Priam's Lens

by Chalker, Jack L

  “Ship oars for a little, Father,” Harker called to him. “We’re leaving poor Sergeant Mogutu well behind.”

  “Huh? Oh—yes, sorry. We ought to have tethered them to our boat, you know. Then we’d have at least three pairs of strong arms for this job and we’d not risk losing them.”

  “We’d risk losing all of us in one unexpected swell if we did that,” Harker responded. “That’s all right. It’s nice to see those arrogant sons of—well, you know—taken down a peg. They’ll be all right if we have no unexpected nastiness, and if we do, it won’t be from this sea or from the weather, looking at the sky and the direction of the clouds.”

  “No, it’ll stay this way if it starts out this way,” Chicanis agreed. “Where did you learn the water part of sailing, if I might ask?”

  “It’s part of the training in the Navy, believe it or not. You not only learn how the Navy evolved from a seagoing one but the training centers are on worlds with oceans and bays and large rivers and you have to do a lot of work in small and medium-sized boats on them. These kind of boats, though—these were for Commando school. They didn’t let us have our fancy suits for the final exam. Stuck us in the water with one of these and very minimal supplies, a knife and a small concealed laser pistol like we’d crashed on some deserted water world. We had to make it into shore, after finding the shore, and, with no map, no real knowledge of where we were, we had to survive through the jungle and find our headquarters unit and report in. All we knew was that the unit was somewhere within a hundred and fifty kilometers of where we were dropped. Period. You just about couldn’t do it alone. They saw to that. You needed to find your mates, keep your own team together, and work as a unit. Everybody seemed to have some knowledge or skill the others lacked, or at least hadn’t paid attention to. That kept us from eating poisoned fruit or being strangled by a carnivorous vine. It was a problem a lot like this one, but with commonality of training.”

  “You don’t approve of Doctor Socolov and me being along, I know,” the priest responded, “but, believe me, it’s part of the mix. Right now I know exactly where we are and what these waters are like. I know where we’re going to land.” He turned and looked at the land that seemed so close and yet was still several kilometers away. “Look at how gloomy and ominous it seems from here, with the clouds ringing and obscuring the mountains. And yet I spent many a summer in those mountains, hiking the trails, looking out on great natural beauty. Some of those peaks are close to six kilometers high. I never got that far, but even from a two-kilometer height down to sea level you can see forever, or so it seems.”

  Harker looked at the mountains that seemed to form a ring around the flat plain to which they were now headed. “Do those mountains go around the whole continent?”

  Chicanis laughed. “No, of course not! But they’re one of several great ranges on Eden, and the only one that actually does go round in sort of a U-shaped pattern. The passes are almost two kilometers up or higher, and it’s an effective barrier. It’s actually more than one range, and if you saw the maps you’d know that it only seems to make the U here, but, of course, for all practical purposes, it does and is. The landform and its proximity to the coast made it ideal for agricultural growth. You could grow anything in there. I think that’s why our indications are that there are many human survivors about on the plain. By the time they had to crawl out of their holes and forage, the place had been scoured and then the old plants started to grow and bloom once more. It’s all wild now, of course, but I’ll wager I can find the old company patterns.”

  The priest had seemed energized since landing on the planet; for all the horrors and the unknown perils to come, he was home.

  Harker looked around. The tide from Achilles’s pull was fairly strong, and it would take them in eventually no matter what they did. He wondered, though, what might be lurking below.

  “Father, what sort of creatures live in these oceans? Anything we need to be worried about?”

  “Not in this close, I shouldn’t think,” the priest replied. “There wasn’t a whole lot of land-based animal life when this world was discovered and developed, but the sea was filled with it. This is a water world, really; the two continents are relatively small, perhaps both of them together making up no more than thirty percent of the surface. Let us just say that the deep ocean creatures are not terribly friendly and are quite large, but that they are also quite alien in form. It’s the small creatures, the viswat as we called them, the ones that have the kind of ecological niche of small fish or shellfish here, that are nasty. They move by the thousands in swarms and they are very hard and have very sharp outlines, and they can cut you to pieces just going by. That doesn’t worry the predators—viswat are near the bottom of the food chain—but they do make it difficult to do ocean swimming.” He sighed. “I suppose the water ecology survived pretty well intact. It’s ironic, in a way. Almost like God was making a comment.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, consider. These Titans, whatever they are, are certainly land-based, and they like the sorts of places we like. So they scour and then remake the land to suit them, as we did, pretty well plowing under what humans built, so the only region that remains pretty much as God made it is the sea. These are the times when one almost questions whose side God is on.”

  “How much longer, Harker?” Katarina Socolov called. She looked kind of green but hadn’t thrown up for a while, although perhaps that was because there wasn’t much left to heave.

  Harker looked at the beach. “Twenty, thirty minutes, I’d say, unless we pick up speed with this incoming tide. Don’t worry, Doc. You only wish you could die; you’ll be fine within minutes of our getting to dry land so long as you replace your fluids.”

  Father Chicanis looked ahead at where they seemed to be going. “We’d best aim for Capri Point, there,” he said, pointing to a rocky outcrop. “There are some fairly nasty creatures that dwell under the sand and are particularly treacherous after it’s been wet down. That’s real rock there, a kind of shale, and there’s only a small stretch of beach to cover. When we get close, give me a rifle and you handle the boat and supplies.”

  “A rifle?” Harker was intrigued. “Why?”

  “Because they’ll come up from under the sand and pull you right down into it. I’ve seen them take limbs, even whole people. We never could wipe them out because they moved out under the sea and onto the shelf and through here and then came back when nobody was looking. No poison or other impediment seemed to do any good at all.” Harker looked over at Mogutu and N’Gana in their boat. “They know about this?”

  “Of course. It only now occurred to me how few briefings you had on this world.”

  Harker sighed and shook his head. “Sure must have made afternoons with the family at the beach a real adventure. Anything else like that I should know?”

  “Nothing lethal. Actually, we used to have a kind of grid that gave a small electrical charge to the sand. You never even noticed it, but it drove all the no-see-ums away. My thinking is that it probably hasn’t been powered for almost a century.”

  “Good point. And when we get off the sand, if we can?”

  “Beyond the beach, I suspect that it’s going to be as new to me as it is to you. You’ve seen the three-dimensional maps, the scanning data, all that. I can recognize the land-forms and some of the old patterns, like I said, but the rest—it’s new. The scour took most everything out, and this is all new growth. It even appears that the roadways and farms had been scraped away, although you can still see the road paths and patterns in the pictures. How easily they’ll be to find on the ground is a different story.”

  “I’ll settle for any kind of road,” Socolov moaned. “Nothing on land could be worse than this!”

  They continued on in with the tide. In another half hour, they approached the beach near the rocky outcrop the priest had called Capri Point. “Going in fast,” Harker warned. “Father, you first. Get onto the rocks and cover us f
rom as high as you can safely stand. Doc, I’m sorry about your sickness, but you’re gonna have to get off fast and pretty much under your own power. Get to the rocks and stay there! As soon as you’re clear, I’m gonna try and throw the line for the supplies. Doc, you’ll have to hold onto it because the padre’s gonna be shooting, I suspect. Then I’ll come up with the line for the boat and Father Chicanis and I will bring it up onto the rocks as fast as possible. Doc, your job is to hold onto that supply rope and don’t fall onto the sand. Got it?”

  She looked nervous and still sick, but she nodded. Harker went to the back of the boat, Chicanis took a rifle, inserted a clip, and stood near the front. Harker lowered a plastic tiller into the water and with all his strength battled the tide and waves to bring the boat as close to the rocks as possible without crashing onto them.

  “Hold on!” he shouted above the sounds of crashing waves. “Everybody ready! Now!”

  There was a tremendous lurch, and the boat ran up on the sand just a meter or so from the start of the rocky outcrop. Harker had proved himself a real expert sailor. Chicanis had been briefly knocked back by the force of the landing. He was unsteady as the waves continued to hit, but fired three loud shots into the sand just beyond and then immediately jumped out and raced for the rocks.

  The bullets had done nothing, but as he hit the sand there was a sudden series of undulations of the yellow beach as if a horde of tiny rodents lived just beneath, and they all headed right for him. He made the rocks before they could catch him, though, and they stopped dead, as if waiting.

  “Did you see ’em?” Harker called, pointing.

  “I got ’em! Don’t worry!”

  Harker turned to Socolov, who looked suddenly more terrified than green. “Doc, you can’t stay here and we have another boat coming in! This is what the job is. It’s a little late to lose your nerve now! Come forward!” He didn’t like to be so blunt and commanding to her, but time was not on their side.

  She moved forward, but he could see her shaking. He took the long line of yellow rope and put it in her hand and then adjusted things, twisting this way and that, so she’d have a good grip. “Now, you don’t have to haul the stuff in,” he reminded her. “Just hold on!”

  She looked out at the beach. There were perhaps five, six meters to the start of the rocks, not much more.

  “Go, little lady!” the priest shouted. “I will cover you! Just follow my footprints!”

  She started, then froze. “I—I can’t seem to move.”

  “You go or I’m going to pick you up and throw you out on the sand,” Harker snapped. “Now!” He moved as if he were going to do just that, and she shot him a glance of fear and hatred that he’d not seen in many years, not since he was training recruits in Commando units, but she went.

  Almost immediately the sands began to come to life again, but now Father Chicanis took aim and started firing.

  The sands suddenly erupted and there was a tremendous angry roar, and a knifelike claw bigger than a man shot out of the sands and straight into the air. Chicanis ignored it and concentrated on a spot to the right and just a bit back of the claw; it was clear that he was hitting something big and nasty from the way things were shaking. It was almost as if the sands had erupted in a kind of volcanic fury.

  Harker didn’t wait to see the show. He took the boat line and made for the rocks, dragging the boat behind him. Only when he felt he was on the rocks did he turn and call, “Father! Help me pull it in!”

  Chicanis was by him in an instant and the two pulled the boat onto the rocks. Harker immediately looked inside for another rifle. He’d had some elementary instruction during the time on the island, but he knew damned well he couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with one. On the other hand, he could hit a beach, and anybody could hit one of those monsters that lurked below.

  He took one glance around and saw Katarina Socolov sitting on the rocks, line still wrapped around her right hand, staring straight ahead, not at them or any action, as if in shock. She would have to wait; there was a second boat to get in.

  Chicanis pointed to the sands where something was still convulsing. “We may be in luck! That’s a smaller one than I’m used to, and to put up that much fuss I’d say another one is taking advantage of its weakness and attacking it.” He turned and waved Mogutu in.

  The colonel wasn’t any more thrilled by the sights on the beach than Socolov had been, but he understood the problem and had faced equally nasty creatures in the past.

  “Probably should have used the machine gun,” the priest commented to himself, ejecting a clip and slapping in a new one. “Oh, well, too late now. Here they come! Think of a blind crab, Harker! Don’t shoot the claws, shoot the body!”

  Mogutu had thought of a machine gun, but he was more concerned with just getting on shore near the rocks. He wasn’t as precise as Harker, and at the last minute the boat was lifted up by a wave and deposited slightly inland on the beach about ten meters away and perhaps twenty meters from where the monsters were obviously ending their fight.

  “Get out and both of you pull the boat here!” Harker virtually screamed at them. “We’ll do the cover! Get a move on! They’ll be able to feel you walking through the bottom of the boat!”

  The idea was sufficient to get even the still pale N’Gana moving. Mogutu lifted his machine gun and sprayed the area around where the underground titans were going at it and then started some bursts along the path where they would have to run pulling the boat and its contents. To everyone’s relief, nothing erupted, and that was enough for the two mercenaries, who leaped out of the boat and began pulling it on the run toward the rocks.

  Suddenly something popped from the sand under the rear part of the boat with enough force to throw it into the air several meters and spill out some of the contents. Said contents included the Pooka Hamille, who launched into the air and went into a steady whirling motion that made him next to impossible to see in detail. He was a long sausagelike blur, and he was headed straight for the rocks.

  “I’ll be damned!” Harker muttered as he fired into the area around the back of the boat. “The damned thing can fly!”

  The Pooka may have been able to fly, but it wanted to fly as little as possible. As soon as Hamille cleared the sands and saw rock, it landed with a loud splat and immediately coiled and turned, tentacles emerging, watching the two mercenaries. Harker made a mental note to remember how fast the Quadulan could move if it wanted to.

  Something was pushing the sand up like a wall, catching and overturning the boat. The two men knew they couldn’t save it; they dropped the lines and ran like hell.

  The wall followed at almost the same pace, but as soon as they hit the rocks it stopped and then subsided.

  “The supplies!” Mogutu gasped, breathing hard but pointing at the overturned boat. “We have to get them!” Harker and Chicanis looked at him. “You volunteering, Sarge?” the Navy man asked. “’Cause I got to tell you, I don’t want to get back out there until I’m ready to leave. And we have our boat and supplies!”

  “I could order you to get them,” N’Gana said sternly, out of breath but recovering rather quickly now from seasickness.

  “Colonel, you and I both know, as old fighting men, that there are orders you give because they will be enforced and orders you give because they should be enforced,” Harker responded. “And then there are orders that are meaningless. That would be this case. I thought you divided things pretty well between the two so there was some redundancy. We’ve got one. Let’s leave it at that, unless you can figure out an easy way to get them.”

  N’Gana and Mogutu both looked back at their boat, upside down in the sand. To get the supplies, somebody would have to run toward the sand monsters, turn the boat over, then drag the supplies up on the rocks. The question was whether or not it was worth it.

  “You’re right, Harker,” the colonel said with a sigh. “But we’re down to one change of clothing each, and we’ve more than halved our
guns and ammunition. It will be pretty tight.”

  “Colonel, human beings have somehow managed to survive here, at least in small numbers, with a lot less, I bet,” Father Chicanis responded. “I think we will cope.” Harker stared back at the other boat. “The supplies will probably stick in the sand, for all the good they’ll do anybody. Looks like the boat will go back out with the tide, so at least there won’t be obvious signs of a landing here in a day or so. Let’s get the boat up and into the brush and hide it, then take inventory. I think we should be inland and well away from the beach before nightfall.”

  They all turned to business, then stopped. Katarina Socolov was still sitting there, still staring.

  Harker went over to her. “It’s all right. We made it. We’re here! We’re alive!”

  When she didn’t react, he put out a hand and touched her shoulder. She suddenly whirled and screamed, “Don’t you touch me! Don’t you touch me!”

  “I won’t touch you,” he responded gently. “Not unless you don’t get off this coast.”

  SEVENTEEN

  A Long Walk in the Sun

  Katarina Socolov had not said a word after they got the supplies from the surviving boat unpacked and divided up. There were now only three backpacks for the five members of the team who could handle backpacks, the Pooka being built for different things. Mogutu took one, Father Chicanis took another, and Harker took the third. The commander of the expedition had not volunteered, and Socolov, though she had trained with a heavy pack, was nonetheless the lightest and smallest of the humans. She also gave no sign of volunteering.

  Harker wasn’t sure if it was shock, self-doubt after the rugged landfall, or his own harsh barking at her to do what had to be done that was causing her sudden withdrawal, but for now they had enough of problems that he decided not to push it. Either she’d snap out of it and rejoin the rest of them or she’d break, in which case, in the cold reality of survival in hostile territory, she would become a liability.