Good for Terry. Cadmann looked soberly around the room. How many of these people were going to be alive in a week? It was up to them, it was up to him.
Jessica looked so terribly fragile. For an instant he recognized the very real possibility that nothing they did would be enough. That their defenses would crumble before an onslaught of grendels.
"As long as they don't chase us off the planet." Zack came back to the podium. "Cadmann, I expect you'll want to prepare for your staff meeting.
Look, people, I know it's a shock—"
"Shock!" Jerry exploded in laughter. "Zack, how many shocks do we get?"
"Fortunately, this was the last," Zack assured them.
"Heard about Zacky's Comet?" Harry Siep called. "Boils the oceans every four hundred years. Oops, three ninety..."
Cadmann grinned. "Yeah."
"That's better," Zack said. "We'll make it. Look, we all know this won't be cut and dried. So what? Before we left Earth we didn't know what we'd face. Now we know the worst, and it's not as bad as some of us thought it would be! They are just animals."
Carolyn giggled hysterically. Everyone could remember: Carolyn and four others standing outside the corrugated-metal building, four generic warriors firing into a single demon.
"We just have to trust each other. We're each proficient in at least two vital skills. Some of us can handle three or four. I expect you to keep a running assessment of your emotional and physical reserves. Pitch in and help anyone beginning to fade. When you're fading yourself, first find, a replacement, then go somewhere and have hysterics."
"But get permission from Cadmann first," Carlos said. "Hysteria without permission is strictly forbidden."
"Enough, then," Zack said. "Staff meeting in half an hour. The rest of you go pack."
Chapter 28
MARABUNTA
There's a price for too much arrogance, a price for too much greed, And in complacent ignorance we've sown the whirlwind seed!
DON SIMPSON, "Serpents Reach" (song)
Changes came with disorienting speed. Everything about the swimmer's new world was stimulation and strangeness.
There was a heat within its body. Its mouth ached. Its balance had changed, become awkward. Swimming was clumsier now.
There was nothing to eat. The green strands it had eaten all its life no longer smelled like food. In all of the swimmer's life it had thought of eating nothing else. The question had never even arisen. Now, confusingly, the flavor had gone flat.
The water itself had gone flat. Something was missing. Some feeling—powerful, dominant, a discomfort growing to panic and pain—was driving it out of the water.
It found itself trying to swim across mud.
The mud flat swarmed with its siblings.
It writhed in place. New muscles flexed and compressed, released, and fire flowed into its new lungs. The panic receded.
The fins which had grown clumsy now revealed new purpose. With great effort, what had been a swimmer thrust against the ground and rose up on unsteady legs, balancing. Its sides heaved, pulling air in and out. It looked at the world above the water.
This place was totally foreign to a swimmer's world of suspension, of placidity and constant pressure. Smells were different, weaker, stranger. Its tear ducts ran with oily fluid, keeping its eyes moist. It found the squeeze that would change its vision, and infinity jumped into its sight.
It felt the pressure of its own weight for the first time in its life.
How could it feel weaker and more powerful at the same time?
Something even stranger happened. It turned, humping its body sideways in sudden alarm. One of its siblings was coming, dull black eyes fixed hungrily. It smelled wrong... smelled right. There was no image, no feeling to match this smell, but something within the swimmer began to flare. It felt suddenly weightless, no longer clumsy...
Its sibling lunged forward.
All thought was overwhelmed by its instinctive response. The swimmer flopped to the side, and the strike of its sibling caught only air. The swimmer's head whipped around and it sank new teeth into its attacker's flank.
Never before had it fought one of its own. The only memory of survival stress was the struggle to evade the Big One, the One who ate swimmers. Many times the Big One had come, and the swimmer had moved swiftly. More swiftly than many of its siblings, because this swimmer had survived.
Once, the Big One had hung quiescent in the water, exuding a different smell. The swimmer had drawn closer, closer, unable to retreat. So close that the Big One could have caught it easily if it wished.
There followed a moment of such intensity that the swimmer could not clearly remember what had happened.
This moment held similar intensity: fear and rage and the taste flaring in its mouth and brain.
The sibling tried to retreat now, but the swimmer was suddenly ravenous. It had tasted something more delicious than all of the green muck in the world. It struck again and again. Around it, other siblings were joining in. They ripped and tore. The smell of blood filled its senses. The death agonies of its hapless sibling quieted, until at last there was nothing but the feast...
Tau Ceti wavered in the mist, stared out at Cadmann like a bloodshot eye. Vanished behind a strand of horsemane trees. Back, then gone again as the Skeeter skimmed the stream.
The swamp below him swarmed with grendels. He couldn't see individuals yet, but he saw darting streaks everywhere. Trees and brush and shrubbery shook, churned and chewed by the horde.
Carlos touched his shoulder. "Amigo. Como esta?"
"Bien. Y usted?"
"Jitters. Cramps." Carlos gripped at his stomach. "The stress is not sweet. But I think I will make fewer mistakes."
"That's the picture. And from here on out, we can't afford any mistakes at all." Cadmann brought the Skeeter down closer to the river. Now he could make out individual grendels. They crowded the water like catfish in the breeding pond, writhing and biting at each other. Two chased a third up a horsemane tree. The leader was too slow, too clumsy. It lost its grip and fell; the others snapped at it as it passed, and the three fell in a writhing cluster.
"Carlos, you're more the mathematician than I am. What is the minimum survival population for our colony?"
"We worked that out. I read a paper on it once. Minimum genetic diversity, minimum skill spread. We took the minimum in adults, with three times that many in fetuses. But if one has faith in the Good Book, one man and one woman could repopulate a planet."
"Times like this, faith isn't a terrible idea." Cadmann grinned bleakly. He directed the Skeeter's camera to the knot of writhing grendels beneath them.
"Feeding frenzy. They trigger on their own. Let's see what Jerry's idea does." Carlos clipped the wire fastened just inside the door. One of the weighted sacks hanging from the side of the Skeeter dropped. Calf blood spilled into the water.
The grendels went crazy. They bit at nothing, drunken with blood lust.
The water churned black.
"Damn, they're stupid."
"Yeah, but they're infants. The ones who survive will be smarter—and we don't have an unlimited supply of calf blood. The reflex is there, though. That's encouraging. We have a pretty creative group. Someone will come up with something even better."
They died by the hundreds. Chewed corpses floated belly up, choking the surface. Others moved in to feed.
"They are no longer fighting," Carlos said.
"No. Enough to eat? Something. Still, we got a lot of them." Cadmann's smile was grim. "Come on. We have work to do."
As they pulled up over the Colony, Minerva Two rose from the dam on a column of foam and mist. Cadmann hovered there, as thousands of gallons of water cascaded back into the lake with a thunderous roar. Waves crashed out in concentric rings, pounding at the dock.