The Legacy of Heorot (49 page)

The command console had been knocked off its table. Hendrick limped over to pick it up and set aright. He touched the switches, and lights glowed.

Tau Ceti was low on the horizon. Carlos limped out to the edge of the plateau and looked out. The mist had dissipated. He looked for grendels on speed, and found none. Here and there a grendel dragged the corpse of a grendel or a cow toward the water. He saw them met by emerging grendels, and torn apart.

Something had happened. Something had changed, and Carlos knew it. The grendels knew it!

Human beings were no longer prey. Man was the ultimate killer on Avalon. Grendels were smart enough to learn. The survivors now stalked each other instead of the aliens from the stars, the creatures who had brought death to thousands of Avalon's former masters.

"Geographic—"

"We're here. Are you all right?"

Hendrick looked toward Carlos. His face was grimy and haggard, his eyes bright. "What do I tell them?"

"Tell them we've won."

HUNTING PARTY

Leviathan, that great dragon in the sea...

Come not between the dragon and his wrath.

KING LEAR, Act I, Scene I.

Thou shall tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shall thou trample under feet.

PSALM 91:13

It was a small pond up a stream that fed the Miskatonic—a stream not much larger than Cadmann's Amazon. The pond was the nearest possible thing to an oxbow lake, still connected to the stream but without the rushing waters. There were boulders piled at its lower end. Mits Kokubun wondered about those boulders. Could grendels have put them there? Beavers were smart enough to build dams. Why not grendels?

Correction: grendel, singular. They were too damned competitive to cooperate, ever.

A nest of boulders overlooked the pond. It was a good place, high enough and steep enough that the resident grendel would have problems getting there. Mits searched the pond area with his binoculars. "Still nothing."

"Still nothing," Joe Sikes said. "Half the morning gone. Christ, what does it take to get the mother out of there?"

"Some of them just won't come out and fight." Mits tapped his comcard.

"Stu. Still nothing."

"Well, it's there. Samlon in the pool and Geographic photographed the shadow. Those things should have more respect for our explosives shortage. I'll try speed soup again."

"Well, okay, but I don't think it'll do any good."

"So? We've got more speed than explosives. Stand by."

They waited. After a moment Skeeter One skimmed across, twenty meters above the pond. Its cabin had a pebbled, battered look, but it flew well. A thick pinkish mist cascaded down and was blown into the pond scum and into the rocks around its bank.

They waited. Nothing happened.

"That was your Skeeter," Sikes said.

"Yeah."

"What was it like?" Sikes asked. "I mean—"

"I know what you mean. What do you want me to say? Stu and I sat there in the Skeeter while the mothers backed dents in the hull. It was fun. Just as it was starting to get dull, a big one bashed its head right through. Damn near got my foot. I chopped it with the ax. It tried to pull its head out, but it was caught on the torn hull metal where it poked through, and then the others outside started eating it. They ate it alive."

"I'd have liked to watch that," Sikes said.

Mits looked at him. Sikes didn't seem to be kidding.

The comcard squawked. "Nothing, huh?"

"Not a damn thing," Mits answered. "Let's get a move on. I want sashimi tonight."

"Okay, okay. I'll use a bomb. Have to call that in. Stand by."

"Our luck, everybody will be busy," Sikes said.

"Nah. They're too hungry to be busy. Fresh samlon."

"I guess I'm getting sick of fresh samlon."

"It's better'n nothing. It's way better'n grendel." Mits swept his binoculars around the edges of the pond. Nothing. Not even bushes.

Grendels would eat anything in preference to samlon. Then they ate samlon.

"Got it approved," Stu's voice said from the comcard. "You ready?"

"Ready here. Set it for max depth. The damn thing's hiding on the bottom, trust me."

"Stand by."

The whish of rotors grew louder. The craft came over the low lip of the rock basin surrounding the pond. It hovered at the center of the pond, and a dark barrel fell from the doorway. "Bomb away. And me too," Stu said. The Skeeter darted off west.

The pond exploded in a geyser. Mits waited, counting seconds to himself.

A half-grown grendel burst from the water. It scrambled onto the beach and ran in drunken curves. Blood poured from its mouth. It rolled and found its feet again, ran, rolled, stopped to take its bearings.

"Sayonara, sucker," Mits hissed. He held the sights on the area just behind the head, down five centimeters from the back ridge, the central ganglion complex that corresponded more or less to the human medulla oblongata. He squeezed off the round. The grendel darted ahead one step and died.

Mits thumbed the comcard. "Tell ‘em. Meat!"

The samlon were starting to float to the surface.

They came in tractors and jeeps and on foot. A team set up nets across the river downstream from the pond. Others inflated boats and set out on the pond. They spread nets. The pond would be seined again and again.

Dead samlon floated belly-up. They weren't very big—from half a meter down—but there must have been fifty in sight, and the team downstream would take more yet.

Skeeter Three came in carrying a prefabricated smokehouse. Colonists trickled in from uphill, bearing firewood. Hendrick Sills moved among the various groups. "Load the Skeeters as fast as it comes in. Some of us'll have to walk home to leave room. When the Skeeters are full we can start filling the smokehouse. Ida, what are you doing?"

"Sushi." She'd sliced up a foot-long samlon and started on another, nibbling as she worked. "Have some."

"The rest of the Colony gets to eat too. Them's the rules."

She sighed. The nightmare was still graven in her face, still caused her to wake at night, moaning for Jon. But they were helping each other heal. This wasn't a perfect world, but together they could make it a good one.

"Hendrick, dear, half the Colony is here. Are they supposed to look at all this and salivate? Look, Skeeter One's already off, and they're piling fish in Skeeter Three as fast as it comes in. We're saving none of it for the damn pterodons."

Hendrick thumbed his comcard. "Skeeter One, air conditioning?"

"It's on. We're freezing. Don't be such a nitpicker, Hendrick!"

The Skeeters would have their air conditioning on max to keep the samlon fresh: a nice example of Avalon's mix of high technology, low, and none. Hendrick tapped again. "Joe. You set up downstream?"

"Sure am. Somebody bring me lunch?"

"We'll think about it."

"Do more than think, or else if I see a grendel I'll cheer her on!"

"Okay, okay, Ida's made you some sushi."

Not that there was much chance of a grendel. The pools downstream had all been cleaned out. One hundred days had passed since the battles. Grendels had established territories and fought to keep them. Like Siamese fighting fish: one grendel to a pool. But unlike the fish who fought only until one retreated, if one grendel intruded on another's territory the result was one dead grendel and one well fed.

This one must have been well fed. There was plenty of samlon here. A good find. No fear that all the meat would be eaten here—as long as the pterodons could be kept under control.

The air stank of speed soup, and recorders on the boats were playing the recording Stu had made during the final attack. Screams of grendel-challenge and grendel-death ravaged the air. The flying appetites hovered, shrieking their anger, afraid to come down.

It was good that they didn't have to use bullets on the pterodons. Too few bullets now. When humans were finished here the pterodons could have the grendel's corpse. Hendrick himself had tried to eat grendel meat—starvation was much to be preferred.

Skeeter Three lifted away, carrying tonight's feast.

Sylvia used an optical pen to underline one of the passages in the old report Terry had written. It felt a little odd to play back Cassandra's old files. Old notes on the expedition to the mainland, back when all the grendels were gone from Avalon and everything was wonderful. Good stuff. We can do it almost the way Terry outlined it—and then a brief, sad flash: Terry...

"It isn't fair," Carolyn said.

Mary Ann looked up from changing diapers. "What isn't fair?"

"You've got men. You monopolize them."

"Foo," Marnie said. "You can't blame me if Jerry prefers my bod to yours."

"Plus the fact that you'll give him pure holy hell for weeks," Mary Ann said. Her voice was strained through diaper pins.

"And if I seduce Cadmann?" Carolyn asked.

"I'll kill you." Mary Ann finished her diaper job. "Now, if you want to marry him—"

"What?" Carolyn was jolted.

"I could use a junior wife," Mary Ann said. Her eyes took on a dreamy look. Then the smile vanished. "Sylvia—"

"It's all right," Sylvia said. Terry, you bastard, you could have relieved me of that promise. You could have. "What's the matter, Carolyn? Don't want to join the commune?"

"Meow," Mary Ann said.

"Sorry. But not very. Look, we have five monogamous marriages plus chaos. There's no point in being delicate about it. Especially among ourselves." Five monogamous marriages, except I could make that four plus another bigamy, and Mary Ann wouldn't mind, and Terry, Terry, you could have said something noble! You muffed your line—

"We're getting off the subject," Marnie said. "Carolyn, this next broadcast is probably our last chance to change anything back in Sol system. By the time they get this message, it will have been twenty years since their interstellar program was proxmired. They're probably bored to tears, ready to hang on our every word. Did we survive the grendels? The suspense must be killing them.

"This isn't just for the Geographic Society. The whole solar system will be listening! Billions of people who watched while they didn't build the interstellar ships will be still alive. A little nostalgic. Getting older, wondering where the excitement went. So we want to make all our points while we've got them hooked! Sylvia, what have you got onscreen?"

"Terry's mainland expedition. We'll send them that, of course. Adventure calls, even on Avalon! We're short one Skeeter now, and the mission has changed a little because we're hungry. We'll want to anchor a Minerva in a bay, then take the Skeeters halfway up some mountain, above where the grendels can reach. Collect some Joes, if nothing else, and reseed the island."

"Any way we can put visuals in that lecture?"

"Visuals of what? They've seen the equipment. We've improved the orbital maps. I guess we can put in Joes... "

"Summon up those notes for the broadcast."

"Yeah." Sylvia tapped. She read off the list:

"Full details on grendel attack. Bored on Earth? Come to romantic Avalon and find adventure. Emphasize that we won. We control the grendels. Nail it down by showing us hunting out a grendel pond. I sent Sikes down with a camera; he'll get that today.

"De-emphasize hunger. De-emphasize fatalities. But we can talk about the taste of local life, Joes and samlon. We can't show another harvest because nothing's come up yet—"

"They've seen a harvest," Marnie said.

"Joes are cute," Mary Ann said. "Don't say we eat them... "

"I suppose. Anyway—set ‘em up for the foray to the mainland. I'll bet my ass we find something weird and interesting there. What eats grendels?"

"Shudder," Carolyn said; and she did shudder. Sylvia chose not to notice. For a moment Carolyn was somewhere else. For a few seconds she wasn't Carolyn, she was Phyllis, dying under the claws of a grendel.

Rachel had worked especially hard with Carolyn. They had all worked to pull her back into the community, caring for her as they never had when her twin was alive. She needed them now, probably more than any of them could understand.

"We can't avoid it," Sylvia said, deliberately raising her voice to cut into Carolyn's train of thought. "We have to tell Earth how many of us died, but we can just send a bald list. And we'll give ‘em a list of what we need. It's short. Ruined equipment. They're bound to have fancier computers than Cassandra. We lost some life forms too. I want just enough of a list to let them know visitors would be welcome.

"But we have to hammer hard on how we beat the grendels. We took on one and two and six and then ten thousand, and we're mopping them up in detail. Carolyn, you have to tell your story for the broadcast back to Earth!"

"That's what Carlos says," Carolyn admitted. "But damn all, I don't want to."

"Why not?" Marnie asked.

Carolyn looked down at her hands.

She was sliding away again, and Mary Ann caught it. "We care. Earth will care." She lowered her voice. ."And Phyllis would be so proud of you.

I bet she is, anyway."

Carolyn's smile was weak. "It was such a little story compared to the last stand at Cadmann's Bluff."

Sylvia shook her head violently. "Jeez, here Marnie and I are all jealous of you—"

"Jealous?"

"Sure. We were up there in Geographic, all safe, and you were out slaying grendels!"

"You don't mean that. You're just being—"

"I was never more serious."

"But Mary Ann—"

"You saved the horses," Marnie said. "Which is a very lot more than I did. Tell them a story, Carolyn! It's not little, it's compact! Tell—tell us. Now. Then it'll be easier when you tell it for Earth."