Time Bomb and Zahndry Others Part 13

Betsy felt her eyes widen in disbelief... but even as she opened her mouth to argue, all the puzzling parts of the incident suddenly made sense, and she knew he was right.

"But isn't that dangerous, not to mention illegal?" Whitney asked.

"Highly," Young told him, answering both parts of the question. "Even with an empty shuttle, which is how I gather he usually does it. Whatever possessed him to try it with a full pa.s.senger load I'll never know."

Betsy's lip curled, ever so slightly; but she held her peace. A figurative rape, perhaps? Or just an overwhelming desire to prove in her presence that he was a superior pilot? It didn't really matter; either way, it told her something about Eric Rayburn that she had never suspected.

"Anyway, as long as that's just my unsupported opinion, I'd appreciate it if you'd both keep it to yourselves," Young was saying. "Betsy, I've got to get below now, help ease any ruffled feathers among the pa.s.sengers. Congratulations again on your fine job here." With a nod to Whitney, the Skyport captain headed off down the hall.

Betsy watched him go, but without really seeing him. So it comes full circle, she thought bemusedly. I fight to quit reacting to Eric, and find out he's been reacting just as blindly and irrationally to me.

She shook her head minutely. Puppets, all of us*even all the ones who think they're mavericks. Puppets pulling on each others' strings.

"I suppose I should go back down, too," Whitney said, breaking into her thoughts. "It was really a privilege to watch you in action, Betsy*thanks for letting me be part of it."

"Just a minute, Peter," she said as he turned to go, pushing the growing bitterness determinedly from her mind. After all, she was only forty-five*far too young to become a cynic. "I seem to recall you were interested earlier in a tour of the Skyport topdeck. That still true?"

"Uh, yes," he said, an uncertain smile playing around his lips. "If it's not too much trouble."

"No trouble at all." And besides, reacting with cynicism would just be giving Rayburn one final victory over her. "Come on, we'll start with the crew lounge. Drinks are on the house*and I understandthe fruit juice is excellent today."

Houseguest

The fuzzy red ball that was Drym's sun hung low in the sky, and already the temperature had started its nightly descent. Measuring the angle between sun and mountains, Wynne Kendal estimated he had a good fifteen minutes to get home before sunset brought on the dangerous, highly energetic "musth" part of the tricorn activity cycle. He was all right though; across the shallow stream just ahead was the ruin of his original prefab home, and it was only a ten-minute walk from there to the House.

As always, he glanced at the ruin as he pa.s.sed. Little had changed in the past eight months; the tricorns had pretty thoroughly trampled the plastic and metal structure the first week after he abandoned it and now, having driven him away, generally ignored it.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," he muttered, the oath expanding to include both the tricorns and the Company exploration group who had given Drym a fast once-over and blithely declared it safe. Perhaps if they'd hung around long enough, the tricorns would have turned on them instead of waiting until the mining group was settled and out of communication to turn from docile to nasty. Clearly, though, the survey had been a mere formality; with rich concentrations of precious scandium-bearing ores lying barely beneath the planetary surface, the Company would have sent miners in even if Drym had been covered with Bellatrix sparkbrats.

Ahead of Kendal loomed a line of granite hills, and he could now make out the five-meter-high rocky dome and gaping circular entrance of his House. His heartbeat never failed to pick up slightly at this point; there was no way of telling from here which of its moods the other would be in, and some of them could be dangerous. Not that it made any real difference, of course. Staying outside alone all night would be even worse.

The sun was just grazing the mountain tops as he reached the House. A few meters to one side of the dome was a hill with one flat face. A large stone rested against it, and Kendal manhandled it aside to expose the tiny cave he used for storage. He withdrew his night-pack, rations, and stove, brushing off with quick motions a few bloodworms who were clinging to the bundles. The mining team had briefly entertained the idea of living in caves after realizing their prefabs had no chance against the tricorns, but the bloodworms had ended that hope. Human tissue was supposed to be completely non-nourishing to Drym fauna, something the planet's flying insects seemed to sense from a distance. The cave-dwelling bloodworms, unfortunately, each needed a few bites to catch on.

The last item Kendal withdrew from the cave was a telescoping duryai alloy pole, originally a part of the miners' shoring equipment. He extended it to the two-meter length required and gave it a quick visual check before stuffing his mining gear into the cave and resealing it. Picking up his packs, he lugged them to the House's entrance, setting them down outside. Taking a deep breath, he held the pole out in front of him like a spear and, ducking slightly, entered the House.

It was not quite pitch-dark inside, but the light from the setting sun showed only that Kendal was in a dome-shaped s.p.a.ce two meters high in the middle and perhaps four across at the ground. A strange, almost musky odor filled the air; strong, but not overpowering. Watching the walls warily, Kendal walked toward the center. "h.e.l.lo, House," he called tentatively.

The answer came promptly and in a tone so low Kendal could feel it as much as he could hear it: "Greetings, master."Kendal breathed a little easier. The House was only sarcastic when it was in a relatively good mood. It had probably fed today, he decided, setting one end of his pole into a notch dug in the hard clay of the floor and carefully wedging the other end against the ceiling. Only when that was done did he finally relax.

Wasting no time, he retrieved his packs and brought them into the House. Flicking on a lantern, he nodded, "Okay, you can close up now," he said, sitting down cross-legged near the pole.

"Very well, master," the House rumbled, and the circular orifice squeezed shut in a way that always reminded Kendal of someone pursing his lips.

"Thank you," he said as he started to set up his stove. "How was your day?"

"How should it have been?" the House responded. "I spoke for a time with the Others, and I waited.

There is little else I can do."

"You did eat, though," Kendal commented. He'd spotted a small rocky bulge high up on the wall that hadn't been there when he's left. "A white-wing, wasn't it?"

"Yes. It was small, but will have to serve. You Men have seen to that."

Kendal winced. In their self-defense killing of tricorns, the miners were apparently causing a serious threat to the Houses' main food supply. Along with the humiliation of having been turned into living bedrooms, this was just one more cause for resentment. And if they got mad enough... Kendal shuddered at the memory of the crushed bodies of the first handful of miners to innocently venture into the Houses. They had never known what hit them. If the exploration team had goofed on their a.n.a.lysis of the tricorns, they had missed the Houses completely, and it had cost seven lives before anyone figured out what was happening. Another four men were lost before the shoring pole technique was perfected.

Like other creatures throughout history, the Houses had proved at least marginally tamable, and were taught by short laser bursts to open and close their "mouths" in response to slaps or light kicks. No one had been prepared, though, when the Houses started talking to them.

Kendal's communicator buzzed. "Kendal; yeah?"

"Tan here. You locked up for the night?"

"Sure am." Cardman Tan had been the Number Three man of the mining team before the tricorns and Houses had taken their ma.s.sive toll; now, he was Number One. "Any particular reason why you're doing a bedcheck tonight?"

"I saw what looked like a new bevy of tricorns coming over the hills in your area a few minutes ago," Tan explained. "I wanted to make sure n.o.body was wandering around outside."

More tricorns in the area. d.a.m.n. "Thanks for the warning. I'll be careful."

"See you tomorrow." The communicator clicked off.

The House was silent as Kendal turned back and finished his dinner preparations. It had listened to the conversation, of course, and certainly understood the implications. Theoretically, more tricorns meant more food for all the Houses scattered among the hills*but only if the bull-sized beasts came within sniffing range of the odor lures the Houses used. If the tricorns chose instead to hound the men at the mine two kilometers away, there wasn't a solitary thing the Houses could do about it. Their "roots"*Kendal's House's own word*went deep into the ground, drawing out water and dissolved rock for their organo-mineral metabolisms. And while no one knew how deep the roots went, it was for sure that the Houses weren't going out hunting."I wonder how many tricorns are in this new bevy, Kendal remarked as he ate, just to break the silence.

"Forty-seven," the House said promptly.

Kendal looked up in surprise. "You've seen them?"

"They pa.s.sed near one of the Others a short time ago. He counted them."

"I see." Kendal hadn't realized he'd been that preoccupied; usually he could feel the underground vibrations the Houses used to talk with each other. "Well, hopefully this group will stay close to the hills, where you can have a shot at them."

"No. They will surely continue their attempts to drive you away from here."

The House's tone was no longer sarcastic, and Kendal swallowed hard. At their friendliest, the Houses were barely tolerant of their human parasites. At other times... Kendal glanced involuntarily at the pole, making sure it was properly placed. "Now, House, you know we don't kill the tricorns because we want to. We'd be happy to live and let live. I know you're not crazy about putting up with us*" the understatement of the decade*"but if you can hold out just another hundred and fifty days or so, our company's transport ship will come and visit us. They'll have the knowledge and equipment to build us homes that the tricorns can't destroy*maybe even find a way to keep the tricorns away from us without having to kill them. Then maybe we can make up for all the inconveniences we've caused you."

The House didn't answer. Kendal chewed his lip. He'd been planning to play chess with one of the other miners this evening via communicator, but it might pay him to talk to his House instead. The Houses had very little opportunity for mental stimulation, and Kendal had found that an interesting chat could often snap his out of a bad mood. "Did I ever tell you about my year on Majori?" he asked casually. "That planet had some of the strangest animals I've ever seen. There was one, for instance, with three legs*or five, depending on how you counted them."

He stopped and waited. "Please explain," the House said at last, a touch of interest peeking through the surliness in its tone.

Inwardly, Kendal smiled. Just like offering candy to a child. And almost as effective. Some of the miners, he knew, treated their Houses like slaves or virtually ignored them, but Kendal had always tried to stay on friendly terms with his. All other reasons aside, it helped relieve the boredom of Drym's nights. "It's like this...."

The conversation lasted far into the night.

Kendal's alarm went off a half hour before dawn, and the sun was barely up as the miners began the day's work. Early morning was their most productive time; for several hours after sunrise the tricorns hid away among the rocks and hills, presumably sleeping, and for that period no guards had to be posted to protect the others from attack. When the giant creatures did finally lumber forth, it took fully half of the forty men to stand guard around the perimeter of the wide, shallow strip mine. A smaller mine would have been easier to defend, but to carry the ore out of a deeper pit would have been agony. All of their powered equipment ran off of standard energy cells, and the decision had been made months ago to save as much power as possible for the hand lasers. Tricorns took a lot of energy to kill.

For a while the miners made good progress, despite the early-morning chill. As the morning pa.s.sed andtemperatures rose, the tricorns began to congregate around the mine. Two of them had to be shot before the rest got the idea and thereafter kept at a respectful distance from the ring of guards. There seemed to be more of them than usual, Kendal thought*the new bevy was getting into the spirit of this thing with remarkable speed.

"Of course they are," Jaker, the man standing guard to Kendal's right, said when Kendal commented on it. "They're at least as intelligent as dogs or wolves."

"No way," another man down the line called back.

Kendal sighed. That argument had been going on for months now, with Jaker and Welles the main partic.i.p.ants. Kendal himself leaned toward Jaker's side*the tall miner's reasoning usually made sense to him*but he was getting sick of the whole debate. What he wanted to know was something no one here could even take a stab at: why were the Houses so intelligent? What possible reason was there for an unmoving pile of rock to develop the intelligence necessary to learn an alien language just by listening to communicator conversations? In addition, Kendal had proved*at least to his own satisfaction*that the Houses were capable of imagination and abstract thought.

The how of it was reasonably straightforward: current theory implied that a sufficiently large brain would automatically develop sentence, and the Houses were certainly big enough to hold a brain that size. But the why of it still drove him crazy.

Jaker and Welles were still arguing when Kendal tuned his mind back to the conversation. "Look at how fast these new ones figured out the lasers*" Jaker was saying.

A motion to Kendal's right caught his eye. One of the tricorns was moving forward. "Jaker!" he snapped, yanking his laser from its holster.

Jaker had been half-turned to shout at Welles; whipping back around, he brought his own weapon to bear, firing a second after Kendal's shot grazed the ma.s.sive skull near the leftmost of the three serrated horns. The creature thudded to the ground; two more shots and it was dead.

Kendal turned back quickly to see a tricorn directly in front of him take a couple of heavy steps forward.

He raised his laser, and the animal stopped. Almost reluctantly, it backed up to its original position.

"See?" Jaker said, just the slightest tremor in his voice. "They know when it's not safe to attack."

"All right, can it," Cardman Tan called from the pit, where the sounds of work had ceased. "Jaker, you give your brain a vacation like that again and I'll have your hide*if one of the tricorns doesn't get it first. That goes for all the rest of you, too. Stay alert, d.a.m.n it!"

There were m.u.f.fled acknowledgments from the guard ring. Wiping a layer of sweat from his neck, Kendal reflected that the strain of the past eight months was starting to be felt. He wondered if they would be able to hold out for five more.

The huge bins that had been set up nearby to store the ore had been designed to handle over a hundred tons each. As a result they were almost, but not quite, strong enough to be proof against the nighttime tricorn rampages; and when it came time to load the day's production, it was found that one of the conveyors had taken one too many dents and was inoperable. Loading the gravel via the remaining two naturally took more time than had been allowed, and as a result it was already after sundown before Kendal started for home. Even then his luck almost held, and he was nearly to the House before a tricorn caught his scent and charged.

Kendal's instinctive urge was to make a dash for it, but he knew a tricorn in musth could outrun him. Soinstead he stood his ground, laser on full power, and waited until he couldn't miss before firing. The shot hit directly between the deep-set eyes. Dodging to one side, Kendal fired again and again into the creature as its headlong rush carried it past him to crash against the side of the House.

Keeping one eye on the motionless tricorn, Kendal quickly collected his equipment and went inside.

"h.e.l.lo, House."

"You killed it," the deep voice said accusingly.

"Uh, yeah. Sorry, but I didn't have much choice in the matter."

"You could have let me lure it to me."

Kendal didn't answer. Whether or not the House's odor lure could have distracted the tricorn was an academic question: Kendal couldn't have let the House eat it in any case. After crushing a victim, the House digested it by forming a thin film of rock under it, attaching it to the House's own ceiling, after which it could be absorbed. But until the film was completed, the ceiling had to remain down*and for an animal the size of a tricorn the process could take a half-hour. Kendal couldn't risk being outside that long at night.

"Again, I'm sorry," he said at last. "There were a lot of tricorns out by the mine today. Maybe one will come out here tomorrow."

The House remained silent. Feeling uncomfortably like a rich man having a picnic in a slum, Kendal fixed his dinner and ate. He tried three or four times to strike up a conversation with the House, but his questions elicited only monosyllabic responses, and eventually he gave up. Settling down instead with one of his handful of books, he read for a while and then turned in.

The tricorn he had shot was still lying against the House when Kendal cautiously emerged the next dawn.

A quick check showed that the animal had probably been dead on impact; Kendal's head shot had fried its brains. A thought struck him, and when he had finished stowing his nighttime things, he a.s.sembled his rock-cutter plasma-jet torch and returned to the carca.s.s. A typical tricorn weighed in at something near a ton, and for once Kendal was glad that the tricorns' nocturnal activities made it unsafe to leave tools at the mine. The torch sliced the rock-hard carca.s.s in half with only a little trouble; and by using the shoring pole as a lever, he managed to roll the pieces to the House's orifice. "House?" he called "I've got some food here for you. Wait until I get both parts inside before closing up, okay?"

A minute later the job was done. "Thank you," the House said, a little too grudgingly for Kendal's taste.

The orifice puckered closed, and Kendal heard the dull thud as the domed ceiling came down with the force of a rock crusher.

"Any time," Kendal muttered as he turned and headed off toward the mine. That altruistic act had cost him time, energy, and a fair amount of power, and he was annoyed that the House wasn't more appreciative. But it didn't really matter that much. If feeding it put the House back in a reasonably good mood, it would be worth the trouble.

The day's work was uneventful, and Kendal was in good spirits as he returned home. "h.e.l.lo, House," he called his usual greeting as he set the pole snugly in place.

There was no answer. "House?" he tried again. "You all right?"As if in response, the orifice closed, sealing Kendal in. He breathed a little easier, his worst fear a.s.suaged: clearly, the House was still alive. But why wasn't it speaking to him? He searched the walls with his eyes, looking for some clue. Two bulges in the wall near the orifice were undoubtedly the remains of the tricorn he'd killed; otherwise everything seemed as usual.

No, not quite. Kendal felt a shiver go up his back as he felt the vibrations through the soles of his boots.

The House was talking to his fellows scattered through the hills. It was a normal enough occurrence*except that he knew that the House could handle two conversations at once when it wanted to. Clearly*painfully clearly*Kendal was being ignored.

Determined not to let it throw him, he prepared his dinner and afterwards tried to read. But he found it impossible to concentrate in the increasingly hostile atmosphere he could feel around him. More than once he actually considered spending the night outside, but common sense and stubbornness killed that idea. The House was simply in a bad mood, he told himself firmly as he finally switched off his lantern for the night.

The vibrations were still going when he fell asleep.

The glowing numbers of his alarm chrono showed three hours till dawn when Kendal woke with a start.

For a moment he lay still, slightly disoriented, as he tried to figure out what had awakened him. Then he heard it: a gentle creaking of metal. Rolling over, Kendal switched on his lantern, his other hand s.n.a.t.c.hing up his laser.

The sight that greeted his squinting eyes shocked him to full consciousness. In the center of the room the shoring pole was bowed a good thirty centimeters out of line in response to the newly convex shape of the ceiling. For a long minute the tableau seemed frozen, and Kendal could almost hear the House straining against the pole. Then, reluctantly, the ceiling gave way, returning to its original position as the pole straightened out.

Kendal found his voice. "House! What are you doing?" he called sharply.

His only answer was a sudden bulging of the wall just above the floor, forming an instant torus whose purpose, he knew, was to shove anything that had been near the wall toward the center where the main crushing force would be exerted. The torus withdrew, and once again the ceiling came down in an effort to break the pole.

"House!" Kendal shouted again, a touch of fear creeping into his voice. Had the House gone crazy?

"House! Answer me!"

"You cannot be allowed to live any longer."

Kendal's heart jerked at the words. "Why? What have we done to you?"

"Do not act innocent. You have forced us to your will, killed our food. And now you have offered me food that is almost useless. I can bear no more."

Almost useless? "House, that tricorn was freshly killed. You know that. Look, it couldn't have rotted that fast, especially at night." There was no answer except another squeeze on the pole. "Hey, come on, be reasonable. You know you can't break that pole."

"So the Others also believe. But once I have proved it can be done, they will join me in killing theirparasites, too."

Kendal felt cold all over. His communicator was resting near the far wall, where he couldn't retrieve it without risking the explosive ballooning which could easily hurl him into the pole. And, anyway, what good would it do to alert the other miners? Kendal's House would hear the message, the other Houses would hear it, and it would just precipitate the attacks a little ahead of schedule. And then... what? All the miners had lasers, but no one had the faintest idea how to kill or disable a House. "Look, can't we talk this over?" he called. "If I gave you bad food, I didn't mean to, and I apologize."

The torus bulged outward and flattened, and the ceiling came down. To Kendal it looked like the pole was bending a little further with each attack. If the House kept at it, it would succeed*and probably long before Kendal could cut his way through the orifice with his laser.

"House!" he tried again, desperately. "You don't want to do this. Remember how bored you all were before we came?*you told me that yourself. We can tell you about places and things you've never seen, teach you about science and*"

"It is not enough," the House interrupted. "Knowledge is of no use to us if we don't have enough food."