by Larry Niven
The stench of speed was a shroud. It hung in the air thick as fog; it clouded his mind. There was nothing to think about anyway. Pick up Cadmann and walk until you're in the house. Depend on hysterical strength. Any passing grendel is on his own.
A larger grendel climbed one of the bigger boulders left by the deadfall. It perched there, looking them over. Carlos paid little attention; he had to watch his feet; he was on uncertain footing, with a mass of ninety-five kilograms sagging from his shoulder. The grendel climbed down at leisure, hooked the ravaged corpse of a heifer and went away. The door was closer.
Cadmann stirred, tried to say something, gave up.
Joe Sikes was in front of him, then up against him. When Cadmann's weight eased off, Carlos almost fainted in relief. Then they were through the door, and Harry Siep closing it behind them, and Mary Ann swearing as they eased Cadmann to the floor.
Mary Ann saw Phyllis McAndrews die. It didn't have to be. She could have come in earlier, but she'd stayed at the communications console a moment too long. What could she have been hearing from Geographic? Whatever it was—
By the time she turned to run to the door a grendel had got behind her. It was heat-exhausted. Its sides heaved, and it was no longer running as a blur. It was still faster than a man, and stronger. It charged, struck Phyllis, and she fell.
For a moment Mary Ann hoped that Phyllis could throw the weakened creature off. Then its teeth closed. Blood spurted hotly over its muzzle as it tore her face away.
From behind her Joe Sikes fired three times. Twice at the grendel.
Once lower...
Mary Ann turned and threw up.
Carlos dragged Cadmann into the room. Someone had let the dogs out:
Tweedledum met them at the door, barking and trying to lick the blood off Cadmann's leg. Carlos brushed him aside.
Mary Ann handed her rifle to a now sober Jill and went to Cadmann. He wasn't quite unconscious. He stared up at her, through her, with pain-dilated pupils. He tried to say something. It made no sense.
"Ida," he said.
"Ah." Carlos took out his comcard. "Ida. Cadmann says go now."
Nothing answered.
"I'll go look," Joe Sikes said.
"Get her moving—"
"Sure." Sikes went out through the back of the house.
"We've done what we can," Carlos said.
Cadmann stared at him for a moment, then nodded. All the strength seemed to drain out of him at once.
Mary Ann bent over.
Carlos helped her slit his trouser legs. There was blood, and a sliver of bone knifed out of the left leg. "Spiral fracture," he said. She was amazed at how calm she could be. I'll collapse later. For now she had work to do.
Blood flowed freely from the right thigh. "Venous blood," Carlos said.
"It flows, not spurts. Jill—give us a hand here, please."
Cadmann's mouth worked as he fought to speak. No words came out, but he coughed and a bubble of blood formed at his lips.
"Bruises. Perhaps a punctured lung. The thing fell hard against him," Carlos said.
"You're in charge," Cadmann muttered. "Get out of here."
Carlos looked down helplessly. "I'll find Jerry—"
"He's in the back room," Mary Ann said. "I don't know what you're supposed to do, but it's your job now. We'll find Jerry."
Tweedledum barked in rage at the clerestory.
Something crawled up through the stream. Three of the dogs met it there, crowded to get at it. The grendel, weakened, managed to get its teeth into Tweedledee's neck before the other dogs tore it apart.
Tweedledum turned from the corpse, licked at his sister's wounds. She whined softly and died.
Stu rushed in, rifle in hand. "The Skeeter's up! They're burning out there! Burning and running away—"
There was a sudden burst of gunfire from outside, and twin screams, human and grendel.
The roof sagged, bulged inward. Two grendels fought to push in through the clerestory.
Jill grabbed a spear, shrieked, and stabbed one in the throat. It writhed, whipped its tail, and she backed off. The spear remained in the wound.
It fell into the living room. It pawed weakly at the spear, eyes ablaze with hatred and pain. It tried to go on speed, but had nothing left. They clubbed at it, everyone striking at it, dogs darting in.
The roof collapsed, and two more grendels fell through. One landed nearly atop Jill, and had its jaws in her leg before anyone could move.
Mary Ann shot it, shot again, then turned, hearing a splash. More grendels. More. Coming in up the stream bed, up the stream that ran through the living room.
She fired at full automatic. The gun stopped almost immediately. Out of ammunition. The grendels were still coming. She looked back toward Cadmann—
A river of fire flowed down. It flowed from the bedroom into the living room, under the earthen walls of the house. Flames danced from the water, and Mary Ann thought she had lost her mind.
"Sikes!" Carlos shouted. "He's poured the kerosene in the river!"
Joe Sikes. I owe you. I guess I already paid.
The fire flowed down to engulf the grendels. They turned downstream, fleeing in terror.
And then there was quiet, save for coughing from the smoke. There were no live grendels in the house.
Another volley of shots.
Somewhere a grendel screamed.
The surviving colonists pulled smoldering furniture and cloth against one of the earthen walls, then smothered the heap with a blanket.
Cadmann stirred and looked at Carlos. He tried to say something.
"Madre de Dios," Carlos said. "Shut up for a moment!"
It was very quiet in the room.
The veranda was covered with blood. Four men, one woman, three grendels; all dead.
Below the veranda and as far downhill as Carlos could see, the plateau was littered with corpses. Men and dogs and cattle; but mostly grendels. Hundreds and hundreds of grendels.
Some lay still. Some crawled, torn nearly in half, trailing entrails from shattered bodies. The air hung heavy with the stench of kerosene and burnt meat. Patches of fire burned twenty meters from the veranda. Ida had brought the fires very close indeed.
The stream no longer burned. It was also no longer choked with grendels. They had retreated in front of a river of fire. Grendels seeking cold had fled from the river and died in the hills.
Other people came out of the house and down from the roof. Gunshots from up above the house: one, two, three, then silence. Rick Erin held a bloody spear. He held it high and shook it in defiance.
The command console had been knocked off its table. Hendrick limped over to pick it up and set aright. He touched the switches, and lights glowed.
Tau Ceti was low on the horizon. Carlos limped out to the edge of the plateau and looked out. The mist had dissipated. He looked for grendels on speed, and found none. Here and there a grendel dragged the corpse of a grendel or a cow toward the water. He saw them met by emerging grendels, and torn apart.
Something had happened. Something had changed, and Carlos knew it. The grendels knew it!
Human beings were no longer prey. Man was the ultimate killer on Avalon. Grendels were smart enough to learn. The survivors now stalked each other instead of the aliens from the stars, the creatures who had brought death to thousands of Avalon's former masters.
"Geographic—"
"We're here. Are you all right?"
Hendrick looked toward Carlos. His face was grimy and haggard, his eyes bright. "What do I tell them?"
"Tell them we've won."
Chapter 34
HUNTING PARTY
Leviathan, that great dragon in the sea...
Come not between the dragon and his wrath.
KING LEAR, Act I, Scene I.
Thou shall tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shall thou trample under feet.
PSALM 91:13
It was a small pond up a
stream that fed the Miskatonic—a stream not much larger than Cadmann's Amazon. The pond was the nearest possible thing to an oxbow lake, still connected to the stream but without the rushing waters. There were boulders piled at its lower end. Mits Kokubun wondered about those boulders. Could grendels have put them there? Beavers were smart enough to build dams. Why not grendels?
Correction: grendel, singular. They were too damned competitive to cooperate, ever.
A nest of boulders overlooked the pond. It was a good place, high enough and steep enough that the resident grendel would have problems getting there. Mits searched the pond area with his binoculars. "Still nothing."
"Still nothing," Joe Sikes said. "Half the morning gone. Christ, what does it take to get the mother out of there?"
"Some of them just won't come out and fight." Mits tapped his comcard.
"Stu. Still nothing."
"Well, it's there. Samlon in the pool and Geographic photographed the shadow. Those things should have more respect for our explosives shortage. I'll try speed soup again."
"Well, okay, but I don't think it'll do any good."
"So? We've got more speed than explosives. Stand by."
They waited. After a moment Skeeter One skimmed across, twenty meters above the pond. Its cabin had a pebbled, battered look, but it flew well. A thick pinkish mist cascaded down and was blown into the pond scum and into the rocks around its bank.
They waited. Nothing happened.
"That was your Skeeter," Sikes said.
"Yeah."
"What was it like?" Sikes asked. "I mean—"
"I know what you mean. What do you want me to say? Stu and I sat there in the Skeeter while the mothers backed dents in the hull. It was fun. Just as it was starting to get dull, a big one bashed its head right through. Damn near got my foot. I chopped it with the ax. It tried to pull its head out, but it was caught on the torn hull metal where it poked through, and then the others outside started eating it. They ate it alive."
"I'd have liked to watch that," Sikes said.
Mits looked at him. Sikes didn't seem to be kidding.
The comcard squawked. "Nothing, huh?"
"Not a damn thing," Mits answered. "Let's get a move on. I want sashimi tonight."
"Okay, okay. I'll use a bomb. Have to call that in. Stand by."
"Our luck, everybody will be busy," Sikes said.
"Nah. They're too hungry to be busy. Fresh samlon."
"I guess I'm getting sick of fresh samlon."
"It's better'n nothing. It's way better'n grendel." Mits swept his binoculars around the edges of the pond. Nothing. Not even bushes.
Grendels would eat anything in preference to samlon. Then they ate samlon.
"Got it approved," Stu's voice said from the comcard. "You ready?"
"Ready here. Set it for max depth. The damn thing's hiding on the bottom, trust me."
"Stand by."
The whish of rotors grew louder. The craft came over the low lip of the rock basin surrounding the pond. It hovered at the center of the pond, and a dark barrel fell from the doorway. "Bomb away. And me too," Stu said. The Skeeter darted off west.
The pond exploded in a geyser. Mits waited, counting seconds to himself.
A half-grown grendel burst from the water. It scrambled onto the beach and ran in drunken curves. Blood poured from its mouth. It rolled and found its feet again, ran, rolled, stopped to take its bearings.
"Sayonara, sucker," Mits hissed. He held the sights on the area just behind the head, down five centimeters from the back ridge, the central ganglion complex that corresponded more or less to the human medulla oblongata. He squeezed off the round. The grendel darted ahead one step and died.
Mits thumbed the comcard. "Tell ‘em. Meat!"
The samlon were starting to float to the surface.
They came in tractors and jeeps and on foot. A team set up nets across the river downstream from the pond. Others inflated boats and set out on the pond. They spread nets. The pond would be seined again and again.
Dead samlon floated belly-up. They weren't very big—from half a meter down—but there must have been fifty in sight, and the team downstream would take more yet.
Skeeter Three came in carrying a prefabricated smokehouse. Colonists trickled in from uphill, bearing firewood. Hendrick Sills moved among the various groups. "Load the Skeeters as fast as it comes in. Some of us'll have to walk home to leave room. When the Skeeters are full we can start filling the smokehouse. Ida, what are you doing?"
"Sushi." She'd sliced up a foot-long samlon and started on another, nibbling as she worked. "Have some."
"The rest of the Colony gets to eat too. Them's the rules."
She sighed. The nightmare was still graven in her face, still caused her to wake at night, moaning for Jon. But they were helping each other heal. This wasn't a perfect world, but together they could make it a good one.
"Hendrick, dear, half the Colony is here. Are they supposed to look at all this and salivate? Look, Skeeter One's already off, and they're piling fish in Skeeter Three as fast as it comes in. We're saving none of it for the damn pterodons."
Hendrick thumbed his comcard. "Skeeter One, air conditioning?"
"It's on. We're freezing. Don't be such a nitpicker, Hendrick!"
The Skeeters would have their air conditioning on max to keep the samlon fresh: a nice example of Avalon's mix of high technology, low, and none. Hendrick tapped again. "Joe. You set up downstream?"
"Sure am. Somebody bring me lunch?"
"We'll think about it."
"Do more than think, or else if I see a grendel I'll cheer her on!"
"Okay, okay, Ida's made you some sushi."
Not that there was much chance of a grendel. The pools downstream had all been cleaned out. One hundred days had passed since the battles. Grendels had established territories and fought to keep them. Like Siamese fighting fish: one grendel to a pool. But unlike the fish who fought only until one retreated, if one grendel intruded on another's territory the result was one dead grendel and one well fed.
This one must have been well fed. There was plenty of samlon here. A good find. No fear that all the meat would be eaten here—as long as the pterodons could be kept under control.
The air stank of speed soup, and recorders on the boats were playing the recording Stu had made during the final attack. Screams of grendel-challenge and grendel-death ravaged the air. The flying appetites hovered, shrieking their anger, afraid to come down.
It was good that they didn't have to use bullets on the pterodons. Too few bullets now. When humans were finished here the pterodons could have the grendel's corpse. Hendrick himself had tried to eat grendel meat—starvation was much to be preferred.
Skeeter Three lifted away, carrying tonight's feast.
Sylvia used an optical pen to underline one of the passages in the old report Terry had written. It felt a little odd to play back Cassandra's old files. Old notes on the expedition to the mainland, back when all the grendels were gone from Avalon and everything was wonderful. Good stuff. We can do it almost the way Terry outlined it—and then a brief, sad flash: Terry...
"It isn't fair," Carolyn said.
Mary Ann looked up from changing diapers. "What isn't fair?"
"You've got men. You monopolize them."
"Foo," Marnie said. "You can't blame me if Jerry prefers my bod to yours."
"Plus the fact that you'll give him pure holy hell for weeks," Mary Ann said. Her voice was strained through diaper pins.
"And if I seduce Cadmann?" Carolyn asked.
"I'll kill you." Mary Ann finished her diaper job. "Now, if you want to marry him—"
"What?" Carolyn was jolted.
"I could use a junior wife," Mary Ann said. Her eyes took on a dreamy look. Then the smile vanished. "Sylvia—"
"It's all right," Sylvia said. Terry, you bastard, you could have relieved me of that promise. You could have. "What's the matter, Carolyn? Don't want to
join the commune?"
"Meow," Mary Ann said.
"Sorry. But not very. Look, we have five monogamous marriages plus chaos. There's no point in being delicate about it. Especially among ourselves." Five monogamous marriages, except I could make that four plus another bigamy, and Mary Ann wouldn't mind, and Terry, Terry, you could have said something noble! You muffed your line—
"We're getting off the subject," Marnie said. "Carolyn, this next broadcast is probably our last chance to change anything back in Sol system. By the time they get this message, it will have been twenty years since their interstellar program was proxmired. They're probably bored to tears, ready to hang on our every word. Did we survive the grendels? The suspense must be killing them.
"This isn't just for the Geographic Society. The whole solar system will be listening! Billions of people who watched while they didn't build the interstellar ships will be still alive. A little nostalgic. Getting older, wondering where the excitement went. So we want to make all our points while we've got them hooked! Sylvia, what have you got onscreen?"
"Terry's mainland expedition. We'll send them that, of course. Adventure calls, even on Avalon! We're short one Skeeter now, and the mission has changed a little because we're hungry. We'll want to anchor a Minerva in a bay, then take the Skeeters halfway up some mountain, above where the grendels can reach. Collect some Joes, if nothing else, and reseed the island."
"Any way we can put visuals in that lecture?"
"Visuals of what? They've seen the equipment. We've improved the orbital maps. I guess we can put in Joes... "
"Summon up those notes for the broadcast."
"Yeah." Sylvia tapped. She read off the list:
"Full details on grendel attack. Bored on Earth? Come to romantic Avalon and find adventure. Emphasize that we won. We control the grendels. Nail it down by showing us hunting out a grendel pond. I sent Sikes down with a camera; he'll get that today.
"De-emphasize hunger. De-emphasize fatalities. But we can talk about the taste of local life, Joes and samlon. We can't show another harvest because nothing's come up yet—"
