by Larry Niven
Its teeth met the wire. Every muscle in its body locked in unyielding contraction as electricity ripped through the line. It bit down so hard that the wire snapped. It jerked free, screaming its fear into the night.
The captured sun surged after it. It ran, terrified of the vine that bit back, of the light, of things that it did not, could not understand. And a thing inside its body flared to life.
From a sac behind the peculiarly flattened lungs, a complex chemical pumped into its system. Its blood vessels swelled. Speed surged through its body. Its movements, already quick, accelerated as if a supercharger had been triggered. Its stubby legs churned at blur-speed as its heartbeat tripled.
The searchlights that swiveled frantically after it never had a chance.
It was overheating, burning as it ran, and as it plunged into the waters of the Miskatonic its skin nearly sizzled. It lay there, marinating in mud, extending its snorkel to the surface. Its heartbeat slowed, steadied, calmed. The chemical fire in its body faded slowly to ashes.
The fear and pain gradually faded, leaving a core of rage. Anger at the invaders who hadn’t the good grace to be either prey or direct competitor. The invaders were rivals, and they were cheats! They were something that it did not understand at all, something that could hurt it in a way that it had never experienced pain, inspire a fear that was quite new to it.
One of their flying things came humming overhead, lights stabbing out and dissolving the swirling gray mist. The creature watched through the muddy water, blinking hatefully, fearfully.
It worked its way back upriver; its thick, reptilian body rippled slowly behind. Blood was in its mouth, and murder on its mind. Murder, not killing. Killing was for food or fun. This was an urge to hurt for the sake of hurting. Not to reduce their numbers, but to make them afraid, as it had been afraid. To repay the invaders for their gift of pain.
How, though? How to get in? It had looked everywhere, and everywhere that it looked were the hard, tasteless firevines which bit back. Everywhere except . . .
Above the river, up along the lip of the cliff, above the straight seventy-degree rise that the colonists had considered a natural barrier, there was no fence. Its eyes narrowed as it considered.
This was it, then. It would crawl up the cliff and give them fear, and death. It would teach them . . .
Stubby legs lifted it from the river muck, and it began crawling up the cliff. The first few meters were easy, but the farther it climbed, the steeper the wall became, until its feet lost purchase, and it slid back down into the water.
It lay there, disgusted, and then trotted a few meters to the right and tried again.
Stealthily now. Eyes narrowed, one foot carefully finding support, and then another. The purchase was a little better here: sedimentary rock, crumbling in layers, offering shelves for toeholds. The creature’s heart beat faster as it considered the havoc it would wreak. It climbed higher this time, and when it started to slide, it fell a clean eight feet before its claws found purchase. It reached the water in a shower of rocks.
It seethed with rage now. Muscles flamed, eyesight blurred with red. Again its body began to boil. Its breath seemed to sear its throat. All thought, all considerations vanished in a burst of chemical speed.
It erupted out of the water, heart thundering in its chest, legs paddling crazily. There was brush, then naked shattered rock, then a flat rock face. Its momentum was so great that when the footing was gone it skimmed up the cliff face, momentum carrying it over places where there were no footholds at all.
Its speed carried it up over the edge. Feet scrabbled for support that wasn’t there. In a moment of utter panic it realized that it was marooned in the air, sailing beyond the lip of the gorge in a great arc, spread-eagled for the captured suns.
No sun swung its way. The slanted roof of a hut rose up to meet it: its thick, scaled body slammed down, bumped over the rows of ceramic tiles to the edge and thumped ignominiously to the ground.
For a second it lay there, dazed and confused. Then as its wits returned it ran for the nearest shadows and crouched, breath whistling in its throat.
After a few minutes, the panic and surprise subsided. It was inside, and could do what it wanted.
From the shadows it watched the invaders scurrying about carrying shiny sticks in their forelegs, scuttling this way and that in slow, comical confusion. It was quite funny, and in the shadows, the creature’s thick lips curled in a dolphin smile.
The glaring circle of the searchlight cruised past it several times. Once, reflected from a metal tower, the light slid directly over it. But there was no one to see.
Mine, it gurgled happily. All mine . . .
It listened carefully, heard nothing approaching in the darkness, and crept out, peering both ways.
It passed the nearest hut. The door cracked open and it scampered back to a shadow and watched as two invaders scrambled clumsily past, reminding the creature of swimmers in their mindless haste.
When they were gone it crept out again, racing from shadow to shadow.
The cliff ascent had made it hot and hungry. The Miskatonic could cool it, but there were matters to settle before it took the plunge.
It paused in a shadow. Across the way was a patch of light, and it could see into the interior of one of the buildings. There was nothing of interest until a door opened and an invader came in, carrying something small and pinkish in its forelegs.
With obvious tenderness the yellow-topped invader laid its tiny burden into a nest made of rigid twigs, and bent to lick the tiny thing’s face, very gently. The invader’s foreleg brushed the wall, and the mock sun went out. The invader left the room.
The creature waited another minute, then crept up to the open space, planning to crawl through and take the tender, wiggling morsel.
To its surprise the clear space was blocked. It tried again, gently, and—
Still it couldn’t get through, but now it was close enough to see that what blocked its path was somewhat like the cold, hard water that sometimes slid down the mountain into its pool. The clear barrier even gave slightly under its weight, and the creature could hear sounds through it.
“—duty again, Alicia? Well, at least April is asleep.”
Uncomprehending, it shook its head and tested the barrier again. There were more sounds, sounds of objects falling, creaking, and it watched the small invader in the nest wiggle, its tiny hindlegs thrusting at the covering.
The creature nosed against the barrier again, then reared back and smashed into it. The barrier splintered, sharp fragments slicing into its nose and above one eye.
It scrambled through the window and took one step toward the small nest when the larger invader threw the door open and screamed piercingly.
Their eyes met, and the creature thought that it had never seen anything more appetizing. With regret it conceded that this was not the time for the large one. A shrug of its hindquarters brought its great spiked tail back and around to smash into the invader’s midsection. The invader curled in on itself; its noise stopped.
The creature shrugged its tail again. The invader flew away and smashed into the wall. Her forelegs pawed at her torso, trying to staunch the flow of crimsons. She slid to the ground.
No time now. Only moments had passed, but it could feel the danger. With a twist of its thick, powerful body it was back to the nest of straight twigs, and the small invader even now squalling its fear. The creature reached in and picked it up.
It was so small, so helpless. So like a swimmer.
Invaders killed swimmers.
♦ChaptEr 7♦
the blind
Ere the moon has climbed the mountain,
ere the rocks are ribbed with light,
When the downward-dipping tails are dank and drear,
Comes a breathing hard behind thee,
snuffle-snuffle through the night
It is Fear, O Little Hunter, it is Fear!
—Kipling, “The Song
of the Little Hunter”
The jagged shape of Mucking Great Mountain rose like a primordial cairn, a titanic mass of unweathered rock stacked as if by Neolithic ritual, towering, raw-edged, lost in the clouds mat shrouded the plateau.
There was almost no vegetation on the mountain, nothing but moss and a little scrub brush that withered out and died within a hundred meters of its base. Pterodons lived up there somewhere, but on this night they slipped invisibly through the mist or huddled in their nests, rough gray wings enfolding the leathery eggs of their young.
The plateau itself was only a few hundred meters wide, fuzzed with brush, and walled at the northern end by thorn tree brambles. A failed stand of larger trees formed a rough deadfall at the far southern end: the soil had never been rich, and the trees—gnarled, spiky growths full of knotted fiber—had died before their maturity, too weak to resist the first onslaught of natural parasites. Now the ubiquitous thorn brush fed on the tangled debris. A few tough, rubbery plants surrounded the artesian spring at the base of the mountain, but there was insufficient moss or lichen to break down the rock, and most of the plateau was barren.
Barren, and deserted—except for two men and a single frightened calf.
Cadmann Weyland adjusted a bowline knot around the smooth white curve of its neck, then tugged on the line to check the anchoring: it was securely spiked into the rock. The calf licked his hand, tried to run a warm pink tongue wetly over his face. Cadmann pulled away guiltily. The calf dropped its head and lowed in misery.
“Sorry about this, Joshua.” He scratched it behind one speckled ear. In its eyes shone the pitiful gratitude of a retarded child given a rubber bonbon. Cadmann felt dirty.
He pulled his jacket tighter and peered up into the mist. It was deeper than even two hours before, masking the starlight, blanketing the twin moons.
Thirty meters distant, on the eastern side of the plateau, was the half-completed blind he and Ernst had constructed. The big German had worked tirelessly for three hours, driving stakes into the rock with sharp powerful hammer blows, cutting and dragging sections of thorn bush, binding them into place and meticulously adjusting the spiny walls into camouflage position.
Thorns gouged needle points through Cadmann’s glove as he helped Ernst haul one last gnarled section into place. “Ouch!”
The big German turned, grinned lopsidedly. “Thorns sharp, hey? I bring lots of band-aids.”
“Sylvia swears these things are harmless.” He grunted, pulling off his glove. The tip of the thorn had broken off under the skin, and would take tweezers to work free. No time now.
The calf brayed miserably. Ernst clucked sympathetically “Poor Joshua scared. We shoot, you shoot good and straight. Kill wolf. We take calf home.”
“So it can grow up to be a cheeseburger. Some consolation.”
“Cad-man?”
“Oh, nothing. On Earth I’d stake that calf out for a mountain lion without a second thought. Here—God, I don’t know. In comparison with whatever’s been pruning our flock, that calf’s my second cousin. It just doesn’t feel quite right.”
Cadmann scanned their blind, the wall of thorn that hemmed them in on three sides. The Skeeter was hidden in the rock niche behind them, invisible from above or the sides. The blind wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do.
The wire grid rectangle of their heater sputtered with flame as Cadmann squatted in front of it. The night was colder than he had realized: the waves of heat eased the tension in his back and shoulders.
He unsnapped his rifle case and lifted free his most prized possession.
It was a Webley semiautomatic express rifle. Its high-energy, mushrooming .44 slugs delivered a staggering load of hydrostatic shock. The Webley had been thoroughly checked out back at the camp, but he reexamined it now. Cadmann had a simple credo that had served him well over the years: when the game is charging full blast, with tusks lowered and turf flying, there is no time to pick grit out of the trigger housing.
He adjusted his infrared goggles and switched them on, peering at Ernst. The big German was a blotch of orangish light in the middle of a blue field. When Ernst moved, the warm air trailing him left an ocher trace image.
Cadmann reassembled his rifle and checked Ernst’s, while his friend tied the last thorn section onto hinges of looped cord and tested its mobility. Satisfied, he lashed it into place.
Ernst folded his legs and sat, long face quiet.
“And we are just about ready,” Cadmann said brusquely. “Here.” He handed the second rifle to Ernst. Something happened to Ernst’s face when the rifle touched his hands. It was as if a little light went on, as though the touch of the woodgrain stock or the smooth metal of the barrel stimulated neural connections that had been unaffected by the cryosleep.
Muscle memory. Tactile as opposed to visual or auditory cues. He works well with his hands. He remembers. Surely Rachel can work out some kind of occupational therapy for Ernst based on manual skills . . .
Their heater died. Ernst leaned his rifle against the thorn barrier and reached around into his backpack for a new tubular cartridge of jellied fuel. He slid it into the heater, and tiny blue flames sprang to life. The flare of light from the goggles was a shade too bright. Cadmann adjusted the light level and again examined the plateau. There was very little to see: only the ghostly outlines of the rock, and the glowing red silhouette of the calf. It gazed forlornly at the barrier, then turned to sip nervously at the waterhole. It stopped, pawing at the ground, gazing into its depths. It moaned.
There was nothing left to do but wait.
Cadmann was humming contentedly to himself, and then the humming turned into words that he was startled to remember:
I Blas Gogerddan heb dy dad
Fy mab erglyw fy llef
Dos yn dy ol I faes y gad
Ac ymladd gydag ef.
Dy fam wyf fi a gwell gan fam
It golli’th waed fel dwfr
Neu agor drws i gorff y dewr
Na derbyn bachgen llwfr . . .
He sang in a soft, unmelodic tone. As he continued, the rust flaked off his vocal chords, and he began to find notes with something other than shotgun precision. “Cad-man. What you sing? Don’t know those words.”
“Oh, oh—damn, I’m sorry. The song’s in Old Welsh, Ernst. My grandfather taught it to me when I was a pup. Guess I’ve never quite forgotten it. A man named Geiriog scribbled it down, and Granddad liked it.” Cadmann closed his eyes and chuckled. “He would. ‘Blood and honor, Cad, that’s what life is about. What a man is made of . . .’” Ernst nodded silently, and Cadmann was embarrassed to find himself wondering if the big German could understand. “The song is called ‘I Blas Gogerddan,’ or ‘Gogerddan Hall.’ ”
He leaned back against his bedroll and closed his eyes. “It takes place during a great battle, when one of the warriors bolts and tries to hide behind his mother’s skirts. She’s not exactly a peacemonger. The best I ever translated the song went:
Into the hall alone, my son?
Now hear your mother’s prayer.
Go back onto the battlefield
And aid your father there.
I’d far prefer your blood be spilled
Like water on the ground
Or have you in your shroud arrayed
Than as a coward found.
Go thou into the hall and see
The portraits of your sires.
The eyes of each and every one
Alight with raging fires.
Not mine the son who would disgrace
His family’s name and home.
“Kiss me, my mother dear,” he said,
She did, and he was gone.
He has come back unto the door,
No longer does he live.
His mother cries, “My son, my son!
Oh God, can you forgive?”
Then comes an answer from the wall,
“While rivers run through Wales
Far better is the hero’
s death
Than life when courage fails . . . ”
The silence following the song was total, and it took a few moments for Cadmann to realize how deeply into the song he had wandered. The words still resonated in his mind, now carried by the rough, untutored tones of his grandfather.
That’s what a man is made of . . .
“Do you like that?” he asked, almost shyly.
“I like, Cad. I like song. You teach it to Ernst. Soon.”
An unstrained chuckle bubbled up through the embarrassment, as Cadmann realized that he felt more comfortable than he had in a hundred and twenty years. At least. “You know, there’s something I’ve always wondered.” He paused, his thoughts interrupted by the soft plaintive moans of the calf. “How many of those songs do they sing as entertainment, and how many are behavioral mod? I mean—my grandfather would never have said that he’d rather have a dead grandson than a live coward, but the message was pretty clear.” He shook his head irritably. There was a tension headache in there somewhere, but it hadn’t wormed to the surface yet. “It sure as hell was. And the worst part of it is that I don’t even know what I think of that.”
He stared into the heater. It was a poor substitute for a campfire, and he felt vaguely discontented. He made a fist, examining it in the dim light. His skin was the same tough, weathered hide it had been since his late twenties. A faint smile: Let’s have a big hand for the oldest, strongest fingers on Avalon.
Absently, he caressed the stock of the rifle, running his thumbnail into the engraved hardwood. With sudden, disturbing clarity he realized that he had never touched Mary Ann as lovingly. He grimaced. “Maybe I do know what I think about that. Sometimes you just have to be satisfied with what you are.”
Ernst reached out with one large hand and gripped Cadmann’s arm warmly.
Together they waited.
Relationships.