Authors: Jr. L. E. Modesitt
Adiamante (19 page)
“Are these guards always male?” Viedras asked, looking up from his equipment.
“No. About two thirds are male, but some are female, probably those females who won't breed in the year ahead, or maybe those who haven't, or can't, and have to provide some service to the community.”
“You don't know?” Viedras sounded both whiny and incredulous.
“No. We don't. We know that the female guards don't have children and aren't associated with them, but to find out more requires tagging or something like that, and there's not much point in disrupting things when the system's in balance.”
Viedras and Kemra exchanged one of those glances that indicated that I just didn't understand. They were right; I didn't understand why they were so dense. Trying to refine some knowledge is arrogance, not scholarship. Did it really matter, unless we were trying to manipulate the environment? So much of the ancients' knowledge was developed either to enhance their manipulations of the environment or in a belated attempt to undo the messes they had created. We worked to avoid either.
Viedras took another step forward. “I just need a little better angle.”
I calculated. “Don't go any closer.”
To his right, Kemra looked at me and stopped.
“Don't be silly. None of them are closer than fifty meters.” Viedras took another step, and then another. “And I need to get closer.”
“Viedras!” I yelled, but it was too late.
He took the fourth step toward the burrows and across that invisible line that marked the rodents' territory.
EEEEeeeeeeecchhhh!
Virtually simultaneously with the high-pitched call almost two dozen furry figures charged out of burrows, three out of hidden tunnels within a dozen meters of the naturalist.
“Fire at will!” I snapped at Babbege.
The force leader gaped at me.
“Fire at will! Shoot!” I repeated.
“Fire at will!” Kemra repeated my command.
Viedras kept taking images or whatever, backing away from the charging prairie dogs, stumbling as he retreated.
I had my slugthrower out. So did Kemra.
We both fired at the four dogs shrieking and bounding toward the naturalist. It's always amazing how quickly they move. I got one, then another, before they got too close.
Then I stepped-up my system and
moved,
drawing the knife as I blurred toward the two remaining dogs.
moved,
drawing the knife as I blurred toward the two remaining dogs.
One almost clawed me, but the razor blade took his paw. I snap-kicked through its neck, and took out the second with the blade.
The two marcybs on the end went down under five of the furry prairie dogs. One staggered up, snapping rodent necks, and bleeding from a dozen deep claw marks. The other didn't.
Before I could get there, the rest of the prairie dogs were either dead, or had retreated.
Viedras stood, motionless.
Kemra scanned the area, slugthrower ready.
I bent over the fallen cyb, but there wasn't anything I could do. A claw had severed his carotid artery like a blade, and there was blood just about everywhere.
The force leader was using some sort of field dressings on the other wounded cyb.
Two other cybs, blank-eyed, picked up the body as I stood up and relaxed my system into normal speed. As usual, my muscles hurt. But my guts were stable. Prairie dogs weren't highly intelligent, an artificial distinction perhaps, but one for which I was grateful. I cleaned the blade as well as I could on the grass and replaced it in the sheathe.
“Let's go,” I snapped. The scent of blood would draw the smaller brown centipedes, smaller only by comparison to the reds which could reach three quarters of a meter, and then the prairie falcons would get into the act, along with the rest of the scavengers. There wouldn't be a trace of blood or bone within a day. “We need to get back to the shuttle.”
For once, no one said anything, but only for a minute or two.
“Those things are vicious.” Viedras turned and glanced back at the prairie dog town, although the bodies were lost in the grass. “Why don't you get rid of them?”
“They wouldn't have been vicious, if you'd listened to me.”
“But ⦠I didn't know.”
I wondered how many times throughout history someone had explained not listening the same way. I wasn't ready to fight that battle, not at the moment. My legs were shaky and still recovering from step-up.
“In a way, that kind of thinking is what led to their development,”
I explained as I turned back toward the shuttle. “There was a vacant niche, and they took it. They're not terribly dangerous outside their own territory.”
I explained as I turned back toward the shuttle. “There was a vacant niche, and they took it. They're not terribly dangerous outside their own territory.”
Kemra looked at the northernmost line of hummocks. “They look like they're capable of expanding their territory rather quickly.”
I pointed to the east, toward grass-covered mounds beyond the hummocks. “That was their last expansion, probably a decade ago.”
“You had to cull them?” asked Viedras, still not understanding.
“No. Things are in balance. The vorpals did that.”
“The nasty giant fox-like things? They hunt the prairie dogs?” asked Kemra.
“It's not that simple, but yes.”
“I think a pack of those prairie thingsâsorry, I don't think of them as dogsâcould stand off a bunch of vorpals.” Kemra glanced from the burrows to me.
“They could, right now. But this is lean territory. It takes about a quarter of a hectare to support one prairie dog, and they won't build more than eight hummock-burrows in one hectare. The burrows are expansive for a few animals. You can see that.” I shrugged. The conclusion was obvious, but it took Viedras a minute to get the point.
“They get too spread out to defend the perimeter against marauders?”
I nodded. “The towns migrate around their range, but never get much bigger.”
“Little fish have bigger fish to eat them. I understand that,” said Kemra. “But what keeps the vorpals in check?”
“Food, each other, scavengers, centipedes, scorpion packs, kalirams, mostly. Some desperate cougars.” I kept walking quickly, following the cybs carrying their dead companion, and listening, scanning. I pulsed Lieza. “Get ready for lift-off. One dead marcyb. One pretty slashed
up. Territoriality problem. Viedras didn't listen to me. Would you let Keiko know?”
up. Territoriality problem. Viedras didn't listen to me. Would you let Keiko know?”
“Stet, Coordinator.” Lieza was all business.
“Do I want to know about the scavengers and kalirams?” asked Kemra.
“The kalirams stay in the rocky parts of the mountains. They're killer sheep that became omnivores with a preference for meat. They prey mainly on the deer, but anything will do, and they don't like humans or vorpals much.”
“What else ⦠never mind.” She broke off as we neared the shuttle.
Lieza had converted two of the couches into flat pallets, and the cyb officers stretched the wounded cyb on one. The wounded marcyb still hadn't said much of anything, and her eyes were the same flat brown, as if nothing had happened. I suspected the dead cyb's eyes would have looked just the same, but I didn't check and repressed a shiver.
“There will be a medical team waiting,” Lieza announced. “Settle in. We're lifting.”
The door had barely clicked up into place when the shuttle eased skyward.
Kemra looked at the screen, and I didn't feel like talking. They still didn't seem to understand. After losing a trooper and facing the prairie dogs, they failed to see what Old Earth had become.
We were still a few minutes out of Parwon when Keiko came across the net. “Coordinator. Majer Henslom was here. He took five squads on the upper Aquarius trail. The vorpals got nearly a dozen. He's looking for your head.”
“He won't get it. Besides, he'll have to stand in line, the way things are going.”
“I warned you.” She projected darkness with her words.
“You did. I'll keep you posted. Or Lieza will, if Henslom does get my head.”
“Thanks,” interjected the pilot, her words ironic on the net.
“I have this feeling that a lot's going on above us,” Kemra said. “You people have a high net, don't you.”
“High?”
“I can sense something, but that's all.”
“Like you, we use nets for some things,” I admitted. “I was telling the pilot that a lot of people were standing in line for my head at the moment.”
Kemra shook her head. She opened her mouth as if to say something.
I looked at her, and she shut it.
Viedras was studying the equipment he'd used, or reviewing the results. His lips were pursed, and I wondered if he'd caught my sped-up movements.
As Keiko warned me, two more marcyb officers were waiting at the locial tower when we set down. One was Majer Henslom. The other was a force leader. The force leader's left arm was heavily bandaged and splinted.
Kemra followed me out of the shuttle. So did Viedras, Babbege, and Cherle. Babbege turned and helped get the wounded cyb into the emergency medical wagon, then climbed in with her.
“Coordinator?” asked Henslom, his voice cool.
Kemra looked from Henslom to me and back again.
“Yes?” I waited, and the medical car whined away toward the center of the locial.
“You seem to have a local wildlife problem. Or you used local wildlife to ambush my troops. Or both.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“You certainly must know. You obviously set it up.”
I looked straight into those flat eyes. “I set up nothing. After our meeting yesterday, in fact, I decided against setting up anything. All I did was refuse to warn or protect you. You don't seem to understand. Old Earth has become a dangerous place.”
Henslom took a step forward.
“Halt!” snapped Kemra.
“I would not have thought you would take the side of the locals,” said the majer.
“I'm not. I'm keeping you from committing suicide.”
For the first time, Henslom's eyes showed confusion.
Kemra used their local net to add, “He's the one who took out your agent bare-handed in the dark. I watched him destroy four of those vicious dogs in seconds. You'd last about three instants.”
“Him? Politicos don't fight,” Henslom flashed back.
“They do here,” came the boosted response.
I kept my face expressionless.
Henslom swallowed.
Then Kemra spoke. “I believe the majer was not prepared to find our ancestral home so ⦠violent.”
“Living here continues to be a struggle.” My words were true, although I doubted the true nature of the struggle would ever be obvious to them. “At every turn, I have tried to let you see matters as they are, and yet you have persisted in seeing them as you wished. Yesterday, I decided against continuing any special protections.”
“Warning is a special protection?”
“One reason Old Earth collapsed was that our ancestors refused to live in balance with the ecology and that they forced incredible diversions of resources to create a luxurious lifestyle and to protect themselves from what they conceived of as the slightest chance of harm.” I turned to Kemra. “The subcommander has seen the ruins. This continent was filled with hundreds of areas such as those. When the earth had the chance to redress the balance, it did. We try to live with it, rather than force even greater changes.”
“You can't tell me you live with things like those ⦠those ⦠predators,” said Henslom.
“No. You're right. We avoid where they live, and we
don't build close to them, and they generally hunt away from the locials. But we also don't go out and kill them just because one sometimes kills a draff or a child.”
don't build close to them, and they generally hunt away from the locials. But we also don't go out and kill them just because one sometimes kills a draff or a child.”
“You'd let a child near them?”
“I wouldn't. I never did. Some people are stupid. We don't regulate stupidity. You protect it, and it breeds.”
They all looked horrified, even Kemra.
“You people don't listen,” I snapped. “I told Viedras to stop. I warned you all that, once you crossed the territorial border of the prairie dogs, they became aggressive. He told me not to be silly, and he crossed that line. We got away with one dead cyb, and some nasty slashes. It didn't have to happen, but you thought you knew better. That's a form of stupidityâor arrogance.” I turned to Henslom. “You didn't ask us about whether it was safe to take your troops out of the locial. You told us that was what you were doing. Your assumption was that Old Earth is perfectly safe unless you're warned. Is deep space safe? Would you drop into the sun's photosphere because no one warned you it would incinerate you? Nothing is perfectly safe. We don't provide warning signs to protect you from yourselves. Try to remember that.” I was treading close to the edge of the Construct, possibly too close, but I had to try.
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