by Larry Niven
“But Cad—”
“No buts this time.” He set the Skeeter down on the asphalt surrounding the dam. Minerva One waited there for them, her sides scarred with exhaust heat, the water still steaming around her. Cadmann twisted in his seat. “I swear to you—Justin and Jessica are going to live. They’re going to have a place to grow up. They will inherit this planet. My solemn oath.”
Sylvia melted against his chest, her face only inches from his. He bent to kiss her, felt his senses swim with her taste and touch and smell.
“You’re our only hope, Cadmann. Please.”
He bussed Jessica and then Justin, as if both were his own children.
And if there were any justice in the world, they would be.
Sylvia climbed down out of the Skeeter, and closed the door behind her.
He watched, motionless, as she climbed onto the Minerva. With a final wave, she disappeared into the airlock.
That was that. It was almost all done. There was nothing left but to face the grendels.
♦ChaptEr 29♦
holding
And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
—William Wordsworth, “Intimations of Immortality”
Geographic hadn’t changed. Sylvia had seen it like this through a tiny window when the next-to-last shuttle brought her to board humankind’s first interstellar spacecraft. Minervas had ridden the hull like limpets; they were gone now. The hull was scarred by decades of cosmic rays and micrometeorites. Skin tension had pulled the empty fuel tank to half its size. Yet this was still Geographic.
What was missing was inside. Electronics. Hydroponics, life-support, computers, everything that could be used below had been sent down to Avalon. Geographic was no longer an interstellar spacecraft.
The air processors can’t support more than thirty people for even seventy-two hours. We’ll be breathing soup after fifty.
“She’s dead,” Sylvia said.
“Not dead. Sleeping,” Rachel said.
“Bloody right.” Zack was grim. “We’ll all live to take her to the planets—”
“Yeah, sure—”
“You are damned right, ‘Yeah, sure!’ ” Rachel said. “What is this? Giving up already?”
“No,” Sylvia said. “Little tired.”
“We’re still Homo interstellar. The one and only, now. If we fail here, what lesson will we teach in Sol system? There won’t be another ship for a thousand years. Maybe never. We came as conquerors. Some of us died as prey, but we ate the samlon too. When we get through this, we’ll eat every samlon in the Avalon rivers while our crops are growing. Jesus, I wish I’d recorded that!”
Zack crowed, “Me, too! Rachel, with a speech like that I could get elected to anything!”
Stu fired the retros, and the Minerva began to pivot. The restful azure curve of Avalon passed the window. Tau Ceti crested the horizon, rose like a flaming gemstone. Talons of searing white light raked at the shadows.
Avalon was neutral. The children of Earth might die, they might thrive. Avalon would embrace their bones or their progeny with equal warmth.
Mist swirled below. Rain coming? Mary Ann stood at the edge of Cadmann’s Bluff and strained to see through the swirl. The Colony was a geometric blur. After a while the breeze came up again, and the mists parted for a moment.
Tweedledum’s cold nose thrust into her hand. “Good dog,” she said absently.
The mist began to close again. For the moment everything was tranquil. The rapidly flowing Miskatonic, the neat lines of the Colony, the rows of unharvested crops. Off to the left, a Skeeter moved in curves. There was no trace of grendels. A picture-postcard day, for Avalon.
The wind rose again, a clean, brisk east wind. She treasured the feel of it, the way it wound around her, through her, dried and cooled the perspiration on her skin.
“Cadmann—” she whispered.
But he was down below her, with his own concerns. For now she was on her own.
Suddenly, large hands were on her shoulders, massaging deeply. Waves of heat flooded away the fatigue and her knees sagged. She looked up over her shoulder.
“That’s wonderful, Jerry. I’m yours.”
“Dump Weyland and it’s you and me, babe. Are you all right?”
“My body wants Jessica.” She touched her breasts, the moist patches where she had leaked through the bra shields. “I think that she’s crying for me. But we have six women up there who can make milk for her. She’ll be all right.”
“How about you?”
She grinned, nodded assurance, and they linked arms. Together they headed back toward the house.
Even from below, the changes were apparent. The house had expanded. Thirteen of Hendrick’s crew had deepened and widened the foundations and reinforced the roof and walls with quarter-inch metal sheeting. That had been a cheerful time, when they reshaped Cadmann’s Bluff just to keep Madman Weyland happy.
Jerry and Mary Ann passed among the same men now. They were harvesting, digging, driving tractors loaded with now useless machinery, machinery that could not become weapons. Their mood was greatly changed.
When the main camp was overwhelmed, Cadmann’s Bluff would remain the most defensible area on the island.
The Bluff’s cultivated rows of corn and hybrid melon cactus would never survive the onslaught. What was ready to be harvested was being gathered for storage. Perhaps when this was all over, they could begin again.
The Joes were restless in the cages. Twenty of them squealed and chattered, pressing their noses against the wire. They exuded sour, pungent fear musk. Something was coming from the south, a horror that had sent their ancestors fleeing into the mountains . . . but the Joes didn’t know. It was the massive influx of strangers that had upset them.
Mary Ann took folded papers from her pocket. Cadmann’s broad, strong handwriting and diagrams filled them.
She examined his drawings, matched them to the plateau that was now below them. The ground was turned and broken into dark moist chunks, save for a pathway ten feet across. That path zigzagged through the field. “Mines—all through this crescent.” She pointed. “Except for the path marked with stakes. The mines are live now.”
Jerry took the sketches. “Too bad we don’t have the fuel for a moat. That might have worked. These asterisks . . . right, that’s the last line of defense, what Cadmann called ‘an array.’ Said that it worked at Rorke’s Drift, wherever that was.”
“Africa,” Mary Ann said. “A handful of British soldiers stood against the entire Zulu nation.”
“Then it should work here,” Jerry said. There was more hope than certainty in his voice. “The Zulus could think. Grendels react in fixed-circuits. Their attack patterns are genetically predetermined.”
“Or mostly are.” Mary Ann frowned. What were the words? “Dis . . . dis something.” She stopped, embarrassed.
“Dispersion,” Jerry said gently. “Random action. Evolution works better if there’s random elements. Most of the grendels will be wired up to do what’s been successful in the past. Not all. We’ll have to be careful of that.” He continued studying the sketches. “Minefield blows them apart. Smell of blood gets them into that feeding-frenzy state. They’ll attack each other as quickly as us. Only—”
“What, Jerry?”
“They’re not supposed to reach the mines. They’d be ten kilometers uphill from their water source. The internal heat should kill them if they go on speed.”
“They fooled us before.”
“Yeah. Yeah. If they get here at all, they’ve fooled us again. Then what’ll they do? Sniff out the mines? Learn to fly?” His bemused eyes suddenly focused on hers. “Oh, Mary Ann, pay no attention to this. It’s just my way of keeping my brain working. I shouldn’t do it out loud.”
Mary Ann nodded jerkily, not believing him.
She flinched as Minerva One plunged from the sky to rock the valley with its scream. She
turned and watched as the shuttle dipped beneath the lip of the plateau and disappeared. “How long?”
“For which? For the Colony? Maybe eight hours until the first fence goes. Then Cadmann will turn on the minefield, and the fireworks begin. We’ll hear that, if we don’t see it. The second fence may never go at all.”
“Pray to God. But it will, won’t it?”
“I don’t know. Honestly! We’ll know if it does, because they won’t need Minerva Two anymore, and we’ll see it take off.”
She nodded.
“Mary Ann?”
“Yes?”
“Just in case . . . I just wanted you to know that Cadmann couldn’t have made a better choice. Not in a hundred years.”
Liar. She smiled. “Come on, flatterbox. There’s work to do, and not much time to do it in.”
Together, they headed up the zigzag path to the stronghold, the last hope of human life on Avalon.
They moved north along the streams. Where they clustered too closely, there were fights. The weaker or warier among the grendels stayed far from water, diving downslope where they saw no others of their kind, to immerse themselves and retreat uphill before they could be seen. A few had already discovered that if they moved slowly, calmly, they could reach the heights where flyers laid their eggs.
The largest of the grendels grew larger yet, up to a meter and a half long, and still they grew, for they were better fed. There was attrition among these. They had to stay closer to water. Some of their smaller siblings had learned to attack where they saw others attack. Larger grendels were torn to ribbons by grendels who attacked in concert, snatched mouthfuls of meat and vanished underwater before their chancy allies could choose another target.
They looked nothing at all like an army. They were refugees. Famine and war and overpopulation moved them anywhere their tiny minds might seek food or safety. But they moved north along the rivers, following the vacuum of the fished-out Miskatonic, until wind and water brought them a wild variety of scents from what had been pastureland.
Then each savagely independent grendel turned in the same direction.
What reached the farmlands was more enraged and starving carnivores than had ever been alive in Avalon’s history, and they moved very much like an army.
The river and its shores swarmed with dark shapes moving upstream. Carlos made a final inspection of the door gun. “Okay. I’m starting now,” he said into the intercom. He fired carefully, in short bursts, aiming at widely separated groups.
The water below exploded into frenzied life. Grendel shapes leaped from the water. Others pursued them. Frothy red tinged with orange spread across the water.
“It’s working,” Carlos said. “Die!” He fired again. One of his tracers speared into a larger grendel’s back, with spectacular results. The speed sacs made a terrific oxidizer. The grendel streaked for the river with its back burning like thermite, and burned even after it was in the water. Carlos whooped.
Greg wheeled the Skeeter back around for another pass. “By God, it is working! Drive them crazy! Use that damned supercharger against them! Bless Sylvia’s knotty little head, she said it would work.”
The Skeeter dove down between the trees. “Die, defenseless, primitive natives!” Short bursts, he told himself. Short and careful. Conserve ammunition, we will need it. The river churned with blood, foamed with the dead and dying.
But all we’re really doing is feeding the others, Carlos admitted to himself, and pushed the thought away in savage enjoyment of the opportunity to kill before dying.
“Running low on power,” Greg said. “I can get us back to camp. By now they must be hooking up Minerva Two. We can recharge.”
“Do it.”
Carlos got on the radio. “I am returning to camp—”
He couldn’t tell who answered: a masculine voice edged with panic. “Pick up Jill Ralston on the way. She’s hurt. She’s on a ridge, eight kilometers west and a little north of the northwest corner of the outer fence.”
They should have had an hour of daylight still, but the western range cut the day short, and clouds were banking in from the sea. It was already dark enough that Carlos could see the dying fire spilling downslope from the ridge. He pointed, and Stu took the Skeeter down.
She lay at the high point of the ridge. A meter below her was a grendel. It didn’t move when they came close, but Carlos fired a short burst into it anyway.
Jill was lying on her side a short distance from the fire. She watched them land but didn’t wave. As Carlos ran from the Skeeter she was trying to stand up.
“Lie down, dammit.” Her left arm looked awful. Cooked. He unsealed an anesthetic ampoule and slid the needle into her shoulder.
He got around to her right side and half-carried her to the copter. He strapped her in before he asked, “Is there equipment we should recover?”
She shook her head and swallowed hard. “The flame thrower’s dead,” she whispered. “It’s in the fire.”
He squeezed in behind her. She stank. Her arm was cooked from shoulder to fingertips. She lay back against the seat and every now and again she sat up and looked around as if she couldn’t believe she was safe. Carlos had always found her attractive, to no tangible purpose.
“What happened?” he asked.
“They were coming up the defile. Ida van Don dropped me on the ridge with the Skeeter. She flew around shooting grendels, and I flamed them when they got close enough. Sandra ran out of power and had to take the Skeeter back for a recharge. Me, I kept shooting. A flame thrower works just fine on a grendel. It scares them. They go into speed and burn themselves up inside.”
“Sure. Are you all right?”
“I am now. They kept coming. The flame thrower overheated—”
“You’re not supposed—”
“I could feel my hands burning. Then the torch nozzle clogged and spit jellied gasoline on my arm. I ran and rolled and kept rolling, and behind me the damn thing exploded. I’ve been waiting to see what would get here first, you or the grendels.”
Which is why we have to be careful with these egregious excuses for makeshift weapons. “Well, we’re here. It’s all over now.” Down below, Carlos could see grendels on both sides of the ridge. They’d gone around the other side of the fire. And it is lucky for you we came when we did. Five minutes more—She couldn’t see him as he shook his head. Such a waste.
“They kept coming. I shot one with my automatic. Little one, under a meter. I hit it four times, I think. It could have taken me, but it never went on speed. Too hot already. It—” She shuddered. “It fell over. By itself. You saw it. They can die. They can.”
“hear this, hear this,” Cadmann’s voice boomed from loudspeakers placed around the perimeter of the camp. “fence power goes on in ten minutes. power goes on in ten minutes. ten minutes to fence power.”
Carlos glanced at his watch. Naturally, Cadmann would wait until the last minute of light to power the fences. They needed power to recharge the Skeeters, for the vehicles, to make hydrogen. There was just enough light to see—but they should have had an hour till sunset.
There were thick black clouds across the west.
“Hey, buddy,” Greg called. “Running out of steam?”
“No.” Wearily Carlos went back to loading Hendrick’s wrecked Skeeter. Small boxes. Lightweight items. Blankets, sleeping bags. Before an item went into the wreck it was placed on the scales outside. The Skeeter itself would be needed uphill, for parts. Might as well use it to carry other gear.
Shooting grendels had been easier work.
Cassandra displayed the cumulative total mass they’d put aboard. “Some to go yet,” Greg said.
“Yes.” Wearily Carlos flexed his arms and bent over to stretch his back. “A pity.”
“Cheer up. You could be laying bricks.”
“Not me. I am a warrior.”
“You’re also a carpenter,” Greg said. “But I won’t remind them.” He jerked his head to indicate th
e power room, where half a dozen men worked frantically to seal the blockhouse with bricks and mortar and welded bars. Others filled the blockhouse with equipment too heavy to send up to Geographic or ferry to the Bluff.
If the blockhouse held intact it would save months in rebuilding civilization. If it didn’t—“It will be terribly inconvenient,” Carlos said to himself. “But not deadly.” He went back to the commons kitchen for another load. All food would be sent to the Bluff.
Minerva Two must almost have finished recharging the two Skeeters. The third was well uphill, beyond reach of the grendels. George Merriot had spent too much time shooting grendels—until it was too late to return to the Colony. He had taken the Skeeter as high as he could before the fuel cells went dead. Cadmann had been furious. Now there were only two Skeeters in operation, and work enough for ten. But we’ll take George up to the Bluff anyway. Carlos felt like telling the idiot to fend for himself.
What could be moved to Geographic was aboard Minerva Two. Lightweight stuff, and all the food, was going into Hendrick’s Skeeter; they would carry it to the Bluff. Equipment too heavy to be moved was going into the blockhouse. The grendels would never get through all that brick.
You had to believe that there were things grendels couldn’t do.
Then there was the computer shack. It had been emptied of equipment. Cassandra stood outside, and the shack now held nostalgia items, never more than ten kilograms from any colonist save one. Carlos still only half-believed that they had let him put his bed in there.
And they’d brick it up to preserve Avalon’s memories of civilization, but only if the grendels gave them time. Carlos set his load inside the wrecked Skeeter and staggered out. They’d almost finished bricking up the power house. Next, the computer shack; and Carlos wanted to help.
The wooden tower stood next to the main entry door to the main power room. Brilliant blue flame danced below as the welders completed their work on the power blockhouse door.