The Leagacy of Heorot Page 8

  "Might as well enjoy ‘em." Terry exhaled a long white stream of smoke in the darkness. The mist and the night formed a wall that obliterated everything more than a kilometer from the camp. Their entire universe consisted of a few buildings and pens and fields and the pale, silent glow of the moons above them. "It'll be a long time before anyone gets around to planting tobacco."

  "You may have discovered the real reason I came," Carlos said contentedly, smoke trickling from his nose. "The only way I could ever quit these damned things is to get ten trillion miles away from the nearest convenience store."

  "Yeah." Terry's smile was tentative.

  "You know, amigo, you look about ten years younger when you let yourself go."

  Terry was grinning now, but covered it with his hand as he took another drag on his cigarette. "Think we're wasting our time out here?"

  A shrug. "Maybe. A couple of nights should tell the tale. Your wife is going to have her babies here. Wouldn't you rather be sure? I mean really sure?"

  Terry inhaled deeply. "On a night like this it's nice to have an excuse to be outside." The grin was open now, and infectious. "You're right. Thanks, Carlos." He adjusted the rifle on his shoulder. "Got to keep moving. Another butt?"

  The searchlight cruised back through the fields. As it passed the pens, the colts and fillies froze their nervous motions, moist eyes glistening like frozen flames. Huckleberry growled, then subsided.

  "We'll have the infrared up tomorrow night," Carlos said quietly. "Got a jiggle along the southern fence. Not enough to trigger the electricity, though. May not have been anything at all, but..."

  "Could have been a turkey," Terry said hopefully.

  "Si... except Bobbi told me that she's seen damned few turkeys in the last week. Maybe they ran into something poisonous." He considered that for a moment. "Or maybe it's Thanksgiving on Avalon-"

  The yowl of a bobcat caught in the gears of a clock could have been no more sudden or piercing. The fence alarm hammered at the night, at their ears, stripping the haze from their speculations in an instant. Another sound was mixed into it: an animal sound, something wet and angry.

  Carlos's arm wrenched at the shoulder socket as Huckleberry spun on the end of the leash, running north for the Armory.

  "Jesus Christ!" Terry screamed, lowering his rifle to port arms, and running behind them. The searchlights swept along the fence, which was vibrating wildly. A ragged chorus of howls split the air as the other dogs converged on the wire.

  Carlos was gasping, the sudden exertion burning his lungs, a silent litany of Dios mio, let it be a turkey. Por favor, let it be a turkey-He stumbled, lost his grip on Huckleberry. Before he could catch the leash, the animal was bounding toward the fence.

  Carlos charged after him.

  There was nothing to be seen, nothing heard except the dreadful screeching. Huckleberry was charging full tilt, snarling his challenge as if he could see something, smell something that Carlos could not. Charging directly at the fence-and with dreadful certainty Carlos knew the dog would not stop in time. "Cut the powerrr!" he screamed, but there was no time, and in the darkness, in the frenzy. Huckleberry leaped directly into the triple strands of the fence. His fur shot up away from his body like needles in a spray of cactus. His startled, agonized yelp was cut short by the hideous sound and smell of meat singeing in the fire. Sparks sizzled whitely from the relays as the section shorted. Huckleberry's body twitched and leaped like a frog on a griddle.

  Carlos turned away, choking as his dinner jolted sourly from his stomach. He swallowed hard, forcing it back down, gagging. No hurry now. After a few moments his vision cleared.

  Huckleberry's body, wreathed in strands of wire, sagged motionlessly now. Jon van Don cut the power. Elliot Falkland pried the blackened, smoking corpse loose with a shovel. The surviving dogs were howling, sniffing, frightened. The stench of death was gut-wrenchingly strong, and a couple of the other colonists had turned away, covering their faces. Lights were coming up all over the camp, and everything was confusion and the patter of feet.

  Zack was there, skidding on his heels, and then covering his nose.

  "What happened here? Carlos?"

  "Alarm. Huckleberry went nuts. I think that he smelled something. He tore his way-hell, I let him go. He ran right into the fence. God, I'm sorry, Zack."

  "No time for that. Did you see anything?"

  There was another sound now, the sound of a motor coughing to life, then purring smoothly. Rotors engaging. A dust cloud swirled up behind the animal hospital as a Skeeter rose from the air pad, orange landing lamps blazing.

  One of the searchlights spun to follow. Light sheathed the craft in silver.

  The Skeeter wobbled, off balance. There was a weight beneath its belly: a calf dangling in a sling at the end of a four-meter line. The animal wiggled feebly. Its legs and head hung with woeful vulnerability as the Skeeter corrected itself and buzzed off to the north.

  "Shit fire, " Zack moaned.

  "-and save the ammunition," Carlos muttered, shielding his eyes as they tracked the Skeeter. "I wonder who that is?"

  Terry was right behind them, hands gripping the rifle. "I'll give you two guesses. Weyland and his tame ape, that's who."

  "What is going on here!?" Zack yelled, running for the communications shack. "Will someone tell me what is happening?"

  "I'm sure someone can," Terry said in disgust. Carlos had the distinct impression that Terry wanted nothing so much as to sight his rifle on the flying machine that was even now vanishing into the wall of mist. "I'm damned sure that somebody knows exactly what is going on."

  The creature was curious and hungry, but mostly curious. There was often enough to eat, but never enough to learn, since the invaders came. Their mobile nests with the hard shells, the odd animals that shared their domain...

  Its short lifetime had offered too little to stimulate its senses. Strangeness exerted a fascination. In the murky racial past there had been challenges, lethal unless understood. The threats were long gone, but the curiosity remained.

  The invaders seemed to have captured tiny pieces of the sun and moons, and could make them shine where they wished.

  It could not grasp how this could be so, could not even form the proper questions, and so the wondering died before it was truly born. Only a trace remained, in healthy caution and a driving urge to learn more.

  Caution was virtually no inhibition at all. It could see their weakness: they were slow, they moved in herds like other beasts. They were merely interesting meat.

  Still, there was something...

  It crawled around the edge of the encampment, rounding the hill to the southwest, a hill that glittered with shiny squares. It bit one of them experimentally. The square was hard and tasteless and moist with dew.

  The creature headed west around the fields, past the blowing wheat and corn, past a smaller field planted with soybeans, around to the edge of the calf pen.

  It had been here once before, during the rain, and had been well rewarded for its efforts.

  It was about to taste the fence when one of the circles of light glided its way. It scampered to the side, almost directly into a second glaring oval, and scampered backward for a few steps, staying in the darkness, playing hide-and-seek with it, while speed began to fizz in its veins. There was always a corridor of darkness to squeeze through, and the game was irresistible. It wiggled across the road toward the main camp, staying in darkness, always in darkness, until it was across the fence from the horse pen.

  It watched them, paying little attention to the lights now, the patterns of movement absorbed so that it automatically moved enough to stay out of them. That game was too simple now. There was another, better game at hand.

  The horses paced nervously now, staring out into the darkness as their noses scented what their eyes could not see.

  It prowled around to the side, watching the horses. They moved quickly. Their skin was glossy and rich. The way their hair tossed with th
eir fear was almost unendurably appetizing. It whined, its hunger assuming the proportions of lust, and sniffed at the fence. There was something wrong here, it could tell. Its nostrils burned a little to sniff it. Something wrong, but the danger meant less with every passing moment. It wanted one of the horses, wanted to bring one down, to outrun it, to leap upon it and break its neck, to rip open the flank and taste it, to gaze into its eyes in the moment of death...

  Its teeth met the wire. Every muscle in its body locked in unyielding contraction as electricity ripped through the line. It bit down so hard that the wire snapped. It jerked free, screaming its fear into the night.

  The captured sun surged after it. It ran, terrified of the vine that bit back, of the light, of things that it did not, could not understand. And a thing inside its body flared to life.

  From a sac behind the peculiarly flattened lungs, a complex chemical pumped into its system. Its blood vessels swelled. Speed surged through its body. Its movements, already quick, accelerated as if a supercharger had been triggered. Its stubby legs churned at blur-speed as its heartbeat tripled.

  The searchlights that swiveled frantically after it never had a chance.

  It was overheating, burning as it ran, and as it plunged into the waters of the Miskatonic its skin nearly sizzled. It lay there, marinating in mud, extending its snorkel to the surface. Its heartbeat slowed, steadied, calmed. The chemical fire in its body faded slowly to ashes.

  The fear and pain gradually faded, leaving a core of rage. Anger at the invaders who hadn't the good grace to be either prey or direct competitor. The invaders were rivals, and they were cheats! They were something that it did not understand at all, something that could hurt it in a way that it had never experienced pain, inspire a fear that was quite new to it.

  One of their flying things came humming overhead, lights stabbing out and dissolving the swirling gray mist. The creature watched through the muddy water, blinking hatefully, fearfully.

  It worked its way back upriver, its thick, reptilian body rippled slowly behind. Blood was in its mouth, and murder on its mind. Murder, not killing. Killing was for food or fun. This was an urge to hurt for the sake of hurting. Not to reduce their numbers, but to make them afraid, as it had been afraid. To repay the invaders for their gift of pain.

  How, though? How to get in? It had looked everywhere, and everywhere that it looked were the hard, tasteless fire-vines which bit back. Everywhere except...

  Above the river, up along the lip of the cliff, above the straight seventy-degree rise that the colonists had considered a natural barrier, there was no fence. Its eyes narrowed as it considered.

  This was it, then. It would crawl up the cliff and give them fear, and death. It would teach them...

  Stubby legs lifted it from the river muck, and it began crawling up the cliff. The first few meters were easy, but the farther it climbed, the steeper the wall became, until its feet lost purchase, and it slid back down into the water.

  It lay there, disgusted, and then trotted a few meters to the right and tried again.

  Stealthily now. Eyes narrowed, one foot carefully finding support, and then another. The purchase was a little better here: sedimentary rock, crumbling in layers, offering shelves for toeholds. The creature's heart beat faster as it considered the havoc it would wreak. It climbed higher this time, and when it started to slide, it fell a clean eight feet before its claws found purchase. It reached the water in a shower of rocks.

  It seethed with rage now. Muscles flamed, eyesight blurred with red. Again its body began to boil. Its breath seemed to sear its throat. All thought, all considerations vanished in a burst of chemical speed.

  It erupted out of the water, heart thundering in its chest, legs paddling crazily. There was brush, then naked shattered rock, then a flat rock face. Its momentum was so great that when the footing was gone it skimmed up the cliff face, momentum carrying it over places where there were no footholds at all.

  Its speed carried it up over the edge. Feet scrabbled for support that wasn't there. In a moment of utter panic it realized that it was marooned in the air, sailing beyond the lip of the gorge in a great arc, spread-eagled for the captured suns.

  No sun swung its way. The slanted roof of a hut rose up to meet it: its thick, scaled body slammed down, bumped over the rows of ceramic tiles to the edge and thumped ignominiously to the ground.

  For a second it lay there, dazed and confused. Then as its wits returned it ran for the nearest shadows and crouched, breath whistling in its throat.

  After a few minutes, the panic and surprise subsided. It was inside, and could do what it wanted.

  From the shadows it watched the invaders scurrying about carrying shiny sticks in their forelegs, scuttling this way and that in slow, comical confusion. It was quite funny, and in the shadows, the creature's thick lips curled in a dolphin smile.

  The glaring circle of the searchlight cruised past it several times. Once, reflected from a metal tower, the light slid directly over it. But there was no one to see.

  Mine, it gurgled happily. All mine...

  It listened carefully, heard nothing approaching in the darkness, and crept out, peering both ways.

  It passed the nearest hut. The door cracked open and it scampered back to a shadow and watched as two invaders scrambled clumsily past, reminding the creature of swimmers in their mindless haste.

  When they were gone it crept out again, racing from shadow to shadow.

  The cliff ascent had made it hot and hungry. The Miskatonic could cool it, but there were matters to settle before it took the plunge.

  It paused in a shadow. Across the way was a patch of light, and it could see into the interior of one of the buildings. There was nothing of interest until a door opened and an invader came in, carrying something small and pinkish in its forelegs.

  With obvious tenderness the yellow-topped invader laid its tiny burden into a nest made of rigid twigs, and bent to lick the tiny thing's face, very gently. The invader's foreleg brushed the wall, and the mock sun went out. The invader left the room.

  The creature waited another minute, then crept up to the open space, planning to crawl through and take the tender, wiggling morsel.

  To its surprise the clear space was blocked. It tried again, gently, and-

  Still it couldn't get through, but now it was close enough to see that what blocked its path was somewhat like the cold, hard water that sometimes slid down the mountain into its pool. The clear barrier even gave slightly under its weight, and the creature could hear sounds through it.

  "-duty again, Alicia? Well, at least April is asleep."

  Uncomprehending, it shook its head and tested the barrier again. There were more sounds, sounds of objects falling, creaking, and it watched the small invader in the nest wiggle, its tiny hindlegs thrusting at the covering.

  The creature nosed against the barrier again, then reared back and smashed into it. The barrier splintered, sharp fragments slicing into its nose and above one eye.

  It scrambled through the window and took one step toward the small nest when the larger invader threw the door open and screamed piercingly.

  Their eyes met, and the creature thought that it had never seen anything more appetizing. With regret it conceded that this was not the time for the large one. A shrug of its hindquarters brought its great spiked tail back and around to smash into the invader's midsection. The invader curled in on itself; its noise stopped.

  The creature shrugged its tail again. The invader flew away and smashed into the wall. Her forelegs pawed at her torso, trying to staunch the flow of crimsons. She slid to the ground.

  No time now. Only moments had passed, but it could feel the danger. With a twist of its thick, powerful body it was back to the nest of straight twigs, and the small invader even now squalling its fear. The creature reached in and picked it up.

  It was so small, so helpless. So like a swimmer.

  Invaders killed swimmers.

 
Chapter 7

  THE BLIND

  Ere the moon has climbed the mountain, ere the rocks are ribbed with light, When the downward-dipping tails are dank and drear, Comes a breathing hard behind thee, snuffle-snuffle through the night It is Fear, O Little Hunter, it is Fear!

  KIPLING, "The Song of the Little Hunter"

  The jagged shape of Mucking Great Mountain rose like a primordial cairn, a titanic mass of unweathered rock stacked as if by Neolithic ritual, towering, raw-edged, lost in the clouds that shrouded the plateau.

  There was almost no vegetation on the mountain, nothing but moss and a little scrub brush that withered out and died within a hundred meters of its base. Pterodons lived up there somewhere, but on this night they slipped invisibly through the mist or huddled in their nests, rough gray wings enfolding the leathery eggs of their young.

  The plateau itself was only a few hundred meters wide, fuzzed with brush, and walled at the northern end by thorn-tree brambles. A failed stand of larger trees formed a rough deadfall at the far southern end: the soil had never been rich, and the trees—gnarled, spiky growths full of knotted fiber—had died before their maturity, too weak to resist the first onslaught of natural parasites. Now the ubiquitous thorn brush fed on the tangled debris. A few tough, rubbery plants surrounded the artesian spring at the base of the mountain, but there was insufficient moss or lichen to break down the rock, and most of the plateau was barren.

  Barren, and deserted—except for two men and a single frightened calf.

  Cadmann Weyland adjusted a bowline knot around the smooth white curve of its neck, then tugged on the line to check the anchoring: it was securely spiked into the rock. The calf licked his hand, tried to run a warm pink tongue wetly over his face. Cadmann pulled away guiltily. The calf dropped its head and lowed in misery.

  "Sorry about this, Joshua." He scratched it behind one speckled ear. In its eyes shone the pitiful gratitude of a retarded child given a rubber bonbon. Cadmann felt dirty.