Adiamante

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “That’s too long.”

  “That’s what it will take.” She paused only minutely before she added, “That’s not why I linked. The cybs are headed out along the lower Aquarius trail.”

  “With Majer Henslom?” I glanced toward the north. Was there a hint of distant clouds?

  “Yes, ser.”

  “Good. I’d like them to get a solid feel for Old Earth.”

  “You still don’t want a screamer?”

  “They’re big boys,” I pointed out.

  “Yes, ser.” Her disapproval—black on black—was clear.

  She still thought I was wrong, and maybe I was, but I didn’t see any changes in the cyb attitude toward us, and without any changes, they were still going to try to wipe out us demis, seize our technology, enslave the draffs, and claim it was all justified by The Flight.

  She also thought I was bending the Construct, and perhaps I was doing that, too, but the Construct didn’t say anything about having to protect people from the ecosystem or the environment. It just said you couldn’t provoke, threaten, or take the first step in a destructive action, no matter what the result might be. It also said, both fortunately and unfortunately, that you could not act contrary to the Power Paradigms. That precluded moral compromises, which was what most aggressors demanded. Working within those parameters was almost impossible—and sometimes it had proved so. That’s why more than half the eleven historical Coordinators hadn’t survived their charges.

  I stopped by the base of the tower and waited for Lieza to float-taxi the shuttle to the area just north of the tower. While it might have been a quarter of the size of the cyb troop landers—not that I’d seen any cyb landers other than troop landers—the magshuttle was still big enough to make a flattened maize cake out of a careless Coordinator.

  We still don’t believe in all the excessive warning and safety devices that were another contributing factor that led to the SoshWars. Personally, I thought that attribution was just Masc propaganda, since men tend to be more careless. But we have so little left from that time that it’s hard to say what happened. We do know that when safety devices exceed five percent of a device’s resource contribution or weight, then there’s either a fault in the design or in the operator, or both. Basically, if you can’t operate well-designed equipment without safeties on safeties on safeties, you shouldn’t be trying it.

  I waited until the magshuttle settled onto the permacrete and the hatch door slid opened, then climbed up out of the light swirling winds and poked my head into the cockpit area.

  “You cut things close, Coordinator,” said Lieza. “There’s a big storm coming in from the north. Won’t get where we’re going until late in the day.” She paused. “Do you really want to see a prairie dog town?”

  “The cyb navigator and naturalist do.”

  “You didn’t discourage them?” The redhead glanced at the screens and then back at me. “Their lander’s on final.”

  “I don’t have to, under the Construct.”

  “You’re as bad as a cybschemer.”

  “I appreciate the compliment.”

  “I didn’t quite mean it that way.”

  “I know,” I told her. “I know. I’m going to meet our friends.” I ducked out of the cockpit, stepped out onto the permacrete, and walked northward to where the lander would stop.

  The permacrete vibrated as the cyb lander rolled off the strip and turned back north toward the tower.

  After it came to a halt, the olive-black metal ramp whined down, and Subcommander Kemra and a thinner and taller man descended. Both wore informal greens under the heavy brownish-green winter jackets. Kemra wore the gold starburst of a subcommander on her collars. Her companion wore no rank insignia.

  “Greetings,” I offered.

  “Hello.” Kemra gestured to the brown-haired and gangly man. “Viedras is our naturalist.”

  I bowed slightly.

  “I appreciate the opportunity,” Viedras offered, his words spaced deliberately.

  Two cyb officers appeared—one beside Viedras and one beside Kemra.

  “Force Leader Babbege and Subleader Cherle.” Kemra inclined her head to each in turn. Babbege was a whipcorded woman a centimeter or two taller than I was, while Cherle was a block of a man more Kemra’s height. Both had the typical flat-eyed look of cyb soldiers.

  On the permacrete behind them stood the cyb squad, each cyb with a rifle.

  “I notice you are carrying a weapon,” observed Babbege.

  “Around the prairie dog towns, that’s generally a good idea,” I admitted. “Rifle slugthrowers for your troops should be sufficient.”

  “Ah …” began Viedras. “According to the older references, prairie dogs were a unique species of rodent … .”

  “They’re still unique, and they’re still rodents, but their teeth are razor sharp, and they mass ten to fifteen kilos each. Some of the males are bigger.” I glanced toward the magshuttle, then toward Kemra. “Ready, Subcommander?”

  “A fifteen kilo rodent?” asked Viedras.

  “Yes.”

  “You wanted to see them, Viedras,” Kemra added. “We won’t see them from here.” Her eyes passed over me as though I didn’t exist.

  So I was in the middle of the procession to the magshuttle, behind Kemra and Viedras and followed by the marcybs.

  The dozen marcybs took the rear seats in the shuttle, two abreast, and the two officers sat down in front of them, leaving several seats between the soldiers and Kemra, Viedras, and me. I half-wished I were in the cockpit, but my job was guide and host.

  “Ready, Coordinator?” asked Lieza, looking back through the open hatch.

  “Lift off,” I said aloud.

  Unlike the initial pressed-back acceleration of the cyb lander, the magshuttle’s departure was smoother and more gradual. Our seats weren’t quite as comfortable as the officers’ seats in the cyb lander, but a lot more so than the troop seats.

  “I suppose we’d better go over the background of the prairie dogs,” I began after Lieza had leveled off and headed the magshuttle northeast.

  “That might be a good idea.” Kemra’s words were cold.

  I couldn’t blame her for her anger at discovering prairie dogs weren’t just rodents, but far larger than their ancestors. The cybs needed to see the town firsthand, and giving the entire story first might well have violated the Construct, if it were construed as a threat, as well as discouraged them from seeing what they needed to see. Besides, the prairie dogs were cute-looking huge rodents.

  “As I indicated, the prairie dogs are genetic descendants of the original rodents of the same name. Their mass is also somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty to a hundred times that of their ancestors.”

  “How is that possible?” asked Viedras.

  “They’re mammals, and we theorize that they’re offshoots of survivors of the Thimeser virus.”

  “You mentioned the virus earlier,” said Kemra. “What exactly was it?”

  “A further modification of the immune-system related diseases that preceded the SoshWars,” I explained. “Something triggered more massive modifications in the Chaos Years, and in some species there were deliberate DNA modifications. That’s how we ended up with, we think, the vorpals and the kalirams—among other things.” I cleared my throat, trying not to think about the cybs being led along the Aquarius trail by Majer Henslom. “Anyway, some of the results bred true, and the prairie dogs almost overran the higher plains for a time before the ecosystem reached a balance. Their aggressiveness is generally restricted to their perceived territory, except in the breeding seasons, or when a member of the family screams for help. This is not breeding season, but we’ll have to be careful. They look like big furry toys. They’re not. They can be very dangerous.”

  “What do they eat?” asked Viedras.

  “Like us, they’re omnivores. They’re pretty good mousers or ratters. They’re good at finding desert prawns in the hot weather, and they can take o
n most snakes. They also like cactus fruits, seeds, berries … .” I shrugged. “They can eat and digest the Degen plains olives.”

  “You say they’re dangerous. Why?”

  I thought I’d explained, but I expanded. “They’re communal. Once they’re threatened, you may find most of the guard males and females chasing you, and they’re quicker than they look and their teeth are sharp. If you don’t get into their territory, except close to breeding times, they’ll just watch.”

  “How far back have they been breeding true?”

  “We don’t have records that far. Some time after the Chaos Years and The Flight. The original progenitors started east of the mountains, actually in the area near the Cherkrik ruins, and they’ve spread east and west from there.”

  Most of Viedras’s questions I could answer. Some I couldn’t. I had no idea of the differences in genetic structure from the original and extinct prairie dogs. There wasn’t any way to compare since we didn’t have any verifiable genetic material from the original species.

  Kemra half-listened and half-looked at the destination screen on the bulkhead before her.

  Lieza interrupted the questioning. “We’re starting down, Coordinator.”

  I sat back and took a deep breath. Viedras shifted his weight in the seat, but I didn’t look in his direction. I didn’t want to answer more questions at that point.

  Lieza set the lander down on hard and flat ground almost eight hundred meters north of the newest hummocks.

  “Why did you set down so far away?” asked Viedras, with a touch of a whine, as he stepped down into the high grass. Some naturalist he was, but maybe he’d been in low ship-gee for too long.

  “If we set down closer to the perimeter, we’d wait longer for them to return to their normal guard status. Also, the north side has the newer burrows, and that makes it easier to calculate the territoriality line.” I surveyed the expanse of grass that separated us from the town.

  Even from more than a half a klick away, the embanked mounds that constituted the prairie dog burrows were impressive, rising clear of the chest-high grasses. Viedras walked slightly ahead and to my left, pausing every few meters to use the recording device/scanner he carried. Kemra was to his left. Half the marcybs were on the left flank, with Babbege—the others on the right, with Cherle.

  As we neared the town, I kept scanning for other predators, but could sense none. I pulsed Lieza. “Do you have the scanners on?”

  “Do kalirams have hoofs?”

  “And?”

  “It’s clean. We made enough noise to clear out any vorpals anyway. Too flat for kalirams.”

  Viedras paused and bent down to inspect something. “Hmmmm.”

  We waited. Then he straightened as if he hadn’t stopped at all and continued scanning or recording.

  From a hundred meters, the burrows were more impressive, rising two and a half meters and forming an undulating rampart.

  When we reached seventy meters, I motioned for the line to halt.

  The outliers were sitting on the corner burrows, perched on their hind legs as I guess prairie dogs had from the beginning. Their well-groomed brown fur glistened even under the gray light of the oncoming storm. Their heads swiveled in quick, jerky movements, taking in the grasslands around their town.

  “They are attractive animals,” murmured Kemra.

  At least she hadn’t called them cute.

  There was a single eagle circling under the high gray clouds, but one eagle wasn’t a danger, except to a pup, and there wouldn’t be any small pups loose this late in the year.

  Farther to the west, the clouds were darker, lower, and headed our way—the storm Lieza had mentioned.

  I gestured. “There’s an outlier—a guard, if you will, at each corner of the town. You can’t see the one in the center of the town, but there’s one burrow that’s higher, and there’s another young male there.”

  “Are these guards always male?” Viedras asked, looking up from his equipment.

  “No. About two thirds are male, but some are female, probably those females who won’t breed in the year ahead, or maybe those who haven’t, or can’t, and have to provide some service to the community.”

  “You don’t know?” Viedras sounded both whiny and incredulous.

  “No. We don’t. We know that the female guards don’t have children and aren’t associated with them, but to find out more requires tagging or something like that, and there’s not much point in disrupting things when the system’s in balance.”

  Viedras and Kemra exchanged one of those glances that indicated that I just didn’t understand. They were right; I didn’t understand why they were so dense. Trying to refine some knowledge is arrogance, not scholarship. Did it really matter, unless we were trying to manipulate the environment? So much of the ancients’ knowledge was developed either to enhance their manipulations of the environment or in a belated attempt to undo the messes they had created. We worked to avoid either.

  Viedras took another step forward. “I just need a little better angle.”

  I calculated. “Don’t go any closer.”

  To his right, Kemra looked at me and stopped.

  “Don’t be silly. None of them are closer than fifty meters.” Viedras took another step, and then another. “And I need to get closer.”

  “Viedras!” I yelled, but it was too late.

  He took the fourth step toward the burrows and across that invisible line that marked the rodents’ territory.

  EEEEeeeeeeecchhhh!

  Virtually simultaneously with the high-pitched call almost two dozen furry figures charged out of burrows, three out of hidden tunnels within a dozen meters of the naturalist.

  “Fire at will!” I snapped at Babbege.

  The force leader gaped at me.

  “Fire at will! Shoot!” I repeated.

  “Fire at will!” Kemra repeated my command.

  Viedras kept taking images or whatever, backing away from the charging prairie dogs, stumbling as he retreated.

  I had my slugthrower out. So did Kemra.

  We both fired at the four dogs shrieking and bounding toward the naturalist. It’s always amazing how quickly they move. I got one, then another, before they got too close.

  Then I stepped-up my system and moved, drawing the knife as I blurred toward the two remaining dogs.

  One almost clawed me, but the razor blade took his paw. I snap-kicked through its neck, and took out the second with the blade.

  The two marcybs on the end went down under five of the furry prairie dogs. One staggered up, snapping rodent necks, and bleeding from a dozen deep claw marks. The other didn’t.

  Before I could get there, the rest of the prairie dogs were either dead, or had retreated.

  Viedras stood, motionless.

  Kemra scanned the area, slugthrower ready.

  I bent over the fallen cyb, but there wasn’t anything I could do. A claw had severed his carotid artery like a blade, and there was blood just about everywhere.

  The force leader was using some sort of field dressings on the other wounded cyb.

  Two other cybs, blank-eyed, picked up the body as I stood up and relaxed my system into normal speed. As usual, my muscles hurt. But my guts were stable. Prairie dogs weren’t highly intelligent, an artificial distinction perhaps, but one for which I was grateful. I cleaned the blade as well as I could on the grass and replaced it in the sheathe.

  “Let’s go,” I snapped. The scent of blood would draw the smaller brown centipedes, smaller only by comparison to the reds which could reach three quarters of a meter, and then the prairie falcons would get into the act, along with the rest of the scavengers. There wouldn’t be a trace of blood or bone within a day. “We need to get back to the shuttle.”

  For once, no one said anything, but only for a minute or two.

  “Those things are vicious.” Viedras turned and glanced back at the prairie dog town, although the bodies were lost in the grass. “Why don’
t you get rid of them?”

  “They wouldn’t have been vicious, if you’d listened to me.”

  “But … I didn’t know.”

  I wondered how many times throughout history someone had explained not listening the same way. I wasn’t ready to fight that battle, not at the moment. My legs were shaky and still recovering from step-up.

  “In a way, that kind of thinking is what led to their development,” I explained as I turned back toward the shuttle. “There was a vacant niche, and they took it. They’re not terribly dangerous outside their own territory.”

  Kemra looked at the northernmost line of hummocks. “They look like they’re capable of expanding their territory rather quickly.”

  I pointed to the east, toward grass-covered mounds beyond the hummocks. “That was their last expansion, probably a decade ago.”

  “You had to cull them?” asked Viedras, still not understanding.

  “No. Things are in balance. The vorpals did that.”

  “The nasty giant fox-like things? They hunt the prairie dogs?” asked Kemra.

  “It’s not that simple, but yes.”

  “I think a pack of those prairie things—sorry, I don’t think of them as dogs—could stand off a bunch of vorpals.” Kemra glanced from the burrows to me.

  “They could, right now. But this is lean territory. It takes about a quarter of a hectare to support one prairie dog, and they won’t build more than eight hummock-burrows in one hectare. The burrows are expansive for a few animals. You can see that.” I shrugged. The conclusion was obvious, but it took Viedras a minute to get the point.

  “They get too spread out to defend the perimeter against marauders?”

  I nodded. “The towns migrate around their range, but never get much bigger.”

  “Little fish have bigger fish to eat them. I understand that,” said Kemra. “But what keeps the vorpals in check?”

  “Food, each other, scavengers, centipedes, scorpion packs, kalirams, mostly. Some desperate cougars.” I kept walking quickly, following the cybs carrying their dead companion, and listening, scanning. I pulsed Lieza. “Get ready for lift-off. One dead marcyb. One pretty slashed up. Territoriality problem. Viedras didn’t listen to me. Would you let Keiko know?”