Jack Chalker - Priam's Lens

Humans had called this “terraforming” and had done it over a few generations; many of these worlds were in that category. The difference here was limitless power; it was done in a single human generation in most cases. During that time ships that attempted to get in tended to be swatted down, and none on the planet had the power to get up and out. After between ten and thirty standard years, with an average of only twenty, populations of up to several billions numbered, at best, in the hundreds of thousands, eking out subsistence livings in the new environment. The Titans took no notice of them still. When the planet was the way they wanted it to be, they then descended. The egglike ships became glowing fixtures on the continents. Few dared go near them; those who did almost never came back.

An interstellar empire that had the power and weaponry to conquer space and some of time, whose weapons could make stars go nova and turn planets into bits of interstellar dust, was helpless against a power that just happened to regard their own rights to life and possessions in the same way that they had regarded the rights of the other races they had come into contact with, and with a power that reduced their great weapons to impotency.

And the worst part was not just being beaten, but being ignored. These new masters were not even genocidal in the pure sense of that word; they simply regarded the populations in their way as totally irrelevant.

The Elder of the Family Maras, called Father by everybody, and who might well have been all of thirty-five and looked half again that, watched Littlefeet come into the camp and gestured for him to approach. The lithe little hunter walked cockily over, but bowed his head in respect.

“Report,” commanded the Father.

“Hunter pack roaming about one hour to the south-west,” he said. They were all taught compass points based upon the sun’s position and a distance system measured in the time it would take to move the entire tribe to that point, a system that only experience could prove. It was adequate.

“Did you track them? Did they see you?”

“No, they were going the other way. Five of them. They were far too relaxed to be hunting. Whatever they had been sent to get, they got. Going in to their den, most likely.”

“We can assume nothing!” the Father snapped, taking a bit of the starch out of the young warrior’s attitude. “They are the greatest threat to us that exist. They are bred to hunt us, and they have been born with terrible weapons that are a part of themselves. Did you get close enough to tell if they were bloodied?”

“I—I did not get that close,” Littlefeet admitted. “They seemed to be stained, but I only saw their upper parts. They actually were very nice looking, I think, but they all looked exactly the same.”

The Father nodded. “Yes, they tend to be attractive. Why not? And they are of the same source, having neither father nor mother, which is why each group is the same. It gives them great power to be exactly the same. They think the same, react the same, and know what each other would do, so they make little noise. The fact that they were not making any attempt to conceal themselves tells me that they must have been bloodied. You saw no sign of a captive or captives?”

“No, Father.”

“Then they took no prisoners for fresh stock. I do not like to hear that any of them are in this area. They have stayed away in the past. We must be more on guard and double the armed watch and patrols just in case they are hunting for breeding stock and have extended their range. Still, I would like to know who they killed.” The Father checked the sun’s angle. “There are still a few hours until darkness. Take Big Ears and backtrack them. Be careful! They have been known to leave traps. But if you can find the remains, try and get the Family name from its tattoos and whatever else you can divine. We must know if this is a one-time thing or something new.”

Littlefeet grinned, proud to have been given such a task by the Father himself. “At once, Father!” He immediately darted off, running across the encampment to the kraal of the young warriors, grabbing some dry hard meal cakes to nibble on as he did so.

The Karas Family had developed a social system that was practical but not followed by all the Families. The males and females tended to live a bit apart, although they interacted. All of the females generally lived together, to make the food, mix the tattoo inks from various minerals, and bear and tend to the young. They also enforced camp discipline and saw to its sanitation. They had the vast majority of the camp under their exclusive control and dominion, and they alone decided who could enter it.

The young males who were of age and considered adults lived in a separate group off by themselves. They played, trained, competed with one another, and did the work that was theirs to do: to scout, to guard, and to fight, and, when the women permitted, to father children with young women. The third, smallest kraal was occupied by the Elders, both males and females, who made the decisions and assigned tasks as the Father had just done to Littlefeet and his buddy, who probably wasn’t going to be thrilled by the assignment. Big Ears, who was much more aptly named than Littlefeet, was not nearly as enthusiastic about long runs and sleepless days and nights as some of his brothers, and he’d just come in from a long day of scouting.

Littlefeet looked around, spotted his friend, and darted over to him. “Hey! Big Ears! Get something to eat! Father has just told us to backtrack a Hunter party!”

“Today?”

Littlefeet laughed. “One good rain and it’ll be a lot harder to do! It shouldn’t take forever. Back by sundown.”

“I’m just dead tired,” Big Ears complained. He was a larger boy, about the same age as Littlefeet but chunky, a wrestler type to Littlefeet’s long-distance runner. Still, the bulk and weight were all muscle; Big Ears, whose ears stuck out like few others’, was strong as an ox. “I figured I’d just eat and drop till sunrise.”

“Aw, don’t worry about it! We’ll manage okay. Besides,” Littlefeet added, lowering his voice to a whisper, “I spotted a newly ripened orange candybush on my way back. It’s in the line they were taking; we can hit it on the way.”

That was more like it. “An orange one, you say? And you didn’t report it?”

“I never got the chance. Hunters are more important anyways. When we come back and report, I’ll add it in, and by tomorrow they’ll have stripped it. Not before we get it all to ourselves this once, though. C’mon!”

Big Ears sighed, yawned, stretched, and scratched him-self. “Oh, all right. We’re not goin’ against no Hunter pack, though, are we?”

“Naw, they was goin’ in the other direction and kinda casual, too. We don’t want to find out where they are, just where they had been before that.”

Big Ears grabbed his spear. “Fair ’nuff. An orange one, you say…”

The Big Knob was one of the forbidden places, places that were said to be haunted by ghosts of the Old Times, ghosts who were looking for the souls of their descendants to somehow recapture the life they’d lost. Everybody knew that you gave those places a wide berth, and, after even this short a time after the fall of everything, there was always a reason why everybody knew something.

Still, the tracks were very clear; the pack had certainly come from here, and had gone there by almost the same route a bit earlier. There was a third track, too, only one way, heading straight for the Knob, keeping low and slow by the looks of it, to avoid detection. The tall yellow grass was at least two meters high all over the plain, so it was very easy to see where somebody might have gone.