Terry Pratchett - The Long War

“There are other sorts here too,” Yue-Sai said softly. “I spotted them in the deeper forest—”

The conversation was cut short by a sound of thunder.

Yue-Sai and Roberta shrank back into deeper cover. Some of the duckbills kept drinking, but the big adults looked up suspiciously. The crest-roos dipped their great heads and backed into a rough circle.

There was a crash, the splintering of wood, a groan as a young tree was felled, and the forest parted like a flimsy stage set as a tremendous animal burst into the open. Its body must have been fifteen yards long, balanced exquisitely on two striding legs. Its arms were small, comparatively, but longer and more muscular than Roberta’s own legs, and the right arm had some kind of creeper wrapped around it. Its skin was covered with feathers, brilliantly coloured, like the costume of an Aztec priest. The head was a gaping nightmare of teeth and blood, and when it opened its mouth to roar Roberta imagined she could smell raw meat.

It strode forward, huge, purposeful. It seemed more mechanical than animal, a killer robot, an automaton, and yet it breathed and pawed the earth. The herbivores were already fleeing, following the water’s edge, galloping and bellowing.

But the elves did not run, not immediately. They scattered into a loose arc, facing the creature, the adults to the fore with stone blades in their hands, the young behind them, but even the young were snarling defiance. It was like another movie scene, Roberta thought. Stone-tool-wielding man-apes against the dinosaur.

Yue-Sai was staring, as if unwilling to miss a second of the spectacle. “A dinosaur, all right. Or its sixty-five-million-years-later descendant. Tyrannosaur-like, or something else evolved to fit the same niche.”

“Of course China had its own magnificent dinosaur lineages,” Captain Chen reminded them sternly. “There are other comparisons to be used, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir,” Yue-Sai said absently. “It could even be a flightless bird. If it is like a tyrannosaur, the odds are this is a female. They had ranges a few miles across; the males were sparser, one every few tens of miles. But what’s that on its arm?…”

The predator’s roars and the humanoids’ responding snarls and gestures were reaching a climax. Abruptly the predator charged, right into the middle of the elf group.

The young with their parents scattered. The adult elves started flickering in and out of existence, faster than the predator could catch them, though she ducked her head, snapped her huge teeth, and swept empty space with her arms and tail. One elf materialized in mid-jump right beside the predator’s head, and took a swipe at her right eye with his blade before stepping away again, without ever touching the ground. The precision was remarkable, and the predator’s eye was saved only by a chance duck of the head.

Bloodied, enraged, the predator stood at the centre of the band of humanoids, unable to land a killing blow on any of them. She roared again, sweeping her huge tail, snapping her teeth.

But the humanoids had had enough. They stepped away now, mothers carrying their children, as far as Roberta could see leaving nobody behind.

“You have to hand it to those little guys,” Jacques said in their ears. “They stood up to their Grendel.”

Yue-Sai shrugged. “Eventually the beast will learn not to tangle with humanoids, especially steppers. And anyhow they were never her main target. Look.”

Now the predator was heading down the beach after the big crest-roos. They had a head start; the roos, alarmed, tons of flesh and bone on the move, were like a retreating tank division. But one mother hung back to shepherd her calf.

“They’ve got too much of a start,” Jacques said.

“Are you sure?” Captain Chen murmured. “Look at what she is doing with her arm.”

Roberta could see that the predator was using one agile hand to unwrap the vine from her arm. The vine was maybe six feet long, and was weighted at either end by something like a coconut. And now, even as she ran, her legs pounding the beach and her spine and tail almost horizontal, the predator whirled the vine and released it. It flew across the intervening space and wrapped itself around the big back legs of the lagging mother crest-roo. The vine snapped immediately, but it was enough for the mother to be brought crashing to the ground. Her calf slowed beside her, lowing mournfully, clearly afraid.

And it had a right to be, for the predator was on the mother immediately. It ran by and ducked its head to rip a huge chunk out of the crest-roo’s rear right leg, then almost casually swiped its head against one magnificent flaring ear, crushing the cartilage so the crest folded like a fallen kite. The mother bellowed in pain.

But she was able to stand, though blood dripped from the gaping wound. She even nudged her infant to move on, as they shambled up the beach after the rest of the herd, which had already cut into the forest.

The predator stood and watched them go, by the water’s edge, breathing hard. The crest-roo’s blood stained her mouth. Then she ducked to the water, took a mighty drink, shook her head, and trotted after the mother and calf. It was a pursuit that could have only one outcome.

“That predator used a bolas,” said Roberta.

Yue-Sai said, “Yes… It looked as though it could have been a natural object. A vine-like growth with fruit. But there was nothing ‘natural’ in the way she used it.” Yue-Sai looked delighted, in her quiet way, to have made this staggering discovery. “I told you, Roberta. We’re far away from home now. Have no preconceptions.”

“I’ll second that,” Captain Chen said. “And I should tell you that our signal-processing experts here inform me that there was data content in the patterns that flared across the crests of those roo-like beasts. They were talking , through the visual means of their crests! Sentience! Our onboard scholars must make all this clear when they joint-author their paper: ‘A mammal-reptile assemblage of tool-making intelligences beyond Earth East two million’. How marvellous! What a great discovery for China!”

They began to walk back to the pick-up point.

Chen, evidently enthused, went on, “We Chinese, you know, Roberta, have a utopian legend of our own. There is a story that dates back to the fifth century after your Christ, of how a fisherman found his way through a narrow cave to the Land of Peach Blossom, where descendants of soldiers lost from the age of the Qin dynasty lived in a land sheltered by mountains, in peace with each other, in peace with nature. But when the fisherman tried to reach it a second time, he could not find the way. So it is with all utopias, whose legends proliferate around the world. Even in North America, where the natives’ dream of the Happy Hunting Ground was displaced by the European settlers’ fables of the Big Rock Candy Mountain. Do you think if we travel far enough we will find such a land, Roberta? Are such legends a relic of some early perception of the Long Earth itself?”

“There is no sensible content in this discussion,” Roberta murmured in reply. “And as to the papers you’re planning—none of this matters.”

Yue-Sai turned to her.

“How’s that?” Jacques asked.

Roberta gestured at the landscape around her. “The coming hypercane will destroy all this. I’ve been studying the climatic theory of these worlds, with their high sea levels. They are prone to tremendous hurricanes, extracting heat from the shallow oceans. Storms that can span continents, with thousand-miles-per-hour winds; water vapour is thrown up into the stratosphere, and the ozone layer is wrecked… I’ve also been studying the records of the weather balloons you launched from the twains. There’s such a storm forming right now. Ask your meteorologists. It’s unmistakable. It will take a few more weeks to reach full strength, but when it does this complicated little community will be right in its path. It’s been an interesting experiment, a stepwise mixing of different species. But it will soon be terminated.”