by Larry Niven
Why am I thinking this?
We were going to put samlon there. She shuddered, and not just with the cold, though the water was cold.
She relished the cold while she scrubbed. The last vestiges of fatigue washed away with the lathered water. Still she rubbed her skin until it burned, and rubbed between the toes, in and behind her ears, scrubbing away ectoplasmic filth. She wanted to be clean, and didn’t know why.
She toweled and dressed. Only then did she go out to the veranda.
Hendrick and Jerry were half-asleep in front of the communications console. Joe Sikes sat on the low wall at the veranda edge and stared downhill through binoculars. Tension and fear showed in the set of his shoulders.
Joe Sikes. He had been a quieter, deeper man since Evvie’s death, but she still didn’t like him. He’d been friendly, more than friendly. Before Cadmann, he was always a willing bed partner. Never more, but it was good to have someone you could just crook a finger at. She could lose herself in him and forget that she was no longer Professor Eisenhower, nothing more than a brain-damaged brood mare. Then one night she’d heard him talk about her.
Boo! She didn’t dare say it. “Hello.”
Sikes spasmed, then whirled around. “Oh. Hi.”
She didn’t laugh out loud.
Jerry sat up fully. “Hello.”
“The quiet woke me,” Mary Ann said. The sun was just about overhead. “What’s going on?”
“Not much,” Jerry said. “Beautiful day up here, but you can see that. Geographic’s trying to get us some information, but so far nothing you wouldn’t expect. IR doesn’t go through fog—uh—”
“I understand. They can’t tell what’s happening below that.” She pointed to the mushroom lid that sat above the Colony site.
“I know this much. They’re not coming out of it,” Jerry said. He found an empty cup on the console table and stooped to rinse it in the stream that cut across the veranda. Then he filled it with coffee from a thermos and thrust it at her. He refilled his own. “Cadmann said you’d be up by now.”
“Where is he?” The coffee was bitterly strong, and hot. She treasured each sip.
Jerry shrugged. “Moving fast. Looking for new things to worry about. What’d you expect?”
“I expect we’d all be dead without him.”
“Me too,” Jerry said cheerfully. “He’s making the rounds.”
The ground fell away sharply below the veranda. Below the veranda were two more levels, bedrooms and storage. Then the ground sloped away again.
“We put the house on the military crest,” Cadmann had said. The phrase meant nothing to her. She didn’t think it ever would have.
The minefield began a hundred meters below. Off to her left ran the little ridge that separated the Amazon from the smaller branch that flowed through the house. Halfway down that ridge, between the house and the uphill edge of the minefield, was a tall boulder. Snail Head. Terry’s Rock. Something colorful fluttered atop that rock.
She walked downhill. The sound of the stream pulled her, called to her, and she followed it. She slipped off her shoes and walked barefoot through the shallows.
Terry’s silhouette still showed atop the glacier rock. She didn’t see his chair. He must have left it at the base; Hendrick and Terry’s own strong arms would have lifted him onto the peak.
She called. “Terry!”
“Hi. Sunrise was beautiful. I hope to God you slept through it.”
“Oh, yeah. Anything?”
“Hendrick brought me breakfast. Biggest event of the day so far. Cadmann’s down there somewhere along the Amazon.”
Nowhere did she see Cadmann. She went back up toward the veranda, then stopped to look back.
Something lay beside the stream, about where the minefield ended. Wasn’t that clothing? She strained to see. A body? She ran up to the veranda, sloshing coffee, and found Jerry. “Is someone out there?”
He laughed softly. “Laundry. The stuff Ricky and Phyllis wore when they chopped up the gland sacs, and Cadmann’s clothes, and your robe. They all stink of speed. I hope you took a damned good shower. If a grendel gets a whiff of you . . . ”
That was why. She clapped her hands happily. “You don’t have to worry.” She closed her eyes and forced herself to remember. “The speed stuff. They’ve already made everything up?”
Jerry pointed up past the veranda, where Stu now lounged near the makeshift Skeeter pad. “We have two tanks of stuff that will drive any red-blooded grendel into hysterics. Bank on it.”
She lost Jerry’s next words as Cadmann scrambled up from below the wall. His fatigues were very clean, with sharp permacreases. He had shaved; there was new life in his step and he looked more rested than he could possibly be.
She came to him. He put an arm around her, gave her a formal peck of a kiss and said, “Come with me?”
They walked down and around the perimeter again.
“They won’t come here,” she said. “Why would they?”
“I don’t know. But that’s just it. We don’t know much about grendels.”
“The big ones are dead. How many did you kill down there?”
“Hundreds. A thousand? Maybe more. Certainly not all of them.”
“They grow so fast. They’d have to eat a lot.”
He nodded agreement. “But there’s a lot to eat. Each other, of course. All our crops. Anything that moves. We’ll be on rationing for a long time.”
The way led back down, across the front of the house, then up to where the Snail Head ridge parted the Amazon. Cadmann helped Mary Ann up the rocks to the white boulder where Terry sat, his rifle still across his knees.
Terry grinned down at Cadmann. “What’s the word?”
“Johannesburg. You’ve been up here all day, Terry.”
Terry stretched. “I like it here, you know? Good view. I can see right down the Amazon.”
“Terry,” Cadmann said calmly, “if anything comes up the Amazon you’ll be cut off. You can’t move fast enough—”
Terry’s eyes darted from Mary Ann to Cadmann. “Now, Cadmann. You know perfectly well nothing’s going to get this far. Let the damn grendels kill each other off in the lowlands. In our copious free time we’ll go down and kill off the last half-dozen and reclaim our territory.”
“Just how serious—”
“Then again, I could hide in the basement with the rest of the cripples and think about Justin and Sylvia and wonder what’s going on outside. Cadmann, I lost my legs thinking we had it all figured out. They aren’t coming. They can’t come. And when they get here you’ll want sentries.” He wasn’t smiling. “Leave me here. I’m fine.”
Cadmann’s mouth opened and shut again. Finally, he nodded. “First sign of trouble, sing out. We’ll send somebody to get you.”
Terry seemed infinitely relieved. “Right. Thanks.”
Cadmann turned and started back down the rocks. “Cadmann!” Terry called.
“Yeah?”
“I just wanted you to know. You’re a good man, Weyland. We couldn’t have done any better.” Terry’s mouth thinned in a smile. Then it was as if they ceased to exist for him. He turned and peered down his rifle scope into the Amazon.
The cattle pens had been built in haste. Fifty head were crowded into them. They lowed and milled restlessly. Cadmann said, “We can protect them, somewhat. But there’s someone we can’t.”
She didn’t know what he meant until he led her to the Joe cages. Missy and her children and relatives stared at Mary Ann through the wire-mesh cage doors, their huge dark eyes identically terrified.
“I thought that you should have the honors,” he said.
Mary Ann unlatched the cage doors one at a time. At first the Joes sat there motionless. Then Cadmann reached in and with great gentleness lifted Missy out (her paws held immobile in his fingers) and nuzzled her. “Goodbye, old girl. We’ll miss you.” He handed her to Mary Ann.
“Do we have to?”
Cadmann
shrugged.
“Oh.” She set Missy on the ground. Missy sniffed the air, then ran south, up into the mountain. One at a time, the other Joes followed.
“And now what?” she asked.
“We wait. Walk around and inspect the guard, I guess. Or look into the crossbow-making. Or—”
“We can just walk for a while.” You feel useful, and I have you to myself.
They walked the zigzag through the minefield, up to the low perimeter wall. The plain was still thinly veiled with mist, but the northern mountains were visible as dark jagged peaks.
A pterodon swooped down from above them, its gauzy wings stretched as it arced through the sky. Cadmann looked after it as it disappeared into the clouds. His eyes were dark-ringed but alive with speculation.
He helped her down the rocks. She felt the tightness of his muscles, could smell the fatigue on his breath. He must have spent much of his life like this. This must be what most of war was like: preparations and fear. When Cadmann’s comcard buzzed, she knew.
“Chief,” Joe’s voice said, “Jerry says we have some movement down on the plain.”
“It’s started. Are you sure?”
“No, not really. Just—something’s moving around the stream. Could have come down from the glacier, for all I know. What have you seen swimming through your living room?”
Cadmann was receding, moving faster than she could. He said, “Not one damn thing, ever.”
Jerry met Cadmann as they crossed the stream, handed him a pair of binoculars. “Take a look, Cad.”
He walked carefully through the minefield and peered down. “Those are grendels. Two. Hard to tell, but I’d say they were pretty small.” He shifted the lenses. “And a couple more coming out of the Miskatonic . . . ”
A curious expression touched his face. The binoculars traced and retraced a short arc.
“Shit,” he said. “Get into the house. Don’t let anyone bathe in the living room, or throw any kind of refuse into it. The Amazon feeds right down into the Miskatonic—”
Jerry’s eyes widened. “People soup.”
“Yeah. Then send someone for Terry—”
A shot, and then a volley. Cadmann swiveled toward the glacier. Terry waved at him as his comcard buzzed. “Cadmann, grendel coming up the Amazon. I got him, but it’s bad news—”
“Terry, listen closely. Where’s the corpse?”
“I hit it and it went on speed, ran in a big circle and back into the water. I can see it. It looks dead now, but it’s half in and half out of the water. The tail is still . . . Cad, it’s bleeding and it’s still in the water!”
Jerry and Cadmann exchanged horrified glances. “That’s it.”
Cadmann screamed into the card as he ran toward the zigzag. “Omar, Rick—get that corpse out of the water now. Maybe it’s not—”
Jerry, falling behind, yelled, “We should have diverted the stream—”
“Oh, great,” Cadmann replied. “Tell me again, three weeks ago.”
Mary Ann ran for the house, her heart thundering in her chest, the words, This is it. This is it . . . yammering over and over in her mind.
♦ChaptEr 32♦
the keep
I have paid my price to live with myself on terms that I will.
—Rudyard Kipling, Epitaphs: The Refined Man
There were five grendels below Carolyn. Four were just clear of the mist; to the naked eye they were mere specks, wide apart and still separating.
“Charlie, do you know you’re being followed?” From left to right, she set names on the intruders: “Ayatollah, Khadafi, Jack, Son of Sam . . . ” Too long. “Mareta.” Mareta Lupoff was the only single human being ever to set off a hydrogen bomb within a city.
Charlie was much too close: two hundred meters away, plodding along at a speed somewhat greater than the horses could manage.
The horses were holding up well, moving a little slower because they were tired. They hadn’t smelled anything yet. Carolyn kept them moving, but she kept watch too.
Twenty horses in a line, linked by rope. Should she free them from the rope? Let them fight their own war?
Grendels. Creatures of mystery and fear, and the more you learned, the more terrifying they were. Those four at the fog level . . . three? One must have turned back. Was it Jack?
They don’t cooperate. That’s not what Beowulf, excuse me, Weyland, would call a flanking action. It’s just grendels trying to stay away from each other. But that near one—Charlie’s almost close enough to shoot, and I bet I can guess what it wants.
Carolyn had listened; she wasn’t stupid, but it was hard to think of grendels as she. Picture Jack the Ripper or Muammar Khadafi as a woman: it was silly.
Those rock knobs had the look of boulders deposited by a glacier—intruders dropped on land scraped flat. That one a hundred meters ahead, twice her height: that would do.
When White Lightnin’ was alongside the boulder (and the near grendel was a hundred and fifty meters downslope), she dismounted. She took all four harpoons and the harpoon gun from the saddlebags. She slapped Lightnin’ to get her moving.
Lightnin’ didn’t move.
Patiently, with no overt sign of panic, Carolyn walked down to the end of the line (toward the grendel, toward Charlie). She shouted and slapped the trailing horse, Gorgeous George. The young stallion glared at her, but he moved. She slapped him again and, jogging ahead of him, repeated the slap on the next horse, who was already moving. The tail of the line moved; the wave moved forward. The grendel was a hundred meters distant and watching curiously. Carolyn reached the rock. The line of horses moved past her as she climbed. The grendel was seventy meters away.
Forty. Twenty. Jesus, it was on speed. The horses screamed. Carolyn smelled it herself, a whiff on the wind, bestial and chemical both. She was halfway up the rock, and the grendel had reached the horses.
She set her back solidly against the rock and lifted the gun while . . .
Gorgeous George reared back on his hind legs, forelegs pawing the air, prepared to stamp holes in an enemy. A black torpedo shot under the forelegs and snapped at one of George’s ankles without ever slowing. George was yanked backward hard enough to snap the line that bound him. The grendel was behind the rock before Carolyn could fire. George fell downhill, tumbling, screaming, and his left hind leg was gone below the knee.
Where was the grendel? Coming up the rock behind her?
Carolyn jumped. She landed without breaking an ankle. She ran away from the rock, trying to see the rock and the horse both—
The grendel was downhill, dragging Gorgeous George. George was very much alive, screaming, thrashing. Carolyn aimed carefully and fired.
She’d have hit it. She would! Charlie must have seen something coming; she saw it shy. The harpoon exploded against George’s chest. It ripped the horse wide open. The grendel looked at her for the barest particle of an instant, then dodged behind the dying horse.
The other horses were on the run. Carolyn was reloading. Wait? Watch the grendel? But the horses couldn’t be left alone. She ran after them. If she scared them, they’d keep running; fine, she’d catch them eventually.
But death was behind her, and she kept looking back. Where was the grendel? As fast as it moved, it could be anywhere.
The grendel was in no hurry. She was overheated, yes, but not to the point of distress. She was small, and had been on speed for less than half a minute.
The horse was not much fun. The grendel fed, trying to avoid tearing vitals for the moment; but the beast had stopped moving almost immediately.
The taste was far better than grendel meat.
Three of her siblings were in sight. They came in a line. Vectors of attraction and repulsion held them in position: fear of each other, fear of the one above them, smell of speed, mist of horse’s blood in the air. Hunger was winning.
Charlie tore into the horse. She ate with some haste now. When her belly was full to the point of pain, she ripped one of the
horse’s hind legs loose and moved uphill, dragging it with her tail. The other grendels closed in behind.
They would eat and grow strong. Let them. Perhaps they would fight. But they would not catch up. Meanwhile nineteen animals moved upslope with their alien guard to tend them. Well and good.
Terry sighted carefully and squeezed off another shot as a second grendel poked its head up over the edge of the bluff. He caught it between the eyes: its head snapped back violently and was gone. Blood in the water. He wiped his forehead. Dammit, I did wait. It was on dry land. When I hit it, it went on speed, of course, and overheated, of course, and went back to the creek. Of course.
Omar and Rick arrived first. They looked, crazily, like some vintage comedy team: Omar the tallest man on the planet, Rick the shortest. There was nothing comical about them as they poked at the dead grendel, then clubbed its head with an ax when the tail jittered. They hauled it out of the water. Its corpse leaked blood.
Something blurred near the lip of the drop-off, and Omar spun, swinging his ax.
By luck, surely by blind luck, the ax struck the grendel in its open mouth. Its death spasm ripped the tool out of Omar’s hand as it flipped back down the hill.
They ran uphill. A dark shape burst from the water behind them. Terry sighted over the top of the scope, firing by instinct. Once. Twice. The grendel leaped, turned, looked directly at Terry. It knew. It moved at blinding speed toward Snail Head. Terry fired again. The grendel continued—and ran directly into the rock. It fell and twitched. Omar and Rick were halfway to the house now, and running hard. Omar’s legs were almost twice the length of Rick’s, but Rick was winning the race.
Alarms went off all over the stronghold. Up at the house, the dogs snarled and bayed. Cadmann’s horses whinnied in terror. Down below, grendels screamed challenge.
Terry felt great. Adrenaline flowed. A year of calm, two years, and we’d have rebuilt all the hospital stuff. I’d have new legs. And a working prick.
Downstream the water parted in strange places, new ripples and eddies where there weren’t any before.