by Vernor Vinge
The yowling was even closer. When bad luck comes, it comes in bunches. Wil took Della by the shoulders, gently shook her. “Are there weapons in the acc chairs?”
Her eyes came open, dazed and wild. “Can’t talk! If they emp me—”
Wil scrambled back to the cave entrance. What was she talking about? Nothing but aurora lit the sky. He looked down. She must have weapons stored in those chairs. Climbing down would expose him to the sky for a few seconds, but once there he could hide under the overhang and work on the chairs. The nearest of the dogthings was only eighty meters out.
Wil swung onto the rock face, and—Della screamed, a tearing, full-throated shriek of pain. Wil’s universe went blinding white, and a wave of heat swept over his back, burning his hands and neck. He vaulted back into the cave, rolled to the rear wall. The only sound was the sudden keening of the dogs.
There was a second flash, a third, fourth, fifth…He was curled around Della now, shielding both their faces from the cave entrance. Each flash seemed less bright; the terrible, silent footsteps marched away from them. But with each flash, Della spasmed against him, her coughs spraying wetness across his shirt.
Finally darkness returned. His scalp tingled, and Della’s hair clung to his face when he leaned away from her. A tiny blue spark leaped from his fingers when he touched the wall. Lu was moaning wordlessly; each breath ended in a choked cough. He turned her on her side, made sure she wasn’t swallowing her tongue. Her breathing quieted, and the spasms subsided.
“Can you hear me, Della?”
There was a long silence, filled with the mewling of the animals outside. Then her breathing roughened and she mumbled something. Wil brought his ear close to her face. “…fooled ’em. They won’t come sniffing around here for a while…but I’m cut off now…comm link wrecked.”
Beyond the cave, the whimpering continued, but now there were sounds of movement, too. “We’ve got local problems, Della. Did you bring handguns?”
She squeezed his hand. “Acc chairs. Opens off my signal…or thumbprint…sorry.”
He eased her head to the ground and moved back to the entrance. The comm scepter didn’t glow anymore; the sphere end was too hot to touch. He thought about the gear Della had in her skull and shuddered. It was a miracle she still lived.
Wil looked out. The ground was well lit: the residue of the nuke attack shone overhead, a line of glowing splotches that stretched to the western horizon. Five of the dogthings lay writhing in the near distance. Most of the others had gathered in a close-packed herd. There was much whimpering, much snuffling of the ground, sniffing of the air. The brightness had burned their eyes out. They drifted toward the rock and hunkered beneath its overhang, waiting for the dark time to pass. Most of them would have a long wait.
Nine dogs paced along the edge of the herd, baying querulously. Wil could imagine their meaning: “C’mon, c’mon. What’s the matter with you?” Somehow, these nine had been shaded from the sky; they could still see.
Maybe he could still get the guns. Wil picked up the comm scepter. It felt heavy, solid—if nothing else, a morningstar. He slipped over the edge of the rock and slid to ground level.
But not unnoticed: The howling began even before he reached the ground. Three of the sighted ones loped toward him. Wil backed into the overhang that hid the chairs. Without taking his eyes off the approaching dogthings, he reached down and pulled the nearest chair into the open.
Then they were on him, the lead dog diving at his ankles. Wil swung the scepter, and met empty air as the creature twisted away. The next one came in thigh-high—and caught Wil’s backswing in the face. Metal crunched into bone. The creature didn’t even yelp, just crashed and lay unmoving. The third one backed off, circled. Wil raised the chair on end. It was as seamless as he remembered. There were no buttons, latches. He slammed it hard against the rock face. The rock chipped; the shell was unscratched. He’d have to get it up to the cave for Della to touch.
The chair massed forty kilos, but there were good fingerholds on the rock face. He could do it—if his friends stayed intimidated. He slid the scepter through the restraint harness and pulled the chair onto his shoulder. He was less than two meters up the wall when they charged.
He really should have known better; these were like the near-dogs Marta had met at the West End mines. They were as big as komondors, big enough they needn’t take no for an answer. Jaws raked and grabbed at his boots. He fell on his side. This was how they liked it; Wil felt an instant of sheer terror as one of them dived for his gut. He pulled the chair across his body, and the creature veered off. Wil got the next one across its neck with his scepter.
They backed off as Wil scrambled to his feet. Around the side of the rock, the blind ones growled and shouted. The cheerleaders.
So much for the acc chairs. He’d be lucky now to get himself back to the cave.
There was motion at the corner of his eye: He looked up. Unlike dogs, these creatures could climb! The animal picked its way carefully across the rock face, its skinny limbs splayed out in four directions. It was almost to the cave entrance. Della! He stepped back from the rock and threw the comm scepter as hard as he could. The ball end caught the creature on its spine, midway between shoulder and haunch. It screamed and fell, the scepter clattering down behind it. The creature lay on its back, its hindquarters limp, the forelegs sweeping in all directions. As Wil darted forward to grab the scepter, one of its clawed fingers raked his arm.
Wil was vaguely aware of shooting pain, of wet spreading down his sleeve. So the cave was not safe. Even if he could get back there, it would be hard to defend; there were several approaches. He risked another glance upwards. There was another cave still higher in the rock. The approach was bordered by sheer walls. He might be able to defend it.
The sighted ones circled inwards. He pushed the chair under the overhang, then ran to the rock face, jumping high. The dogthings were close behind—only this time he had a free hand. He swung the scepter past their noses, then crawled upwards another meter. One of the creatures was climbing parallel with him. Its progress was slow, no more agile than a human’s. Was it coming after him—or trying to get to Della? Wil pretended to ignore it. He paused again to swipe at those who harried him from below. He could hear the climber’s claws on stone. It was sidling toward him, fingerhold to fingerhold. Still Wil ignored it. I’m an easy mark, I’m an easy mark.
One of the lower dogs bit into his boot. He bent, crushed its skull with the scepter.
He knew the other was less than a meter away now, coming down from above. Without turning his head, Wil jammed the scepter upwards. It hit something soft. For an instant man stared at dogthing, neither enjoying the experience. Its jaws opened in a hissing growl. Its claws were within striking distance of Wil’s face, but the scepter was pushing against its chest, forcing it off the cliff. Brierson tucked his head against his arm and pushed harder. For a moment they were motionless, each clinging to the rock. Wil felt his hold giving way. Then something crashed into the dog from above, and its growl became a shriek. Its claws scraped desperately against stone. Resistance abruptly ceased and it fell past him.
But the others were still coming. As he scrambled higher, he glanced up. Something was looking down at him from the cave. The face was strangely splotched, but human. Somehow, Della had beaned the dog. He would have shouted thanks, but he was too busy hustling up the wall.
He hoisted himself over the cave’s edge, turned, and took a poke at the dog that was coming up right after him. This one was lucky, or Wil was slowing down: It snapped its head around Wil’s thrust and grabbed the shaft of the scepter. Then it pulled, dragging Wil half out of the cave, tearing the scepter from his hands. The creature fell down the cliffside, taking several comrades with it.
Wil sat for a moment, gasping. What an incompetent jerk he was. Marta had lasted four decades, alone, in this sort of wilderness. He and Della had been on the ground less than four hours. They had made all sorts of
stupid mistakes, now losing their only weapon. More dogthings were gathering below. If he and Della lasted another hour, it would be a miracle.
And they wouldn’t last ten minutes if they stayed in this cave. Between gasping breaths, he told Della about the cave further up. She was lying on her stomach, her head turned to one side. The dark on her face was blood. Every few seconds, she coughed, sending a dark spray across the stone. Her voice was soft, the words not completely articulated. “I can’t climb anywhere, Wil. Had to belly crawl t’get here.”
They were coming up the wall again. For a strange instant, Wil considered the prospect of his own demise. Everyone wonders how he’ll check out. In a policeman’s case there are obvious scenarios. Never in a million years would he have guessed this one—dying with Della Lu, torn to pieces by creatures that in human history did not exist.
The instant passed and he was moving again, doing what he could. “Then I’ll carry you.” He took her hands. “Can you grab around my neck?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” He turned, guided her arms over his shoulders. He rose to his knees. She held on, her body stretched along his back. He was fleetingly aware of female curves. She had changed more than her hair since that day at the beach.
He wiped one hand on his pants. The nick on his arm was only oozing, but there was enough blood to make him slippery. “Tell me if you start losing your grip.” He crawled out of the cave onto an upward-slanting ledge. Della massed more than the acc chair, but she was doing her best to hang on. He had both hands free.
The ledge ended in a narrow chimney heading straight up. Somewhere behind them, a firefight glowed. It brought no anxiety to his mind, only gratitude. The light showed breaks in the rock. He stepped in one on the left side, then one on the right, practically walking up the slot. He could see the entrance to the upper cave, scarcely two meters ahead.
The dogs had made it to the first cave. He could hear them clicking along the ledge. If this was easy for him, it was easy for them. He looked down, saw three of them racing single file up the slot.
“Hold tight!” He scrambled for the top, had his arms hooked over the entrance the same instant the lead dog got his foot. This time, he felt teeth come straight through the plastic. Wil swung his leg away from the wall, the animal a twisting weight on his foot. Its forelegs clawed at his calf.
Then he had the right angle: The boot slipped from his foot. The dog made a frantic effort to crawl up his leg, its claws raking Wil’s flesh. Then it was gone, crashing into its comrades below.
Wil pulled himself into the cave and lay Della on her side. His leg was a multiple agony. He pulled back the pants leg. There was a film of blood spreading from the gashes, but no spurting. He could stop the bleeding if given a moment’s peace. He pressed down on the deepest wound, at the same time watching for another assault. It probably didn’t matter. His fingernails and teeth weren’t in a class with the dogs’ claws and fifteen-millimeter canines.
…bad luck comes in bunches. Wil’s nose was finally communicating the stench that hung in the cave. The other one had smelled of death, bones crusted with fragments of desiccated flesh; the smell here was of wet putrefaction. Something big and recently dead lay behind them. And something else still lived here: Wil heard metallic clicking.
Wil leaned forward and slipped his remaining boot onto his fist. He continued the motion into a quick turn that brought him up and facing into the cave. The distant firefight lit the cave in ambiguous shades of gray. The dead thing had been a near-dog. It lay like some impressionist holo—parts of the torso shrunken, others bloated. Things moved on the body…and in it: Enormous beetles studded the corpse, their round shells showing an occasional metallic highlight. These were the source of the clicking.
Wil scrambled across the litter of old bones. Up close, the smell stuffed the cave with invisible cotton, leaving no room for breathable air. It didn’t matter. He had to get a close look at those beetles. He took a shallow breath and brought his head close to one of the largest. Its head was stuck into the corpse, the rear exposed. That armored sphere was almost fifteen centimeters across. Its surface was tessellated by a regular pattern of chitin plates.
He sat back, gasped for air. Was it possible? Marta’s beetles were in Asia, fifty thousand years ago. Fifty thousand years. That was enough time for them to get across the land bridge…also enough time for them to lose their deadly talent.
He was going to find out: The dogs were yowling again. Louder than before. Not loud enough to cover the sound of claws on stone. Wil thrust his hands into the soft, dead flesh and separated the beetle from its meal. Pain stabbed through a finger as it bit him. He moved his grip back to the armored rear and watched the tiny legs wave, the mandibles click.
He heard the dogs coming along the ledge to the chimney.
Still no action from his little friend. Wil tossed the creature from hand to hand, then shook it. A puff of hot gas hissed between his fingers. There was a new smell, acrid and burning.
He took the beetle to the cave entrance and gave it another shake. The hiss got louder, became almost sibilant. The armored shell was almost too hot to touch. He kept the insect excited through another ten seconds. Then he saw a dog at the bottom of the slot. It looked back, then charged up the chimney, three others close behind. Wil gave the beetle one last shake and threw it downwards, into the cliff face just above the lead dog. The explosion was a sharp cracking sound, without a flash. The dog gave a bubbling scream and fell against the others. Only the trailing animal kept its footing—and it retreated from the chimney.
Thank you, Marta! Thank you!
There were two more attacks during the next hour. They were easily beaten back. Wil kept a couple of grenade beetles close to the edge of the cave, at least one near the bursting point. How near the bursting point he didn’t know, and in the end he feared the beetles more than the dogs. During the last attack, he blew four dogs off the rock—and got his own ear ripped by a piece of chitinous shrapnel.
After that, they stopped coming. Maybe he had killed all the sighted ones; maybe they had wised up. He could still hear the blind ones, down beneath the overhang. The howling had sounded sinister; now it seemed mournful, frightened.
The space battle had wound down, too. The aurora was as bright as ever, but there were no big firefights. Even isolated flashes were rare. The most spectacular sight was an occasional piece of junk progressing stately across the sky, slowly disintegrating into glowing debris as it fell through the atmosphere.
When the dogs stopped coming, Wil sat beside Della. The emp attack had blown the electronics in her skull. Moving her head caused dizziness and intense pain. Most of the time, she lay silent or softly moaning. Sometimes she was lucid: Though she was totally cut off from her autons, she guessed that her side was winning, that it had slowly ground down the other high-techs. And some of the time she was delirious, or wearing one of her weirder personalities, or both. After a half-hour silence, she coughed into her hand and stared at the new blood splattered on the dried. “I could die now. I could really die.” There was wonder in her voice, and fascination. “Nine thousand years I have lived. There aren’t many people who could do that.” Her eyes focused on Wil. “You couldn’t. You’re too wrapped up in the people around you. You like them too much.”
Wil brushed the hair from her face. When she winced, he moved his hand to her shoulder. “So I’m a pussycat?” he said.
“…No. A civilized person, who can rise to the occasion…But it takes more than that to live as long as I. You need single-mindedness, the ability to ignore your limitations. Nine thousand years. Even with augmentation, I’m like a flatworm attending the opera. A hundred responses a planarian has? And then what does it do with the rest of the show? When I’m connected, I can remember it all, but where is the original me?…I’ve drifted through everything this mind can be. I’ve run out of happy endings…and sad ones, too.” There was a long silence. “I wonder why I’m crying.”
“Maybe there’s something left to see. What brought you this far?”
“Stubbornness, and…I wanted to know…what happened. I wanted to see into the Singularity.”
He patted her shoulder. “That still may be. Stick around.”
She gave a small smile, and her hand fell against him. “Okay. You were always good for me, Mike.”
Mike? She was delirious.
The lasers and nukes had been gone for hours. The aurora was fading with the morning twilight. Della had not spoken again. The rotting dogthing brought warmth (and by now Wil had no sense of smell whatsoever), but the night was cold, less than ten degrees. Wil had moved her next to the creature and covered her with his jacket and shirt. She no longer coughed or moaned. Her breathing was shallow and rapid. Wil lay beside her, shivering and almost grateful to be covered with dogthing gore, dried blood, and general filth. Behind them, the beetles continued their clicking progress through the corpse.
From the sound of Della’s breathing, he doubted she could last many more hours. And after the night, he had a good idea of his own wilderness longevity.
He couldn’t really believe that Della’s forces had won. If they had, why no rescue? If they hadn’t, the enemy might never discover where they were hidden—might never even care. And he would never know who was behind the destruction of the last human settlement.
Twilight brightened towards day. Wil crept to the cave entrance. The aurora was gone, blotted out by the blue of morning. From here he wouldn’t see the sunrise, but he knew it hadn’t happened yet; there were no shadows. All colors were pastels: the blue in the sky, the pale green of the grassland, the darker green in the trees. For a time nothing moved. Cool, peaceful silence.
