assistirfilmes Book 2: Chapter 19: Prey
Book 2: Chapter 19: Prey
Book 2: Chapter 19: Prey
Bob
June 2172
Delta Eridani
Archimedes patiently tied two strands of vine together while the cub watched. I smiled, observing the tableau in the video window. His mate, Diana, kept one eye on the drone. She had never liked the drones, or me, and still tensed up when one was around. Having a child to protect just made her that much touchier.
Archimedes was oblivious. He was too busy teaching his cub basic skills. The cub took the vines and, tongue sticking out of a corner of his mouth, tied a perfect granny knot. Archimedes sighed and corrected it into a square knot. The cub smiled up at his father and I experienced a jolt of—well, something. Pride? Envy? Wistfulness? Maybe all of the above. It was hard to sort out. My eyes were watering, and I had to suppress a strong urge to re-watch one of the recordings of Riker’s chats with our family.
I minimized the window and turned to see Marvin watching me. He said nothing, and after a moment he dropped his eyes and went back to what he was working on.
I took a few deep breaths and brought the window back up. The cub had successfully executed a square knot, although he still didn’t seem to be clear on the difference. I chuckled. I’d given Archimedes some sailing knots over the last while, and he was learning them, one at a time. It looked like he was trying to pass that knowledge on to his cub.
The boy would be given a Naming Ceremony as soon as he said his first word. Both Archimedes and I expected that to happen earlier than average. The Deltans quite reasonably considered language to be the difference between them and animals, and the first use of language was the proof that the child had, for want of a better word, a soul. The Deltan word didn’t quite mean the same thing, but it was close enough.
Diana was still eyeing me, so I decided to give her a break. I told Archimedes that I was going to go for a cruise around, then took off.
I brought the drone up to a kilometer altitude and rotated slowly. It was still early in a beautiful spring day, and dew sparkled on the trees and grass. This part of Eden was mostly forest, but there were enough meadows and open areas to allow grazing animals to make a living. I was making a point of recording panoramas like this whenever I could. Someday, maybe ten thousand years in the future, the Deltans would be civilized, and would probably have done something to Eden similar to what humans had done to Earth in the twentieth century. It would be nice to be able to show them what their world had once been like. I wondered if I would still be hanging around here by then.
Wow, I needed to shake off this melancholy mood. I enjoyed hanging with Archimedes, but once in a while it triggered images of my parents and sisters. When that happened, a change of scenery was in order.
I instructed the drone to fly back to Camelot and take up station-keeping, and I switched to a drone stationed at one of the Lagrange autofactories.
The armaments project was overdue for inspection, anyway. I had a section, carefully separated from everything else, where I was experimenting with explosives and munitions manufacture. I was playing with the idea of a shell powered by plastics instead of gunpowder. A primer triggered by an electrical current would remove the need for a hammer. Using ethylene glycol as the binder would result in a compound that was usable under all environmental conditions, including extreme cold. And the stuff didn’t become unstable with age. Oh, and it was easier to work with safely than gunpowder.
I moved on to the main autofactory area. Four replicant matrices were currently nearing completion, to give life to the version-3 Heaven vessels lined up nearby. I hadn’t decided yet if I wanted to upgrade myself as well. Granted, the threes were significantly faster than my version-2 hull; but I had no immediate need for speed. Everything in the Delta Eridani system was accessible by drone. I seldom had any need to fire up my SURGE drive. Come to think of it, I hadn’t left orbit around Eden in years.
Despite my ongoing reluctance to replicate, I felt a moral obligation to get more of me out into the universe. Besides the simple fact that more Bobs exploring meant more interesting revelations, there was the implied promise to Dr. Landers to perform the task that he’d resurrected me for. By extension, I had a responsibility to what was left of the human race. Riker was doing a magnificent job of getting them off-planet. It was up to the rest of us to find places for them to go.
My brooding was interrupted by a text from Marvin. There’s been an attack.
I sent the drone back to station-keeping and re-entered my VR. Marvin was waiting.
“Gorilloids?” I asked, sitting down.
“No, I think it might be our Giant Claw. A foraging party was out gathering food when one of them was grabbed. They say they couldn’t really see it, except they got the impression it was really big. It flew away with the victim, and everyone else high-tailed it back to Camelot.”
“What do you mean, they couldn’t really see it? Did it jump out of a tree?”
“Um, no, that’s the thing. They were looking right at it but couldn’t make it out. The Deltans didn’t really have a word for it, and the translation routine was having fits, then finally settled on invisible.”
“Ah, jeez. So a giant flying thing that can become fully or partly invisible, or maybe blend in...” I trailed off as I watched Marvin’s eyes get bigger. “Umm...?”
He flipped through the archives and pulled up a video segment from my early investigation of Eden, back before I’d even found the Deltans. The video depicted what I’d named a hippogriff. About the size of a robin, this little critter had four legs and a set of wings. It was predatory, and it could hide in plain sight because it could...
... change its coloration to match the environment. Oh, crap.
“They’d be a lot bigger than this little guy, but what the Deltans sort of saw would fit the bill.” I nodded at Marvin. “Good catch. But we still don’t know where it comes from, right?” ɌaΝȮβÈŞ
Marvin shook his head. “I’m still searching outward from Camelot. I’ve reached the ocean in one direction, but still lots of land left at the other compass points. I’m biasing it towards the original Deltan territory, although that’s not a sure thing either.”
“The big question,” I said slowly, “is whether any of our drones saw it.”
“I already checked. There weren’t any in the area. Everything we could spare is out searching. Somehow this thing snuck inside our perimeter.”
“Wonderful. Wonder-freaking-ful. I haven’t just brought the Deltans back to the fire, I’ve put them back in the frying pan. Some sky god!”
* * *
I watched from a distance as the tribal elders gathered to discuss the recent death. I wasn’t invited to attend, since I was probably the subject under discussion, and I didn’t feel like forcing the issue. Archimedes was told to be there, and he looked nervous enough for both of us. He and Diana exchanged frightened looks before he left.
The meeting went on for quite a while, and there was a lot of gesticulating and yelling. I’d probably never mentioned directional microphones to the Deltans, so I guess I couldn’t blame them for not realizing that I could hear everything.
Archimedes passed on my theories, which in retrospect probably made things worse. But it would have come out sooner or later. The central theme of the meeting, though, revolved around whether I was malicious or just an idiot. Either way, a lot of people believed that they’d been safer back at the old site.
Objectively, that wasn’t true. They’d been slowly going extinct, and wouldn’t have lasted more than another generation or so. But explaining population trends to essentially innumerate people was a losing game. They understood death when it happened in front of them, far better than they understood attrition.
The meeting took about two hours. When Archimedes came back to his spot, he looked very hangdog. He sat down and accepted a piece of jerky from Diana.
“They’re about evenly split,” he explained. “Half think you’ve led us here to be food for the flying things. The other half ask how you could have known about these things if we didn’t know. And we’re from here.”
I thought about that and sighed. If the Deltans had been human, those would have been the two camps, but the split wouldn’t have been fifty-fifty. Deltans were surprisingly rational.
“You’re not in trouble, are you?”
“Not really.” Archimedes glanced at Diana and smiled ruefully. “But my, uh, stock is down. I think that’s how you say it.”
“Don’t worry about it, Archimedes. You’re still the best damned weapon-maker in, well, anywhere. If you need to distance yourself from me for a while, that’s fine. But either way, Marvin and I will continue to look for the hippogriffs.”
Archimedes nodded. His cub toddled up and dropped into his lap. Head-first.
* * *
“Well, that explains it,” Marvin said. “I stopped at the shoreline and I shouldn’t have. The things seem to be centered on a rookery out on this island...” Marvin pointed to a large island a kilometer or two offshore. Obviously volcanic in origin, it was steep, deeply folded, and very probably had a lot of lava tubes that would make perfect homes for large flying things.
“How many of them are there?”
“Can’t tell for sure.” Marvin shrugged. “They’re always coming and going during the day, but unless I start tagging them, I don’t know how many nests or dens or whatever are in those caves. But certainly scores of adults, at minimum.”
I frowned. “That’s a significant population of predators. So what do they eat when they can’t get Deltan?”
Marvin waved up a picture. “Seals. Well, seal-equivalents. Or maybe closer to walruses. They seem to fill the same niche. They spend most of their down-time basking on the beach, and they hunt in the water. They’re a little more mobile than seals or sea-lions, but still basically sitting ducks on land. Although I’d imagine they could do some damage with those tusks.”
I stared at the picture for a few milliseconds, rubbing my chin. I turned to the globe and expanded it until it showed just the island and the Deltans’ past and current range. “So the hippogriffs discovered the Deltans, who were probably easier prey, chased them out of their original territory...”
Marvin continued the thought. “Then eventually caught up with them after they moved into gorilloid territory. The Deltans could handle the gorilloids, with flint weapons to help, but they couldn’t handle both predators. They retreated over the mountain range...”
“...which put them out of range of the hippogriffs, but lost them the flint resource. Without that, they couldn’t quite hold their own against the gorilloids,” I finished.
“And then we, and by we I mean you, led them back to the flint site. Where they are, once again, on the menu.” Marvin gazed at me with one eyebrow raised. “So what now?”
I sat down, called up coffee, and leaned back in thought. “I think we can agree that just doing nothing is off the table?” Marvin nodded and I continued, “Likewise, asking the Deltans to move again is probably a non-starter. I doubt they’d do it even if I had a good, safe destination in mind.”
“Plus, the flint site really is their best long-term bet, generally speaking.”
[Approaching predator detected]
In VR, Marvin and I rolled our eyes in sync.
“I’ve already talked about that.”
“Perhaps next time, we should leave your Archimedes out as an offering for them.”
I sent the drone straight up ten feet. “Don’t. Ever. Threaten. My. Family. Not ever.” As I finished saying the words, I realized that I’d turned the volume up. It had probably been painful to sensitive Deltan ears. The entire council was cringing, and possibly not just from the volume.
I slowly lowered the drone back to head-height. “I mean it, Hoffa. I’ll take care of the hippogriffs. And thanks to you, I’ve figured out how.”
Hoffa looked confused and somewhat concerned. I noticed that Arnold looked at Hoffa and smiled.
* * *
“Okay, I’ll bite.” Marvin was grinning at me. “How? And how did Hoffa help with it?”
I glared at him. “I’m going to drop a rock on the island. Which is what I wanted to do to Hoffa.”
“Jeez, Bob, here you go again. You’re going to perform planetary ecological surgery just because it’s convenient.”
“No, Marvin.” I jumped to my feet. “I’m going to do it because those things threaten my family. And you can analyze that all you want. I don’t give a damn.” I closed down his VR connection and he disappeared, effectively kicked out. Pretty rude, and I’d be apologizing later. But for the moment, I was too steamed to care.
* * *
I had a far more immediate problem, though. Assuming I was right about the hippogriffs smelling blood, then today’s battle would bring yet another wave tomorrow—maybe much larger. It would take time to find a large enough mass to destroy the island. I calculated an initial size of a hundred tons would about do it. We had identified a number of nickel-iron asteroids in the system, some of which would be about the right size.
I received a ping from Marvin. It was time to eat crow. I invited him in, and we looked at each other warily.
He broke the silence first. “You know we’re no good with this crap, right?”
It was enough. I broke down laughing, and we nodded at each other. Done. Possibly identical twins could come close to understanding, but certainly no one else.
We sat down and I described my thoughts on the impactor.
“Huh,” he replied. “So, a couple of months to build Bill’s asteroid mover, a couple more weeks to move the asteroid into place. You think the hippogriffs will just wait around?”
“I’m open to suggestions.”
“I understand you’re angry, Bob, and you want to smash the island to smithereens. But all you need to do is hammer it enough to take out the hippogriff population. You don’t need a Yucatan-level event to do that.”
I nodded. “So, a bunch of small impactors?”
“A thousand-pound steel ball will do a lot of damage.”
“Ohhhhhh...” I nodded. “Ship busters. Yeah, I’ve still got four in inventory.”
“The thing is, though, Bob, you don’t want too big of a bang. Tsunamis, ground shocks, flying debris could do more damage to the Deltans than a bunch of hippogriffs. Get this wrong, and you could be directly responsible for the extinction of the Deltan species.”
I nodded, shocked. Time to get my temper under control.
* * *
We decided to use the ship-busters one at a time and gauge the results after each strike. I sent the first ship-buster in at what I hoped was a reasonably sedate velocity.
The results were slightly more, um, spectacular than expected.
In retrospect, maybe I didn’t allow for the amount of material that would normally be shed by a meteor on the way down. Or I forgot to carry the two. Whatever the reason, the impact produced a mushroom cloud that would have done a fission bomb proud. As the smoke and dust cleared, it was obvious that the island, and the hippogriffs, were gone.
Well, that was the good news.
The bad news was that this was definitely going to produce ground shocks all the way to Camelot. And at least some debris. I flew several drones over to the camp, to find everyone already awake, staring at the bright cloud to the southwest.
Archimedes looked up at the drone as I arrived. “Did you do that?” he said in a hushed voice.
I wasn’t sure of the expression on his face. Awe, certainly, but I thought maybe a bit of fear. I hoped not. That wasn’t the legacy I wanted to leave.
“Yeah, Archimedes. That’s the hippogriff island being obliterated.”
Archimedes’ eyes grew wider and his ears went down. He took a half-step back from me.
Damn.
At that moment, the ground shock arrived. It wasn’t the worst earthquake I’d ever seen, but was probably the first in the Deltans’ experience. They hugged the ground, and there were many screams.
The shaking was brief. It was followed a few minutes later by the sound of the explosion. The crack and roar seemed to go on forever, but couldn’t have been a minute in all. The Deltans continued to huddle until it let up.
But now came the hard part. I went to the elders. “There may be some burning rocks falling from the sky, in about a hundred heartbeats or so. You should get everyone into the lee side of the bluff.”
There were wide eyes and flattened ears, but no one was going to argue with me. In short order, every Deltan was huddled behind the central bluff.
The debris arrived right on time. Drones hadn’t been able to detect anything big. I hoped that would hold, as I wasn’t really sure I could intercept incoming debris with a buster. Or if it would do any good.
The pelting lasted several minutes. It was impressive, and there was some minor damage to the village, but no one was hurt. The Deltans huddled for the rest of the night, unwilling to leave the sanctuary of the rock.
* * *
When morning finally came, people spread back out to their normal locations. A few of them had to do some cleanup, but their neighbors pitched in. Overall, the amount of actual damage was minor.
The council was having yet another session. Again, though, I wasn’t expecting a medal.
When they were done, they motioned to the drone. I flew it over, and Hoffa stepped forward. “We understand what you’ve done. We understand your explanations. But everything you ask, everything you do, seems to come with a larger and larger cost. We’re not sure if we’re better off now or not. There’s a lot of argument about that.”
He paused for a moment, a determined look on his face, then faced me squarely. “We’d like you to go away. We’ll face our fate ourselves. If you want to kill us, we can’t stop you. If you want to kill me, I can’t do anything about it. But you’re not welcome here anymore.”
I stared at him, through the drone, for what seemed like forever. I was frozen. Numb. It was too much to process. The emotional circuit breaker had tripped. I’d lost a family already, now I was losing a second one.
I backed out of the drone, and turned to Marvin. His face was grey. I was sure I didn’t look any better. “I guess I screwed up,” I said.
“Look, let’s just clear out for now,” he replied. “Give things time to cool off. You can talk to Archimedes later.”
I nodded, and re-entered the drone. I floated over to Archimedes, who was not looking well. Deltans didn’t display shock the same as humans. His facial fur was lying in disorganized mats. But the wide eyes and flat ears were probably universal. A disconnected part of me started theorizing about why that might be, and I squashed it.
“Archimedes, I’m going to take off until things cool down. I’ll talk to you later.”
He nodded. I noted that Diana had a look on her face of either satisfaction or triumph. I’d never hated anyone as much as I despised her at that moment.