him, pulling, coaxing, babying her along. Scraping arms and legs, protecting her as best he could, but aware that little scrapes didn't matter right now. Have to get her to shelter. Have to get her to shelter...
The going was steep now, and twice they almost fell. Once they did, sliding and skinning hands and knees. Bobbi was a little more alert now, and more help. She managed to thrust a leg out, halting a tumble. He laughed weakly and kissed her forehead, and then pushed her up another few meters.
Muscles tensing, tendons in his back stretching with the strain, afraid to stop for rest or to look back to see what was following them out of the water, Carlos helped Bobbi up the sharp incline. The pounding in his head grew worse. They slipped again, and this time her thigh caught on a sharp spur and made a nasty gash.
Damn! He whipped off his shirt and wrapped it around her leg quickly, before it could leak blood and destroy the tiny inspiration that had begun to flower. Above them and to their left was a shallow ledge, all but invisible from below. A single person might hide there. Maybe.
"Come on, just keep moving." She must have sensed or seen some of the dread in his manner, because she was glancing back down at the river now, at the churning white and pale rushing blue.
Carlos lowered her to the shelf. Perfect. There was even a slight overhang. If she crawled back into it, she would be safe.
If all went well...
He untied the hastily applied dressing and knotted the shirt into a tourniquet, applying it above the wound. Blood oozed in a sluggish stream.
Good enough. One way or the other, it would do.
He looked back out at the river. Nothing yet. Now he could remember: the image of Elliot's body disappearing beneath the surface, fat arms and legs slapping the water once.
And another image: that of the first creature back at the Colony as it dashed through the searchlights in a nightmare of fanged and taloned rage.
He shivered.
"Now listen," he said, kneeling next to her. "I lied to you. We're not up here to make it easier for a Skeeter to pick us up. We're up here because there's another of those creatures in the water. I've got to go, to make a trail to lead him away from you."
Her eyes widened. Her fingernails tore at his arm. "But Carlos..."
"Listen to me," he whispered fiercely. "You've seen what those bastards can do. I don't want to give up what little chance we have."
Bobbi moved clumsily, trying to sit up. The blood trickling from the gash began to pulse more strongly.
"Your leg is bad. Don't make it worse." Carlos forced her back down.
The leg! He had to do something, but there was no time at all, only hope.
"I have a chance," he said. "I don't think those things can climb as well as a human being. They're too heavy." He looked at the steepening wall. "I can climb that damn mountain and keep it busy until someone gets here. It can't be long. When I'm gone, climb as far back into the shadows as you can. Keep pressure on the tourniquet as long as you can."
"Carlos—"
His mind stuttered, trying to find the right words, something brave and reassuring, and couldn't. Finally he just held her, saying again, "I love you."
He left her. He climbed down again and examined her perch. Bobbi couldn't be seen from below. Not seen, but what about smell?
The first stop was the rock that had gashed her leg. It was bloodstained, and he searched until he found a fist-sized stone. He pounded at the spur until it shattered. He scooped up the fragments and flung them as far as he could.
There was no guarantee that his ploy would work, but one thing he knew for certain: he had to make a stronger scent trail for it to follow.
He did it the only way that he could, thankful that there was still fluid in his bladder, enough to leave a trail from beneath the bloodstained rock well to the right, away from Bobbi.
He began to climb.
He was quickly blowing for air. How long had it been since the crash?
Twenty minutes? It seemed an eternity. But the Skeeter would be coming! We lived longer than I thought we would. He was up the grade above Bobbi now, and he saw that she had crawled farther between the rocks. Good girl.
Now he was high enough on the cliff to see down into the river. There was the blood slick where Elliot had met the rocks. Beyond were limp black fabric and boat fragments at the river turn. To the south, there was nothing but the rushing river. Where were the rescue Skeeters?
Where was--?
Oh, Jesus.
There was a movement in the water, and something moved up out of it, as steady and inexorable as a Titan, some god of the fishy depths. Carlos cried out reflexively.
It was the same as the first creature, only larger, half again as large, and fleshier. It paused as if
getting its bearings, then stared right at him—
For one crazy, shameful instant he thought. Let it have Bobbi. Let it have anything.
Then it blurred, as if shot from the water by compressed air. It crossed the rocks, paused for an instant, then took off again, cutting an angular trail up toward the wall—paused and exploded into a series of zigzags that was like nothing so much as a crazy pinball game, then hit the wall and ran almost straight up at him.
Carlos tried to close his eyes, to wait in darkness for a swift and terrible death, but didn't have time. It was, it was—
It shot right past him and kept going until it perched on a rock shelf halfway between him and the top of the mesa.
The creature crouched above him. It ignored Carlos entirely as it scanned the river and rocks far below. Except for the rapidly turning head it stood entirely still, yet gave an illusion of motion, like an engine revving in neutral.
What was it looking for? More boats? Whatever it was doing, it wasn't watching Carlos.
It can move. Faster than anything I have ever seen. Faster than anything I have ever heard of. I can't outrun it. It must have seen me, but it doesn't act like it. Maybe—
The cliff was steep. A fall would kill him. Better that than the monster, he thought, but he couldn't make himself believe it enough to jump. He made his hands stop trembling, reached down, found a handhold, tested it. It was firm. He lowered himself a few inches, found a new hold, and—
The creature snarled: a high-pitched scream like a drill biting into metal. Carlos looked up into its vast dark disklike eyes. The message in them was unmistakable: Where the fuck do you think you're going?
"Ah, nowhere," he muttered under his breath. The creature watched him for another few seconds, then turned away.
Carlos pressed himself into the rock wall. Between terror and confusion, he couldn't guess what his next move might be. But what does it think it's doing? Is it crazy? A crazy thought, indeed. Carlos laughed, and it turned to look at him, and the laugh stuck jaggedly in his throat. It went back to scanning the river.
