by Dave Freer
"Hell, Keil, why don't you just ask me for hen's teeth? Every one needs them and I've got to ration 'em. Cap's already down there heading for the queen section. But . . . any chance that S'kith's still okay?" There was concern and hope in his voice.
Keilin shook his head, trying to get his voice to work. Finally he said, thickly, "No. He's dead, Bey. He died laughing at his joke. He used the bomb in his own body to blow the power cable."
The broad man turned away. He shouted at the party of Gene-spliced going down past the frightened stream of Morkth-men. "Remember, I'll have the guts out of any of you that injures a woman or child! Bring them up, and bring them up careful!" He turned to the captain next to him. "Diarma. This has become a debt of honor. That Morkth-man died to save my kid . . . all of our kids. I gave my promise. I'm responsible to see the kids especially don't get hurt. That they get looked after. Pass the word down the communication lines, will you?"
The Gene-spliced have the strength and speed and dexterity of their spliced-in ancestors. They are also an emotional people. Perhaps the human source material was like that. Or perhaps it was a lingering trace from the chimpanzee and kodiak lines. These folk were close-knit and clannish, and they cared. Keilin should not have been surprised at the ready tears on both broad faces. Bey handed Keilin a bag of pitch-pine knots. "See if you can find him. He'll have a hero's grave on the Moss. I'll stay here and see that his wishes are carried out."
Shael and Keilin walked across to the air duct S'kith had followed down. The cover was still pulled aside. It was a narrow hole leading down for thirty levels. It was dark, and they could just see that it went . . . down. Keilin took out of his pocket a pebble he'd sucked to ease his thirst while they'd marched from the Moss, and dropped it. Counted. It was many seconds before the faint "plink" came up from the hive water supply.
"I can't!" Shael said. Keilin felt that way himself. The narrow darkness was already making him feel tight-chested. "My arms won't last twenty-seven levels," she added, looking into the darkness.
It was true enough. She was far stronger now than she had been when she'd been a pampered Princess, but . . . Keilin sighed. He felt that it was vital to go down that terrible hole. At least it was not angrily sucking air the way it had during S'kith's descent. But yet he was afraid of leaving Shael. Foreboding hung about that choice. He compromised. "I'll go. You stay with Bey. Don't leave him. Please." His voice was full of care and he leaned forward and kissed her. "See you." And he lowered himself down into the claustrophobic shaft.
There was no way one could carry a lighted torch and climb. So he had to do it in complete darkness, moving on memories garnered from those moments of close contact with S'kith, and faith. His fear of closed-in spaces clutched at him, but still he went down. After all, S'kith had come down here, somehow beating his fear of returning to the hive. Keilin felt he could do no less.
At last he came to the side shaft. The only side shaft. Only the queen level had an emergency air off-take. Keilin followed it. Finally he came to where the air line went into the filtration plant. No poison could reach the queen chambers, and as a side-effect, neither could a human cockroach. So Keilin had to leave the air duct and emerge, before the great queen door. Keilin found he didn't need the torches here. At this, the most crucial level of the hive, every fourth light still gleamed with a dull phosphorescence. Obviously this was some failsafe should disaster strike the hive's heart.
The great golden doors hung open. Bodies were strewn around. Some had obviously been trampled by storming rivers of Morkth feet. Keilin went on, past the now empty laboratory, into the wrecked comms room. The burned door of the power generator room still stood. When the power cable was severed, power for the arc cutters was cut. The hole surrounded by cooled runnels of titanium steel was still too small for a Morkth . . . or most adults. Without more ado Keilin began thrusting his slim sinew-and-muscle boy's body through the sharp-edged hole. Not for the first time he cursed the growing process.
There was not much left of his friend. What the explosion hadn't ripped apart, high voltage had cremated. But a force drew him to the far corner of the room. There, severed, but still clutching, was S'kith's hand. He had to force the rigor-set fingers apart to expose the five core sections. Their familiar blackness and oil-swirl patterns called to him. He touched them, and knew that Shael, hand on her bracelet stone, had been waiting for him to do so. He also knew that the remaining sections lay in the Beta-Morkth's technofortress. The conquest of this hive had been a child's game, compared to what that would take.
* * *
Once S'kith's barricade had been removed it was easy enough to open the door. Using a coil of wire from the laboratory Keilin set out into the queen's maze. Here he needed the torches in the bag. It was perhaps fifteen minutes later that he encountered a Hansel-and-Gretel trail of scraps. Off down a further twisting corridor he could hear Cap's voice. He called Cap's party back to where he stood.
Cap eyed him with disfavor. "I should have known you'd turn up where you're not supposed to be. What do you want?"
For an answer Keilin held the wire. "This'll lead you through the maze to where the core sections are."
"Hmph. Why didn't you just bring them with you?" demanded Cap roughly.
"Because I want you to see what you did to my friend. The man you called a traitor. The damn things are still in his hand," said Keilin fiercely, blindly.
"Watch your tongue, boy. This is for the human race. It's more important than one worthless Morkth-man. This wire'll take us there, you say?" he said, taking the strand from Keilin's limp hand.
A Gene-spliced officer took Keilin by the shoulder. "Word has come down from the top about what he did," she said quietly. "Bey wants the women he says are called the Warrior brood-sows found and freed. Can you help us?"
Keilin nodded. S'kith would have wanted that. "A floor down. S'kith told me about it. I'll lead you." They set off out of the maze and down the awkward stairs, not designed for human tread. Soon they were passing tiny lightless cells.
"These?" asked the woman.
"Worker-brood," said Keilin shortly. "According to S'kith they're so stupid they can barely do more than eat and be bred."
The officer held a torch to the grill. Piteous whimpering came from inside. A blow with a heavy hand-axe shattered the lock. A naked, vast, pregnant and blubber-rolling filth-smeared body lay there, blinking myopically in the unfamiliar light. Slack-jawed she looked at them, and then, with a hopeless grunt, turned her jowl-face away and began licking a spigot on the back wall. She made no attempt to move toward the open door, and showed no curiosity about the strangers.
Several of the troop were retching as Keilin led them further down. The cells on the next level were no different. But here there was no whimpering. Instead the air was abuzz with whispered speech. Keilin paused. He owed his friend this triumph. His voice didn't even shake as he called out "S'KITH 235!" with all the volume he could muster.
There was silence. Then pandemonium broke loose. "Let us out! Let us out!" Joyful, hopeful, frantically happy yells echoing in the passage. And S'kith's name was repeated endlessly in a paean of triumph. No resting place of grandeur, none of the poignant legends that the gene-spliced would build about him, would ever honor his friend as those voices did.
A lifetime in a cell too small to stand in does not equip you well for the outside world. Yet these were no beached whales that they set free into that passage. Calisthenics and determination had maintained their bodies. They were naked, yes. But not filthy. And they were organized. They'd never known when this day would come. But they had believed and prepared for it.
The first question they all asked was, Where was S'kith? By the predatory look in the eyes of the enquirers even his legendary stamina might have been tried right there. "He's dead. He destroyed the power system so that we could succeed in our attack." A great sigh echoed down the passages. They had mourned him long ago. They would mourn him again. But not yet.
&
nbsp; "Then where is the fighting? We must kill Morkth." The leader was a hard-eyed woman with long dark hair, plainly pregnant, about thirty-five. Keilin remembered what S'kith had told him. Probably, after this baby, she would have been killed and eaten.
"The Morkth have fled in one of their big flying craft. There is no more fighting really. Just confused Morkth-men."
"So it is true then. There can only be one reason they would flee. They have been trying to hormonally alter both frozen workers and volunteer warriors. They must have succeeded. They have a queen egg to protect."
Before the enormity of this statement could sink in, Keilin felt a calling.
A desperate, urgent calling. A feeling that he must make contact. He touched his ankle, fingers dipping into the pouch, touched the core section.
"I need to get to the surface, fast. She needs me."
Twenty-eight levels of twisting spiral ramps was still a long, long way to run. Keilin knew he could never be there in time, but he ran until his lungs were on fire. Eventually he burst past the confused files of empty-eyed workers, out into the morning sunlight.
It was bedlam up there. The shield path had been scattered. Now confused Morkth-men surged all over in little knots. In the center of the hive roof stood a stunned group of the Gene-spliced. Keilin rushed over to them. On the ground between them lay Beywulf, his head in Wolfgang's lap. He didn't have legs any more. And through his shirt oozed a sluggish trickle of blood. Someone had tied tourniquets on the leg stumps, but Bey's normally ruddy face was spook-white.
Wolfgang's voice cracked. "My father tried to stop him. He wasn't even armed. Cap cut him down when he turned away. Just like that. Dad must've seen him out of the corner of his eye. He jumped. The blade cut through his thighs instead of his midriff. Cap stabbed him in the chest as he fell. Then he took the girls into the Morkth platecraft he'd summoned from the desert . . . or that is what Cap said. The young one fought and he hit her." Wolfgang shook his head in disbelief, his eyes full of the tears he refused to let fall. "My father has served him faithfully for nearly ten years. Now he's dying. Why? Why did Cap do this?" he screamed.
Keilin closed his eyes, bit his lips, summoned all his determination. His voice when it came out had the unmistakable ring of command. He was slight, nearly seventeen years old. And there wasn't a man on that roof who wasn't going to do exactly what he told them to, immediately. He pointed to two of the officers. "You. And you. Clear this roof. Anyone still on it in two minutes from now will be killed. Leave Bey. Get all the Gene-spliced below. At least five levels. Now!"
Only Wolfgang didn't move. "I'm staying with my father. What are you going to do?"
Keilin turned to look at him. "I'm going after them. And I'm taking Bey to the only place that might be able to save his life. I'm going to summon transportation too. And that'll bring the Beta-Morkth. Your father wants you to live. Now go. Go on. Get down at least five levels."
He was met with a long, flat stare. Then Wolfgang shouted, "Johann, Gerda, Hamesh, Sula." Four young Gene-spliced turned from harrying people back down into the hive. "I need some help to carry my father. And to avenge him."
Keilin didn't even see them any more. He had his hand in the bulging ankle pouch. He allowed the fear and desperation to surface. He allowed his suppressed feelings about Shael to flow. He wanted transport. To Compcontrol at the South Pole.
He expected a flying carpet. Or a giant bird. Or a Morkth antigrav plate. But he must have had Beywulf's condition in mind. What he got was a long white flyer, with a big red cross on the front and sides. The back opened, and a wheeled stretcher rolled out. A mechanical, toneless voice said, "Mechambulance unit 16. Load the patient."
* * *
They were flying high and fast. Bey was in a metal cocoon. Wires and tubes attached to him were superstitiously eyed by the five Gene-spliced and the three stark-naked women who had come wandering out onto the roof just as they were loading Beywulf onto the stretcher unit. There seemed little choice but to take them along. Keilin himself however viewed the entire setup with mere acceptance, and nothing more than a desire for haste. He hoped that the Beta-Morkth response had not killed too many people. He had no way of knowing that the response he expected hadn't occurred. All he knew was that the land below had dwindled rapidly and then changed to a blue sheet of sea. Surely soon they must be there?
Finally, Wolf's questions pulled Keilin out of his reverie. "We're bound for a mountain on the South Pole. I don't know much about it, except that it is very cold. Full of snow and ice. No, I don't think Cap has joined the Morkth. He's just using the craft of a few that were killed, by me and my partner."
He looked at the three naked girls who were shivering on one of the empty stretchers. "We'd better contrive some kind of clothes for you ladies. The outside world is not temperature-controlled like the hive."
Wolf nodded. "Yeah. I looked around in here. There are some blankets in there." He pointed to a drawer. He was his father's son however. "Shame to spoil the view, though." He turned for a last look at it. And turned away rapidly. Two of them were touching each other. Quite intimately. "You . . . you can't do that here!"
"Why not?" asked one of the three.
"What is wrong with what we are doing?" another asked with genuine puzzlement.
With a quiet smile, Keilin went to the drawer and left the five young Gene-spliced to their explanations. Despite Beywulf's situation, the whole thing was not without humor. The folk of Dublin Moss had thought their morals the most flexible in the world. All the same they were failing dismally in their attempt to explain sexual taboos to the three girls, at least one of whom was showing a distinctly rounded belly. He snorted a chuckle to himself. Hell, he'd grown old in the last couple of years. Most of the words the Gene-spliced were using were beyond the hive girls. Well, at least it would keep young Wolf from worrying about his father for a while.
He intervened with three rough ponchos a few minutes later. "I'm sure Wolf and one of his companions will be delighted to give you a demonstration of what they mean by normal sex . . . some other time. But before you get to the practicals you so badly want, I think you should try these. You are turning blue. I agree it is lovely to be able to see each other, but the blue makes you look like Morkth."
They couldn't have donned those ponchos any faster if they had known just what they were supposed to do with them.
When they were dressed, one of Wolf's companions, Sula, began to laugh. "How many of you," she paused delicately, "warrior brood sows are there?
"Thirty-seven thousand three hundred and twenty-two . . . if you count us," said the girl who called herself Faime.
Looking at her companions with a broad smile, Sula continued, "Do you realize what will be happening back at the hive? The Gene-spliced trying to cope with that mess . . . and thirty-seven thousand three hundred and nineteen like these wandering around looking for a feel-up." She raised her eyes heavenward.
The thickset Johann sighed. "To think I'm here where the ratio is a lousy 4:5 when I could be there at a happy 1:10. Wolf, you no-good bum!"
* * *
The flight continued. They devised leggings for the girls, and bound strips of blanket around their feet. They also solved the toilet arrangements for a party of nine, three of whom had never had to learn bladder control. Bey stayed warm, his heart beating, as fluids ran into him. The chest and stomach wounds had been cleaned by little metallic arms. Keilin suspected the machine had drugged him, as his friend lay so still. Time passed, and talk continued. Keilin had to tell his side of the story. He had his entire audience sniffing and then openly weeping at his recital of S'kith's defeat of the hive. They ate some of the smoked beef and journey biscuits that the fear-of-starvation Gene-spliced had inevitably carried into battle. The expression on the hive girls' faces as they tasted the food filled Keilin with nostalgia, remembering S'kith in earlier days. Below now was a gray sea occasionally dotted with white gleaming shapes. The craft was undoubtably losing height.
An alarm screamed out from a speaker above their heads. A mechanical voice squawked. "Secure all personnel. Emergency status. Mechambulance unit 16 under attack. Taking evasive action."
They had barely time to grab for handholds. The craft banked viciously then dropped like a stone. They hurtled along, inches above the gray wave chop and were abruptly flung upward. They skimmed over the gleaming edge of a white floating mountain. And sheered away, jinking between more vast bergs. Behind them a burst of incandescence shattered the ice. The speaker squawked, constantly. Stuff about "Rules of war; non-combatants; medical personnel; prohibited weaponry and nuclear-free zones," until Keilin wished he had a free hand to shove a pillow over the thing and suffocate it.
Then there was another burst of incandescence, in midair this time. The mechambulance began to regain height. "Personnel. Emergency status cancel. Compcontrol defenses have nullified attack craft. Landing two minutes." The speaker continued in its flat mechanical tones. The mountain looked just as it had in Keilin's vision from the desert. Except bigger. And colder.
As the craft dropped towards an opening in the rock, Keilin had a brief view of a huge, dark wreck on the far shoulder of the mountain. Spilling from it was what looked like a river of ants. Then the mechambulance zoomed into the rocky tunnel. Behind them steel doors slid shut. The craft slowed. Then it stopped, pushed its tail end into a brightly lit bay and opened the back hatch. Beywulf's entire bed section began to roll out.
A man in green clothing was waiting. He shook his head at them. "Don't come out here. Only the patient can go in through the sterilizer unit. This is the sterile zone. I'll be with you as soon as I've seen to the patient. Unit 16, take them round to reception."
The speaker bleeped. "Please stand clear. Rear entry closing." Before the stunned group could respond, it had closed. The craft moved off slowly, despite their pounding on the door. Then the hatch opened again.
This time there was a broad set of stairs in front of them, leading to a well lit hall with hundreds of chairs in it. Above the door a glowing sign read: