Starborn and Godsons

by Larry Niven

  “And how do we get there?”

  Jaxxon’s twin brother folded his hands, then unfolded them. “I think we’ll need a combination of tactics to defeat Cassandra.”

  “Not to mention Messenger’s onboard,” Jaxxon said. “We don’t even know its capacities.”

  “So we’ll need to forget concealing movement. Instead, we’ll use a variation of the same tactics we used to break you out, Cadzie. We’ll give them too much information.”

  “How do we do that?” Cadzie asked.

  “Compartmentalize. No group knows what another group is doing. Assume that they will be intercepted.”

  “I don’t want anyone dying for me.”

  “Then advise them to flee, but not fight. If cornered, surrender. Tell what they know. But only the people here, now, know where we’re going.”

  “All they know is to keep going,” Cadzie said. “One conclusion could easily be that WE don’t have a destination, either. Random, desperate, guilty flight.”

  “Exactly.”

  By midnight, the campfire had burned low. “Piccolo,” Toad said. “You worked in Snowcone. What did you tell us about those rivers?”

  The surfing master had been one of the first to join their resistance team. A light flared in his eyes, almost as if he had been waiting years for something to awaken him from a slumber. “Five years ago we hit water on level two. Closed up the mine shaft. But we mapped the underwater river, and I’d bet five pounds of coffee it connects with our anomaly. It does.”

  Little Shaka leaned closer. “Let’s say the dipole source is a cthulhu city. They are aquatic, or at least amphibian. They can’t cross a desert, or anything close to it.”

  “Before we even seriously consider going,” Toad said, “I want to ask: why would they do something like this? Why build a city there?”

  Shaka shrugged. “Why do human beings build cities? Resources, trade, water? Sometimes spiritual reasons, belief in a particular place being favorable to the gods.”

  Joanie nodded. “And we don’t know how old that city is. What things might have looked like ten thousand years ago. The landscape could have been . . probably was very different.”

  “Can we use these?” Cadzie asked. “The underground rivers?”

  “Maybe. Probably. If we can it would be terrific, because every hour above ground increases our chances of being spotted somehow. If we can make it to the mines, from that point on Cassandra can’t see us. Fifty miles south is the city, by my reckoning. And I think these rivers connect. But fifty miles of underground rivers?”

  “We’d need rebreathers, underwater sleds. Something like that.”

  “I . . maybe I shouldn’t say this . . .” Trudy offered.

  “Say what?”

  “Power armor, Cadzie.”

  The idea was so simple and obvious in retrospect that he blinked. “Shit,” he said. “You’re right. Unka Carlos went into the water, and breathed just fine.”

  Beth took it and ran with it. “What if we could lead some of the legion into a trap? That’s our best source of power armor.”

  Trudy wrapped her arms across her chest. Perhaps it was chilly. “They won’t give up easily.”

  “Neither did we,” Cadzie said. “And they killed some of our people.” Ugly murmurs. “It’s self-defense now.”

  The miner seemed pensive. “Kill them and take it?” the miner said. “Damn, that’s ballsy. What happens then? You think you can broker a peace after you’ve murdered them?”

  “Can they after they murder us?” Beth asked.

  Shaka shook his head. “People aren’t that rational.”

  “All right.” Cadzie said. “You’re right. No matter what we did, it would increase the antipathy. Hard to come back from.”

  “Well . . .” Little Shaka asked finally. “What if we didn’t do it?”

  “What do you mean?” Evie asked.

  Shaka’s voice dropped, because thoughtful. “What if . . Avalon herself did it . . .”

  “That might be a pretty fine line.” Jaxxon said.

  “I think we can walk it.”

  ♦ ChaptEr 42 ♦

  bees

  Camouflaged, armored and tucked into the coastal cliffs, the Godson base was a hive of activity. Teams of analysts were reading the tracking equipment, gathering and interpreting information.

  The commander was Stype’s fiancé, Captain Sven Meadows. He was a tall man, even for a Godson. They had avoided the awkwardness of his being subordinate to her by cooperative billeting and flexible chains of command. At the moment he was at the coastal station, a hastily constructed landing pad, and was currently reading details from his digipad.

  “Captain Meadows, sir!” Meadows looked up.

  “Sir! We’ve picked up a signal,” Sergeant Kanazawa said.

  “Where?”

  “In these hills. It was brief.” They waited a moment, then the signal repeated. There they were. “I want a squad there,” the captain said. His smile was a hunter’s.

  “And . . there they are.”

  The smile grew thinner still. “I’ll lead a squad there,” Meadows said.

  “What orders?” his sergeant asked.

  “Capture if possible. If not . . .” He shrugged.

  “He’s killed once,” Sergeant Kanazawa said, “and they helped him.”

  “That’s how I see it,” the captain said. “So be it.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Cadzie put the binoculars down. “There,” he said. “That’s where they died. I’ve kept track of it. The kind of thing kids do.”

  “Have you ever been here?” Trudy asked.

  “No. I haven’t. Never been. Never had business here.” He said it flatly, although his face was tight. Once upon a time, three decades before, he had been an infant protected in a blue blanket as parents he had never known had been stripped to the bone. Even he wasn’t entirely certain how he felt about returning to this spot.

  “Doesn’t this seem kind of sick?”

  “Just the opposite,” he murmured, finding his emotional footing. “Until now I thought my parents died for nothing. This gives it a little purpose.”

  “How long do we have to hold them?” Piccolo asked. Apparently some of his Surfer Dude affect was simply a put-on, garnered from old Earth two-dees, probably featuring former child stars in one-piece bathing suits. He was displaying more of the calculating mind that had made him a first-rate engineer.

  “Long enough to get them all in the bottleneck.” Cadzie said.

  “There’s the flag,” Piccolo said, and pointed.

  “Good stuff,” Cadzie said. “Let’s get blue.”

  By decree of the council, an emergency cache of blue blankets had been located anywhere a beehive had been identified: the colony wanted no more fatalities.

  They had not anticipated a moment like this.

  The Godson skeeters were advanced over the Avalonians’ decrepit vehicles. Skeeter Violet Two held six in power armor. It hovered at cloud level, far higher than any weapon the rebels were likely to have in play. Through a telescreen Meadows watched a fleeing Grendel Scout on the ground below them. Was one of them Sikes? “They think we won’t hit the ground with them,” he said.

  “They’re wrong, sir,” Kanazawa said confidently.

  Joanie crouched behind a boulder with Cadzie and Trudy. “Can you really do this?”

  “What?”

  “Use this. This place. This method, to attack people. I mean . . considering what happened to your parents . . .”

  He understood. To be truthful, the notion sickened him. “We’ll find out.”

  “Here they come!”

  “Blankets!” Cadzie called.

  The ship landed. The Godsons emerged, firing. A blue blanket-wrapped Grendel Scout went down. Then Cadzie touched the button that triggered the radio-controlled explosives over the bee nest.

  The creatures were not “insects” of course, but flying variants of the same strain of genetics that
led to Avalon tree crabs and scribes, probably closer to tiny flying crustaceans. They swarmed in underground hives, their full life cycles not totally understood: the “bees” were too dangerous.

  When the mining explosive triggered, a thousand pounds of dirt and rock flew into the air, and at first, Cadzie, peering out from under his blanket, wondered if he had used too much. If the blast had killed his prospective allies.

  And then . . .

  Captain Sven Meadows saw the rebels disappear behind a tumble of rocks, and felt a certain amount of contempt. There was no way out for them in that cul-de-sac. Still, it was possible that a trap of some kind had been baited, and as they moved forward in standard two-by-two formation, they kept their scanners running.

  “Sir,” Sergeant Kanazawa said. “Our scans detect a radio signal to the west, a hundred yards. A scan of frequencies suggests that it’s a mining charge.”

  Clumsy trap. Was there an avalanche to be brought down upon them? No. Then what these idiots planned was to lure them into some kind of crossfire, perhaps a homemade claymore, industrial explosives combined with nails and shrapnel.

  For men unaware and unarmored, it might have worked. He proceeded with caution, as if his men were not armored.

  A sudden explosion shook the earth. Meadows’ men rolled flat. There was plenty of cover, but that cloud looked funny, and it was expanding much too fast—

  Within seconds a storm of bees streamed out of the ground, and attacking everything around them not nestled in blue. The individual bees moved like bullets: they were drunk on speed, like grendels. Like bullets, they got inside armor faster than a man could duck.

  “Oh God!” Kanazawa screamed. “It hurts!”

  “Seal the suits!” Foster yelled. “Seal your suits!”

  “It’s too late! They’re inside!” Kanazawa screamed something in Japanese, then lost language and just gobbled pain.

  Captain Foster sealed his suit. It didn’t help. Three other Godsons were dead or dying in fifty seconds.

  When it was over, the bees hovered, seeking their tormentors. Cadzie’s people saw only the cloud. Infrared showed only warm spots that dwindled and were gone.

  A hour later, the cloud had thinned, and an hour after that, they were gone, seeking a new nest.

  Cadzie and his people climbed out of their Cadzie blue survival sacks.

  Shaka was shaken. He murmured umoya ongcwele again and again. Cadzie knew that much Zulu. It meant, roughly, “Holy shit.”

  “I’d heard about that, but never seen it,” Cadzie murmured.

  Trudy leaned over and vomited. Cadzie steadied her as she did, and then held her as she wept. “What . . what have I done?”

  Shaka looked at her as if regarding a venomous snake. “They . . were your people.”

  “Not any more,” she said, raw. “If I don’t have you, I don’t have anyone.”

  “You have us,” Joanie said, gentling her as if she was a frightened horse.

  “Come on,” Piccolo said. “Let’s strip the suits. We have to move.”

  “You know . . .” Nnedi said. “We crossed a line, here. We lured them in. We triggered the bees.”

  “And they killed our people.”

  “Three of ours. Four of theirs.”

  “Shit.”

  “We’d better win, hadn’t we?” Cadzie said.

  ♦ ChaptEr 43 ♦

  tsiolkovskii

  Stype could not stop screaming.

  She grew gradually aware that her people were watching her. That did it. She dried her eyes and patched herself into the Speaker’s communication line as she had been requested to do.

  The Speaker was patient. “We are aware that you and Sven were more than friends. But we ask you to stand down.”

  She wiped her eyes. “Is that an order, sir?”

  A pause. “It is a recommendation.”

  “I don’t think I can do that, sir.”

  “It is more than a recommendation.”

  “Sir,” she said. “Would you like me to tender my resignation?”

  “No, Major Stype.”

  “Then I am going to hunt them down,” she said. “And kill them all. And will do my very, very best not to be killed in the process.”

  “We would appreciate that.”

  When the line went dead, the Speaker turned to his physician and assistant. “This situation is getting out of control. Wake him up.”

  “We have him at the tipping point,” Dr. Mandel said.

  “Take him over.”

  Ninety seconds of walking and elevator pod brought them to the cryonics lab. “We’ve been preparing for this for eighteen hours,” Chief Engineer Jorge Daytona said. “Bringing him closer to the surface without thawing all tissues. His brain oxygenation and nutrition has been achieved with a circulation system.”

  “Aren’t you still risking the brain tissue?”

  “There is a risk, yes. Greater risk of stroke and brain damage, less danger of heart attack. We were able to use drugs for the increase of tissue elasticity.”

  “He’s coming to,” Mandel said.

  The massive shape of Colonel Tsiolkovskii began to stir. His gray eyes opened. “Are . . are we there? Am I . . .”

  “You have your new legs,” the Speaker said. “And a new arm. As we promised. But no, we’re not at Hypereden.”

  “Where is Prophet Newsome?” Tsiolkovskii groaned.

  “He is dead.”

  The Russian showed no reaction to that. “Where are we?”

  “There was a secondary destination. Avalon. Tau Ceti IV.”

  Tsiolkovskii wagged his massive head slowly, from side to side, trying to clear it. “Tau Ceti . . IV? Then this is our destination?”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that,” Dr. Mandel said. “We’ll explain.”

  “Please.”

  “We need you. You’ll be at full strength in a day. Your regrown limbs are in perfect condition.”

  “I’m . . ready to serve.”

  Finally, the Speaker seemed to be satisfied. “We promised you the adventure of a lifetime. Here it is.”

  “I had dreams,” Tsiolkovskii mused. “We landed on a planet. There were fools who had squandered their heritage.”

  “Yes,” the Speaker said.

  The old soldier’s eyes brightened. “And something else. Creatures. Nothing from Earth. Is this right?”

  “Yes, there are creatures.”

  Tsiolkovskii nodded. “This is a great moment.”

  Dr. Charlotte Martine got the call while finishing breakfast. “I’ll be there,” she said. Big Shaka didn’t sound terribly excited, so she didn’t hurry.

  The morgue didn’t smell any worse than usual. “Hal and Towner had ice this time,” Shaka said. “It’s fresher. Look at it! It’s a wonderful intact dead cthulhu, the first we’ve ever had, and I’m going to learn everything about it.”

  “You need sleep,” Martine said. “You need to eat. You look like that cadaver, Doctor, only bonier.”

  “I worry about my son. But look, Charlotte, this is what I wanted to show you. This hole in the abdomen.”

  Charlotte Martine looked it over. A sharp point had stabbed deep into the creature’s belly, not quite where a human being would have an appendix. One thrust and . . Martine borrowed a probe and felt around.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Big Shaka, this isn’t at all like the wound we found in Aaron Tragon’s belly. This, the perpetrator dug straight in. He, she, it was looking for something and found it right away. Tragon’s killer dug in and felt around and stabbed in all directions and, I expect, got nothing.”

  Shaka smiled. “Shall we look at that previous corpse?”

  “Why?”

  “There might be a hole in that one too.”

  “I remember— All right, we’ll look, but I remember that cadaver was ripped half in two. One hole . . yes.” They were looking at a hologram display. Shaka rotated it. “It’s just one hole, Shaka, but it’s th
ere. Straight in and straight out. Whoever did that knew what he was looking for. And—”

  “It certainly wasn’t a grendel gun slug. And Aaron didn’t have it.”

  Twyla, Carlos’ girlfriend and the camp’s best psychologist, staggered from the town store bearing an armload of provisions. Zack tottered up to her before she could finish lashing them to the back of her electric bike. “Twyla!”

  She turned, panting. “What is it, Zack?”

  “I heard about a little conversation you had with Cadzie, analyzing some data from the Godson power suits.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Never mind. I heard that you were worried about a reading.”

  She considered, then answered carefully. “They may have programmed their people for hyperaggression. For enjoying the kill.”

  “Would that affect their . . law enforcement practices?”

  She seemed unhappy to answer. “They’re very disciplined. But it’s possible, especially in the heat of pursuit.”

  “And after the bees?”

  “Especially,” she said. “Nothing triggers anger like fear.”

  As they had planned to do, the Grendel Scouts fanned out in different directions, joining with other groups, splitting out again and traveling in all directions in an expanding fractal pattern. Using camouflage and thermal shields they did all they could to evade escape, even as some were rounded up.

  As planned, they did not resist if cornered: Cadzie wanted no more fatalities if possible.

  The Godsons noticed the tactic, even if they had no immediate strategy to counter it. “We have picked up traces. They’re doing a very good job of concealing their motions.”

  “But it is not totally effective?” the Speaker asked.

  “No. But there is a secondary level of concealment.”

  They produced a mapped pattern, showing four data points.