Frederik Pohl - Jem

Kappelyushnikov broodingly watched him go. “I too have bad feeling,” he said. “About dear friend and fellow pilot Boyne, too. Questions I would like to ask, but this is not good time.”

“I’d like to know more about what they’re using the Creepies for,” Dalehouse agreed. “And frankly, that bit about our being responsible for the Peeps’ accident is beginning to get under my skin. Do you think there’s any possibility it could be true?”

Gappy regarded him thoughtfully. “You are very nice person, Danny,” he said sadly. “Perhaps you do not wonder enough. Like, do you wonder why Greasies have landing strip when gillicopter lands anywhere?”

“That hadn’t occurred to me,” Dalehouse admitted.

“Occurred to me,” said the Russian. “Just like occurred to Boyne to wonder why strange little hatch dear Gasha rode on is in our plane. You and Gasha look at it, you say, ‘Oh, what a nuisance. Cannot understand purpose.’ But when pilot looks at it, Boyne or me, we say at once, ‘Oh, how strange that aircraft designed for peaceful exploration has built-in bomb bay.’ ”

Thirty meters below the airstrip, Mother dr’Shee woke with the smell of cyanide in her splayed nose, too faint to be dangerous, too strong to ignore. The Shelled Devils were at it again.

She yipped peremptorily for the brood-member on duty. It turned out to be t’Weechr, the runt of the litter and the one the others saddled with the least attractive jobs — including, she realized justly, attending to the wants of the Mother when she first woke up. There were only seven in this present brood of hers, and all of them male, and none of them the size or the strength or the wit of their father. It was a loose and unsettling time, and it spoiled her temper.

“Food,” she ordered harshly. “And drink. And someone to groom me while I am waiting.”

T’Weechr said humbly, “There is no one but me, Brood Mother. I will be quick with the food and groom you while you eat.”

“And why is there no one?”

“The New Devils are teaching, Brood Mother. All are commanded to be present.”

“Tssheee.” If dr’Shee had been a human, the sound would have been a grunt, written “Humph” for convenience’s sake. But she was not actually displeased, merely fretful; and when t’Weechr returned it was not only with tubers and a shell of water, but there were even some fresh leaves and fruits from Above.

“Taken or given?” she demanded, sniffing them suspiciously.

“These were gifts of the New Devils, Brood Mother,” the youth apologized.

“Tssheee.” They were, however, tasty, and she was hungry. She defecated neatly into the shell when she was finished, and t’Weechr folded it closed.

“Is there any other service, Brood Mother?” he asked, licking a final strand of her fur into neatness.

“No. Be gone.” He touched noses and wriggled away to deliver the package to the rotting rooms. The next brood would mix it with the planting mud and plaster it into the ceilings of the farm tunnels when they prepared the next crops. By then it would be well aged, and of great value in growing the tubers.

Runt or not, t’Weechr was a good child. She would miss him when the litter matured and scattered. And that time was not far off. At every awakening now, her dugs had been smaller and harder. The breeding males knew it, and every time she left her nest they wriggled close to touch her, nose to anus, testing to see how near she was to courtship. Only yesterday the male with the scarred leg had said, half-jesting, “What would you like next time, dr’Shee? Krinpit shell? A live Flying Devil? The head of a New Devil?”

“Your own head,” she had said, half-irritated, half-flirtatious. He had snorted laughter through the spreading folds of his nose and crept away, but he would be back. It was not an unpleasing thought. Dr’Shee’s brood-sister had mated with that one, two litters ago. A fine brood, three females! And the sister had said he was indefatigable at rut. Well. A proper courtship was a proper courtship, but she could not help hoping that he might turn out to be the male with the finest gift to lay before her.

Faint and distant vibrations in the earth set her whiskers to quivering. That was the New Devils, too. Time was when such tremors had meant only a particularly violent thunderstorm Above, or perhaps the crash of a falling many-tree. Now the New Devils scraped and shoved hillocks and boulders around at will, and the earth was no longer easy to her senses. As she moved around her chamber, sniffing and touching to make sure everything was in its place, it was touch and smell and taste that principally guided her. Sometimes her males had plastered bits of fungus and vegetation into the walls along with the secretions that made their tunnels hard and waterproof, and from the plant decay there was some faint glow. Dr’Shee appreciated the light but did not need it. For her people, eyes were almost a handicap, especially on their infrequent dashes to the Surface, when only the densest of clouds and worst of storms dimmed Kung’s radiance enough for them to bear.

“Greeting, dr’Shee.”

She sniffed in startlement and then recognized the female at the entrance to her chamber. “How are you, qr’Tshew? Come in, come in.”

The other female entered, and dr’Shee said at once, “I will send for food.”

“I have eaten,” said qr’Tshew politely. “What lovely courtship gifts.” She fondled dr’Shee’s collection. Six breedings, six fine gifts: a hard thing stolen from the New Devils that no one understood; the leg of a crabrat — that had been her first gift, and the least worthy, but in some ways the most satisfying of her courtship gifts; even the claws of a balloonist. Every one had been stolen from the Surface itself, at great risk, and delivered to her at a cost. Few males survived more than two or three mad, half-blind dashes to the Surface to steal courtship gifts. The enemies were everywhere.

Manners satisfied, qr’Tshew came to the point. “The father of my last brood has died of a bad breathing,” she said. “Also three young of other mothers.”

“What a pity,” said dr’Shee. She was not referring to the male, of course; once a male had achieved breeding he was done, for that female. But to have young die of the cyanide gas!

“I fear for our way of life,” said qr’Tshew primly. “Since the New Devils came, our litters have not been the same.”

“I have had the same thought,” dr’Shee admitted. “I have spoken of it to my sisters.”

“And I to mine. I and my sisters have thought something we wish to share. Our young are being taught things by the New Devils. Dr’Shee, shouldn’t we mothers learn what the litters are learning?”

“But they are learning ways of bringing death! You and I are mothers, qr’Tshew!” Dr’Shee was shocked.

“The Krinpit bring death to us, do they not? The broods in the upper galleries have blocked off the tunnels where the bad air came from, but is it not certain that the Shelled Devils will break through again and more bad air will come?”

“I cannot bring death, except of course for food.”

“Then let us eat them, shells and all,” said qr’Tshew grimly. “Touch closely, dr’Shee. There is a story—” She hesitated. “I do not know how true it is. It came from a Krinpit and might as well have come from a Flying Devil.” That was an old saying to indicate dubiousness, but in this case, dr’Shee realized, it was actually true. “This Shelled Devil taunted one of my sister’s brood by saying that New Devils had destroyed an entire city of our race. He said the New Devils thought of us as vermin and would not rest until we were all gone. That is why they have given the Krinpit the bad air.”