The Legacy of Heorot (44 page)

Cadmann, Ricky and two other men stood in the center of a deserted camp. Beyond the fence the grendels growled and snored, utterly sated.

Cadmann used the comcard. "Greg! Come and get your ride."

"Yo." Far down the line of the inner fence, a shadow detached itself and jogged toward the lights.

"Damn, they're quiet now," Ricky said. He depressed the trigger of the flame thrower, testing. Fire squirted out and puddled on the ground.

"Not for long. They're gorged now. Come tomorrow their bellies will be empty again. Corpses will begin to putrefy. Maybe they're scavengers, and maybe not. Between the survivors here and the ones still coming north, we're going to have our hands full, believe it."

"Still... it's just too damned quiet."

Skeeter Two came in for them.

"Find me an empty barrel," he said to Rick. "Half fill it with water."

The little man tested two, then found one. "This'll do." He ran a hose in. Water thrummed against the side of the barrel.

Cadmann shook his arms. Drops of orange blood and superhemoglobin spattered against the ground. The wind shifted slightly, and grendels stirred, alarmed by the scent.

He dumped a quarter of the bucket into the barrel and sloshed the brew around with a stick. God, it stank.

"All right, you two squeeze into the cabin. Ricky, with me in the hoist."

Carlos leaned out of the Skeeter. "What's the plan, amigo?"

"Just take us up gently. Hover over the fence: I have an unpleasant present for our friends."

"Bueno. Send them my very best regards."

Cadmann touched his throat mike. "Jerry. Is everyone accounted for?"

"The whole camp. We haven't lost anyone. Just get out of there, will you?"

We made it! No one dead. Christians 2,000; Lions zip. "Marty."

"Yo."

"We're getting out of here. Give us five minutes and the Minerva's all yours. Five minutes, and you're gone when you want to be."

"Whoopee! Cad—look, I didn't mean to be a drag—" "Fine. Out." He took one last look around. "All right, Carlos. Up!

Wh--?"

Two shadows moved at surreal speed. The first grendel, the prey, hit the inner fence and died in a blue flare. The second smacked into the first in the same instant. The fence tore. The second, living grendel rolled, found its footing, swiveled its head. Its legs blurred and it.... expanded...

It was coming straight at him. Cadmann tried to bring up his rifle.

Twenty meters away, the grendel jarred to a stop. It screamed at him: a challenge.

In that moment Greg fired from the side.

The grendel was outraged. It whipped around and. was gone, charging into a second stream of bullets. It hit Greg and knocked him flying, turned, and was coming back at Cadmann when three streams of bullets chewed it to rags.

Rick sprinted toward the spot where Greg had fallen. Cadmann called, "Rick. Back. Now."

Rick stopped, looked, and found two grendels investigating the break in the inner fence. He ran.

Cadmann was set to lift the barrel. Rick, puffing, took the other side. They climbed into the cargo hoist and braced the barrel between them.

Cadmann's stomach lurched as the Skeeter swung up, lifting above the deserted camp. The lights were dimmed now, save for the beam from the belly of the Skeeter. The Colony looked asleep, almost peaceful.

"Any final words?" Rick asked bitterly.

The Skeeter flew over the fence. Its light revealed a dozen grendels burrowing their way into a heap of the dead. Three were at Greg, pulling him apart like a chicken.

"Yeah," Cadmann said flatly. "My challenge. Dump it!" They tipped the barrel over, and the gallons of bloody fluid rained down.

Suddenly there was a storm of activity. Speed-drunken grendels streaked from every direction, congregating beneath them in a hissing mass. He could hear their screams even above the whip of the rotors.

"Bastards."

Rick's eyes gleamed.

Cadmann hawked and spit down into the whirlpool of motion. "Carlos. Get me out of here. I have work to do."

Carlos spun them around and headed toward the swollen silhouette of Mucking Great Mountain.

GRENDELS IN THE MIST

When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace. But when a stronger than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armor wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils.

LUKE 11:21-22

Mary Ann watched the sun rise behind a roiling mountain of storm. The dark had shown her nothing of what was happening down there. Neither did the light.

She heard slow thumping behind her.

Hendrick was on crutches. One leg was encased in a balloon cast while the ruined calf muscle regenerated. He was awkward on the crutches, and tired too. "I thought we sent you to bed," he said.

Mary Ann shook her head. "You sent me to rest."

"You resting?"

"Yes. How's Terry?"

"In place. We perched him on that big rock you call Snail Head. You can see him from here."

She looked. Yes, a shadow-man sat on a big white boulder, rifle in his lap, legs in a wide V. She turned back to the clouds.

The covered veranda had become the fire-control area. It had a wonderful field of view, but hers from below the veranda was almost as good. She could see along the winding silver ribbon of Amazon Creek as far as the edge of the bluff, and beyond to the sea of storm.

Half a dozen colonists were digging up mines, altering them and burying them again. The mines had been set to be harmless to a dog, death to an adult grendel. Now they must be reset, and the dogs penned up, kept out of the field.

The dogs didn't like that at all. She could hear their protests from inside the house. Tweedledee and Tweedledum were teaching their litter brothers and companions how to howl.

Another Skeeter was landing above the house. "I'll take it," Hendrick said. She heard him thumping away.

"I'll show them," she said, but he was already going, and she didn't insist. It was her house. Her house, but she was tired. She should be in bed.

Hendrick and Jerry and others were running the defenses, enlarging the privy, caring for the livestock. Other voices maintained communications with Geographic, the Minervas, the Skeeters. But when a Skeeter load came in, room had to be found for the refugees.

The living-room floor, with the small stream running right down the middle, was the men's bedroom. No other room was that size, so women were bunking in smaller clumps. Newcomers had to be shown everything. "We have to ration. Talk to Cadmann if that's a problem for you. You don't raid the kitchen. Sorry. The privy is down through the minefield. Follow the marks. We made maps and copied them and they're on every wall. Wash up in the big tubs outside. The water comes in from upstream above the house. It's cold but it's safe.

"The only hot water is in the kitchen and the main bathroom, and there really isn't much of it because the heaters were designed for just two people. Sorry. We don't have energy to spare. Not for heat, not for lights. Sorry. There's soap, but there isn't much, and we're saving some for the medical people. Sorry."

Sorry. She was getting very tired of using that word.

It seemed that nobody but Mary Ann could find anything. Hendrick had found her in the kitchen finding utensils for the cooks. They had ordered her to bed, and seen her to her door before Terry went on duty.

Her bed was big. They'd moved it into a storage room; the bed nearly filled it. At least she was alone. Few of her guests could say as much. She had the bed to herself because Cadmann was down there in the mist surrounded by grendels, with the outer fence ruined and rain about to short out the inner. And she stood below the veranda, watching the clouds.

Damn you, Cadmann. You didn't have to be there.

Maybe he did. Maybe we had to try to defend the Colony, and if we lost the Colony, and he wasn't there, he'd blame himself forever. But damn him, he didn't have to be the last man out. Let someone else be a hero. For once.

The diverted stream ran into and through the house, across the veranda, down a series of small falls, and rejoined the Amazon lower down. It was no more than knee-deep anywhere. The Amazon might have been armpit deep in spots. Running a stream through the house sounded so good, she'd clapped her hands when Cadmann suggested it. He'd half remembered something, an American architect, and she'd told him! Frank Lloyd Wright. The house was called "Falling Water" and was his best work, and she'd remembered it, and Cadmann built it for her. They'd even planned to stock it with samlon.

The Minerva roared out of the clouds at a forty-five-degree angle. Mary Ann held her breath as she watched the craft accelerate. She'd heard the panic in Marty's voice. And Cadmann had seemed desperate when Marty wanted to take off during the long night. The Minerva rose higher, if you crash, it serves you right. There was a puff of fog as it went supersonic... a change in the wake as the nuclear scramjet came on... a belated roar.

No explosion. No grendels in the intakes after all. And the Minerva was gone.

No power now, no fences. He had to come out now. Should have left when the Minerva did. Before the Minerva. He should be here now. Where are you, big guy--?

The clouds stirred and she saw the Skeeter emerge.

She climbed up to the veranda. She asked the first person she saw, "Is he alive?"

It was Joe Sikes. "I've got Carlos. He says they lost Greg. Nobody else."

"Greg..." She shook her head. She couldn't say. Good. Greg. Lost how? His new wife was in Minerva. Who? All she could remember was Alicia. Alicia and the baby. So much death. The new name was gone. Doesn't matter.

She'll know soon enough. "It's over then. Thank God." She went off to bed.

Carolyn watched the sun rise below. Noon yesterday she had ridden out of the closing mist, moving southwest, uphill and toward the glacier, riding until nightfall. She'd led the horses all night. It was a mistake. While trudging uphill and trying to report her position she'd dropped the comcard and stepped on it. The horse she led stepped on it as well. Now it didn't work. No one knew where she was. Maybe they'd send a Skeeter to look for her. Maybe they wouldn't. She couldn't go back to the Colony—

Southwest and uphill. He's said southwest and uphill. They'd look for her there, and it was the safest place she could find.

Again the sun rose in blue brilliance, but today it rose over a sea of mist. Clouds had rolled in from the sea; they covered the Colony like a lid, with a great contoured thunderhead for a handle.

Carolyn and the horses were well to the north and west of Cadmann's feudal stronghold, and that, too, was hidden.

The land had flattened out like a tilted table. A line of horses trotted uphill with White Lightnin' at their head.

The horses were all yearlings or younger. Even White Lightnin' wasn't all that big; but Carolyn was small. The horse carried her easily.

She fumed as she rode. They didn't want me with them! Cadmann Weyland is off fighting Ragnarok with his picked crew, and I'm not in it. They wanted Phyllis, perfect Phyllis, but not me. Not worth fighting with, not worth fighting for—Yet she wasn't truly unhappy with Cadmann's decision. Where would she have wanted to be? At the Colony, waiting for the grendels to swarm? Aboard Geographic while the air grew stale and the Minervas failed to arrive? She had quite another reason for her anger.

Anger held back the fear.

Carolyn had never been on a horse until long after she reached Avalon.

She'd tended the colts, and grown used to them, and learned that they were skittish, balky, untrustworthy. If Carolyn lost control of herself, if she screamed at a colt or swatted it, it remembered; it shied from her next time. She had learned to control herself around horses.

Around people... well, people were more complex, and they talked to each other. Word had spread.

Once she had known how to steer people where she wanted them. Once she had been Zack's second in command. Without Rachel behind him, Zack would have been working for Carolyn! Though he would still have been part of Geographic's crew, the best of the best.

Hibernation Instability had merely touched Carolyn, but it had left Zack alone.

And of course Phyllis. Nothing ever stuck to Phyllis. She had Hendrick, she could have had Cadmann, everybody knew it. Phyllis could fall into a mountain of horse manure and come out with roses in her hair.

I'm still smart. Smarter than she is! But I get scared. And that thought was frightening too. She took deep breaths and looked back—

The mist was coming after her in a cloud like a breaking wave, and there were grendels in the mist. She could see lightning flashes in the tops of the clouds. Rain. The grendels love it. Maybe they won't come out.

The Colony might have vanished already in a sea of ravening miniature grendels. For all Carolyn could tell, the only earthly life on Avalon was herself and twenty horses. She found herself hoping with savage fervor that that irresponsible butterfly Carlos had made her pregnant before Sylvia took him.

The Geographic Society sent no woman who didn't want babies, she thought. I'm locked into that. Preprogrammed. Hibernation Instability should have taken that too.

Thus far she had avoided water. She couldn't do that forever. Horses could go a long way without food, but not without water. It shouldn't be a problem. She was taking them toward the glacier that ran down the slope of Mucking Great Mountain. There would be streams and springs.

She looked down toward the edge of cloud...

She knew what it was as she reached for the binocular case. She was almost relieved. At this distance it looked like a black tadpole. Through the binoculars there was not much more detail: a mini-grendel, plump and streamlined, moving on quick, stubby legs. A meter long, she thought; not one of the big ones. Eyes. Watching her. How well could it see? It looked at her—