Lords of the Seventh Swarm

Chapter 32

After all his dealings with the dronon, Gallen was surprised that the dronon hadn’t begun searching the tangle before he left his ship.

He’d turned off the engines when he first landed, ceased all radio transmissions, and manually dismantled the ship’s transponder. Gallen feared the dronon would commandeer the starport facilities at Felph’s palace and use the computers there to demand that each ship send its code. The ship’s Al couldn’t ignore such a request; it violated the ship’s programming, and once a ship sent its code, it automatically broadcast its exact latitude, longitude, and altitude.

After Gallen had verified that his ship wasn’t emitting any gravity, radio, or heat waves he felt somewhat secure. The dronon wouldn’t be able to find him using the passive sensors that detected such emissions.

This meant that they would have to begin using active sensors-directing energy and particle streams in an effort to search the planet for large metallic objects. It would take time to scour the surface of an entire planet, but the dronon had plenty of ships capable of helping in the search. It wouldn’t take much time.

Gallen’s greatest hope was that the dronon’s sensors wouldn’t penetrate here, so far beneath the tangle.

Yet he still felt afraid. The dronon had a tool he couldn’t defeat so easily. The Seekers. The dronon could still track by scent. But he hadn’t left any scent within two thousand kilometers, and here in the tangle, air currents moved sluggishly. Their scent might not reach the surface for days maybe weeks.

But if by chance the dronon found that scent, they would be able to follow it easily.

While the others rested, Gallen packed enough food for five days, wondered if it was too much. He hoped to find Teeawah sooner, but in all honesty, it could take months. He had no idea how to reach his destination except through an interlaced network of caves that might be impassable. Quite possibly, he might find that he was in a section of the tangle that didn’t connect to the caves.

And if he didn’t find the city soon, he’d die. He was a lone Lord Protector, leading his friends into an enemy fortress. Part of him wanted to deny that anything bad would happen, but he’d seen some of the prowess of the sfuz. They were so fast. He wouldn’t be able to protect his friends in a pitched battle. Gallen wouldn’t even be able to protect himself against so many enemies.

In all probability he was leading them all to their deaths.

Gallen clenched his fists and cursed his fate. If only he hadn’t beaten the Lords of the Sixth Swarm. Only an odd combination of determination, skill, and luck had put him here. Yet if he’d walked away, if he’d simply refused to fight that first battle so many months ago … the dronon would still rule the worlds of man in tyranny.

No, Gallen could not truthfully regret his fate. The dronon war had cost millions of lives each day. Gallen had won a temporary peace for mankind. A few months of reprieve, a few months of joy on ten thousand worlds. Some fifty quadrillion people lived on the Unified Worlds. Gallen had won something for them, and even if he and his friends died in these lightless depths, their lives would not have been wasted.

But in spite of the facade he tried to erect for his friends, Gallen didn’t believe that he would survive this trip. The tangle seemed too thick, too dangerous. His destination too uncertain. The dronon too likely to attack.

Even if he did find the Waters of Strength, who knew if they would have any effect on him?

Gallen had too many foes to combat, too little to hope for.

He felt overwhelmed. I am but one man, Gallen thought. Too much depended on him. Not just Maggie and Orick and the few friends around him-it was Arachne and Athena and the gray people that Felph held in such low esteem. And beyond that was the wider universe. Everynne fretting somewhere back on her Omni-mind, his Mother living in her quaint home on Tihrgias, Ceravanne trying desperately to find her own peace under the tutelage of the peaceful treelike Bock.

Gallen wanted to collapse, to turn aside and run. He’d never faced a task so daunting. The prospect of failure terrified him. If I die, he thought, Lord Felph could resurrect me. But Maggie, Orick, and Tallea would be dead. He couldn’t face that. To live on without them would be damnable. He’d never forgive himself.

So he had to beat the dronon. He had to go on fighting, drag himself forward no matter what the consequence.

Regardless of the outcome, he had to go on, keep fighting, because … because he loved them all, loved them so profoundly that for a moment he stood in awe of the simple power of his emotions, just considering, remembering the faces of friends that were beginning to be lost in the haze of time.

He closed his eyes, tried to recall the woods outside his home on Tihrglas, the call of the kiss-me-quicks hopping in the bushes, the towering green pines, the way the maples on the hillside north of town reflected the reds of the sunset in the autumn till they shone like coals.

Gallen’s mantle recognized his desire, sent him recorded images of home-sights, sounds, smells-so that suddenly Gallen found himself standing inside the common room at Mahoney’s Inn, the first night he’d met Everynne.

There were John Mahoney and Father Heany smoking by the fireplace, just after teasing Gallen about how he fancied young Maggie Flynn. And over in the comer sat Sean Mullen, a terribly thin man who’d once given Gallen’s mother a cow. Gallen hadn’t thought about him in months. Beside him sat Ian O’Bannon, an old fisherman who’d taught Maggie to dance-another friend Gallen had forgotten. The fellow had once told Maggie that she should stay away from Gallen, saying, “You’ll have naught but misery from that one-always out playing the hero, trying to impress folks.” Gallen could smell the beer in the air, the sweet tobacco smoke, the scent of wool and sweat. He could feel the heat of the fire warming his hands.

Yet this memory belonged to Veriasse, not to Gallen, so that he saw himself and Maggie as they had been that night, two shy teenagers sitting off in a dark corner, trying to hide their affection for one another from everyone in the room.

Gallen laughed at the image. Both he and Maggie had looked so skinny, so young, so innocent-just six months before.

Is that how I was? Gallen wondered to himself. A child. A barbarian. A wild animal. Despite all the dark times since, despite his loss of innocence, Gallen looked at the young man he’d been a few short months before, and decided he would not trade places.

Not even if he died today because of it. He thought about the warning Ian O’Bannon had given Maggie. He’d believed Gallen wanted to impress folks. He’d never understood, never understood what Gallen dared tell no one that he did what he did because he loved people, loved them so deeply that something inside him just had to give and give until he had nothing left to give.

Even his dear friend Orick didn’t understand it. Orick thought that Gallen fought because of some innate need to struggle. But Gallen realized at this moment that he fought, even when he’d run out of strength and out of hope, because that was all he could do. Someone had to fight, and he would fight on, yet wish desperately for the fighting to come to an end.

Gallen sighed, withdrew from his reverie, went back to work. Felph had loaded an odd assortment of weapons for the earlier expedition. Felph’s arsenal held weapons one normally only found in military hands-class II small arms. Most of it was offensive weaponry; Felph had little defensive armor. That wasn’t odd. Getting military body armor was nearly impossible.

Gallen replenished his supply of photon grenades. An explosive foam would work as land mines. An intelligent pistol with smart missiles would help him quietly neutralize individual sfuz. He did find one automated defense system-a class IV defensive weapon, that might save their lives with its powerful shields, but Gallen felt compelled to leave it behind. The power unit on it was low, and the thing weighed so much that even having Orick haul it around could prove impossible.

Once he’d sorted the weapons, he stared at the pile-slight grenades, concussion grenades, heat grenades; small arms; assault pistols; explosive foams; Black Fog. Enough weaponry to kill five thousand men. It wasn’t enough.

Not against creatures like the sfuz, who Athena believed would rise from the dead. Who knew what powers the sfuz might have? The thought made him feel jittery.

More disconcerting, Gallen had an odd feeling of discomfort, the feeling he was being watched. It seemed unreasonable to imagine he was being watched in his own ship. Yet the feeling had grown as he brought the ship into the tangle-an enigmatic sensation, an itching at the base of the brain.

If he didn’t know better, he’d have sworn the sfuz were watching him not from without, but from within. He imagined another consciousness wandering through his mind, turning over his thoughts and fears and ambitions, trying to discover what lay beneath. Sometimes he’d find his eyes wandering about the ship, and it seemed almost as if another entity commanded them, was searching through Gallen’s eyes.

It seemed an odd sensation, an almost paranoid fear. But the Qualeewooh’s spirit mask had shown him he was dealing with powers he couldn’t comprehend.

And if the sfuz were drinking from the Waters of Strength, did the sfuz’s ancestors speak to them? Could they be warning their descendants of Gallen’s plans? Did the sfuz wear their own spirit masks, deep in their chambers, dreaming disturbing visions of Gallen’s descent?

And if they did, how could Gallen fight such creatures? He looked through his arsenal again and again, the creepy sensation hounding him.

He wondered. If I drink from the Waters of Strength, what becomes of me? The Qualeewoohs say they defeated space and time, self and nature. What does that mean? Will I speak to my ancestors, whispering my child’s name as I walk between the stars?

At twelve hundred hours, Gallen went to Maggie’s room, kissed her awake, roused the others. He felt he should give them some warning before they departed, but there was little to say.

He, Zeus, Orick, and Tallea bore the heaviest packs, while Gallen gave Maggie an intelligent pistol and a glow globe. Let her be the lightbearer here in the darkness.

Gallen said, “I want to avoid the sfuz at all costs. We can’t let them know we’re here. So we’ll travel in silence. No talking until we strike camp, and I can put up some buffers. If we’re discovered by even one sfuz, kill it before it can warn others. Use an intelligent pistol. They’re quiet and accurate.

“If we do find ourselves in a pitched battle, we’ll need to win swiftly, then retreat from the sfuz, circle into their lair.

“Right now, the sfuz should be asleep. We’re out over a valley, about four hundred meters above it. I suspect there’s water beneath us, so the sfuz won’t come out here.

“The cliffs are to the north of us, about five kilometers. I don’t know how far we’ll have to go to find Teeawah itself, or how well guarded it might be.”

Zeus’s face was pale, and Maggie stood holding her belly, her expression thoughtful.

“Now, here is the hard part,” Gallen said. “When we near the city, we should find sfuz tracks. That’s how we’ll know we’re close. We should be able to follow some kind of trail. But first, we have to wait for the sfuz to leave for the night. I … don’t know how we can manage that. We need to wait for them to leave, and at the same time, we can’t let them see us or catch our scent. We’ll have to go in while they’re on the hunt.”

Gallen,” Maggie said as if he’d forgotten something, “they won’t all leave.”

“No,” Gallen said, “their young will be in the city, I guess. Maybe the old and the weak.” He didn’t want to mention the guards he suspected might be there.

Maggie frowned in shame. “We’ll be slaughtering families.”

“We have no choice!” Gallen told Maggie. He knew what she was feeling. She didn’t want to slaughter the sfuz.

They’d both been infected by the Inhuman; they both knew how passionate, how beautiful a life could be, even if it was not a human life.

Despite Felph’s protests to the contrary, Gallen recognized that the sfuz were smarter than mere animals: they used tools. They created fortresses. They domesticated other animals. They were self-aware, and valued their own lives as much as Gallen valued his own.

What right do I have to kill them? Gallen asked himself. What right do any of us have? The Waters of Strength, if they exist, are not mine, any more than they belong to the sfuz.

The dronon, Gallen saw, recognized but two classes of human-those that opposed them, and those who could be used as tools. Am I to the sfuz what the dronon are to man?

He wondered if he should tell the others about the itching that filled his head, warn them. He didn’t want to frighten them. Sfuz that revived after death were bad enough. He didn’t want to tell of creatures invading his mind.

“Maybe we can sneak into Teeawah,” Gallen said at last. “We’ll find a way. Let’s go.” He hit the switch to open the ship’s doors. The others filed into darkness by the light thrown from the interior of the ship. Gallen closed the doors. Darkness folded around them.

Maggie held the glow globes up, squeezed so that a spark breathed into flame in her hand.

Gallen led. The sensors in his mantle could read magnetic north, tell his elevation, and store an image of the sonar maps of this region. Gallen knew exactly where he was headed.

He took off through the thick humus.

The ground beneath his feet had built up from rotted limbs and detritus. Only the ancient boles of fallen trees held the soil, so all around were sinkholes. But the trees, hundreds of meters long, created paths of a sort, roads they could travel. So long as they kept finding such paths that led toward their destination, they would be fine.

It was a strange journey. Above them were false roofs at various levels where trees had collapsed, so that always they were in odd chambers where a roof might drop low or block the path altogether, while in other places a roof would rise a hundred meters in the air, and Gallen would find himself in a huge cavern.

Bits of fallen leaves and trees had filled nooks all around them. Gallen led the way through strange and twisted tunnels, creeping along beneath huge fallen beams.

Sometimes, back home, Gallen had traveled up to the headwaters of the Morgan River. In the winter, floods would wash trees and bracken downstream, and these would gather at the river bends, sticks and dirt forming huge piles. In summer, his father’s hounds would chase mice or squirrels through those piles of drift for hours. Now, Gallen was discovering how the mice must have felt, groping through such a mess.

Once, Gallen passed a huge circle just on the right side of the path, a place where the ground seemed to have been dug away. The circle was too round, too perfectly symmetrical to have formed naturally. It looked like a mine shaft. Maggie held up her light. The hole dropped far into the darkness. Gallen looked up. It continued above as far as the eye could see.

Not a mine shaft, he decided. A tunnel. Something a mistwife could climb up through.

Suddenly Gallen feared to breathe, to move. He wondered if the vibrations caused by their walking would call a mistwife.

Orick stepped to the edge of the pit and looked down. Gallen dared not speak, dared not warn him. The bear nosed around, then turned, knocking a clod of dirt into the pit.

From far down below, Gallen heard the echo of a splash, followed by a wondrous thrashing sound, waves beating against one another as something enormous moved in the water.

Orick opened his mouth wide in terror, backed from the pit as if bitten. Gallen gave a curt gesture, urging everyone to flee. He didn’t know if the light would attract the mistwife, what the beast might be capable of.

Maggie and Tallea rushed past Gallen.

A horrible groaning escaped the pit, a sound like a tree makes in the deep forest as it collapses under the weight of snow. Then Gallen heard rushing water.

The ground beneath his feet trembled, and Orick scrambled past. A hissing erupted from the pit. Something was rising, rushing through the hole.

Gallen reached for his weapons belt, unsure what to grab. None of his weapons would defend him against something this big.

An enormous form gushed up through the hole, water tumbling from it, propelled by no means Gallen could distinguish. Enormous worms, pinkish gray in color, dozens of meters long, shot up above him, writhing to find purchase in the next layer of the tangle. Suddenly the worms each broadened, and Gallen saw fluke-shaped webbing holding them all together at the base, followed at last by a broad head that sported an enormous white eye.

When the mistwife’s eye passed Gallen’s level, the creature jerked to a halt. It gazed at the glow globe Maggie held.

Gallen ran. He couldn’t force the others to retreat without light, yet the mistwife had seen them. He needed a barrier of some kind between them and the creature. He pulled out a small canister of Black Fog-the only one he had-and tossed it behind. It hissed and spurted darkness, spinning under the pressure of escaping gas.

Darkness wouldn’t stop the creature. The ground rumbled as a tentacle snaked toward Gallen.

Gallen retreated as the tentacle burst through the rising Black Fog. Gallen ripped a heat grenade from his hip pouch and tossed it into the humus, knowing it would be far too small to kill the mistwife, hoping it might sting the beast.

Gallen spun, ran after the others as fast as he could. The grenade exploded into light and thunder, its searing blast filling the cave with smoke. For a moment the ground quit rumbling. Gallen had gone a hundred meters or more before he heard a terrible shriek that caused the earth to tremble. It was a high, thin sound, a squeal of consummate power and wrath.

Then the mistwife advanced. The ground beneath Gallen shook, as if the mistwife were trying to tear the world apart. Behind Gallen, Black Fog filled the tunnel so much that he could not make out the flames thrown by the heat grenade.

The sudden movement of the creature made a wall of Black Fog billow toward him. Gallen sprinted to keep ahead of it.

Maggie and the others had been running on a trail made by a fallen tree. Now they’d reached the end of this particular tree. The passage ahead was blocked. But above them was an opening to another passage.

Tallea scampered up the sheer, muddy cliff, but Orick couldn’t follow. He clawed at the mud, but it wouldn’t hold his weight. Maggie stood at the bottom of the cliff, helpless to advance farther, Zeus at her side.

Behind Gallen, a second tentacle whipped into the light. It bore no scars or burn marks from the grenade.

Gallen spun and hurled a second heat grenade as far back as he could. It blazed like the sun; the smell of smoke filled the narrow chamber, overwhelming.

Again the mistwife shrieked; the ground shook furiously. The mistwife was grappling with the bole of the tree that they stood on, twisting it.

Gallen grabbed Maggie to keep her from falling. The tentacle withdrew from them, but the smoke that filled the passage was choking them all.

Suddenly, the end of the log Gallen stood on pulled away; a pit opened beneath them, perhaps six meters down, and Zeus tumbled in. It led to a small tunnel. Gallen and Maggie couldn’t go up to Tallea. They could only go down to Zeus.

“Come down with us!” Gallen shouted to the she-bear: he grabbed Maggie, helped her slide down into the tunnel.

In moments the bears scampered behind him, and Gallen ran. He didn’t want to wait and see if the mistwife would try for them again.

Here a path led down an ancient highway of worm vine. The road was broad and smooth, the roof above them higher than before.

Behind, Gallen could hear the mistwife thrashing. The crash of giant trees being ripped apart, the creature’s horrible shrieking cries.

Gallen wondered if the mistwife’s cries of pain would attract sfuz.

No, he decided. If I were a sfuz, I wouldn’t go to investigate something that caused a mistwife to shriek.

Yet as they passed one wide chamber, Gallen could clearly hear the mistwife above him, shrieking in rage. And he realized that the mistwife was eeling ahead of them, going north and climbing upward.

Gallen got a cold feeling in his stomach. “I think the mistwife is heading toward the cliffs,” he whispered.

Zeus said, “She’s angry. Maybe she thinks the sfuz are to blame.”

Of course-of course, Gallen realized. She is the huntress here, and the sfuz are her prey. She knows where to find them.

He’d imagined hunting for days or weeks to find Teeawah, but now he saw that he would only have to follow the mistwife through her hunting passage. It would lead to the sfuz.

“We have to go up higher, and go north,” Gallen whispered, gazing ahead. Nearby, a jumble of trees had collapsed into a pile, and the cave forked.

One route appeared to head in the direction he desired. “That way!”