The Legacy of Heorot (41 page)

Mary Ann nodded jerkily, not believing him.

She flinched as Minerva One plunged from the sky to rock the valley with its scream. She turned and watched as the shuttle dipped beneath the lip of the plateau and disappeared. "How long?"

"For which? For the Colony? Maybe eight hours until the first fence goes. Then Cadmann will turn on the minefield, and the fireworks begin. We'll hear that, if we don't see it. The second fence may never go at all."

"Pray to God. But it will, won't it?"

"I don't know. Honestly! We'll know if it does, because they won't need Minerva Two any more, and we'll see it take off."

She nodded.

"Mary Ann?"

"Yes?"

"Just in case... I just wanted you to know that Cadmann couldn't have made a better choice. Not in a hundred years."

Liar. She smiled. "Come on, flatterbox. There's work to do, and not much time to do it in."

Together, they headed up the zigzag path to the stronghold, the last hope of human life on Avalon.

They moved north along the streams. Where they clustered too closely, there were fights. The weaker or warier among the grendels stayed far from water, diving downslope where they saw no others of their kind, to immerse themselves and retreat uphill before they could be seen. A few had already discovered that if they moved slowly, calmly, they could reach the heights where flyers laid their eggs.

The largest of the grendels grew larger yet, up to a meter and a half long, and still they grew, for they were better fed. There was attrition among these. They had to stay closer to water. Some of their smaller siblings had learned to attack where they saw others attack. Larger grendels were torn to ribbons by grendels who attacked in concert, snatched mouthfuls of meat and vanished underwater before their chancy allies could choose another target.

They looked nothing at all like an army. They were refugees. Famine and war and overpopulation moved them anywhere their tiny minds might seek food or safety. But they moved north along the rivers, following the vacuum of the fished-out Miskatonic, until wind and water brought them a wild variety of scents from what had been pastureland.

Then each savagely independent grendel turned in the same direction.

What reached the farmlands was more enraged and starving carnivores than had ever been alive in Avalon's history, and they moved very much like an army.

The river and its shores swarmed with dark shapes moving upstream. Carlos made a final inspection of the door gun. "Okay. I'm starting now," he said into the intercom. He fired carefully, in short bursts, aiming at widely separated groups.

The water below exploded into frenzied life. Grendel shapes leaped from the water. Others pursued them. Frothy red tinged with orange spread across the water.

"It's working," Carlos said. "Die!" He fired again. One of his tracers speared into a larger grendel's back, with spectacular results. The speed sacs made a terrific oxidizer. The grendel streaked for the river with its back burning like thermite, and burned even after it was in the water. Carlos whooped.

Greg wheeled the Skeeter back around for another pass. "By God, it is working! Drive them crazy! Use that damned supercharger against them! Bless Sylvia's knotty little head, she said it would work."

The Skeeter dove down between the trees. "Die, defenseless, primitive natives!" Short bursts, he told himself. Short and careful. Conserve ammunition, we will need it. The river churned with blood, foamed with the dead and dying.

But all we're really doing is feeding the others. Carlos admitted to himself; and pushed the thought away in savage enjoyment of the opportunity to kill before dying.

"Running low on power," Greg said. "I can get us back to camp. By now they must be hooking up Minerva Two. We can recharge."

"Do it."

Carlos got on the radio. "I am returning to camp—"

He couldn't tell who answered: a masculine voice edged with panic. "Pick up Jill Ralston on the way. She's hurt. She's on a ridge, eight kilometers west and a little north of the northwest corner of the outer fence."

They should have had an hour of daylight still; but the western range cut the day short, and clouds were banking in from the sea. It was already dark enough that Carlos could see the dying fire spilling downslope from the ridge. He pointed, and Stu took the Skeeter down.

She lay at the high point of the ridge. A meter below her was a grendel. It didn't move when they came close, but Carlos fired a short burst into it anyway.

Jill was lying on her side a short distance from the fire. She watched them land but didn't wave. As Carlos ran from the Skeeter she was trying to stand up.

"Lie down, dammit." Her left arm looked awful. Cooked. He unsealed an anesthetic ampoule and slid the needle into her shoulder.

He got around to her right side and half carried her to the copter. He strapped her in before he asked, "Is there equipment we should recover?"

She shook her head and swallowed hard. "The flame thrower's dead," she whispered. "It's in the fire."

He squeezed in behind her. She stank. Her arm was cooked from shoulder to fingertips. She lay back against the seat and every now and again she sat up and looked around as if she couldn't believe she was safe. Carlos had always found her attractive, to no tangible purpose. "What happened?" he asked.

"They were coming up the defile. Ida van Don dropped me on the ridge with the Skeeter. She flew around shooting grendels, and I flamed them when they got close enough. Sandra ran out of power and had to take the Skeeter back for a recharge. Me, I kept shooting. A flame thrower works just fine on a grendel. It scares them. They go into speed and burn themselves up inside."

"Sure. Are you all right?"

"I am now. They kept coming. The flame thrower overheated—"

"You're not supposed—"

"I could feel my hands burning. Then the torch nozzle clogged and spit jellied gasoline on my arm. I ran and rolled and kept rolling, and behind me the damn thing exploded. I've been waiting to see what would get here first, you or the grendels."

Which is why we have to be careful with these egregious excuses for makeshift weapons. "Well, we're here. It's all over now." Down below Carlos could see grendels on both sides of the ridge. They'd gone around the other side of the fire. And it is lucky for you we came when we did. Five minutes more—She couldn't see him as he shook his head. Such a waste.

"They kept coming. I shot one with my automatic. Little one, under a meter. I hit it four times, I think. It could have taken me, but it never went on speed. Too hot already. It—" She shuddered. "It fell over. By itself. You saw it. They can die. They can."

"HEAR THIS. HEAR THIS." Cadmann's voice boomed from loudspeakers placed around the perimeter of the camp. "FENCE POWER GOES ON IN TEN MINUTES. TEN MINUTES TO FENCE POWER."

Carlos glanced at his watch. Naturally Cadmann would wait until the last minute of light to power the fences. They needed power to recharge the Skeeters, for the vehicles, to make hydrogen. There was just enough light to see—but they should have had an hour till sunset.

There were thick black clouds across the west.

"Hey, buddy," Greg called. "Running out of steam?"

"No." Wearily Carlos went back to loading Hendrick's wrecked Skeeter.

Small boxes. Lightweight items. Blankets, sleeping bags. Before an item went into the wreck it was placed on the scales outside. The Skeeter itself would be needed uphill, for parts. Might as well use it to carry other gear.

Shooting grendels had been easier work.

Cassandra displayed the cumulative total mass they'd put aboard. "Some to go yet," Greg said.

"Yes." Wearily Carlos flexed his arms and bent over to stretch his back. "A pity."

"Cheer up. You could be laying bricks."

"Not me. I am a warrior."

"You're also a carpenter," Greg said. "But I won't remind them." He jerked his head to indicate the power room, where half a dozen men worked frantically to seal the blockhouse with bricks and mortar and welded bars. Others filled the blockhouse with equipment too heavy to send up to Geographic or ferry to the Bluff.

If the blockhouse held intact it would save months in rebuilding civilization. If it didn't—"It will be terribly inconvenient," Carlos said to himself. "But not deadly." He went back to the commons kitchen for another load. All food would be sent to the Bluff.

Minerva Two must almost have finished recharging the two Skeeters. The third was well uphill, beyond reach of the grendels. George Merriot had spent too much time shooting grendels—until it was too late to return to the Colony. He had taken the Skeeter as high as he could before the fuel cells went dead. Cadmann had been furious. Now there were only two Skeeters in operation, and work enough for ten. But we'll take George up to the Bluff anyway. Carlos felt like telling the idiot to fend for himself.

What could be moved to Geographic was aboard Minerva Two. Lightweight stuff, and all the food, was going into Hendrick's Skeeter; they would carry it to the Bluff. Equipment too heavy to be moved was going into the blockhouse. The grendels would never get through all that brick.

You had to believe that there were things grendels couldn't do.

Then there was the computer shack. It had been emptied of equipment.

Cassandra stood outside, and the shack now held nostalgia items, never more than ten kilograms from any colonist save one. Carlos still only half believed that they had let him put his bed in there.

And they'd brick it up to preserve Avalon's memories of civilization, but only if the grendels gave them time. Carlos set his load inside the wrecked Skeeter and staggered out. They'd almost finished bricking up the power house. Next, the computer shack; and Carlos wanted to help.

The wooden tower stood next to the main entry door to the main power room. Brilliant blue flame danced below as the welders completed their work on the power blockhouse door.

"Hear this. Fence power in thirty seconds. Get away from the fences. Hear and believe. Fence power in thirty seconds." Cadmann put down the microphone and used his binoculars to scan the perimeter area. No flares. No rockets. He lifted the mike again. "Okay, power on."

He had held off on this even after Minerva Two was hooked up. While gunmen could protect the fence, he could repower the Skeeters with all of the Minerva's power. But it was getting too dark to find the monsters and protect the fences. Now the fences would protect them.

Green lights turned to red on the console in front of him. "That ought to hold them," Joe Sikes said. "Fry the little bastards."

"And some of the big ones," Cadmann said. "But not for long."

"How long do you think?" Sikes asked.

"Through tomorrow if we're lucky, but I'll be satisfied to have tonight. Okay, make the last run to Minerva. What are you carrying?"

"Cassandra, mostly."

"Right." Cassandra might as well live aboard Geographic. She didn't use oxygen, and it would be damned hard to rebuild without her.

Landing lights flashed as Skeeter One rose. The dark shape of Skeeter Four, Hendrick's wrecked machine, dangled below it. As the Skeeter crossed the fence perimeter its searchlight stabbed downward, circled, then flowed across the cornfields.

The fields were alive. Stalks fell, disappeared beneath large shapes.

"Holy shit," Joe Sikes said. "We won't be eating that for a while—"

The Skeeter hovered for a second longer. Cadmann reached for his microphone, but before he could lift it the Skeeter wheeled and headed off in the general direction of the Bluff.

Cadmann unslung his rifle. "Play the tower spot out there in the center of the field, will you?"

"Sure thing."

He sighted where the dark seemed to move and squeezed off a round. For a moment, nothing: then a feral scream from the field. More screams, and the area exploded with grendels. Cadmann smiled in grim satisfaction. "As long as they clump up like that. Find me another clump, will you?"

"Shouldn't be difficult."

A gust of wind blew mist across his face. Cadmann grimaced. "Joe, shine the spot up for me."

"For what?" But Joe Sikes was already doing .it. The beam swung up and blazed against thickening cloud cover.

"We won't like it if it rains," Cadmann said.

CHALLENGE

As to moral courage, I have seldom met with the two o'clock in the morning courage: I mean unprepared courage.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, Memoirs

"Here they come!"

Darkness flowed across brown earth. There was too little sound: a hissing like ocean waves across sand, rustling of a thousand feet on loose dirt. They came in a wave, too much like an army.

Blue arcs flashed. Smoking meat suddenly flavored the humid air. Grendels seared by electricity smelled too much like a samlon just ready to come off the barbecue. It was distracting: it spoke to the wrong part of the brain.

"Here!" someone screamed. Blue arcs, closer, much too close. The tower searchlight swung over. Impossibly, a grendel had torn through the outer fence, past the minefield, and had fallen against the inner fence. The grendel was dead, but the two who chased it were both on speed.

Cadmann leveled his rifle and waited. The fence arced. One grendel leaped back. The second leaped after it. Cadmann smiled grimly. "Save ammunition," he called to the others. Let the fences kill them. We won't have fences for long...

The searchlight danced farther out, to the outer perimeter fifty meters away. Dark shapes were piled there. A dozen or more grendels had flung themselves onto the still-charged fence. Electricity sizzled deep within the pile, but other grendels climbed over the stack of corpses. Still more used their tails to drag dead siblings away from the fence.