Someone fired automatically. Then someone else.
Carlos screamed wordlessly. He forced himself to center the grendel in the sights of his weapon.
It was out of the hole, out and charging, moving at speeds that no animal could possibly reach, moving so fast that although time had slowed for Carlos, the creature had become faster, so fast that everything happened at once—and he squeezed the trigger.
Carlos's bolt exploded in the bushes behind the creature. Three other hits. The grendel screamed, then screamed again as it tried to come forward but tripped over its own severed foreleg.
Even then it did not die. It pulled itself up onto the rocks and took off like a good racing car, away from the pain, away from the foaming, smoking water and lancing spears, running east through the shallow stream, toward the safety of the Miskatonic—
As Cadmann had said it would.
"Down!" Cadmann's voice was calm and reassuring in the earphones, and
Carlos was down. One second later there was an awesome roar, and after that he was showered by dirt and falling rock. Two big mud drops struck his cheek.
"All clear." Cadmann sounded cheerful. "Chalk up one more."
One more.
"Like I said, no brains," Hendrick said. "They'll always go for the river. Plant some mines and wait—"
"Would you have thought of that?"
"Aw, I don't know."
"Nor would I," Carlos said. "Or, let us say it another way. You or I, perhaps we would have thought of the mines, and perhaps we might have thought of whatever it is that we will need when those no longer work. Would you be willing to bet that either of us will think of that before Cadmann does? Or know that it is right?"
Hendrick stood and shook off the dirt from his coveralls. "Lighten up.
Let's go see what we got."
"Yes." Carlos stood. "Let us look at our grendel." His forefinger picked a speck of wet red flesh from his cheek. Not a raindrop.
There wasn't much. Craters in the dirt, splashes of bright crimson, torn alien flesh and bone, a flailing severed tail, ropy red strands splashed against the rocks. Carlos felt a grin pulling his face toward his ears.
Twenty hunters stood up from their positions around the clearing.
All twenty of them. They hadn't lost a single man, and the grendel was as dead as anything had ever been.
"Let's be sure," Cadmann ordered. "All units, stand by. Alpha team, move out."
Once again three men moved forward. One stood with flame-thrower ready as the others tossed the satchel charge into the pothole.
WHAM!
Mud, water and samlon showered the area. Carlos stood tensely—
And nothing happened.
"All clear," Cadmann said at last. He left his command post and came over to Carlos. "And that's what I call ballin' the jack."
"Damn straight, amigo." Carlos raised his weapon. "Damn straight!" The victory cry built deep inside him, rolling slowly up through his chest and out of his throat like the cry of a more primitive, more basic animal. The others joined in. Twenty hunters, screaming to the cloud-muddied sky, the glory and perfection of the moment connecting them with a simpler time.
They were alive, and the enemy was dead, its limbs and guts spread before them. Still the timeless scene seemed somehow incomplete. This was the time when the shamans, the ancient men and women of the village, should scramble out from behind the rocks, should examine lengths of twisted gut, stare into the scarred and lifeless eyes of a foe and speak of the signs within. Eat handfuls of jellied brain and sing of dark portents and bloody dreams.
Then again, he realized that he didn't need diviners to tell him the future.
Here, on Avalon, mankind was the future.
The howls from twenty throats rose to the sky...
Jerry sighed in disappointment as he examined the gutted corpse.
There was samlon meat in its belly. Jerry identified parts of three samlon, two nearly dissolved, one nearly fresh.
"Now we know. Nothing protects samlon," Jerry said. "No great secrets here at all."
"So why are they still around?" Sylvia wondered.
"They probably breed faster than hell, and there aren't enough grendels to wipe them out. That's good news. I guess. There is a limited number." Something attracted Jerry's attention, above the creature's staring eyes. He moved his tweezers under something, and lifted.
Half a meter of limp tubing rose from a cleft in the forehead.
"I'll be damned. Will you look at that? It's got a snorkel for breathing underwater. Here, you can see where the blood vessels fill to lift it. Just like a penis. Sorry."
Sylvia said, "We're out to kill them. You're starting to admire them."
"Know your enemy."
Once the technique was devised, the killings themselves became almost routine. The adrenaline was there, the sense of satisfaction, but experience had dampened the true danger, replacing it with caution and structure.
Because, after all was said and done, the grendels were mortal. Heirs to the same failings as any other creature of protoplasm. Vulnerable to the same techniques of killing that had worked on Earth, evolved through countless big-game hunts and wars since the beginning of recorded time.
Flush the beast.
Channel its retreat.
Bottleneck, and the killing ground.
The second killing team utilized an additional refinement. There was a chance, no matter how small, that a grendel might be hiding, outside the water hole, or might find an auxiliary exit and attack them from the rear. Transverse observers were posted, one for every two hunters facing the killing ground. Two hovering Skeeters watched from above, scanning for grendels.
There were only twelve sites on the entire island with a probability above 30 percent.
Twelve holes. One a day, with the Colony kept under full battle alarm the entire time.
They would not lose another human being.
It was good to have a system: Skeeter above, and a first pinning team moved into place while the engineering corps designed the mine field, worked with Cadmann to determine the field of fire that would best funnel the creature to its death.
Where natural walls of rock were insufficient, walls of flame were utilized, flame throwers backed by men and women with rifles and spear guns.
And always, always, a conspicuous bolt-hole. Someplace where a pain-maddened creature could run to safety, to freedom...
To certain death.
So died the fourth grendel, blown in half and then roasted by jellied flame, dead even as it crawled for the depths of the Miskatonic, pitifully torn claws outstretched, eyes open and fixed. Yearning, perhaps, for one last taste of the samlon flashing within.
And the fifth, dead before it ever reached the minefield, Carlos's explosive spear in its brain. He took limited pride: he had been aiming at the heart.
And always, always, there was Cadmann, driving them on and on, past exhaustion with his boundlessly murderous energy.
The spirit was infectious, and when they trudged back to their temporary camp at the end of the fourth day, no one wanted to be skeetered back to main base.
The temporary camp was a fifty-meter stretch of cleared brush, burned out and then chopped and plowed. Supplies were flown in from the Colony. The entire perimeter of the camp was mined, and a Skeeter flew in irregular patterns, scanning with infrared.
At first Carlos disliked the endless hum of the Skeeters overhead. Now, the cessation of the sound, or the occasional sound of two overhead rotors as Skeeters changed shifts, would awaken him instantly, sending a hand reaching out for the spear gun.
He was tired but happy. The muscles in his calves had seized up, and the tendons ached. He massaged them for a half hour before they stopped screaming.
Cadmann's tent was near the southern periphery of camp, and Carlos rapped on the foil, saying, "Knock knock."
Cadmann laughed. "Come on in."
The big man was sitting cross-legged on the ground. A light was suspended from the tent pole, shining onto a map.
"What do we have here, compadre?"
"Well, a peek at tomorrow's kill. We've identified the monster here—smaller than the others. It's the southernmost beast.
"Dumping blood, sheep intestines and chunks of monster into the other two water holes hasn't gotten us anything, but here we have one." He grinned, and turned to Carlos, teeth gloaming. "Do you know what that means?"
"It means that we're almost finished."
"By God, yes!" Cadmann slammed his fist down. "Cigar?"
Carlos shook his head at first, and then nodded. "I didn't even know you smoked."
"Only on verra special occasions, my man." He conjured two thin cheroots from a plastic pouch and clipped the tip off both. They lit and inhaled smoothly, enjoying the thick, sweet aroma. "About six months ago, I can remember being upset that we hadn't brought along a Kodiak bear or a mountain lion."
"Well, your wish sure came true."
"Yeah—in spades. No offense, heh heh..." Cadmann leaned back against his bedroll and exhaled a long, fragrant stream. "No. I wondered if I was a little off my nut about that. Look around us. Know what I see?"
"What?"
"Survivors. We came, most of us, because life was too easy on Earth, but it was still a guided vacation. There were the colonists, and the crew. And me, Great White Hunter, professional killer. My God, most of them felt safe. That attitude would have been passed on to the children, and their children. And if something like this had happened in two generations instead of right now, our grandchildren might not have been able to handle it at all. So we've lost a few people, and they weren't dead weight, don't get me wrong—but the ones who are left are true pioneers, not tourists. Fighting for their wives and husbands and children, and their future."
Carlos nodded soberly. "I can see what you mean."
"I figured you would. And I couldn't sit here and tell you that I'm sorry it happened."
"Even with the death... ?"
"Everybody dies. The obstetrician slaps you on the ass with one hand and hands you a postdated death certificate with the other. What's important is that our children have a better chance. It's always been about the children. Always. Women have never loved being kept from education and treated as second-class citizens. Men have never enjoyed having their balls shot off in wars. Men and women didn't fall into their roles accidentally, and each side doesn't hate the other. It happened because for a thousand generations, that was the best way we knew to build a civilization, to build a better future for our children. The industrial revolution doomed slavery—racial, sexual, social. Civilization is worth fighting for."
Cadmann seemed more at peace than Carlos had ever seen him. And why not? Vindicated, loved, appreciated. Involved in the work he was born for. Regardless of what happened from this point forward, the work that Cadmann had done would earn him respect and honor for the rest of his life.
Cadmann was the Colony's only real warrior, but with luck, he could teach the rest of them to be soldiers.
"Here." Cadmann opened a flask and handed it to Carlos. It was strong, unwatered whiskey. Carlos sputtered, but didn't lose a drop. "You'd better not. Probably the most valuable thing in the known universe. Two-hundred-year-old Scotch."
"Salud. " Carlos felt the sweet liquid fire flowing down his throat.
"Jesus, that's good."
"Unfortunately, that's all there is."
"Yeah. Things could be a lot better." Sadness clouded his face as he drew deeply on his cigar, but he relaxed as he exhaled a misty wreath around the lamp. "But do you know something?"
"What?"
"Compadre, they have been a hell of a lot worse."
Chapter 22
THE LAST GRENDEL
The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of cause.
WILLIAM JAMES
Number six was the last. All the other bolt-holes had been all the other underground rivers mapped. If there was another grendel left on Avalon, it had no interest in blood, no fear of hydrostatic shock. It never turned on its supercharger at night, when Geographic's thermal scan dissected every square meter of the island.
No, this one was the last, and here in the highlands, the farthest south on the island that any human had been, Cadmann felt a minute sense of loss.
He listened to the live tone in his ear from the radio link, and to his own breathing. He plucked a sprig of avalonia grass, chewed on it absently and spit out the faintly sweet fibers.
He was propped on his elbows at the edge of a bluff overlooking a marshy stream, just upriver from one of the largest hot springs. The thermal gradient had thrown the scans off for a little while, giving this last monster a temporary reprieve.
Skeeter Two had lured it out with grendel blood and fresh meat. The monster had come sniffing out, growled weakly up at the Skeeter before it snatched the joint of raw beef. It looked and acted starved: much thinner than the others, and only two thirds the length.
The Skeeter's tape had been played back at the Colony. Cadmann vividly remembered the image of a gaunt, hollow-chested reptile tearing at the meat as if it hadn't eaten in a week.
Jerry had taken the podium and fought for the creature's life.
"We don't know we can find more of them on the mainland. Think about it—an animal which can produce a high-grade organic oxidizer. Imagine a herd of them. Hobble the legs or even amputate them. Breed them to get that oxygen-bonding stuff, that super hemoglobin, like cows give milk!"
Grendels, serving man? It might be. They would try it... once.
But Cadmann wondered to himself, wondered about the sadness that he felt. What if this was the last grendel in the universe? After all, there were earthly species restricted to just one subcontinent or group of islands.