by Larry Niven
There is a relationship between hunters, between hunter and prey, between a hunter and his own body, his aches and pains and fears. Between a hunter and time itself.
They mingle, this complex set of interrelationships which varies in every case, and within a single hunt varies from instant to instant.
But whatever the variables, there is one thing that remains constant:
There comes a moment in which time ceases to have meaning, when aches and pains and fears dissolve into insignificance. When friendship or antagonism, hesitation or eagerness all meld together to create an instant of pure feeling, clear intention, when the observed and the observer are one. At this moment the mixture of awareness and involvement is like a supersaturated solution: one vibration, one degree’s variance of temperature triggers irrevocable change, a shockingly abrupt crystallization of potentials.
Cadmann and Ernst, cradling their rifles, gazing out into the darkness, existed in that state. The night sounds, the constant shuffling of the calf, its occasional whines all absorbed into the gestalt of the experience.
Waiting without wanting. Preparedness without hope. Empty vessels, delicate balances awaiting a trigger.
Joshua the calf strained at his tether, pulling toward the northern edge of the plateau. He was staring out into the darkness to the south, eyes huge and shiny, all sound stuck in his throat like a chunk of frozen grass. He reminded Cadmann of nothing so much as a deer transfixed by the headlights of an oncoming jeep.
For just one moment the tableau was stable.
Then the calf tried to bolt. It strained at the tether, pulled until the plastic line was as taut as a bowstring: vibrating, singing against the spike in the ground.
“Don’t see anything . . . ” Cadmann whispered. “Where—?”
Ernst nudged his elbow, and pointed south. Cadmann’s goggles whirred noiselessly as they adjusted for range. Gradually it came into focus: a faint blotch of orange beyond the jumble of dead trees and thorn brush.
It slowly changed from an indistinct blob to a real shape: oblong, rear portion low to the ground, upper body more erect. “Komodo dragon,” Cadmann said into the tiny tape recorder in his pocket. “Komodo dragon, but the tail’s thicker. Head’s rounder. It can walk bipedal but doesn’t much. Uses the short front legs to get over the brush. Jesus Christ. The bastard must weigh two hundred kilos, easy.”
The calf strained against the noose until he was gagging. His swollen tongue bulged from his mouth. The legs were as rigid as iron pipes, and the eyes protruded whitely, rimmed with red.
The thing stalked out of the south. It waddled toward them, toward the trembling calf, moving with confident slowness, stopping for a moment to survey the plateau, even pausing to stare at the blind.
“It knows we’re here,” Cadmann dictated. “Knows and doesn’t give a damn. Christ, it’s like it smiled at us.” You’re next, it thinks. Well, maybe not.
“Well insulated. Not giving off much heat. Hard to get details.” Cadmann cursed and turned his goggles up another notch. The creature paused for another leisurely look at the blind, then turned away to move toward the calf again. Its infrared glow was like a will-o’-the-wisp gliding across the land.
Cadmann grinned. Gotcha. I don’t know what you are, but we’re sure as shit going to find out. “Don’t shoot until I do,” he whispered.
“Aye aye, Colonel.”
Was Ernst remembering? No time to think of that. Wait. Come on, baby, come on, further from the edge, out onto the plateau. I don’t know what you’re made of, but ten rounds of this ought to finish you.
“Parasites,” Ernst whispered. “Careful. And maybe it has young—”
“Good thinking.” Parasites. Like fleas on a dying rabbit. They can be dangerous once we’ve killed it. He is remembering. Adrenaline? The creature had moved closer. Come on, come on . . .
The creature was within fifteen meters of the calf. It continued slowly, paused often to sweep its head around. “I think it can see in the IR,” Cadmann dictated. “Probably sees us better than we see it.”
The calf was bleeding from the neck as the nylon braids rubbed and cut, but adrenaline drove him on. Just an instant now—
The thing moved like a boneless crocodile, each step, though apparently clumsy, rippling back through its body like rhythm through the legs of a millipede. It was hypnotic to watch, and now that he could see it more clearly, he could see and sense the raw animal power of the thing. “It’s smart. As smart as a dolphin, maybe. Give it enough time, it might evolve intelligence.” He felt a fleeting moment of sadness.
Then the tether snapped, and Joshua bolted. The creature rippled after it.
Ernst fired first. Cadmann let the rifle swing easily to follow the creature and squeezed off a round. As he did, the creature moved again. Cadmann’s shot went wide of the mark. “Jesus, it moves fast,” Cadmann shouted. Ernst fired again. The creature’s body was slammed by the first shell, and suddenly it was moving. It whirled and dashed toward the blind, moving at an impossible speed across the rocky plateau.
Shock piled upon shock. The infrared goggles flared as if a thermite bomb had ignited in the creature’s bowels. The rangefinders couldn’t adjust fast enough as the creature dashed toward them. Its image remained out of focus but flared until he saw nothing but a bright glare. Ernst fired three times more. It was impossible to tell whether he had hit the creature. It screamed, in pain or defiance or challenge, or all three, and it hissed like a steam engine. Suddenly it was upon them.
Ernst stood. He had removed his goggles and was firing blind into the blood-tinged darkness. The dragon hit the thorn barrier. Branches bent, split, splintered. Thorns and bark exploded into the interior as the monster slid sideways into them. It thrashed its tail and a section of the wall fractured and slammed into Cadmann. He fell. Spikes pierced his face and hands and legs. A flying broken branch struck the left side of his head and knocked the goggles askew. Cadmann tried to stand, but one knee didn’t want to work properly. A thorn branch hung from his left hand. He had to set the rifle down to tear it free. Blood followed the thorns.
Less than five seconds had passed since the first shot.
The creature screamed again. The thorn branches flew again as it lashed its tail. Cadmann tore away the useless goggles. There was blood in his eyes, and he fumbled for his rifle. Everything seemed to happen at once, to his right Ernst was firing wildly at something that tore through the thorn barrier as if it were not there. Nylon line snapped. More thorn branches flew as deadly missiles.
Cadmann’s left hand didn’t want to work. Blood streamed from the palm, and lifting his rifle was agony.
Ernst fired once more. The creature screamed, whether in agony or rage Cadmann couldn’t tell. It seemed to take forever to bring the big rifle around, and then Ernst was in the way. More blood flowed into Cadmann’s eyes from the scalp wound.
“Get back!” Cadmann screamed. “Back!”
Everything was moving in slow motion—everything except the monster. Its speed was impossible, and Cadmann’s mind, in a vain attempt to grasp the thing’s rhythm, had slowed reality down until he seemed to be swimming in clear syrup. His thoughts slugged along like a holo played at one-tenth speed. Too many impressions per second, too many feelings, too much surprise. Too much of anything and everything, until his entire nervous system was in overload, and for an instant nothing registered but shock.
The monster had torn the fence to shreds. The great tail lashed back and forth. Each time it struck branches and splinters flew at them. It knows, Cadmann thought. My God, it knows! The barrier fence crumbled to nothing.
The world was a blur. There just wasn’t enough light. His left eye was blood-blinded, useless, and his right wasn’t in much better shape.
Exactly eight seconds after the first shot was fired, the thorn barrier was a mass of splintered ruin. Faster than a cheetah ever ran, than a cobra ever struck, something that was all dark mouth and glistening teeth wiggled through the opening, and Er
nst screamed.
It was a sound that Cadmann knew he would never, could never, forget—all of a man’s hope vanishing in one overwhelming moment of agony.
The monster’s head jutted through the jagged opening. The jaws clamped savagely into Ernst’s thigh. Arterial blood spurted. Ernst thrashed and flailed. His arms flopped like a ragdoll’s. He struck at the creature’s head with the rifle, then with great mallet fists that made no more impression than snowflakes on an anvil.
The jaws snapped again, clamping more deeply. The scream arced higher, wavered, began to fade. The monster backed out of the hole, dragging Ernst with it.
Cadmann was watching himself watch, the distance between thought and action expanding until he felt like a man falling down a well, sky and sun and rationality impossibly far above him, growing further with every hundredth of a second. With immense effort he fought his way past the paralysis and forced himself to act.
Outside now, Ernst was still whimpering as the thing crawled up his body, looking into his eyes. Its paws were locked onto his front shoulders, huge face so close that it looked as if it might kiss him. Ernst’s own blood drizzled out of its mouth and onto his cheek.
Ernst turned to Cadmann, something beyond fear or pain in his face, only a pleading silence that was shattered by a single urgent word:
“Please . . . ”
Cadmann shouldered his rifle and fired: at the creature, at Ernst, at the night, as logic dissolved and terror coursed through his body like electrical sparks arcing from pole to pole.
And Ernst exploded.
The gas cartridges!
A bright nimbus of flame played around the bodies, and Cadmann shielded his eyes.
The creature howled its wrath and pain as a fireball of jellied fuel engulfed the rough wet leather of its squat amphibian body. It reared back, shrieking, turned and ran.
To Cadmann, it seemed to fly downhill like a meteor or a rocket missile: one long stream of fire ending at the pool. It skimmed across the surface of the pool, then sank almost in the center. Its agonized howl ended suddenly. The flame went out. The pool smoked and steamed like a cauldron of soup. A trail of fiery webbed footprints, improbably far apart, sputtered for a few moments and died.
Cadmann pushed his foot at the thorn barrier. An entire section of it simply fell to the ground. His rifle drooped in his arms.
Cadmann doffed his jacket and flailed at Ernst’s flaming, smoking corpse. The heavy nylon was melting, burning his hands, but he continued beating at the corpse mechanically, ignoring the pain that was beginning to surface, until the last flickering tongue had died.
Ernst’s body was charred and broken and chewed, barely recognizable as anything that had ever been human.
Cadmann knelt by it, breathing deeply to stave off shock. His entire left side felt like raw meat.
Ernst stared at him, through him. Cadmann reached out trembling fingers to close the eyes, but there were no eyelids, nothing but singed, smoking, crinkled black flesh, flesh dark as any African’s, flesh black as coal with pinkish-red pulp showing through a few cracks.
Cadmann turned to the side and was suddenly, violently ill.
♦ChaptEr 8♦
grendel’s arm
What of the hunting, hunter bold?
Brother, the watch was long and cold.
What of the quarry ye went to kill?
Brother, he crops in the jungle still.
Where is the power that made your pride?
Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side.
Where is the haste that ye hurry by?
Brother, I go to my lair—to die.
—Kipling, “Tiger Tiger”
“Skeeter Three, this is home base. Do you copy?” Zack listened to the answering crackle of static, and cursed under his breath.
Standing close behind him, Sylvia Faulkner held her sides gingerly. Sudden stress had drained her, made her legs unsteady, her belly feel swollen and tender.
The entire colony was in a barely contained state of panic. There would be little sleep tonight, and a heavy demand for stimulants and mood stabilizers before morning.
Zack was holding up well, but his eyes were frightened.
Sylvia’s body cried out for somewhere dark and warm to curl up and sleep, just dream the nightmare away. But she had done it: she had held herself under control while she examined Alicia’s corpse and identified the bloodstains left smeared in an empty, broken cradle.
The aborted rescue party had only worsened the situation. Too many of the men had families now, wives and children that they were reluctant to leave. There seemed little reason to march out into the fog, searching for what no one really wanted to find.
Gregory Clifton’s haggard face still floated in her memory. The sound of his voice as he begged desperately. Please—I need your help. Help me find my baby. Please . . . I . . . His words had trailed away as the sedative took hold.
“Skeeter Three, this is home base. Do you copy? We have you on radar, now. Just come on in, Cadmann.” Zack rubbed his hands on his pants. His voice was cracking. “Is Ernst with you? Do you have the calf?” Another pause.
Sylvia folded her hands, staring down at them disconsolately. “Maybe the radio is broken.”
“I hope so,” Zack said miserably. “God, I hope so. I don’t want to go looking for him in the morning. For them. How in the hell did this happen?”
The door clattered open, and the air took a chill as Terry entered the communications shack. His hands clutched at the edges of his windbreaker. “Greg is out now,” he said sharply. “It’s not exactly what you’d call sleep, but it’s an improvement. We don’t want him up and around when Weyland comes back.” He paused thoughtfully. “He is coming back, isn’t he?”
Sylvia glared at him.
“All right, all right—I don’t want a lynching party. Nobody’s calling Weyland a baby-killer. I just want the truth. About now I don’t know what to think.”
The fog outside was still a hovering, isolating curtain. In only two hours Tau Ceti would rise and burn much of the mist away. Until then it stifled sound as well as sight and aggravated their sense of dread.
Zack rubbed his eyes. “That idiot. He had to go out and get the job done himself.”
“He’s an idiot all right,” Terry said. Then, exhaling harshly, he added, “But goddammit, just this once, I hope he was a successful idiot. Christ, poor Alicia.”
Sylvia reached out to her husband, gripped Terry’s fingers tightly and pulled him close. Two deaths. Two deaths in a population of less than two hundred.
One percent of their microcosm dead in one swoop, without any explanation, any answers. Perhaps just a series of warnings that they had all been too rational to heed.
Everyone except . . .
“Cadmann, can you hear me?” Zack adjusted the microphone’s sensitivity. “Come in, please.”
There was a commotion outside, yelling, and through the fog she could hear the beat of the Skeeter’s rotors as they whipped the air.
“Thank God,” Zack said fervently. “Weyland.”
Leaning on Terry, Sylvia levered herself up out of her seat. “I want to go out,” she said.
She expected opposition from Terry, but he just nodded. “Let’s go,” he said. “I guess everyone should be there.”
The air pad was directly behind the commshack, an asphalt-paved square with a target circle painted in white and a ring of landing lights implanted around the edge.
Those lights splashed whitely against the belly of the Skeeter, beamed grainily up at the insect shape that hovered as if suspended by the fog. Its cargo hoist was empty. Its silver belly pivoted slowly on the axis of its top rotor. A ghost ship bobbing on a sea of air.
Rick Erin and Omar Isfahan were trying to wave Cadmann down, motioning with flashlights, talking worriedly into the flat rectangular comcards clipped to their shirt collars.
She could hear Zack’s voice over the nearest one, could hear it grow more tense as th
e hovering Skeeter’s transmitter remained mute.
Most of the colony was out now—a forest of frightened, weary faces graven with unanswered questions.
“Cadmann—can you hear me? Come on down. Come on and land, Cadmann. You must be running on fumes anyway . . . Come on, Cad. We just want to talk to you. We’ve had some trouble down here, and maybe you can help us understand it. Come on down, Cad . . . ”
There was a long pause, and then Sylvia heard Cadmann’s voice. A small, weak, plaintive voice.
“I’m sorry,” it said. The Skeeter wobbled as if Cadmann was having trouble flying and talking at the same time. “I didn’t mean for anything to go wrong. You’ve got to understand. There wasn’t any way that I could have known how fast that thing is. There w-wasn’t any w-way I could have known.”
Terry’s eyes narrowed as a low mutter swept the crowd. “What the hell happened to him?”
A million possibilities shouted against each other in Sylvia’s mind. She remained silent, afraid that anything she said would make the situation worse. Somehow.
“Come on down, Cad. We’ll talk about it.”
“I . . . I’m coming.” The Skeeter floated down, spinning on the axis of the cockpit, settling to ground like a pale blue feather.
At first there was no movement from the Skeeter, just the motionless silhouette in the pilot’s seat. Then the door opened, and Cadmann fell out.
Sylvia’s scalp crawled. He was burned, scratched and bloodied. His face was chalk, his movements teetering jerkily on the edge of shock.
Carlos hurried to his side, tried to help him, but Cadmann waved him away and levered himself up using the Webley like a crutch.
“No,” he gasped. “Get . . . Ernst. You’ve got to believe now.”
The other side of the Skeeter was already being opened. Someone gasped, someone cursed; several colonists broke for the open air. The stench of burnt flesh hit Sylvia, triggering a fresh wave of nausea.
“Let me take that,” Zack said, forcing nonchalance into his voice. He reached for the rifle.
Cadmann snatched it away, screaming, “No! Nobody’s taking this from me.” He held it white-knuckle tight against his chest. “You’re scared, aren’t you? Well, it’s about time! Maybe some of you will stay alive.” He patted the Webley. “Anyone who’s smart will get one of these for himself.” Cadmann laughed bitterly. “I’m not even sure we can stop it.”