The Legacy of Heorot (10 page)

Dawn broke over a miniature Asia: the Himalayas glittered, flamed white. The China Sea was a riot of warm blue diamonds.

She was riding his hips. She saw the sudden delighted surprise in his face, and he said, "Earth mother."

She didn't know what he meant, or care. Only afterward did she guess how she must have looked, her face and shoulders glowing within the globe of the Earth.

Like all of the times and all of the ways that she had made love to Cadmann, this time was utterly precious to her. If there was a barrier between them, it wasn't the disdain that she felt from Marty, who laughed to his friends as he knocked on her door. Or Joe Sikes. Good old available Joe, who knew her weaknesses so well. Who rapped on her window when his pregnant wife was asleep.

It was different because she knew there would come a moment when he would smile as she kissed him, and then they would laugh together. The barrier would crumble for a while, a fragile crystalline moment, and Cadmann would really be with her, caring for her and letting her fill his needs. And when that time came she turned her face away, unwilling for him to see the dampness on her cheeks.

Later, long enough later for any tears to have dried and any tremors to have ceased, he held her softly, as if afraid that she might shatter. Gazing at her, he ran his thick blunt fingers over and around the curves and shadows, touching, soothing. Finally he sighed, laid his head gently between her breasts and fell into a deep, soundless sleep.

AT THE WIRE

What the hammer? What the chains?

In what furnace was thy brain?

Where the anvil? What dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

WILLIAM BLAKE, "The Tyger"

It didn't matter a damn that the stars above Carlos's head, twinkling in Avalon's eternal mist, were not those of Earth. It didn't matter that the wind carried the ticklish scent of alien blossoms, or that the plants beneath his feet were mingled Terran and Avalonian grasses. Beneath the smiling face of a con man, the quick and nimble fingers of a carpenter and the mind of a superb historian, there lurked the soul of a farmer. Like it or not, Carlos felt absurdly at peace.

He ran his gloved fingers above the electrified wire-without touching. The wire was connected to power leads and pressure sensors. Any attempt to climb over, push under or break through it would trigger a shock: the more pressure exerted, the greater the voltage would grow, terminating in enough electricity to barbecue anything on the short side of a rhino. Huckleberry, the year old gray-brown German shepherd on the end of Carlos's leash, had learned to be quietly respectful of the wire. He could stand within two feet of it without flinching but would venture no closer.

The wire extended around three sides of the camp, starting north of the living quarters, running west near the main road, curving south past the animal hospital, the machine shop and the air pad. There it met the cliff again, stopping shy of the fields.

There were more calf pens across the main road, these fenced separately, each enclosed in another "graduated" electric fence.

Huckleberry sniffed the cages as they turned west towards the cliff edge, the fifty-meter drop behind the camp that led to the sluggish waters of the Miskatonic.

"Hey!" He threw an arm over his face as a wandering searchlight temporarily blinded him. "Cual es su problema, eh?"

With an apologetic hobble, the searchlight glided on its way. Lamps and video cameras had been mounted on the communal dining hall, the roof of the machine shop and a corner of the animal pens. There was barely a centimeter of the camp that their glaring ovals did not flare into momentary day. Saucers of light skimmed along the road, circling, dipping, interweaving.

Carlos watched those circles and pulled his jacket tighter. Suddenly he felt a chill, and the heat-reflective windbreaker didn't help at all. This cold blossomed within him.

Silhouettes dimmed the window of the yellow Quonset hut next to the air pad. He watched enviously. In the communications shack there would be coffee and companionship and hot crullers, things he couldn't expect for another forty minutes.

Huck whined as footsteps approached, and Carlos's attack of hunger died instantly. He squared his shoulders and put a little more pep in his step. At least I can look like a sentry!

"Terry." He smiled. The dark softened a malicious grin. Terry looked fatigued and disgusted. His face, never plump, was drawn even thinner, and he looked as if he thought Cadmann was boffing Sylvia while he walked patrol.

Terry fished a pack of cigarettes out of his vest and offered one to Carlos. "Just the thing, amigo." They stood for a time, savoring Earth-grown tobacco.

"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 their 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.