by Larry Niven
Marco’s voice. “Absolutely. The camera is on you now.”
They looked back and up. The Godsons’ camera drone was there, a hovering silver sphere usually just behind them, but sometimes to the side or front, to get different shots.
Trudy asked, “Why is it so important that Aaron not reach the anomaly first?”
“He’s a wild card,” Cadzie said. “Always has been. I don’t trust him.”
Joanie cleared her throat. She’d heard that. “Are you ready to do this?”
“Yes. Grendels in the dark. I thought this was about trusting the people who have my back. This is more . . trusting myself.”
With every passing mile inland the river grew more rapid, the zodiac’s power cell driven engines quietly, powerfully pushing against the outward tide. Aaron was crowded close with two restless grendels. He was used to their presence, their thick musty aroma, but if truth be told, he never forgot their lethal potential. They were triggered by prey behavior, and so long as he never exhibited it, their training would trump their instinct.
His rubberized raft rushed under towering cliffs, no beaches to land a craft. Aaron found a hole in the cliff wall, as tall as a man and wide as two grendels, and entered the underground river. From here Cassandra’s map was blurred.
He lit a lantern and watched shadows shape caves and constrictions around him. His grendels were uncomfortable now. Both were sniffing in the direction of one broad passage. He whispered in their ears . . no good . . raised his voice to a shout above the water’s roar.
“Do you have something, girl? Go on.” He slipped Delilah off her leash. The grendel slid off the zodiac’s back end without a splash, and surged ahead.
Shadows expanded, then receded, shaping a cave that was turning (Aaron checked his inertial compass) north. Toward that magnetic source. Where rock walls came close, he fired an occasional paint pellet to mark his path. Where was Delilah?
Was it possible that, despite his careful training, she might go feral?
The channel opened out hugely.
Aaron’s light wasn’t enough . . but what he was looking at looked artificial. A blobby building in the middle of a lake. It was half underwater. Aaron turned toward what might be a dock. He fired a glowing paint pellet into the ceiling.
He steered the boat into a dark recess in what seemed a giant’s adobe hut. His free hand was soothing Hypolita, whose tail thrashed softly in prelude to what would usually be some kind of tantrum.
His torch was more effective here. The big room was awash in water, a meter deep or more. The walls were etched in shapes he couldn’t interpret. Aaron steered around a mass of seaweed and found a flat table, squarish, a few meters wide and a few inches above the water. Then a huge raised firepit. Then a mass of rusted iron that must once have been tools.
Humans had been on Avalon for forty years. What was all this? Aaron had been part of a group of cutups called the Merry Pranksters, but he’d have known if this was their work . . and surely any such jape would have been brought to a climax long ago.
And here to one side was a globe of metal nearly a meter tall, marked . . hmm. Roughened, anyway. Marked like a relief map, but only across a quarter of its face; the rest was smooth. It was raised out of the water, on a ledge that ran along the wall.
Next to it on the ledge, a lump . . chipped into a dome shape . . a box? With a pentagram chipped into the lid. Aaron was standing up in the boat to examine it when a grendel screamed, far away.
With no conscious thought at all, Aaron’s grendel gun was in his hand. He called, “Delilah?”
The answer: nothing but echoes. “What in the hell was that? Stay in the boat, girl.” His other grendel, Hypolita, seemed disturbed, but still on point.
He docked his boat, and jumped out. Hypolita followed him, nervously thrashing her tail, as he moved closer to the globe. He could make out the shape of continents. He’d be about . . here, in the middle of roughened texture, of what must have been explored territory.
The water rippled behind him. Hippie hissed. He recognized the tone of that hiss: Hypolita was afraid.
“What is it, girl?” Something was in the water. Hippie’s vocalization transformed from fear to rage in an instant and she charged into the water, on full speed.
The water thrashed violently. The cave echoed with screams of agony. Then . . the water erupted. Hypolita churned at full speed, on and on, with incredible violence, finally crawling up out of the water. Steam boiled off her body in waves, hot enough to cook crabs. Trembling, making her death sounds, she laid her heavy head on his foot, a final act of fealty.
She had cooked herself with her own speed. Dead.
Aaron felt something he had not experienced in years . . .
Terror.
He had lost his light. He scrambled for it as wet things rose up out of the water, crawling toward him. He tried to train the light on them and when he did he was stung from the left side. He screamed and tried to turn but was stung from the right. These were electric shocks! He tried to crawl toward the Zodiac, and pulled himself in, sobbing and begging.
“Please. Stop. I meant no harm. Please . . .”
He started the engine and started purring away, but something hit hard, punching a hole in the Zodiac. It began to leak, sinking into the water. He clung to the partially inflated bladder, trying to keep his body out of the water, but could not. Another sting and his body stiffened, and slowly he slid into the water, his scream stolen by the darkness and the wet.
The water had a different taste, deep underground. More minerals, less salt. Thoughts too were flavored by the nearness of a magnetic source, the shouting of the shrine. The school flowed around Whast, sharing thoughts and selves, and all was placid and mellow and dark, until the wave came.
It was a startlement. A wave ran across the surface of the water, faster than a wave should move: a Walker machine, a boat, this deep beneath the ground. Following wakes ran down past Whast, past the school of fifteen. The surface wake pointed toward the shrine itself.
Walkers had never been this deep beneath the ground, not in forty-odd seasons since they entered the world. Whast had never seen this kind of tool: part vehicle, part balloon.
The school followed, staying beneath the water. They convulsed when a grendel dropped out of the boat. Then, all minds linked in one motive, they converged on it and stung it until it stopped moving. Two of the school were dead, and Gorb had come too close and was bitten through the torso.
The boat had come to a stop in the shrine’s great cavern. Another grendel emerged. Grendels in the shrine! The school converged again. The dying grendel thrashed loose and returned to the boat, moving on speed, too fast for mere cthulhu.
Magnetic signals passed among the cthulhu. Then they rammed the boat.
The occupant now splashing in the water was a single Walker. The school drew back, most of them. Then wounded Gorb attacked the Walker, releasing perhaps her final sting. Whast and Insel followed, converging from the sides. It thrashed under their stings, then went still.
The rest of the school surrounded the three. Whast and Insel and Gorb. Gorb was bleeding badly from the first grendel’s bite. The pulse in the magnetic field said, +You have killed a tool-using mind.+
Gorb protested. +This was an animal! It brought grendels into the shrine, the center of magnetic sense!+
+For many years we have seen them use tools. We all agreed. Walkers are not to be killed ever again.+
Whast sent, +We all have listened for their pulse. There was no mind.+
The three were still trapped in a circle of implacable accusers. One of the school swam loose to dig into the torso of one of the two killed by the grendel. A smooth finger-sized device emerged. She put it in her pouch and went to collect the other. They would go into the soul box until needed.
Insel whined, +They have no minds! Listen! Look!+ Quicker than the school, she threw herself on the corpse of the dead Walker, lifted it onto the ledge and dug into its bel
ly with her stinger. +Look! The amplifier, the mark that every mind-bearing person carries in her bowels, it isn’t here!+
One of the school edged forward and dug, probing in the Newcomer’s torso through the hole Insel had made. Up, down, left, right. +Nothing. An absence.+
+This proves nothing,+ some of the school felt. More sent, +We know that the amplifiers are scarce. They come down to us from the deep past. Some are lost. The rest make our minds greater when we swallow them. Walkers do not have amplifiers, but they make tools. They don’t kill us, we must not kill them.+
The three sent only their distress.
+We are agreed,+ the school sent. Unanimously. +You must go.+
The three swam away into exile. Gorb was trailing. The taste of blood followed them and went with them. Behind them was a ghastly silence, growing as the shrine receded. They’d been cut off, not just from the school, but from the greater family of all cthulhu.
♦ ChaptEr 30 ♦
cadmann in the caverns
Cadzie and Trudy entered the shadowed cave mouth, and the chill he felt was more than the mere absence of sunlight. This was not a place for humans.
“Heat signatures?”
Trudy checked her monitor. “Fading. Traces. As if something was here.”
“But gone now?”
“Maybe.”
Cadmann Sikes mused. “This might sound silly, because it’s where every horror movie goes wrong. But . . I think we should split up. You take the zodiac back to the entrance. I’ll go in on foot.”
“You think that’s smart?”
“I’m making this up as we go along. But if there aren’t any grendels, I think I’m all right. And if there are . . damned if I don’t think I’d be all right anyway. Go on.”
“All right,” she said, and kissed him. “Be wary.”
And she putted back toward the entrance. The camera that had been following them wavered, then followed Cadmann.
Cadzie was forced to walk on ledges, jump from one position to another. Once, to dive into the water with his grendel gun on his back, and scramble back out again.
“Aaron!” he called. Here on the roof was a spatter of yellow paint. “Aaron!”
A twinkling caught the corner of his eye. It was the camera. Twinkle, twinkle, and the tiny light went out. Some kind of signal? The camera was still floating behind him. He went back a few steps, then shrugged it off.
And here came a floating mass . . the grendel gun was in his hands, because the thing coming toward him was vaguely reptilian. Had been. A grendel, floating on its side. Wearing a collar. The most fearsome creature humans had ever faced, rendered to meat.
More cautious now, he investigated deeper into the tunnel, until his light revealed . . another dead grendel. Wearing a collar, like the first. “What is going on . . ?” he heard himself whisper, aware that the chittering monkey in the back of his brain was screaming get out.
At the cave mouth, the others had arrived, most clad in power armor modified for amphibious warfare.
“What if I fall off?” Joanie asked. It was a fair question. When she stood in the zodiac, the gyros stabilized her, but the uneven terrain to come could easily pitch her into the drink. What then?
“The suit will automatically offer you a rebreather mouthpiece,” Captain Meadows promised. “Standard battle suits aren’t airtight, but you’ll be fine. You’ll have six hours of oxygen: plenty of time for anything we’re likely to face.”
“With a little extra.” A female voice from the shadows.
“Trudy,” Little Shaka asked, “where’s Cadzie?”
“In the tunnels,” she said. “We have a tracer on him.”
Marco said, “Not any more. The camera I set on him has gone wonky. Let’s get in there.”
“We have heat signatures,” Joanie said.
“What direction?” Marco asked.
She pointed in three directions: Six o’clock, nine, twelve. “Shit.”
Carlos felt a swell of command within him, finding the part of him that believed in the armor. I’m not a naked ape. I’m not a naked ape . . . “Beach the craft, now. We take a stand.”
“We have about two minutes,” Captain Meadows said.
“Someone check my armor again,” Carlos said. “I am not missing this.”
“Perimeter defense circle,” Meadows said. “Back to the wall.”
Within seconds they were a ring of steel. Joanie was completing her third compulsive equipment check, and puffing like a steam engine.
“This stuff had better work,” Carlos muttered. Joanie nodded her armored head.
“Relax,” Marco said. “Let it function. It has to read you. We ran you through two hours, so it is partially adjusted, but . . we’ve got your back.”
Carlos was breathing hard, adrenaline pumping.
“Carlos . . .” Cassandra said. “I am limited, but still detecting your vitals, and your heartbeat is above one fifty.”
“I’m surprised it’s not over two hundred. What are you seeing?”
No response.
Joanie’s voice grew shrill. “Someone’s coming!”
Splashing through the water and then . . it was Cadzie!
Joanie again: “Did you find my father?”
“No,” he gasped, “but I found both of his tame grendels. Dead. What’s happening?”
Marco launched his drone. “War.”
The water erupted and grendels came at them from multiple directions. Fast. Grendel Scout reflexes and power armor were almost overwhelmed, it all happened too rapidly for conscious thought, so quickly that Cadmann’s memory could only hold a few quick flashes of light and sound, impressions of claws and teeth and armored humans grappling and firing ballistic and capacitor weapons, the roar of explosive rounds and screams of pain—grendel pain.
He saw something flash from the water and take Uncle Carlos down. A moment of panic, then his forebrain reasserted itself: That’s armor. He’s protected. He’s a fighter, the most experienced grendel fighter among us. He’ll be fine—
And turned his attention back to business just in time to fire two capacitors into a grendel going at either Little Shaka or Trudy. He didn’t know. He didn’t care. It reared back, poisoned by its own speed, and virtually tail-danced across the surface of the water, whirling like a dervish, then sinking.
And then, as rapidly as it had all begun, it was over.
Five dead grendels floated in the water near the ledge. A ravaged corpse on the ledge itself. The armored defenders sagged, but still stood on their feet . . except for . . .
“Where’s Carlos?” he asked, afraid of the answer. Captain Sven Meadows, gasping for breath, armor splashed with blood, pointed into the water. He followed the gloved finger, and saw where the surface boiled, as if something incredibly violent was happening just below.
Then . . a reptilian head surfaced, bobbed, eyes glazing, its entrails flagging from a torn abdomen as it rolled and then sank.
Then . . an armored head appeared, buoyed by yellow inflating bladders. An invisible engine drove it to the ledge, and two armored arms pushed it up to dry land.
No one spoke as Carlos shook his head, and a fractured armored faceplate slipped back. “That,” his adopted uncle said finally, “was better than sex.”
Cadzie sighed with relief. “I won’t tell Twyla you said that.”
“Good enough.”
“Did you find Aaron?” Little Shaka asked.
“No, but I found two dead grendels. With collars.”
“Take us.”
It took about six minutes to lead them from the battleground to where the second grendel corpse bobbed in the water. They searched in a widening circle, calling “Aaron!”
“Aaron!” Until Trudy signaled that she had found something.
A splash of glowing paint above them.
The searcher converged upon a spot he instantly dubbed the Cathedral, a chamber with arched roof and a pulpitlike pile of stones on a ledge toward the ba
ck. The longer he took it in, the more he could believe it was a place where amphibians would congregate.
And here, they found the ruptured remains of a zodiac. And then, behind the man-sized tower of smooth pebbles, the remains of Aaron Tragon. He was splayed out on his back on a crude tabletop. His face was still distorted, as if seized by such terrible contractions that even death had not released him. A raw, red-lipped hole gaped in his abdomen.
“What happened here?” Marco asked.
“You never found him?” Captain Sven Meadows asked.
“No, I didn’t,” Cadzie said, suddenly aware of how they were looking at him. All of them. And how terribly lame his words sounded, even to him.
♦ ChaptEr 31 ♦
the biology hutch
The room was warm enough, but somehow the bizarre nature of the objects mounted on the central table drained that warmth, lent a chill to the proceedings.
Alien artifacts, sheets of metal, pyramidal ceramics the size of your fist, oddly carved crystals. Objects formed by an intelligent, tool-using creature with symbolic language and the ability to mine, refine and work metal and rock.
The copper sphere was densely graven with symbols, but until just twenty hours ago had never been touched by human hands. The implication was staggering. Little Shaka had awaited this moment his entire life. His father had crossed an ocean of stars seeking this, and now, at last, it was here.
The Godsons had requested a representative at the meeting. Either that, Little Shaka thought, or they wanted Cadzie under their observation at all times. They’d sent Dr. Sven Martine, a Godson medical officer in his early twenties.
Martine asked, “So . . what do we have?”
Big Shaka radiated gravitas beyond his elven dimensions. “We’re not entirely certain. I mean . . we don’t really have an anthropologist, or a xenolinguist or anything close to it, but Cassandra has made some guesses, and we can fill in some of the blanks.”
Shaka held up two finger-sized lumps like elongated eggs. “The box these were in was glued to the ledge; they couldn’t move it. These are iron, or mostly iron. They’re magnets, dipoles. Powerful. They’re not simple things, there are textures in the fields. There was an organic coating, some kind of slime.”