by Larry Niven
“Usually I count sheep. You wouldn’t believe what was vaulting the fence last night—”
Jerry peeled back the outer tarp.
“Sheez!” Sylvia moved back from the sudden stench of unrefrigerated flesh. It smelled wet and uncooked and corrupt: the kind of odor that conjures an image of hungry flies and heavy spices; the smell that permeates a backstreet butcher shop on a warm summer afternoon.
Zack was trying to back out of the room, but the sight and moist sound as the tarp was peeled away held him transfixed. As the last layer of cloth left the corpse, he grunted in disgust and turned his head.
One of the calf’s legs was gone. Another was broken, chewed almost completely through, hanging at an angle. A hideously raw wound gaped in the center of the body. Skin and muscle had been ripped away, ribs snipped cleanly or shattered, jagged edges jutting through the flesh. The bones were grooved and splintered as if something had tried to push Ginger sideways through a wheat thresher.
Marnie had come in; she hooked a gauze mask around her ears. “All right, Jerry, start the camera.” Her voice had a lisp that turned “Jerry” to “Sherry,” although she pronounced each word with extreme care.
Jerry looked up at the ceiling. “Cassandra. Program. Autopsy assistant. Run.”
A glowing crystal at the end of a gooseneck extension snaked down from the ceiling. The video camera paused patiently as Jerry adjusted a collar at the top of its neck. Its red eye winked on. “Okay. Program is running. Recorders on. Go, Marnie.”
Marnie wheeled over the tray of instruments and pulled on rubber gloves. The stomach wound swallowed her arms to the elbow.
“I note puncture marks around the throat without further damage inflicted there. Buttocks and abdominal muscle removed. I suggest that death was caused by severing of the jugular and carotids, but that the attacker dragged his prey to safety, and there consumed the, ah, missing tissue and internal organs.” Her delivery was precise enough to compensate for much of the mushiness of her lisp. Years from now this would be seen all over the Earth.
“The bones are neatly sheared—almost too neatly, I would think. Jerry, take a look at this.”
Her husband came to her side and pulled on a pair of plastic gloves. “Sylvia,” he said quickly. “Get on the console and follow us with the camera.” The glowing crystal wound its way to Marnie’s shoulder and perched there, peering. “What have you got?”
“Just a moment.” Sylvia fiddled with the controls. Suddenly, the abdominal wound was floating in front of her, in living color. Her own stomach rolled, and she leached some of the color from the video stage. Little of this would be seen by Earth’s billions. Too much blood. Maybe there was an underground market?
Jerry’s hand walked into the image, pointing at a rib that hadn’t been ripped away. His scarecrow body moved smoothly now, in familiar habit patterns. “We have bite marks here—” His fingers traced several notches. “I want a projection based on bite radius, jaw pressure and overall strength. Whatever killed Ginger had power. It had to move her fast.”
“I’m not doing anything useful,” Zack said. “I’m going over to Control to check the infrared returns.” No one answered. “I just hope to hell something has come up.”
As soon as he was out of the room, Marnie looked up. “Nothing yet? Not a flicker?”
Sylvia shook her head. “Nothing. Not one of the Skeeters has picked up anything larger than a turkey.”
“And Cadmann’s still out there looking?”
“First out, last back. You know Madman Weyland.” The torn flesh disappeared from the video stage, replaced by a two-dimensional column of numbers. Sylvia turned to the computer monitor. “Cassandra. Imaging.” As she talked, her words and numbers were transformed into lines of color. She manipulated them with an optical pencil until they became teeth and a crude mandible.
Marnie exchanged terse words with her husband. They looked at the wounds and the luminous outline hovering in the air in front of the pregnant biologist, and tried to shut down their imaginations. They were not entirely successful.
Ginger had yielded up the last of her secrets, and lay quiet now, refolded within her shroud of waterproofed canvas.
The operating room reeked of disinfectant and strong coffee. They sipped coffee while they examined the video image. A disembodied brace of teeth without muscle or flesh floated in the air, grinning, mocking their confusion.
“I come up with something like a hyena’s jaw, more teeth, broader bones.” Sylvia’s finger traced the jawline.
“Not strong enough,” Jerry sighed. “Remember the way the ribs were sheared. Cleanly. I can’t think of anything strong enough—”
“—to cut those bones?” Marnie shook her head. “We’re not talking strength here. There are plenty of animals who have the strength. It’s the pressure I can’t believe.” The camera hummed. “So much force concentrated in such a small area. You’re talking about a carnivore built like a stegosaurus—leviathan body, peanut head.” She drained her cup, clattering it down on the counter. “And I don’t believe that, either.”
“Don’t believe what?” Sylvia was staring at those jaws. The teeth would be like shears, and unbelievably powerful. She shuddered.
“I don’t believe a carnivore the size of a rhino with the speed of a leopard.” Marnie threw her hands into the air. “I’m sorry! There’s just nothing that size on the island.”
“Maybe it swam over,” Sylvia said in a small voice.
“But there’s nothing here now.”
“Maybe it swam back.”
Jerry stared at the image for a long moment, then shook his head uneasily. “We’d better hope to hell that that’s just exactly what it did.”
The pterodon beat its leathery brown wings in slow motion, craning its claw-hammer head to skaw displeasure at the humming, hovering intruder in its domain. Frightened at first, it had lost some of its natural caution, spiraling closer and closer to the thing, trying to decide if it posed a threat. Suddenly, the bulbous head of the intruder erupted in light, turning dusk into midday, burning brighter than Tau Ceti at its height. Blinded, the pterodon cawed and reversed its arc, heading for the safety of its nest, high in the crags of Mucking Great Mountain.
Cadmann chuckled and wiggled the searchlight toggle, playing the Skeeter’s beams around the pond at the base of the mountain. It scanned clear, except for a few samlon near the surface. Nothing large had been near it recently: the infrared would pick up a man-sized heat trace half an hour old.
Fed by trickles of snow melt and a tributary from the southern highlands, the pond was the largest body of still water for fifty square kilometers. If there was a large carnivore in the vicinity, surely it knew of this watering hole. Perhaps it even fished for samlon here . . .
The pond stared up at him, a blind eye around the edges, dead black in the center. The water shivered as he brought the Skeeter down for a closer look. “How deep are you, fella—?”
Before the thought could congeal, his earphones buzzed. Cadmann cleared his throat into the microphone. “Weyland here. Found anything?”
It was Zack on the other end. “Not a thing, Cad. You?”
“Not yet, but—”
“We need to have Town meeting tonight. Head on in.”
“I’ve still got a quadrant to sweep.”
Cadmann could almost hear Zack counting under his breath. “Cadmann—you’ve already swept your entire area twice. Everyone else is in. We’ve been at this all day. We need to talk, and nobody wants to wait any longer.”
“But—”
“I’m too tired to play martinet, Cad. Do me a favor and just come back in.”
The pond stared at him. Something about it made his stomach itch with tension. He wheeled the Skeeter around for a long look at the plateau. The brambles were struggling for a foothold on the square kilometer of naked rock and Cadmann saw that yes, a trap could . . .
Suddenly, he was smiling as he climbed, spun the Skeeter aro
und and dived toward the lights of the Colony.
There were no colorful newsreels or densely worded technical briefs displayed on the walls of the communal meal hall.
There were no sharp, tangy vegetable smells, and no warm buzz of camaraderie.
A low mutter of disgust tinged with fear wound its way through the group as they faced the floating image of the dead calf, its wounds marked with flashing green labels.
Mary Ann gripped Cadmann’s hand; her nails bit into his palm every time the camera zoomed in on a wound, until he carefully disengaged her hand and put it firmly in her lap.
At the head table, Zack paused in his comments to take a drink. It seemed to brace him. Cadmann wondered what exactly was in that pitcher.
“This is our best reconstruction,” he concluded, rather apologetically. “Sylvia extrapolated this from the spread and depth of the bite marks. We have an eighteen-centimeter jaw base, and a roughly wedge-shaped head. It looks like something sired upon a rattlesnake by a bear.” Nobody laughed. “Um . . . massively strong jawbones and corresponding muscles. We can’t be sure how much such an animal would weigh. Certainly enough to destroy any credibility the tracks by the chicken cages might have had.” He peered out into the audience. “I’m afraid that that incident was a particularly unfunny prank.”
Gregory Clifton handed a drowsy April to his wife, Alicia, and stood. “Zack, let’s cut the crap. I worked on the computer map. Half the Colony saw the information as it was coming in. There isn’t an adult here who can’t interpret the technical data for himself. How about opening up the floor?”
The applause shook the room.
Zack shrugged, spreading his hands. “All right, Gregory—what’s your idea?”
“We know about the pterodons. None of them get too large. But maybe there’s another species of flying carnivore. Something the size of—oh, crap, let’s say a California condor . . . ”
There was a quick spate of derisive laughter. Jon van Don yelled, “What the hell, why not a roc, Greg?”
Barney Carr brayed with laughter. “Watch out for flying elephants!”
“Wing span–to-weight ratio, Greg,” Stu called. “It would have to be huge to lift a calf. Much larger than a ground carnivore capable of bringing down the same size prey. And how would it evade the Skeeters?”
Greg held up his hand. “Hear me out. It wouldn’t need to fly away with the calf. It could fly in, and then drag a heavy victim to a safe place. And maybe it nests up in Mucking Great Mountain—”
There was a shout from the back of the auditorium, and Andy Washington, the big black man from the engineering crew, stood. He was fighting a losing battle with an evil grin. “I say our mistake is thinking it had to be big. Maybe it’s not an it. Maybe it’s a them, like a herd of Marabunta army mice—”
“Something like a glassfish,” Jean Patterson added. “A super-chameleon—”
“It has to be coldblooded to evade the infrared—”
“The hell it does! There’re hot springs everywhere you look!” The opinions were flying too thick to stop now, and Zack sat back, pleased and relieved by the healthy creative energy being released.
La Donna Stewart stood, tiny fists poised lightly on her hips. “Has anybody considered a borer?”
“I think we’re listening to one—Ow!” There was the sound of an affectionately brisk slap as she whacked her fiancé, Elliot, and the room quieted for a moment.
“I mean like a mole, or like ants or termites. This entire area could be riddled with tunnels and we’d never know it. It could operate like a trapdoor spider. Engineering should put together a seismic detector, Zack . . . ”
Andy whipped out a pad of paper and started making notes to himself.
Zack Moskowitz took the opportunity to grasp control again. “A good suggestion, La Donna. All good suggestions . . . ” He glared at the engineer. “Except maybe the Marabunta mice, Andy.”
He touched a switch, and the grotesque skull disappeared from the wall. He chuckled darkly. “I know that some of you don’t even believe in this thing. There is . . . one possibility that Rachel suggested to me. As camp psychologist she felt it was time we discussed it openly.”
He took another sip from the thermos, then plunged ahead, dead serious now. “We all know about Hibernation Instability. It’s no joke to any of us. Personally, I’ve noticed that I don’t parse as well as I once did. That I need a calculator for operations that I used to do in my head. And I wonder, is that just age? Or could it be those little ice crystals that weren’t supposed to form?
“We’ve had major memory losses, impairment of motor skills, mood swings and clinical personality disorders—all of which we’ve been able to handle by juggling work duty and schedules. A few cases have required chemical stabilization.”
The muttering in the room had quieted. They were ahead of him, and heads nodded in anticipatory agreement.
“Maybe things have been too placid here. The crops are thriving, we’ve had no deaths—hell, no real injuries—”
Cadmann looked around him in the dark. A little white lie there, Zack. Ernst walked right of the cliff and broke his ankle his first week down.
“Just maybe there are those among us who feel that it’s been too easy, and perhaps for our own good want to—” His fingers fluttered as he fought for the right words—“want to keep our guard up, our spines stiff, by creating a bogyman. A harmless joke, perhaps, except that the loss of the dog, the chickens and now the calves suggests a rather disturbing trend.
“I won’t suggest that this is what has happened. But I would be remiss to exclude the possibility from this discussion. So . . . if anyone has anything to talk about, please . . . ”
He looked out over the audience, which was dead silent. Zack gripped the edge of the table, his knuckles pale. He moistened his lips nervously. Alicia’s baby started to cry, and she blithely offered it a nipple.
Zack cleared his throat uncomfortably. “No one has anything to say? Carlos?”
Their carpenter/historian shook his head. He peered at his fingernails, inspecting them in the dark. “Not me, amigo. I uh . . . I heard that the tracks by the chicken cage might have been a prank. We all heard Cadmann say that, and I guess that’s possible.”
There was silence for another long moment, then Cadmann stood. His big hands were splayed out on the table in front of him, and his face was grim—not a shred of regret or admission or apology there. “I know what I think. I think that we’re wasting our time here, talking about Hibernation Instability. That’s bullshit. I have a good idea of what we’re up against here: something that is fast and strong and smarter than a wolf. Smart enough to use the rivers and streams to foil other predators, maybe. At any rate, that’s how it dumps the heat, and why we don’t pick it up on the scans.”
There was a murmur of approval, and Cadmann continued. “This thing is checking out our territory one bite at a time. I’m not trying to alarm anyone, but it’s pretty obvious that our present defensive plans are insufficient.”
Terry stood up, brows furrowed petulantly. “We’re using standard procedures, Weyland. In fact, our patrols are heavier than the situation really warrants. We’re taking people away from other projects.”
“I agree, Terry. So let’s not take them away for an indefinite period. I say an aggressive defense could handle this situation in a week.”
“Aggressive defense?” Terry asked, arched eyebrow and tightly pressed lips punctuating the words with sarcasm.
“We don’t wait around for this thing to find a hole in our defenses. We set traps. We hunt it down. This is our world. We’re masters of this island, damn it, and I for one don’t have much stomach for just hiding behind a fence.”
“And we can guess who’d like to play Great White Hunter.” Terry turned to look at Zack, but he was still talking to Cadmann. His voice was calm and measured, as if speaking to a child. “There’s no call to jump the gun. We need to evaluate the situation carefully. See h
ow it responds to standard procedures. Then, if necessary, we can make a coordinated sweep of the island. There’s no need to turn this into a safari. Especially since, as Rachel has suggested—there may not be an exterior threat to this colony.”
He turned back to Cadmann. “Before you get your back up, no, I’m not accusing you or your friends.” He flickered an eye at Ernst. “But it wouldn’t shock me if you wish I had. There are some people who need a fight to feel alive. Who feel old and useless without one.”
He sat down, leaving Cadmann the only man standing in the room. There was a disgusted ripple of whispers, and Carlos’s barely audible voice stage-whispering, “What a crock.”
Cadmann closed his eyes and told his bunched stomach muscles to relax. “Listen to us. The only thing we can agree on is that something is happening here. I say that until proven otherwise, we make the simplest assumption—that there is an unknown life-form, and that we have invaded its territory. Now if you put me in charge of a small group of hunters, I can—”
Zack shook his head. “This has all happened too quickly, Cadmann. Until we evaluate the information further, we simply can’t judge the relative merits of our defensive options.”
“Spoken like an accountant,” Carolyn McAndrews said stridently.
Cadmann glared at her. “This is between me and Zack, lady. Button it.”
Zack blew air. “This is uncalled for. Both of you, cool down. For the time being, I think we should sit tight, on our home ground. After all—” Zack smiled—“this camp is our territory. Let’s make it come to us, all right?”
“Damn it!” Cadmann was yelling now, and frustrated with himself for doing it. “I demand the establishment of a militia, and I’m going to organize it. I’m better suited than anyone else here for that position—”
“Cadmann, I think we should wait—”
“Wait? All right. You hurry up and wait. None of you understand—” Cadmann bit his lip, sealing off the torrent of words. He turned and stalked out of the hall.