Frederik Pohl - Jem

“But the New Devils are teaching our litters how to destroy Krinpit.”

“The next part of the story is puzzling, but I think it is so. The Shelled Devil says that there are three kinds of New Devils. One kind destroyed the city. Another kind gave them the bad air with which they harm us here. And the kind that teaches our litters is a third kind. They have destroyed Flying Devils and Krinpit, as well as persons of the two other kinds of their own race. But they do not destroy us.”

Dr’Shee thrashed her long, supple body in agitation. “But that is not true!” she cried. “They have taken several litters from their classes to some other place, and only a few have returned. And they have been weak and slow, and speak of their brood-mates dying!”

“My sisters and I have heard this also,” agreed qr’Tshew.

“Tssheee!” The petaled folds of dr’Shee’s nose were rippling furiously. “It feels,” she said at length, “as though the teaching of bringing death is not a bad thing. If we bring death to the Krinpit, then they will not be able to bring more bad air to us. If we help our New Devils to bring death to the others, then they will not be able to aid the Krinpit or the Flying Devils against us.”

“I have had this same thought, dr’Shee.”

“I have a further thought, qr’Tshew. Once we have brought death to these others, perhaps we can then bring death to our own New Devils.”

“And then our litters will be ours again, dr’Shee!”

“And our burrows will be safe and dark. Yes! Do not go away, qr’Tshew. I will summon t’Weechr and he will begin to teach us these lessons!”

EVEN IN JEM’S favorable conditions — air denser, gravity less than Earth — there was a peremptory equation of lift. Danny Dalehouse could carry whatever he liked simply by adding balloons to his cluster. Charlie had no such power. He could carry what he could carry, and there was an end to it. To carry any of Dalehouse’s gifts meant sacrificing ballast and therefore mobility. To carry them all was impossible. When Dalehouse scolded him for giving the crossbow to a flock-mate — at a time when the ha’aye’i seemed everywhere! — Charlie sang placatingly, “But I must keep the speaker-to-air! I cannot have both, cannot have both.”

“And if you are killed by a ha’aye’i, what good will the radio do you?” But Charlie didn’t even seem to understand the question. He and the flock were singing a sort of rhapsody about the speaker-to-air and how it enriched their chorus; and Dalehouse abandoned the effort.

Charlie’s possession of the radio wasn’t all good. It meant that Dalehouse could really keep in contact with the flock from the ground as long as they stayed in line of sight or somewhere near it, and that fact had not escaped Major Santangelo, the new camp commandant. It was getting less easy to escape into the air. At the same time, it was getting less attractive to stay in the camp. Santangelo had established command at once. He had proved it by sending Harriet and Alex Woodring off to try to make contact with a distant tribe of burrowers, hopefully uncontaminated by contact with the Greasies. And the camp was being run along increasingly strict military lines.

Dalehouse broke through the flock’s song. “I must return. Four more flocks of our people are joining us, and I wish to be there when they arrive.”

“We will come with you, we will come with you—”

“No, you won’t,” he contradicted. “Too many ha’aye’i near the camp.” That was the truth, and that, too, was a consequence of the “gifts” he had given them. Since the Oilies had found out that Santangelo’s “scientific instruments” were being used by the balloonists to keep tabs on what was going on in their camp they had taken to shooting down every balloonist that came within a kilometer of them. So balloonists were growing locally scarce, and the predators hungry.

“Fly by the Wet Valleys,” he commanded. “Learn if our people are well there.”

“No need,” sang Charlie. “See the wings of your friend ’Appy coming from there even now!” And back behind the shoreline, there it was, Cappy’s little biplane coming back from visiting the outpost, circling in for a landing.

“Then good-bye,” sang Dalehouse, and expertly vented hydrogen until he came down to the level of the onshore winds that carried him back to the camp.

He was getting really good at ballooning, and he was smiling as he drifted down over the commandant’s pet project, the little mud fort on the shore, and dropped to earth on the first bluff. He gathered up the deflated balloons, slung their loose-netted bulk over his shoulder, and walked happily enough up to the hydrogen shed.

That was the end of happiness. Half the camp was gathered around Kappelyushnikov and Santangelo, farther up the hill. Jim Morrissey and half a dozen others were coming toward him, their faces grim. Dalehouse caught Morrissey’s arm as he passed. “What’s the matter?” he demanded.

Morrissey paused. “Trouble, Danny. Something’s happened to the outcamp. Harriet, Woodring, Dugachenko — they’re missing. Gappy says the camp’s been ripped apart, and they’re gone.”

“Harriet?”

“All of them, damn it! And there’s blood and Krinpit tracks all over the place. Let go, we’ve got to get down to Castle Santangelo — in case they invade by sea, I guess. Anyway, you’d better get up there and see what your orders are.”

Orders! How like an army officer to overreact and start issuing orders in all directions! Dalehouse let them go past and walked belligerently up to the group around Santangelo and the pilot. Someone was saying, ” — I didn’t know there were any Krinpit in the Wet Valleys.”

“If you were in Beverly Hills you wouldn’t know there were any rattlesnakes in California, either, but if you wandered around Hollywood Hills they’d bite your ass off. That’s enough for arguing,” the major said. “Those of you with assigned defense posts, get to them. We’ve got four ships coming in in the next twenty hours. It’d be a good time for anybody to catch us off guard, and we’re not going to be caught. Move it!”

Dalehouse, who had been given no assigned defense post, was not anxious to get one. He moved away briskly with the others as the group broke up, circling around the outskirts to approach the communications shack.

Inside, the comm team on duty was watching a continually shifting display of moving symbols against a green grid of coordinate lines: the four resupply ships, already in orbit around Jem, making their final course corrections before dropping down to the surface. Dalehouse had expected Kappelyushnikov to show up there, and he did, moments after Dalehouse himself.

“Ah, Danny,” he said dismally, “you have good taste for finding nice place to fuck off. Wait one while I see if asshole traffic controller has accidentally got ships in right orbit.” He peered into the screen, grumbled at the crew on duty, then shrugged and returned to Dalehouse. “Is on course,” he reported. “Now question is, is course right? We find out. Poor Gasha!”

“Are you sure she’s dead?”

“Have not seen corpus delicti, no. But Danny, there was very much blood, two liters at least.”

“But you didn’t see the bodies.”

“No, Danny, did not. Saw blood. Saw tents chopped up to fine Venetian lace, clothes all over, food, radio smashed, little scratchy bug-tracks everywhere I looked. No bodies. So I yelled some, listened, poked into bushes. Then came home. So poor Gasha, not to mention poor Alexei and poor Gregor.”

Danny shook his head wonderingly. “The Krinpit are damn noisy beasts. I don’t see how they could catch the camp by surprise, and if they weren’t surprised they should’ve been able to take care of themselves. Santangelo made them carry guns.”