by Larry Niven
Mama had been tricked. She had bitten something, but it wasn’t meat, and where was her enemy?
There! Just like the other, it skimmed across the water, almost toward her. It swerved away as Mama streaked toward it. The intruder was fully on speed, and young, Mama thought. She herself had never moved so fast . . . but its turn was too slow. She was on it, and her teeth closed with terrible strength—
On thin, tough, tasteless skin, and flesh that ruptured and bone that broke—fragile bone, prey blood, prey meat, with no taste of speed. Not at all the flesh of her own kind, and she’d been tricked again!
She had barely slowed. She kept moving, fleeing the site of her kill, curving toward safety, sliding across the bucking surface of the water. Where is my enemy? Where?
Behind her, meat thrashed in the water, then subsided. More prey was climbing the cliff, unmolested, and that was hardly surprising. In the middle of a duel one does not pause to dine.
How may I lure my enemy?
My enemy’s territory, my enemy’s prey. Challenge!
Carlos Martinez was shaking: with cold, with shock and pain from the fractured cheekbone and the flap of scalp torn away when he wrapped himself around Bobbi’s unconscious body to shield her from the rocks.
She lay curled on her side, flat stomach spasming, river water still trickling in a brown stream from her mouth, eyes glazed, but open and wandering blindly. (Alive, vivo! flashed insanely into his mind, alive, vivo!, scrambling his thoughts.) She was in shock, and probably concussed, but all that really mattered for the moment was that she was alive.
He gripped his head tightly, fighting the ringing and the pain. In a few moments, they quieted and he massaged Bobbi’s rib cage firmly as he looked about him.
Later in the year, when the snow from the northern mountains melted, the spot he stood on and another thirty meters of tumbled rock would be submerged. In another ninety days there might not have been a place for them to crawl onto. He and Bobbi might have been dashed against steeply sloping walls of naked rock. A few hundred meters north or south the water dashed against sheer cliff. As bad and barren as this shelf was, it still represented something very near a miracle.
He would have to fight rapids or climb to get off the beach. He managed a quick prayer of thanks that he wouldn’t have to try. Rescue would come soon. Thank goodness for the hololinks! The camp would have seen exactly what happened.
His head throbbed. He kept up the steady, gentle massage on Bobbi’s rib cage.
Her eyes fluttered open weakly. “Carlos . . . what happened?”
“We hit a rock.” That had to be it. That was all that it could be. So why was there a wet red flag on part of the memory? Something trying to hide from him and warn him at the same instant?
Carlos ripped his shirt off and wiped her face with it. She seemed flushed. He bundled the shirt and tucked it under her head. Not long now. Elliot Falkland would be fighting upriver even now. He managed a smile to think of the rotund engineer piloting his way through the rapids. Bobbi would have treatment within the hour, and tomorrow they would be able to laugh about this.
The Colony would already be sending out Skeeters.
He thought that he could hear the hum of a distant engine. “I’ll be right back, Chiquita,” he said, and kissed her softly. Her lips felt bruised and flushed.
She reached for him, gripped at the wet cloth of his shirt. “No. Don’t leave me. Please.”
There was help out in the river. It tore him, but he pried her fingers loose. “Shh. Shh. I love you. I’ll be right back, I promise. O.K.?”
Shaking, unconvinced, she nodded her head.
Carlos scrambled over the rocks to the south, to a higher point where he could see the bend in the river. All he could see was the rush of the water, silver-white with dark patches as it exploded over rocks and took sudden dips and turns. To either side the mountain walls were steep, at least forty near-vertical meters of iron-gray, roughly weathered rock. The crusty gray was interrupted by bands of lighter color. High tides? Geological separations? His mind wasn’t working properly yet.
From the new vantage point, he heard nothing, could see nothing, and that puzzled him. Where was Elliot? Then he saw.
He’s been wrecked too! Dear God.
Elliot lay inert on a patch of rocks by the far shore. He must have been thrown clear. The second boat was no more than a few dark shreds of fabric which still fluttered, wedged into rocks. There was no sign of La Donna.
A dark, spreading stain grew from beneath Elliot’s head and dripped down into the rushing water. Carlos’s stomach went sour and tight. I’ve got to help him—
And then Carlos saw it. The thing ripped through the water like a black torpedo. That was what his subconscious had screamed to him. He had caught a bare glimpse of that dark juggernaut churning through the water, smashing through the side of the boat . . .
The foam suddenly churned, and the black thing erupted from the water, flashing up into Elliot with the speed of a striking snake. Elliot’s body jerked once, massively, and disappeared into the waves.
Something that felt like a cloak of cold slime swept over Carlos, numbing him. But in its wake his mind began to work. His first conclusion was inescapable: if he did not think very clearly, Bobbi was going to die.
What was there to do? The monster would find them. He’d be insane to assume anything else. They couldn’t hope to outrun that creature under the best of circumstances. With Bobbi barely conscious, it would take a miracle to escape.
Do something. Odds don’t matter. Act! In half an hour, no more, we’ll be rescued. The camp is better prepared now. They were watching the race! They must already know what they’re up against.
And Cadmann’s back in camp.
Carlos scrambled back down to Bobbi. She wound her arms around his neck weakly, and her black hair streamed back over her shoulders like seaweed. “Carlos? What?”
“We’ve got to move.”
“Why?” Her head lolled back as if her neck were fractured. She coughed wetly. “Why can’t we stay here? I hurt. I’m so sleepy.”
Lie, you bastard. “We need to be at a better vantage point for the Skeeters—if they’re going to pick us up.” He lifted her to her feet. She seemed a feather. “Come on, hon.” He grunted as she found her feet. He bent, unknotted the pillow he had made of his shirt and slipped it over one arm.
He half-pulled, half-lifted Bobbi up over the first eastern row of boulders, then took the opportunity to reorient. They had to get away from the river—but another twenty-five meters up the rocks and they would be against the cliff. No hope there.
The mountain stretched above them, a splintered pale fortress carved from the primeval clay by ragged knife strokes. Above the ridge the clouds that had been fleecy and white an hour ago had darkened, were tinged with black as though heralding a sudden thundershower. The air had gone chill.
He might be able to climb that wall, but there was no way in hell that Bobbi could make it. And there was no place to make a stand here, nothing that would afford protection.
What it looked like, he thought grimly, was a damn good place to die.
There was an answer. Both of them could die, or one, or just maybe neither. But they had to separate.
Watching his footfalls carefully, he carried her along with him, pulling, coaxing, babying her along. Scraping arms and legs, protecting her as best he could, but aware that little scrapes didn’t matter right now. Have to get her to shelter. Have to get her to shelter . . .
The going was steep now, and twice they almost fell. Once they did, sliding and skinning hands and knees. Bobbi was a little more alert now, and more help. She managed to thrust a leg out, halting a tumble. He laughed weakly and kissed her forehead, and then pushed her up another few meters.
Muscles tensing, tendons in his back stretching with the strain, afraid to stop for rest or to look back to see what was following them out of the water, Carlos helped Bobbi up the sharp incline. Th
e pounding in his head grew worse. They slipped again, and this time her thigh caught on a sharp spur and made a nasty gash.
Damn! He whipped off his shirt and wrapped it around her leg quickly, before it could leak blood and destroy the tiny inspiration that had begun to flower. Above them and to their left was a shallow ledge, all but invisible from below. A single person might hide there. Maybe.
“Come on, just keep moving.” She must have sensed or seen some of the dread in his manner, because she was glancing back down at the river now, at the churning white and pale rushing blue,
Carlos lowered her to the shelf. Perfect. There was even a slight overhang. If she crawled back into it, she would be safe.
If all went well . . .
He untied the hastily applied dressing and knotted the shirt into a tourniquet, applying it above the wound. Blood oozed in a sluggish stream. Good enough. One way or the other, it would do.
He looked back out at the river. Nothing yet. Now he could remember: the image of Elliot’s body disappearing beneath the surface, fat arms and legs slapping the water once.
And another image: that of the first creature back at the Colony as it dashed through the searchlights in a nightmare of fanged and taloned rage.
He shivered.
“Now listen,” he said, kneeling next to her. “I lied to you. We’re not up here to make it easier for a Skeeter to pick us up. We’re up here because there’s another of those creatures in the water. I’ve got to go, to make a trail to lead him away from you.”
Her eyes widened. Her fingernails tore at his arm. “But Carlos . . . ”
“Listen to me,” he whispered fiercely. “You’ve seen what those bastards can do. I don’t want to give up what little chance we have.”
Bobbi moved clumsily, trying to sit up. The blood trickling from the gash began to pulse more strongly.
“Your leg is bad. Don’t make it worse.” Carlos forced her back down. The leg! He had to do something, but there was no time at all, only hope.
“I have a chance,” he said. “I don’t think those things can climb as well as a human being. They’re too heavy.” He looked at the steepening wall. “I can climb that damn mountain and keep it busy until someone gets here. It can’t be long. When I’m gone, climb as far back into the shadows as you can. Keep pressure on the tourniquet as long as you can.”
“Carlos—”
His mind stuttered, trying to find the right words, something brave and reassuring, and couldn’t. Finally he just held her, saying again, “I love you.”
He left her. He climbed down again and examined her perch. Bobbi couldn’t be seen from below. Not seen, but what about smell?
The first stop was the rock that had gashed her leg. It was bloodstained, and he searched until he found a fist-sized stone. He pounded at the spur until it shattered. He scooped up the fragments and flung them as far as he could.
There was no guarantee that his ploy would work, but one thing he knew for certain: he had to make a stronger scent trail for it to follow.
He did it the only way that he could, thankful that there was still fluid in his bladder, enough to leave a trail from beneath the blood-stained rock well to the right, away from Bobbi.
He began to climb.
He was quickly blowing for air. How long had it been since the crash? Twenty minutes? It seemed an eternity. But the Skeeter would be coming! We lived longer than I thought we would. He was up the grade above Bobbi now, and he saw that she had crawled farther between the rocks. Good girl.
Now he was high enough on the cliff to see down into the river. There was the blood slick where Elliot had met the rocks. Beyond were limp black fabric and boat fragments at the river turn. To the south, there was nothing but the rushing river. Where were the rescue Skeeters?
Where was—?
Oh, Jesus.
There was a movement in the water, and something moved up out of it, as steady and inexorable as a Titan, some god of the fishy depths. Carlos cried out reflexively.
It was the same as the first creature, only larger, half again as large, and fleshier. It paused as if getting its bearings, then stared right at him—
For one crazy, shameful instant he thought, Let it have Bobbi. Let it have anything.
Then it blurred, as if shot from the water by compressed air. It crossed the rocks, paused for an instant, then took off again, cutting an angular trail up toward the wall—paused and exploded into a series of zigzags that was like nothing so much as a crazy pinball game, then hit the wall and ran almost straight up at him.
Carlos tried to close his eyes, to wait in darkness for a swift and terrible death, but didn’t have time. It was, it was—
It shot right past him and kept going until it perched on a rock shelf halfway between him and the top of the mesa.
The creature crouched above him. It ignored Carlos entirely as it scanned the river and rocks far below. Except for the rapidly turning head, it stood entirely still, yet gave an illusion of motion, like an engine revving in neutral.
What was it looking for? More boats? Whatever it was doing, it wasn’t watching Carlos.
It can move. Faster than anything I have ever seen. Faster than anything I have ever heard of. I can’t outrun it. It must have seen me, but it doesn’t act like it. Maybe—
The cliff was steep. A fall would kill him. Better that than the monster, he thought, but he couldn’t make himself believe it enough to jump. He made his hands stop trembling, reached down, found a handhold, tested it. It was firm. He lowered himself a few inches, found a new hold, and—
The creature snarled: a high-pitched scream like a drill biting into metal. Carlos looked up into its vast dark dislike eyes. The message in them was unmistakable: Where the fuck do you think you’re going?
“Ah, nowhere,” he muttered under his breath. The creature watched him for another few seconds, then turned away.
Carlos pressed himself into the rock wall. Between terror and confusion, he couldn’t guess what his next move might be. But what does it think it’s doing? Is it crazy? A crazy thought, indeed. Carlos laughed, and it turned to look at him, and the laugh stuck jaggedly in his throat. It went back to scanning the river.
At the shore was injured prey, dying. Two more prey were climbing the cliff, characteristically clumsy. The enemy must regard these as hers. Mama planned her move, and then—
Challenge. Mama charged across the water, straight at the feebly moving prey. Her jaw clamped on its hind leg. She dived beneath the froth, released the meat at once and swam for her life. Three seconds later she surfaced far downstream, to watch her enemy come to reclaim stolen meat.
The corpse tumbled unmolested. Her enemy was too clever, far too clever for one so young.
Of the two other prey, one had disappeared. The last was halfway up the cliff.
Mama studied the cliff. It wasn’t sheer, but the thought of being stranded there while something came at her was one she rejected at once . . . and retrieved, and toyed with.
She could see most of the cliff, and no danger showed there. Her enemy might be in the water or at the top of the cliffs. She never doubted it was watching.
There were footholds along the cliff. Take any path too fast and she might be stranded in midair, falling toward waiting jaws. Motionless in white froth, with only her eyes showing, Mama chose her path.
Then she moved. Across the seething water. Up along cracks in the rock, now quick, now slow, dancing her route, ready to face death with her footing firm. In seconds, she was halfway up the cliff, poised on a ledge above live prey.
Challenge. Come and get what’s yours!
♦ChaptEr 17♦
rescue
No man quite believes in any other man.
—H.L. Mencken, Prejudices
“But what could have happened?” Zack demanded.
Cadmann guided Skeeter One through the twisting canyon, barely noticing the naked rock walls rising to either side. “Don’t know.” The w
est side of the canyon was growing rapidly darker. The smaller sun cast shadows much sharper than he’d been used to on Earth. It made judging distances harder. Cadmann moved the Skeeter toward the brightly lit eastern wall. It was banded in orange and pale reds. “Don’t know. Damn pretty country here.”
“Yeah, sure—how can you be so calm?”
“I’m not, but what’s the use of getting excited until there’s something to do?”
“Yeah. You’re right.” Zack took a deep breath. “Those walls are pretty. Like the Australian outback. Ever go there?”
“No, the U.N. never needed soldiers out there.”
“It was a rock. Cadmann, it had to be a rock.”
“A rock that got two boats?”
“Why not? And we don’t know that Elliot’s boat is gone—”
“Like hell we don’t.” Cadmann’s mouth was a grim line. “Look, Zack, you can kid yourself about interpretation, but not about what we heard, and the last thing we heard was La Donna screaming. And the last thing we saw?”
“You saw. I ran the tape and I didn’t see what you saw.”
“Oh, maybe I didn’t see it either. There was something. Something dark in the water near Carlos’s raft, something that I swear was moving across the current . . . well, no, I won’t swear.” Cadmann spoke into his comcard. “Skeeter Two.”
“Here,” Stu Ellington answered.
“We’re coming up to the bend. You go right across the canyon, down to the rapids, and turn back. We’ll start the search at the upstream end.”
“Roger. Goddam, I’m glad you’re with us.”
“Me too,” Zack said carefully. “I’m still hoping we don’t find—”
“Nobody had to remind you to bring your rifle. And damned if that spare clip doesn’t look loaded with incendiaries.”