Metamorphosis

by Jack McKinney

  "You'll never get a wife, you lamebrain!" she bawled at him. "A woman'd have to be nuts to hook up with a dippy squirt like you!"

  "Oh, yeah?"

  "Yeah! You're hopeless!"

  They were snarling at each other, when Annie reminded herself why

  she had come out there. Hold your horses, Annie! If you play your cards right, this guy could make you a jungle princess. Or a queen. Who knows? They might even make you a goddess!

  She turned from him, hands clasped to where her bosom was due to appear any day now. "I'm really sorry for shouting at you, Magruder," she sniffed. "It's just that-it's so difficult when a woman becomes emotionally involved."

  Magruder looked like he'd been sandbagged. "Uhh! You're not crying, are you? Hey, don't do that!"

  Everything was going just swell, Annie figured. In a week or two she would be running the valley. But then her schedule was thrown out the window: with a low rumbling, a trio of Shock Troopers flew by overhead. "Yikes! Invid!"

  Magruder looked up at them stonily, as the flight of Troopers disappeared in the distance. "The Overlords have come back to their nest here in the valley."

  Annie turned to him. "'Overlords'?"

  He nodded. "My people hate them. Ever since they first came here, and made the great roof over this valley, hunting has been bad; they frighten the game."

  He pointed downriver. "The strange three-in-one flowers grow thick down there, and so the Overlords built the great roof over the valley, to make this place their garden. The legends say that someday the river god will rise up to smite them, but"-a shrug-"so far that day hasn't come."

  He turned and reached for his spear. Annie frowned, "Um, Macky, you're not gonna try something stupid, are you?"

  He hefted the weapon. "It's time I became a man!" he said. "I'll prove myself in battle!"

  Hollering at him to use his head didn't help. He sprang away into the trees, nimble as a squirrel. Annie stumbled after him, tugging to free the hem of her skirt from some thorns. When she saw Magruder next, he was poised on a branch near a wide trail-a trail that had been beaten down by

  something a lot bigger than any wild game in the valley.

  She hit the dirt as she heard the tread of mecha. When she lifted her head again, Magruder was swinging at the lead Shock Trooper on a vine, clutching his spear, yowling a fierce battle cry.

  He landed with remarkable skill, on top of the lead alien's head canopy. "Now they'll stop laughing at me! I'll show all of them that Magruder is a man!"

  Annie was prepared to see the spearpoint bounce off and Magruder either fall to his death or be plucked to bloody shreds. But instead, just as he struck, the Invid, apparently oblivious to him, fired its thrusters. Magruder lost his balance, caught his spear with both hands and fell. The spear lodged sideways in the grooves at the back of the cranial canopy; Magruder clung to it.

  The next thing Annie knew, her new flame was being dragged away through the air, feet kicking, atop a Shock Trooper.

  It took her a while to get the tribesmen and her own teammates to believe it. The LaBelle lower lip was thrust out again. "That's right! This place is some kind of Invid hothouse! Magruder took them on all by himself! He's convinced the only way he'll get you to stop laughing at him is become a macho sexist Tarzan!"

  Silverhair shook his head. "That boy will be the death of me." "The Invid are probably looking for us," Scott said.

  "The tribesmen are going after Magruder!" Rand shouted. "Scott, we've got to help these guys; the Invid'll wipe out every last one of 'em."

  "We've barely enough Protoculture left to light a match," Lancer pointed out, "let alone fight a battle."

  Scott was lost in thought, staring off at the dam. "Then, we'll have to improvise and maybe get a little hand from the good old river god."

  Rand and Lancer began to get the idea, looking at their leader skeptically. It was funny how Scott wasn't very flexible until it came to fighting off the Invid.

  "The trick will be in getting the Invid close enough to the dam. We may have to risk the last of our Protoculture reserves to lure them there."

  Rand added, "Leave it to me. Those big boys just love to follow my Cyclone."

  "Good. The rest of you, I want enough explosives planted on that dam to blow the whole business through those holes in the roof. Cobalt grenades, Tango-9-the works. And we're going to need Protoculture flares."

  Lunk and Rook were smiling, though Marlene looked apprehensive and uncomprehending. Annie was off to one side, thinking. I don't like this! Macky and me're being left, out in the cold! My jungle darlin's just got to prove himself, or-ahh! Eureka!

  The Shock Troopers had been flying a slow spiral pattern, like searching wasps. They weren't flying very fast, but they were more than high enough for the young would-be warrior to make an unfavorable impression on the ground when he hit.

  He held on, hoping they would pass over the reservoir or some other body of deep water soon. That was his only hope, and his hands were going numb. His fingers were slipping.

  Then the alien mecha flew into the middle of a hail of boulders. The rocks bounced or broke harmlessly on the mecha. The Shock Troopers shielded themselves with the ladybug-shaped targones mounted on their forearms. They landed, looking around more in curiosity than in anger or alarm.

  The Invid themselves didn't understand all the secrets of the Flower of Life. For some reason, the Flowers had chosen to thrive in this valley, and it was critically important to the Invid to understand why. Therefore, they had roofed the place, in order to control study conditions. They left the population of atavistic Humans unbothered.

  At least, so far. The Troopers were hit by a rain of spears and arrows that shattered on or rebounded from them. Their optical sensors swept the jungle for enemies. Magruder managed to drag himself up. "Hey! Hold your

  fire!"

  Silverhair shouted from the shelter of a leafy screen. "Quick, get down!" But Magruder sprang to his feet, standing on the Trooper as if it were a mountain he had just scaled. "Look at me, Silverhair! I'm a man, and I'll

  prove it to you!"

  Magruder felt that this was his moment. He grasped his spear and got ready to thrust it into the monster's brain.

  But a figure swung out of nowhere, scooping him off the Shock Trooper's head just as the thing reached up to find out what was irritating it. Alloy claws clashed together on empty air.

  Lancer, swinging across to safety with Magruder under one arm, laughed. "Keep trying to kill yourself and you won't live to be a very old man."

  Annie saw where they would land and ran to meet Magruder. There wasn't much time left to get her plan in gear.

  The Shock Troopers turned on the tribesmen, who were pelting them with arrows and spears again. The Invid advanced slowly, hoping to learn what had caused the change in these docile primitives.

  "They've taken the bait!" bellowed Silverhair. "Hurry; back to the temple!"

  Rand, leaning on a log next to his Cyclone, tossed pebbles at a leaf aimlessly and yawned. I hate waiting! Let's get this turkey in the oven!

  He never heard the bare feet sneaking up behind him, and he only began to turn when he heard the swish of the creeper-wrapped wooden club. Then he was stretched out cold.

  The Shock Troopers lumbered under the immense trunks of the deserted tree-city with the Regis's voice ringing within them. "The Robotech Rebels are somewhere in the vicinity! Scan for traces of Protoculture activity!"

  It didn't take them long to find it and hear it. A Cyclone revved nearby

  and the optical sensors swung to fix on it at once.

  Straddling Rand's Cyc with Magruder behind her holding the handlebars, Annie settled her goggles and shrilled her war cry. "Hit it!"

  Magruder, it turned out, wasn't as primitive as he looked. He had some experience with the two-wheeled, battery-powered putt-putts that the dam engineers had once used to get around on. He gave the accelerator a twist, and the Cyc shot off along the wooden ove
rhead walkway.

  The Invid looked up, following the noise. Rand, lying trussed up back where he had fallen, shrieked through his gag, Those brats stole my Cyclone!

  Magruder did a daring jump from one level to the next, right above the Invids' heads, and Annie didn't seem to realize just what danger she was in. "Yeah, there they are! Yoo-hoo! Come and get us!"

  The Shock Troopers rocketed after them, slowed a bit by the need to watch out for the giant trees. Magruder zoomed down to the jungle floor and away; the aliens began making up the distance quickly. "Okay, remember to hold on tight now!" Annie yelled.

  "I will!" Annihilation discs began crashing nearby.

  Annie seemed undisturbed as the Cyc hurtled along, finding paths through the dense foliage that only the tribes-people knew. "Magruder, my little Ape-Guy, we're gonna make a man of you yet!"

  Rook set her last cobalt grenade in place. There was only one limpet mine, and Lancer was placing that to the best advantage. The grenades and Tango-9 would have to do the rest of the job. She didn't want to think about what would happen if it wasn't enough.

  Ironically, Silverhair and his people raised no objection to the whole plan. Deliverance in the form of the river god was what they had always looked for. It was the reason they had defended their god's den. It was obvious to the tribe that the freedom fighters were just messengers of the god, sent to assist him. Rook was beginning to think the religion wasn't as crazy as it seemed.

  She listened, for the two-dozenth time, for the approach of Rand's Cyc. Don't you dare screw up this one! she thought to him silently. Then she wondered why she should even care about him.

  Then she thought again, C'mon, Rand. C'mon!

  Lancer set the last of his charges and delicately threaded a lilylike flower in one of its adhesion legs, for an artistic touch. He patted it, then turned and dashed for high ground.

  The trooper caught up faster than Annie had calculated, jostling the Cyc with near misses in the long feeder tunnel that led to the dam. Magruder lost control just as they shot out of the tunnel and mecha and riders all ended up plunging through a screen of fronds and leaves and spilling in separate directions over lush grass.

  The Invid appeared a moment later to land and stalk closer, spreading to either side. This Protoculture motorcycle was similar to the freedom fighters', but its riders seemed to have no armor, no weapons. There would have to be a little more examination before irrevocable disposition of the Humans was made.

  That was the moment when Lunk blew the flares; all Invid heads turned automatically. A dozen Protoculture mini-suns burned on the dam's concrete face.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  They were such disparate personalities-it's amazing that anyone could have believed they would come together as a result of random forces.

  Crowell, Remember Our Names! (The Road to Reflex Point)

  "Protoculture activity on the dam!" The Regis's voice came to her children. "Investigate!"

  The gleaming purple Shock Troopers boosted away, forgetting Annie and Magruder for the moment. Lunk came dashing off the dam crest roadway, getting clear of Ground Zero.

  Scott watched with satisfaction as the Troopers, joined by the others who had been combing the valley, plummeted down to the blinding-bright Protoculture flares set along the dam face. He pushed the button.

  Concrete blew out in a storm of conventional and Protoculture shaped charges, as the dam fractured and broke. The Invid mecha were stunned by what was happening and then they were thrown backward and down by the falling concrete cliff and the freshwater sea behind it. In a moment, a squadron of Invid were wiped away, smashed and flattened by forces that not even Robotech armor could withstand.

  "And so the river god legend comes true," Scott mused, looking down on the devastation from the heights. Just lying on top of some Flowers of Life had given Rand weird visions; perhaps living in the midst of a preserve of them had given the tribe some kind of altered perception, or prescience

  The water quickly pushed up dirt and trees, hunks of mecha and vegetation. It was less a tidal wave than a moving wall of mud and solid debris that would plow down anything before it. A lot of Flowers were doomed. Maybe the Invid would even lose interest in the valley.

  Lunk, Rook, and Lancer had come up behind him. Lancer spoke softly. "Did the tribe's Visions serve us, or..."

  Annie pushed herself up, realizing that she had been lying on top of Magruder. Nearby, the Cyc rested on its side, smoking, but still intact. "Macky! My little Greystoke! Are you hurt?"

  Magruder moved, then sat up, rubbing a bump on his head and knowing that by all rights he and Annie should have been torn limb from bough. Then he heard the din of the flood. They had barely made it high enough; a few yards away and several down, the broached reservoir had left its high-water mark.

  Annie was offering him a handful of white silk, her gage for her jungle knight. "Need a hankie?"

  His hands closed around hers. "Hey, we did it, Annie! Thank you, oh, thank you!" His face was alight; not even Silverhair could say no to him now!

  Annie sat listening to the world-shaking noise of the flood recede. Sunlight came directly down on them through one of the holes in the Invid-built roof. It seemed a perfect moment, the kind she had always wanted to live, the kind she had always wanted to trap in amber.

  "Believe me, Macky, it was my pleasure."

  Rand was beginning to get a grip on the knots that held him. "If they've damaged my Cyclone I'll twist the skin off their heads and strangle 'em with it!"

  He was blinded by salt sweat, but he was working mostly by feel. He had an enormous headache from the shot he had taken. "What is it with kids these days, anyway?"

  It was a holy night in the treetop town, both because the Invid had been driven out by the river god's righteous wrath, and because Magruder had at last proved himself a man of the tribe. (The team noticed that a number of people were breathing a sigh of relief about that, since they wouldn't have put up with any more of Magruder's pecadillos.)

  Magruder and Annie, in the best raiment of the village, got to sit side by side in the high-backed chairs of honor in the tribe's council hall. Annie looked a little punchy but very happy. In addition to greeting Magruder as a man and a brother, Silverhair offered him his choice of any woman as his wife.

  "All hail, Magruder!"

  The river receded quickly, and for some reason the tribe didn't seem bothered by the loss of the dam, or the likelihood that the Invid would come again. Prophesies had been served, had been borne out, and thus other prophesies and Visions-which the tribemembers wouldn't discuss-would be, too. Therefore, all was well.

  With the tribe's help, the building of a string of rafts went with surprising ease and speed. There were hidden warehouses, with empty oil drums, cordage, and tools. Several nights later, the team floated off downstream, on a string of rafts that supported them and their mecha.

  Lunk had gotten a few powerful heat-turbine outboard engines going, and these were used for steering and minimal propulsion-enough to give the rafts headway. Even Marlene had to man a sweep, since the team was now one member short.

  The shoreline still reeked of the stuff that had been washed up onto it during the flood. Watching the luminous fairy-grove of the tribe, each team member thought about what Annie had meant to him or her. All, that is, except for Rand, who stood by his outboard and looked downstream only, refusing to acknowledge that anything had happened.

  The others silently manned steering engines or sweeps. At last he whirled on them. "Why the long faces? You all look like your gerbil just died. Try pulling yourselves together, okay? We're better off! You didn't have to look after her as much as I did, so trust me on this one. Now us big kids are free to get on with some down 'n' dirty freedom fighting!"

  Rook, sitting with her back to a crate, hiked herself up a little, studying him. "Y'know, you're as transparent as glass."

  Rand made a blustering objection, then turned away, his cheeks hot.
/>   Then he said in a low voice, "Hey, I think we've arrived."

  It was just coming into view around a bend. The Invid Hive looked a little like a spider straddling the river. Its nodules were all alight now, like blister windows. Its curved underside glowed like a belly-furnace. As they watched, a flight of mecha left it, ungainly bats making their way out into the night.

  "There are no Hives like that," Scott breathed. "That's the weirdest looking-" He drew breath. "All right, everybody; you know what to do."

  They had tarped the mecha and Lunk's truck with camouflage covers, but that didn't hold much promise for the time when the string of rafts came in under the bright undergut of the Hive. It was like being a bug under a lamp beam, Rand reflected, as he huddled under a tarp, staring up at the fiery glare of the thing.

  But somehow they weren't noticed. They couldn't decide whether it was because the Invid were in a turmoil after suffering losses, or simply that the aliens were looking for Protoculture spoor and ignoring everything else.

  The stilted Hive made a bizarre sight, set against the delicate pink-lighted inner surface of the tremendous roof shell. At some point, the team realized that the light had grown less harsh, that they had passed out of the fortress's immediate area. They emerged from cover as the rafts drifted into darkness.

  Something crossed the night sky. It was the patrol they had seen leave the fortress, exiting the valley through one of the giant holes. There were five Shock Troopers flying as the rear two echelons of a triangle, two followed by three. But what was at the apex made the team gasp.

  "Hey, look at-" Rand began.

  "I don't think I've ever heard of a Trooper like that before," Lancer said, the last of the Hive's light catching his pale skin.