Cerberus: A Wolf in the Fold flotd-2

by Jack L. Chalker

  She paused for a moment, a distant, wistful look on her face, and I said nothing. Finally she continued.

  “So the girl finally passed her preliminary nursing and midwife exams and reached her fifteenth birthday, and they sent her to Akeba House. The next few months were an absolute heaven—anything and everything she wanted, plus the excitement of new people, trips into the cities, the resort and all that. And of course they arranged for her to become pregnant. That wasn’t bad, either, although it’s pretty dispassionate in the doctor’s office. She felt lierself change and marveled at the miracle within her. And finally the baby came—pretty rough the first time, but that didn’t matter. And there was this beautiful baby boy, clinging, nursing, crying.

  “And then one day, in about the second month, they came and took the baby away. They didn’t”—she paused, her voice getting choked with emotion at the remembered pain—“they didn’t even tell her. Just came and took him and that was that. And then they said go, take two months’ leave and do anything you want—then come back. You have to have roughly a baby a year.”

  She sighed and I thought I saw the glimmer of a tear, the first time I’d ever seen Dylan cry.

  “And so,” she went on in that wavering, distant tone, “she ran to the others, her friends, for consolation, and got none. Either they were hardened to the system or they’d given up and were reconciled to it. The House staff also was very little consolation, finally offering to send me to a psych center so I’d adjust and be happy doing nothing but having babies. I couldn’t accept that, either, so I sort of gave up. Gave up and gave in, like they all do. But Akeba House was located on an outcrop, and there was a small harbor on one side. I used to watch the hunters go out, and my mind went with them every time, as Sanda’s does now. I became their friend, except for the times when I was obviously pregnant and they shunned me like a disease. Finally, during my leave time—after my fifth child—one of them, a very compassionate man I’ll never forget, said much what you did just now—hell, you and he were a lot alike, really. He could be killed tomorrow and probably would be someday, so if risks were his business, well, he’d smuggle me aboard—and he did.

  “And you know—nothing much happened. We sighted a bork, yes, but another boat took it and chased it out of view. The whole thing was pretty dull, really—but to me it was everything. It made me alive again, Qwin. I determined to get out of the motherhood, and I worked and schemed and plotted and took my opportunities just like you—and it worked. If it hadn’t been for that joyride, though, I’d still be up there at the House, still having babies and gazing out at the sea, as Sanda is now. Wasting—just like she is. Do you understand now?”

  I turned over and hugged her and held her close. “Yes, Dylan, I understand.” I sighed. “So when are you going to take her?”

  “Day after tomorrow. I wouldn’t want it on my conscience that I killed a baby, too.”

  “All right. If your mind’s made up. But please consider the matter again before you do. You’re risking that sea, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know. Call me dumb or a softie or whatever. But I risked it for you, too. Maybe the luck’ll hold one more time. The chances of getting caught are a lot slimmer this time. I’ve got a good crew. They won’t talk, because it’d mark them as disloyals and they’d never get another berth.”

  “Your mind’s made up, then?”

  She nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “Then I’m coming along, too.”

  She sat up. “You? After I’ve been trying to get you out for weeks now?”

  “Well, maybe if the president’s along the responsibility will be spread a bit.”

  “No,” she said firmly. “Come on if you want—hell, I’d love to see you. But there’s only one person in charge of a boat, and that’s the captain. One person in charge absolutely, and one person who’s responsible for all aboard and their actions. That’s the law and that’s the way it has to be. Understand?”

  “Okay, Captain,” I responded, and kissed her.

  It was a foul morning with intermittent rain and mist, so that you were hardly aware it was past dawn. The sea looked choppy and the boats all rode up and down uneasily on the water. That worried me, but Dylan was actually in better spirits because of it.

  “We’ll all be in rain gear, so if anybody happens to be spying from Akeba House they’ll get no clues, not with these slickers, and with her hair tucked up under the rain hat”

  She had briefed her crew the day before in the privacy of the open sea. Nobody had objected. They knew her almost as well as I did, if not better, and she had their absolute respect.

  The boat had a name—Thunder Dancer—but it was usually used only officially. Informally, it was always “Dylan’s boat” or just “the boat”

  We stayed inside the aft cabin where we had schemed and plotted not that long before, and a crewman fitted us with life jackets and briefed us. Dylan, at the wheel, was busy and we respected that.

  “You can both swim, can’t you?” the crewman asked, half joking.

  “Yeah, although I’m not sure how far and how fast” I responded. “It’s a shame we have to go out on such a rotten day.”

  He laughed. “Oh, this is a good day. You ought to be here when we get in really rough weather. Waves over the bow, and even we crewmen puking as we hold it together. Don’t worry about this, though. The front’s only three or four kilometers out, and we’re going a lot farther than that today. We should have warm and sunny weather by midmoming.” And, somewhat to my surprise, we did.

  It was an education to watch the fleet move out, the trawlers chugging along slowly with two hunter-killers as escorts while we, as one of the two point boats, cleared the harbor and its buoys and flashing lights. We suddenly rose on two skilike rails, thus tilting the whole boat back as it poured on the speed, suddenly freed of having the bulk of its mass push against the water.

  “I have to be at station,” the crewman told us. “You can go up to the bridge now if you want, but hold on to the handrails at all time.”

  I looked aft at the rapidly receding shoreline, half hidden in fog and mist, and at the wide wake we were leaving. The shoreline itself appeared ghostly, the great mass of trees rising from the water in and out of fog, punctured only by some distant lights.

  “Oh, God! Isn’t this great!” Sanda enthused, rushing from one window to another. She was like a little kid again, squealing, oohing, aahing, and just having a grand old time.

  And there I was, the grand old veteran space pilot, feeling funny in my stomach. But that old me had been in a different body. Still, Dylan had come out on occasion in this body and seemingly had had no trouble, so that wasn’t the whole explanation.

  “Let’s go up to the bridge,” I suggested as we broke through the squall line and were suddenly hit by sunlight.

  “Great! Lead on!”

  We walked through the interior, past the electronic detection gear and biomonitors that would locate the masses of skrit on or near the surface and would also warn of borks, through the small galley and up a small set of steps to the bridge itself. There Dylan was sitting, relaxed, in the broad, comfortable captain’s chair with an idle hand on the wheel, looking out. She turned as we entered and smiled. “Well! How do you like it so far?”

  “Tremendous!” Sanda enthused. “Oh, Dylan, I can never repay you for thisl”

  Dylan took her hand from the wheel, got up, and hugged Sanda. The look on our captain’s face said that the attitude alone was more than payment enough.

  “Hey!” I yelled. “Who’s driving?”

  Dylan laughed. “The autopilot, of course. I’ve programmed in the course and set it for automatic after we lifted. No more attention required until we get to our zone for the day.”

  I felt a bit foolish and even a little ashamed. The same guy who bearded lions in their dens and was confident of taking on Wagant Laroo, who’d piloted starships through trackless voids, was damned scared out here in an alien ocean with n
o land closer than two kilometers-straight down.

  “You look a little green,” she joked, looking in my direction. “If I were the mean sort I’d find some really rough water and give you a workout—but don’t worry, I love you and I won’t.”

  The rest of the morning we sat around talking, occasionally bringing Dylan a cup of coffee or light snack from the mini-galley or doing the same for the crew.

  And she’d been right. After a while it got to be damned boring. Not for Sanda, who climbed all over the boat, getting explanations from the gun crews, and lessons from the electronics experts, and asking a million questions. For me, though, and basically for the crew as well, there was nothing exciting about skimming along the ocean at thirty-six knots with nothing anywhere in sight.

  Still, they all had within them some extra sense, some deep love for the sea, the boat, and their lives here. They were happy, content, at peace out here in a way I could not understand, perhaps could never really figure out.

  The ocean itself, though, had a certain academic fascination. It was different colors in different places, and there were obvious currents you could literally feel, as if the temperature rose and fell in a moment depending on what invisible part of the water you were in. In the distance you could actually see the storm front now moving “inland”, and out a little farther to the northeast you could fully see a thunderstorm, dense rain, high, bomb-like clouds, and lightning all included, while you yourself were basking in the sunlight of a cloudless sky.

  The pattern was generally the same for the boats. We had gone to a sector southeast of Medlam allocated by the Cerberan Coast Guard so that each company had its own area for the day, then had started a wide, circular sweep of the zone, going round and round in ever-smaller circles as the instruments looked for skrit.

  “Still no skrit in commerical quantity,” a speaker told us, “but we’ve got a bork on scope.”

  Dylan was suddenly all business. “Does he look interested in us?”

  “Nope. Not particularly. Big one, though. Four, maybe five tons. About twelve hundred meters south-southwest and at about twenty meters depth. Not going much of anywhere, maybe going to come up for some sun is all.”

  “Well, keep an eye on him,” she ordered, “and warn me of any changes in behavior.” She walked out onto the outer deck around the bridge and I followed. The wind from our speed was pretty fierce, although there was a windshield just forward of the real bridge and actually an auxiliary wheel. She stared out at the open sea, as did I, but I could see nothing.

  “Yup. There he is,” she said unemotionally as she pointed. I squinted in the indicated direction but could see little. I began to wonder if she was putting me on or if my eyes weren’t as good as hers.

  “I don’t see a thing.”

  “See—way off there? Look real hard in the sky. Squint a little against the reflection, or put on your dark glasses.”

  I put on the glasses, which I didn’t particularly find comfortable, and tried to see. “Look in the sky?”

  She nodded. “See those little black specks?”

  I tried very hard, and thought I could see what she meant. “Uh-huh.”

  “They’re geeks,” she told me.

  I tried to remember what a geek was. Some kind of flying horror, I seemed to recall. A carrion-eater. “Do they always follow borks?”

  She nodded. “They’re too lazy to make kills for themselves, and borks are greedy killers who are not too efficient about disposing of their kill. Oddly enough, the bork feeds mostly on skrit, which is why we have the problems we do, but it attacks and takes bites out of almost everything, including other borks. Some sort of natural balance, really. The borks feed the flying creatures and several other sea creatures by the kills they make and don’t or can’t consume. That’s why we even have limits on the number of borks we can kill.”

  “He’s turning,” came the voice on the speaker. “We’ve got the bed pretty well located now and he’s heading right toward it. I’ve sent a slowdown order to the fleet. Shall we engage?”

  She looked thoughtful. “Call Karel. Ask if she’s in any position to assist a runaway.”

  There was a short pause, and I gathered by their manner that it was better just to stand out of the way, and let them do what they knew how to do so well. I had an uneasy feeling about all this, though. I kept hearing that “four, maybe five tons” over and over again.

  “Karel says she’s about twenty minutes away, and escort’s about forty.”

  She looked at me. “Where’s Sanda?”

  “In the lounge, last I checked.”

  She turned back to the speaker. “Make sure the passenger is secure inside, then tell Karel to pour it on. Gun crews to full alert status. Stand by to close.” She went to the outside wheel and reached to one side, flipping a switch. The boat slowed noticeably. Then, one hand on the wheel and the other on the throttle, a stick with a big black ball on top, she took full control of the boat from the autopilot.

  “You better go inside and get strapped in,” she told me. “We’re at least going to have to turn the bastard and I don’t want to lose you.”

  I nodded absently, feeling a little tightness in my stomach. Lots of nasty things and nastier situations I could handle, but out here on the open sea facing a creature I’d only seen pictures of, I was totally at the mercy of Dylan and her crew. We were closing on the thing. I could clearly see the nasty-looking geeks, about half a dozen of them, circling a dark patch in the water.

  “Qwin! Please!”

  “All right, all right. I don’t want to distract you. I was just wondering why they called them borks.”

  At that moment the sea ahead of us exploded wth an elephantine mass at least three times the size of the boat. An enormous slit opened, revealing a tremendous cavity linked with sharp teeth and wriggling, wormlike tendrils. “BOOOOAAAAARK!” it roared, so loud that it echoed like thunder across the open sea and almost burst my eardrums.

  “Ask a stupid question,” I muttered, turned, and dashed for the lounge. Sanda was already there, strapped into a chair and watching out the window. I joined her, almost getting thrown against the side by the sudden change in the boat’s direction.

  Sanda’s expression was stupefied and vacant, her mouth open, and when I got myself into a seat and stared out the window I probably looked about the same myself. “Oh, man!” she breathed.

  The entire side of the ship seemed dominated by the monstrous reddish-brown thing that continued to show more and more of itself. I couldn’t translate what I was seeing to the pictures and diagrams I’d seen of the things.

  Out of the water on either side rose four huge tentacles with bony spikes all over. The tentacles alone looked as if they could pick up and crush the boat, and those bony protrusions looked as if they could easily penetrate not only the plastiglass but the armor plating itself. Worse, I knew that the entire surface of the bork’s skin was tremendously sticky and abrasive at the same time, so that the merest touch could rip flesh from bone.

  And we were slowly cruising by now, as if on a sightseeing tour!

  Suddenly I heard the engine rev up, whining as if it were strained to the limit: We had been moving so slowly that we were actually hardly up on our hydrofoil skis at all. Then the guns let loose, shaking the ship from stem to stem and sending cups and such flying. The guns were explosive projectiles; you couldn’t use a disrupter system on something mostly underwater because you might not be able to stop the effect. Besides, a weaker laser wouldn’t put a dent in something this size, whose vital organs were always well underwater and away-from direct attack by boats.

  I had to admit that for the first time in my life I felt not only helpless but terrified.

  The shells struck the thing and exploded with enormous force, releasing not only a powerful explosive charge but also some kind of electrical one as well. The creature roared and moved faster than I would have believed anything that big could possibly move. But still we remained, just
crawling past.

  With a splash I thought might sink us by itself, the thing had appeared to retreat and dive at the same time, but I was suspicious of this respite. We waited tensely.

  Suddenly we were jerked almost out of our restraining straps as the full power of the engines was released at once and the ship almost jumped out of the water.

  In a matter of no more than a couple of seconds, the bork rose with a roar and enfolded an area of ocean astern of us. I realized with a sinking feeling that that area of sea was where we had just been.

  The aft gun opened up with a full series of shots, pouring it into the great beast. With its computer laser-guidance system it must have poured twenty or more exploding charges into the thing, and they barely made a dent in it.

  Again the bork seemed to shrivel and sink beneath the waves. Outside somewhere over the roar of all the action I kept hearing fierce, loud cries of “Geek! Geek!” like some sort of bizarre cheerleading squad—which in a way it was.

  So much for how creatures on Cerberus got their names.

  For more than half an hour we played cat and mouse with the beast, luring, feinting, and shooting at it with enough ordnance to totally obliterate a medium-sized city. After a while you could see the areas of the creature that had been shot away, and occasional wounds still bubbling and hissing from the electrochemicals shot into it that water would not extinguish. But no matter how many times it was hit, there seemed to be another section just as nasty and virtually untouched.

  I did finally realize what Dylan was doing, though. She was doing her job—pulling the bork further and further away from the skrit that had to be commercially harvested. All I could do was admire her skill, timing, and guts. I recall thinking, And they have charter boats for people to do this for fun?

  How far away had she pulled it? I began to wonder. Possibly several kilometers. But while it was clear to me that we were faster in the long run than the bork, we didn’t have the ordnance to kill the monstrosity alone. For all that we were doing, we were hitting nonvital parts.