by Jeff Carlson
Vonnie lunged. She grabbed one with each glove, crunching through the blunt horn-like spikes on their topsides. Two bulges of extra cartilage protected their brains. She squeezed. In a human, the result would have been spasms and unconsciousness. The sunfish went rigid, increasing their torque. They tore at the ice before she ripped them loose. She hurled them down in a shower of chunks and dust.
A breeze ruffled at the dust. Alarm bars filled her visor as the dust levitated, then swept upward through a few holes in the ceiling.
“I’m spraying emergency sealants!” Ben shouted.
“Von, our mecha are reinforcing the ice,” Koebsch said. “We can stop the blowout. The tent contained most of it.”
“I told you this would happen,” Ash growled.
“The pressure held. You aren’t losing atmosphere,” Ben said.
Vonnie rose and advanced on the tribe. She was aware that she’d reverted to a human posture. Fine. Let the sunfish learn her true capabilities. Towering over them, she widened her spotlight, bathing them in its heat, splattering the males’ blood through the light as she raised her fists and screamed: —Are you animals or worthy allies?
—We are Mid Clan Six-Six! they cried.
—You are too close to the surface! Too close! If they dig apart the ice, there is only death for you! I will survive while you asphyxiate!
The matriarchs screeched. Four of them leapt, including Charlotte. Vonnie swung and missed.
The matriarchs went over her, springing off the nearest wall. Goose bumps lifted the hair on the back of her neck. She was surrounded, but the matriarchs ignored her. They attended to the battered males. They pacified the males by herding them into pairs and applying pressure to their wounds.
One sprawled limply on the floor. Vonnie had squeezed too hard, rupturing his brain case. Charlotte touched his swollen body and shrieked: —No life. He serves as food.
—Food! they cried.
Without thinking, Vonnie exposed her revulsion. She turned to avoid the sight. Then she realized she’d shown weakness. A fresh jolt of adrenaline lit her veins and she rushed to place her back against the wall, certain they would attack.
The sunfish studied her in the echoing dark. Large or small, they’d paused as a single unit. They piped and screeched, measuring her.
—Eat? Eat? Eat? Eat? they cried.
Vonnie stood motionless. Her temples throbbed from the strain of gritting her teeth. With a soft zzzzz, the welding laser on her wrist went to full power.
Charlotte slashed at the dead male, cutting his belly with her beak. She popped him open with a familiar clockwise pull of her arms. Then she threw his entrails in a spiraling mess. The sunfish swarmed.
Breathing hard, Vonnie thought, They wondered if I was claiming the first bite. My God. They expected me to lead them in their feast.
Were they honoring me? Bowing to me? It’s too much. I’ve learned so many things from them. I’m more committed and frank than ever, but this is too much. I can’t pretend to eat with them. I won’t.
“Von, are you okay?” Koebsch asked.
Ben said, “Your pulse and respiration are through the roof. Take it easy. You’re not really down there, remember? You’re safe in 06 with me.”
“I remember.”
“Someone else can take over if you want.”
“Thank you. I’m okay,” she said distantly, watching the sunfish gobble the male’s softer parts. Others ripped at hunks of skin or rubbery strands of cartilage.
As her suit’s radar targeting automatically tracked each sunfish in the crowd, another truth dawned on her. Lam and the matriarchs kept the savages from most of the warm flesh. Lam made no pretense of eating himself. He was simply an enforcer as the matriarchs devoured the best meat and innards. They allowed the few intelligent males like Tom to gorge as well, but the savages were given scraps.
More interesting, the larger breed didn’t join the riot. They hung back, silently communicating among themselves with their arms.
Why hadn’t they shoved into the bloody mess? Did they disapprove? What if the Mid Clans hadn’t adopted the same necessary custom of devouring their own dead? Would they condemn the smaller sunfish and dissolve their alliance?
“Dawson is shouting at his display,” Ben reported with an ugly laugh. “He must love this.”
“Why do you say that?” Koebsch asked.
“Use your head,” Ben said. “Cannibalism is exactly what he needs to make public opinion of the sunfish even worse. Are we editing our datastreams? Maybe we should.”
“That’s illegal,” Koebsch said.
The two of them want to argue about everything, Vonnie thought. Ben keeps needling him and Koebsch keeps asserting his authority just like the sunfish challenge each other.
“We’re more similar than we look,” she murmured. She felt like the color was returning to her face. With it, her head cleared. She clicked on her radio and said, “Lam, what are the larger sunfish talking about?”
—New sunfish eat. Old sunfish wait.
“They’re not angry with the smaller breed?”
—No. Happy. New sunfish are hungry and sick. Need protein. Need oxygen.
“They decided to let the smaller sunfish eat,” O’Neal agreed. “A single corpse isn’t much, and they want to improve the overall health of their new clan.”
Vonnie nodded to herself, surprised and pleased. She hadn’t anticipated such generosity. It boded well. If the larger breed lived in a rich environment, peace and wealth might explain their size. She began to ask if Lam had gleaned any clues about their home when he radioed again.
He seemed more lucid now. He used full sentences, perhaps he was replying to O’Neal, a biologist like the man he’d been. —The new clan also needs fewer savages, Lam said. The larger sunfish were not upset when you killed one.
“I wish I hadn’t.”
—The matriarchs are working toward the same judgment. It’s why they kept the savages from the most nutritious parts of the dead male. Instead, they allowed the savages to eat the cartilage and pedicellaria.
“Lam, no. What judgment?”
—They will kill others.
“Tell them to stop!” she yelled. “We can’t slaughter everyone who isn’t smart enough.”
—You pushed them toward their decision.
“Me? I didn’t. Please. We can find roles for the smaller males. The tribe still needs workers and scouts.”
—They are animals. You asked if they’re animals. You said animals will destroy the tribe, and the matriarchs heard your disapproval.
“Wait!”
—Do not interfere.
“Von, we need to listen to him,” O’Neal said.
“Our top priority is peace,” Koebsch added. “If the matriarchs get rid of one or two of the worst males…”
“Jesus Christ, do you know what you’re asking?”
“Affirmative,” Koebsch said for the record. “Von, you’ve reminded us a thousand times how alien they are. You’re also correct that they’re a bit like us. Every day they compete among themselves. They want a chance to improve. That’s what we offered them.”
“We can’t endorse murder,” she said. She repeated her protests to the sunfish. —Your smaller males are animals because of starvation and disease. Join us. My clan has endless food. We can make your eggs healthy again.
The matriarchs screamed. They stroked the wounded males protectively, shielding them from Vonnie… but there was also melancholy in their body shapes.
—The stupid males will always be stupid males, Lam translated. —They cannot change.
“I can help them!”
—The matriarchs do not want your help in dealing with the savage males. Their new clan has the warriors it needs in the larger sunfish. The healthy smaller males are superior scouts and hunters. Even without accepting an alliance with you, Mid Clan Six-Six has become a superior tribe. The savages are a liability.
“My God, don’t…”
—This is what you asked for. Intelligence. Cooperation. Mid Clan Six-Six cannot adhere to your principles with the savages polluting their tribe.
The many sunfish rearranged themselves. The matriarchs, their intelligent males and the larger breed pulled away from the scattered remains of the corpse.
The savages kept eating. That they’d been provided with a last meal was not due to fondness or compassion. The scraps were a diversion. As the savages bickered with each other, tussling over a few specks of flesh, the tribe encircled them.
“There has to be another way!” Vonnie shouted. She flexed her gloves, leaning toward the savages as if to defend them from the other sunfish.
—Do not interfere.
“Von, stay back,” Koebsch said.
“We’ll banish them!” Vonnie cried. She reached out to block Charlotte and Lam. “Don’t kill them! Send them into the ice. Let them go. I demand it.”
Two of the savages turned as if to look up. With preternatural speed, the others sensed the change in the first two. All seven of the savage males retreated into a clump like a phalanx, guarding each other.
Vonnie’s subconscious must have known the result of her movements. She couldn’t bear to witness a massacre, so she’d allowed the savages an advantage. They should have been defenseless. Instead, they’d recognized their tribemates’ attack formation.
The matriarchs shrieked. Then the tribe fell upon the savage males. Charlotte bumped Vonnie’s wrist as she leapt, thunking against her suit’s plastisteel. The brief contact was menacing and insolent. —Fight! Charlotte screeched.
—Obey me! Vonnie cried.
Lam joined the matriarchs and the larger sunfish, leading with his metal arm. They immediately dominated the conflict, although they sustained blows and gashes they might have avoided if the savages hadn’t been warned.
—Stop! Vonnie cried. —Let them go!
The paroxysm of beaks and arms intensified as the sunfish succumbed to their killing lust. Shadows flailed through Vonnie’s spotlight, then sprays of blood and ice.
They chewed on each other. Screaming, touching, clasping enemy and friend alike, they read each other. They knew their opponents’ dying confusion. They shared their madness, their agony, their dreams and their plans.
The savages sprained a larger female’s arm and lacerated Charlotte’s topside. They bit another matriarch. Tom was injured above one ear. That was the extent of the fight. Within forty seconds, the savages were incapacitated or dead. Then the wounded were killed. A savage’s tortured wail faded from the cavern as they eviscerated him.
Vonnie almost threw up. No, she thought, staring through a sticky dark mist of body fluids. The grisly fog wafted through the cavern on disturbed currents of air, then sank to the floor as it froze into red clots and snowflakes.
She shut her eyes.
“You’re safe with me,” Ben said. “Von, I’m right beside you in Module 06.”
She might have nodded. She looked again. At her feet, the sunfish bolted down as much meat as they could cram into their stomachs. The larger breed ate, too. There was only a single monster who did not consume the dead. Lam.
“Why…” Vonnie said weakly.
—They believed you were testing their resolve, Lam told her. —Their sole explanation that was you questioned their vows to accept your treaty. They killed their savages to bring harmony.
“You helped them!” she said out of spite. “Don’t say it’s their fault. I watched you do it.”
—Yes. No. We killed the savages for you.
Weeping, nodding, Vonnie offered a miserable prayer to whatever gods existed. She would never forgive herself. She had thought Dawson’s betrayal of the ESA crew and Top Clan Eight-Six was appalling. Now the sunfish had betrayed their males for her.
They did it for me.
Far away, the ice was haunted by a shivering cry from the sunfish beneath the FNEE modules. Vonnie’s suit modified the call into a long scream like a diving hawk. It was a song of violence and rapture.
In unison, the matriarchs and the larger sunfish drew their beaks from the corpses. Wet with grotesque, steaming innards, they screeched. —Danger! Kill!
Vonnie raised her welding laser and pressed closer to the wall. Her body felt like a coiled wire until O’Neal spoke.
“Don’t show fear,” he said.
She reset herself. She took a new, lower shape by kneeling on the ice, but she kept her laser up. She expected the sunfish to come for her next. Their execution of the males went against everything she’d imagined for them. Beside it, Dawson’s betrayal seemed insignificant, and the males’ deaths had been her fault. She’d betrayed herself.
Caught between the cavern wall and the shrieking matriarchs, Vonnie called desperately on her radio to Lam. “What do they want?” she asked.
—You won’t like it, he said.
“Tell me.”
—The sunfish below the FNEE are enacting the same purge. They are also killing their savages.
11.
Vonnie staggered in relief and new fear. The matriarchs weren’t screaming at her. They were calling through her. They’d ordered a new slaughter across the ice.
Ribeiro broke into her audio feed by issuing a Class 1 alert, his voice thick with repugnance. “A bloodbath is underway in the fractures beneath us,” he said. “The larger sunfish have attacked the smaller kind.”
Vonnie shook off her paralysis. “You’re wrong,” she said. “It’s both breeds against a specific group of smaller males, isn’t it?”
Ribeiro deflected any admission of a mistake. “Our systems are tracking more than forty individual combatants in a congested space,” he said. “A few were lost beneath an ice fall. Others are already dead.”
“Koebsch, it’s a disaster,” Henri said. He was in the FNEE command module with Ribeiro and used the same emergency channel.
Vonnie was preoccupied with the sunfish in her cavern. They had resumed their feast and she stayed back with her laser up, salvaging her thoughts from her own turmoil. “The sunfish don’t care about you,” she said.
“They may bring down our modules,” Ribeiro said.
“Colonel, check your systems and our transcripts again,” Koebsch said. “The intelligent sunfish are killing the savages. They want to accept our treaty.”
“What they want is immaterial if collateral damage opens a hole in the ice,” Ribeiro said.
“Stand down,” Koebsch said. “Do not send our mecha through the lock. Do not activate our weapon systems. Is that clear?”
“Affirmative.”
“Sir, their fight is over,” Tavares reported. Vonnie brightened at the young sergeant’s voice. “Some of the larger breed are shoring up the wall that collapsed,” Tavares said. “Others are digging through the debris.”
“That’s good news,” Koebsch said.
“It does not look like good news,” Ribeiro said. “They are eating their dead. How do we know they won’t begin a new fight when they require their next meal?”
“That’s unlikely,” Koebsch said. “The purge wasn’t motivated by hunger.”
“Ash, please check our grid,” O’Neal said. “Ribeiro told us some of the sunfish were lost. Are they buried or did they get away?”
“They got away,” Ash said. “I show three radar signatures moving northeast from the FNEE modules at a depth of point zero two klicks. They’re not coming toward us.”
“I wasn’t worried about three savages attacking our camp, but it may affect how the Mid Clan deals with us if a few of their undesirables escaped,” O’Neal said. “Von, you need to keep that in mind as you talk to them.”
Vonnie spoke like she was in a nightmare, forcing each word through her disbelief. “You want us to hunt them down?”
“I want us to remove rival hunters or saboteurs from the area and have the bodies to prove our success,” O’Neal said. “I want us to look invincible.”
“How did this happen?” she asked. “Now
we’re killing sunfish in order to save them?”
“Von, it’s who they are.” O’Neal was gentle, but what she noticed was the conspicuous silence of Ben and Koebsch. Maybe it was better for her relationship with each man that she didn’t shout at them.
On the cavern floor, the matriarchs and the larger sunfish finished eating, although two of the dead males were mostly intact. Their oozing blood had been lapped up. Then their shredded organs were repacked and their injuries were sloshed with urine, which froze, sealing them shut. Both corpses would be preserved for later.
Meanwhile, the living sunfish picked at their tribemates, removing every fleck of gore from their skins and their stubby defensive spikes.
The two breeds crawled among each other indiscriminately. The slaughter had done more than remove an irritant. It had served as a marriage. Charlotte, Lam, and four larger females formed a nucleus at the bottom of their heap, a new arrangement of leaders… and Vonnie saw their nucleus was composed of six instead of a more typical quartet.
Was that relevant to the tribe’s new name?
As the leaders directed their beaks at Vonnie, they sent Tom and Brigit and two larger males to the cavern ceiling, dividing the pack so that nearly half of them took submissive positions above her.
—We are Six-Six! they cried.
Vonnie shifted her weight as she studied them, acknowledging the changes in the group; their losses; their improved balance and strength. But she wondered if Ribeiro’s pessimism was correct. Had they proclaimed a death sentence on the savages partly because of their hunger?
The new leaders noticed the misgivings in her. They replied with their own suspicion. —How does Ghost Clan live beyond the ice? Charlotte called.
—You know we have metal like the shape I wear or like him, Vonnie said with a gesture at Lam. Feeling like she was on safe ground as they discussed engineering and ROM, she grew more confident. —We have tools beyond your knowledge, and we can build farms and reservoirs for you. We can make good atmosphere. We will share.