by Larry Niven
Lassiter pulled her back toward the door, the water foaming black and reddish in the retreating light.
Then they were through the door, but by that time the first of the eels had reached them—
And more than eels in the waning, fractured light. Something was in there. A lot of somethings. Machine-gun patter of feet in water. They were coming. Fast.
“Close the damned door!” she screamed, hearing that shriek as if another woman, a smaller, weaker, woman, had babbled the words. A woman she didn’t recognize. Surely not her . . .
Shock. She was in shock. She recognized it: the slow motion of tachypsychia, the disorientation, the disassociation. Her instructors had told her that recognition was the first step toward reintegration, and hopefully survival.
“Close the door!” Three men were yanking on the two levers, pushing them up, but nothing happened.
She pushed one aside, looking back at the gaping opening in the wall, the death space, from which water leaked and small, savage creatures clambered out of the wet. Something larger thundered toward them. Stype pushed with all the strength of her long powerful legs, then realized that the levers were not stuck, they were engaged in some kind of a notch, forgot that she had yanked the lever sideways after pulling it down. She pulled at it—
And the first eel was on her face. She managed to grab before its chisel teeth could set in her cheekbones, but ripping it away tore a flap of skin.
She screamed, the pain again fracturing thought. One single thought dominated everything, piercing even the pain and terror and shock. And that was the need to scream, “Grendels!”
Joanie was on her feet before the warning cry had finished echoing. Pure reflex, conditioned since childhood. She ran for the grendel guns before rationality kicked in and she realized that the Godsons still had them under guard. Everything seemed to be happening at slow motion, and she was aware of a voice in her head saying: Shoot me if you want. I’d rather be shot than torn apart by monsters.
And in that torpid state, from the corners of her eyes she saw that the other Grendel Scouts were also in motion, while the Godsons were barely reacting at all. Then her hands were on a rifle, and she spun, and as her fingers found the trigger and the first capacitor round was fired she saw that the Godson soldiers were starting to react, some slurred voice at the back of her head reassuring that their armored captors were not reacting slowly at all—it was just that the Grendel Scouts were obeying programming deeper than conscious thought.
♦ ChaptEr 55 ♦
the colonel
The Starborn had fled, but also left radio-controlled mining charges as they did, keyed to numbers on their demolition controller. Cadzie had planted the last of seven just a hundred meters back along a steadily narrowing tube. “Jesus,” Cadzie panted. “He’s still on our trail?”
“I told you,” Trudy said, her voice dull and flat. “He’s the best.”
Cadzie had certainly heard her say that, but the implications were just really sinking in. Denial is a powerful force. He hoped it wouldn’t kill them both. “Blow the tube,” he said.
“Cadzie!” It was Shaka. “We have grendels here! We’re in trouble and coming your way!”
In a blink, in an instant, everything changed. He reacted as if Colonel Tsiolkovskii was no longer a threat at all.
“You stay here,” Cadzie ordered Trudy. “I’m going back. They’ll need my help.”
“Hell if I am. Those are my people. All of them.”
“Sikes!” That was Tsiolkovskii’s voice, in their radio. “The situation has changed. Repeat: the situation has changed. We have been alerted that the Speaker now believes you to be innocent. Something has gone wrong in the city below. The creatures you call ‘grendels’ are attacking both our groups.”
“If this is a fucking bluff—”
“On my honor, it is not. I am going back down to lead the way. I am not asking you to come down. It is too late for that. I am asking you to go ahead and clear the way. Find a place for us to make a stand.”
Cadzie’s mind raced. “What should I be looking for?”
“A narrow tunnel we can collapse after our people are through. Hopefully access to the surface, an escape route. Or at least a way to get a radio signal to the surface so that we can get a rescue party down to us if we can’t get up top ourselves. Have you got anything you can use to leave markers for us?”
“I’m just supposed to trust you now?”
“I served in the same war with your grandfather, Sikes. He was an officer and a gentleman. And on my honor as an officer, I swear I’m telling you the truth. Your grandfather would respect that oath, and believe me.”
Cadzie glanced at Trudy, who nodded, ever so slightly. She believed him.
“All right,” Cadzie cursed under his breath, praying he was not making the worst mistake of his life. “I can cut arrows into the wall at every turn, and flares when possible.”
“That will have to do. Get to it. Tsiolkovskii out.”
♦ ChaptEr 56 ♦
retreat
In no more than an hour, Joanie’s world had changed so many times that she could barely think. From free, to a seesaw battle, to flight, to being trapped, to surrender. Fear that they would be executed . . followed by stern, but fair treatment accompanied by grudging respect . . barring that lunatic Stype.
And then the most savage and deadly reversal imaginable, when human beings ceased being adversaries as they scrambled for safety through a city scarred by rocket shells, and now swarming with carnivorous eel-like samlon. Most were no larger than medium-sized dogs, but a few were fully grown adult carnivores. They snapped at each other in warning, but what they really wanted, what they craved, was any flesh not their own.
“Retreat!”
The scream was given over and over again, echoing from the toothed ceiling, splintered by the narrow spaces of Whoville’s ancient, abandoned honeycomb.
They ran, and she saw a Godson pulled down by things that swarmed him, gave him no chance to fight back, barely a chance for anything but gargled screams.
Jason helped Jaxxon along. The older brother seemed stunned, foggy-headed, probably concussed. Half his face was scraped and scarred, and he’d lost a tooth.
No one would ever have trouble telling elder from younger Tuinukuafe brother. That was . . if they survived this dreadful day.
The creatures seemed not to have full control of speed, losing footing and overshooting their marks, the only thing that kept her alive as eels shot past her, smacking their heads into the rock walls. If they couldn’t flip back onto their feet instantly their brothers and sisters forgot their preference for human flesh and fell onto them ravenously.
Waste not, want not, she thought to herself. There was a mad giggle in there somewhere.
Then she was into one of the tunnels, an armored Godson behind her. In that narrowed space the automatic weapons fire was devastating against the horde, so that as she ran, and then scrambled along a ridged floor, the earsplitting, sharp percussive sounds behind her were a comfort, signaled the possibility of survival.
Jaxxon crawled painfully after Jason along the tube in front of her, and as it narrowed had to wiggle on his belly to stop bumping his head along the ridged ceiling.
Behind her, a scream and the sound of automatic weapons fire. And then thunder that shook walls and floor.
Jaxxon stopped and looked back over his shoulder. In the flashlight glare, his torn and bleeding brown face was furrowed and flat, pulled back in a mixture of fear and rage: combat face. War mask.
She’d seen it on Landing Day, when he and his brother performed a traditional Maori Haka war dance. That had been a game, something that they had learned from videos. This was different.
He pressed himself against the wall. There was little room, but he waved at her. “Squeeze past,” he said, voice a rumble. “I’m going back.”
“Joanie, don’t!” Jason called back. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying!”
>
“Hell if I will,” she said. “Keep going. You aren’t dying heroically today, asshole.”
He glared at her through a crimsoned mask, but turned and kept climbing.
The retreating Starborn and Godsons scrambled on hands and knees through a narrowing tunnel. The grade was about twenty percent, and slippery wet, but ridged so that they were able to get enough purchase to continue the climb.
The world shook.
“What is that?”
Another explosion behind them.
“What the hell?” Joanie said.
They heard a cough ahead, and a scratching sound, and from around a bend Cadzie’s head appeared. “What’s happening?” he asked.
“Colonel Tsiolkovskii is bringing up the rear. I think that he may have set off a detonation, collapsed the tunnel.”
♦ ChaptEr 57 ♦
strategy
They’d gathered at Zack’s comfortably cluttered office, where they could use the electronics. Big Shaka’s face and mood had soured. “It makes sense. If the Godsons think the cthulhus had something to do with Aaron’s death . . and can be . . I don’t know . . reasoned with? That there might be something there that they can use? If we trust that they know what they’re doing, then the cthulhus are allies. And they’re going to need them.”
“But . . the attack has been called off.” Carlos said.
“Do we know if that message has been received? If it can be received?” Sylvia asked.
“We don’t know,” Shaka said. “But we have another problem. Look at this.”
An image appeared of an alpine pasture, ringed with mountains.
“This is the territory above that magnetic anomaly? This ‘underground city’?” Sylvia said.
“It is. But Messenger achieved a deep scan just twenty minutes ago, looking for thermal signatures.”
The image changed. Scribes, visible from orbit. As the deep scan sank in, smaller ovals moving below them: the ecology that accompanied them. The scan focused through the crust. Darkness, and then a few vaguely human-shaped red blobs. Deeper. Scuttling crimson reptilian shapes, followed by additional levels of dark tunnels and rock, down and down to a cavity large enough to swallow Camelot’s central colony . . and on one side of it, a seething mass of red.
“What is that?” Carlos said, pointing. “Geothermal heat?”
“That’s what we thought at first. But we did a higher resolution scan. Bring this up ten times, please.”
The red differentiated into a crawling mass of horror. Refined again, as the computer analyzed and clarified until they were looking at something terribly familiar.
“Oh no,” Carlos said. “Oh shit.”
“We don’t know what this place is. Whether it is natural or artificial. But there are hundreds of them.”
“Hundreds?” Carlos groaned. “Grendels?”
“Not on speed, I don’t think. The heat isn’t intense enough. Not most of them. And we don’t think they’re mature, either.”
“Note that they have a sort of Brownian motion in all directions, but compress at this point, here? Here’s another scan,” Little Shaka said.
The image changed.
“A wall?” Shaka said. “Not a natural barrier. And apparently composed of a composite substance. Built to keep them out of the city?”
Carlos nodded. “I’d think so, yes. Then the kids are safe, yes?”
“We can hope so. Have you seen this inventory of what the Godsons were carrying in with them?”
“Sure.”
Shaka grimaced. “Did you see the explosive rounds? Armor piercing rounds?”
“Yes . . oh, God.”
“Yes,” Shaka said. “Oh God indeed yes, that’s one of the things that might have happened. Imagine a pitched battle. Just one of those shells going in the wrong direction.”
“The wall has lasted thousands of years . . .”
Shaka frowned. “In a geologically stable region. We have a problem. And part of the problem is that we don’t even know if our message can reach them. We don’t know how long it will take to reach them.”
“We have rescue on the way?”
“Yes, but through the mines?” Shaka asked, clearly sceptical. “Hours in the water. And if the wall was keeping them back, it is reasonable to assume that the breach has exposed the grendel breeding chambers . . .”
“Breeding chambers?”
“Not a poor assumption. Our best current hypothesis is that cthulhu may have bred the grendels. Supplied them with parasites to increase their intelligence. Depending on how important they considered grendels to be . . .”
Sylvia was not happy. “Anyone who kept dangerous animals that close by would have to have had a damned good reason.”
“Agreed,” Shaka said. “Anything from biologicals to tactical defense capabilities to . . I don’t know. Food?”
“Food?” Sylvia was even less pleased.
Shaka shrugged. “We eat samlon.”
Sylvia’s face soured. “Never again. Go ahead.”
“The collapse of the wall could give grendels access to the underwater tunnels. Imagine our rescue troops running into a murder of grendels. Underwater.” The idea was pure nightmare. “I’m sorry, but that’s a nonstarter. We can’t take a risk like that.”
“What else can we do?” Sylvia said.
“The surface. We may have to drill down from the top. We anticipated that when we were worried about collapsing the roof on the city. Now we’re worried about collapsing it on our people.”
“What was the time frame?”
“Days,” Shaka said. “The Godsons might have better equipment . . on Messenger. Bringing it down, mounting it . . .”
“Madre Dios. They might only have hours.”
The door slammed open. Trevanian ran in, holding a sheet of paper. His hand trembled as he combed them through a mop of pale hair. His face looked drained of blood. “We’ve got a message!”
“From the Starborn?” Sylvia asked.
Trevanian shook his head.
“This Russian colonel?” Carlos asked.
Again, a negative response. “Well, who, then?”
Trevanian swallowed, hard. “Umm . . I don’t know quite how to say this, but I think it’s from the cthulhus.”
♦ ChaptEr 58 ♦
language lessons
The communications shack was packed so tightly the air felt thick enough to drink.
“Look at these messages,” Big Shaka said. “Came in from Cassandra, routed through the dolphin system.”
“The . . what?” Dr. Martine asked.
“The dolphin speech project,” Shaka said. “We brought a pod of adult dolphins in cold sleep, and a thousand embryos.”
“Why adults . . ?” Martine asked, and then seemed to figure it out for himself. “Because they spoke the language, and embryos wouldn’t. Did you crack it? I remember that Earth hadn’t, by the time we left.”
“We’ve made strides. A vocabulary of about three hundred words,” Trevanian said. “And apparently, the dolphins have been talking to the cthulhus.”
The implications were obvious. “Let’s see the message.”
“Remember . . it went from cthulhu to dolphin to Cassandra to us. Everything about it is questionable.”
And on the screen, the words: “Your children in danger. They fight each other. They free the grendels.”
“Free the grendels?” Carlos groaned, disbelieving. “Who would be stupid enough . . .”
“Cassandra,” Sylvia asked. “Can you send a message?”
“To the dolphins, yes. If they can speak to the cthulhus . . .”
“Do your dolphins have . . I don’t know how to put this, but . . a sense of humor?”
“You think they might be playing a joke?”
“Joke, maybe,” Trevanian said. “But not a cruel one.”
“Fair enough. Cassandra, send a message: can you help them?”
The message was sent. They waited.
“So . . it goes from here, to Cassandra to the dolphins to the local cthulhus . . to the mainland? How?”
“We don’t know. But whales can communicate for over a hundred kilometers. There are theories that suggest they actually had a world-spanning network.”
“But that’s in water . . .”
“And we’re dealing with an alien species. We just don’t know.”
And then they had a response: Give us back magnets.
“Magnets? What magnets?”
“Holy crap,” Trevanian said. “Are they talking about the dipoles?”
Quick conversation. “We can return them . . .”
“Wait a minute,” Martine said. “What is the chemical composition of these dipoles?”
Cassandra answered. “According to spectroscopic analysis, iron and trace minerals.”
The doctor smacked her hand on the table. “Then we can make a hundred of these things. More. Tell them we can manufacture what they no longer can!”
They did. And a moment later they received an answer. “We can merge.”
♦ ChaptEr 59 ♦
revenge of the ants
As a boy in Minsk, Anton Tsiolkovskii and his older brother Mikhael had owned an ant farm made of a blue nutrient gel. They had not needed to add either food or water, and a pale light at the bottom of the display allowed him to see what they were up to at all times. The little black insects had been able to eat their way through the gel, making their living spaces as they did. Fascinating. The tunnels looked a little like the swirls one sees in water when you pull the plug in a basin. Branching, looping, joining and breaking away.
He and Mikhael had watched for endless hours, and then Mikhael had had an inspiration. He’d begged their father to buy a second one, and deliberately populated it with red ants instead of black, after researching to be sure the nutrient gel would sustain them. After weeks, when they had built a civilization of equal complexity, he watched with wide-eyed fascination as Mikhael rigged a plastic tube connection between the two farms, so that the two civilizations collided.