Priam's Lens

EIGHTEEN Met near Sparta

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” Kat Socolov said as they walked along under another hot sun.

“Sometimes a dangerous practice,” N’Gana responded.

They’d all pretty well cast off everything except a vine belt that had been twisted and looped and held their batons and other weapons and tools, and Father Chicanis had made a leaf and vine backpack for his cherished communion set. Oddly, the nudity didn’t seem to bother any of them, not even the priest, or particularly turn anyone on, either.

“If this mixture melts away our precious artificial substances,” asked Kat, “then it’s gonna melt away those password cubes as well, isn’t it?”

“I told you, they will be sufficiently below ground to have escaped this. We’ve seen areas under the old road-works here where things are remarkably well preserved if they’re kept out of that rain and the elements,” the colonel replied.

“Oh, sure—they might well be there, if nobody’s taken them, if they’re still where the incomplete records said they were, and so on. That’s not the point. The thing is, so we get there, we get down, we illuminate everything somehow, and Hamille, here, gets through the holes in the foundation and brings them back to us. Then what? The moment we bring them up here to the surface, they’re gonna be rained on. If we retrace our path, it’s another ten days to two weeks, even if we figure out how to get back to the island. By that time they’ll be mush and you know it. We’re stuck.”

N’Gana wasn’t at all bothered. “There is a contingency plan for everything,” he told her. “I have already determined a method to get around that.”

“Yeah? What?” Harker put in, curious himself.

“First things first. If we don’t have it, the rest is moot.” Kat Socolov whispered to Harker, “I bet he didn’t even think of it until now.”

But Harker had more respect for the colonel than that. He just wondered if the contingency plan, whatever it was, did not involve sacrificial deaths. He couldn’t get out of his mind the image of that freebooter down here, probably naked, certainly at least as defenseless as they were, possibly stalked by something or someone running from the Titans themselves, knowing that his information was valuable but that he himself could not leave.

The mission, the colonel had said over and over again, was the only thing that mattered. Strong talk for a soldier for hire, but, unlike the pirate, not all of them would need to die to get that information out.

“How well do you think we’ll fit in down here in the Stone Age?” Harker asked her in a loud whisper.

She stared at him. “You really think it’ll come to that?”

“It could. That’s the most likely scenario, at least temporarily, maybe permanently if they don’t find a way to get us off.”

She shrugged. “We haven’t really been tested on much yet here, even with the loss of our stuff. This place almost seems designed to let a small number of people live on, so long as they remain apes who talk.”

“Huh?”

“Look at us! The climate’s warm enough all year to keep us comfortable like this, there’s a year-round growing season for edible fruits and even vegetables, as we’ve found, if you know how to look for them. Plenty of water, and no large predators. The trick is to not draw any attention to yourself, so no fires, no building of structures—in effect, no real artifacts. We’ve grown comfortable under those rules in just a few days. Imagine what being like that for maybe fifty, sixty years has done to the survivors. I’m already losing track of time. One day looks like another, one grove or one field of tall grass looks like another. I’m beginning to think that my life’s project is going to be myself.”

“Your watch still has a date in it,” he noted.

“I lost it a while back. Makes no difference anyway. I have some kind of weird sense that this place changes you—or that something is doing it.”

He’d tried to get her to elaborate on that, but to no avail.

The old Grand Highway had proven reliable and comfortable as a path up to now, but at some points it had presented problems. The bridges were gone, so coming to rivers and streams meant wading or in some cases swimming. All of them could swim, and none of the distances or depths had been too great, but now they came around a bend and faced their greatest challenge.

It was the delta of a large and complex river system, and the road vanished right into it. It was extremely muddy, and the current seemed slow, but it was clearly quite an obstacle.

Father Chicanis was baffled. “There is no river like this. Not here! I would have remembered such a thing! It wasn’t even on the aerial surveys! There is a river between Sparta and Ephesus, but this can’t be it! We have been following the road and we are still west of Sparta, I’m sure of it!”

“Well, it’s here now,” the colonel sighed. “It is difficult to say if the channel is deep, or what might lie in it, but I see a series of mud bars and mud and rock islands there. I suspect that most of it is shallow, since, if you look carefully, you can see rusted and twisted remnants of the highway here and there. Well, we won’t attempt it today. I would say we camp early and see if we can get some real rest. Tomorrow we can start testing it out.”

Harker looked it over. It appeared as shallow as he said, but you never knew about this kind of river. They had deep spots, and treacherous eroded stuff just beneath the surface that could cut you to ribbons. Often the bottoms were quagmires, too, sucking you down if you tried walking even in the shallows.

It was a good kilometer across to the next solid anything; in between were fingers of mud and rock piled up here and there as the big river slowed before finally emptying into the sea.

“What about a raft?” Kat Socolov suggested. “If we can make something out of the driftwood or something here, we could pole across.”

“Possibly,” Harker responded. “But I’m not sure I like trusting myself to something cobbled together and held by these vines. One sharp rock below and you’d be in the middle of a disintegrating and possibly dangerous bundle of sticks. Flotation is a good idea, but on a one-to-one personal level, I think. Not one big raft, but a lot of little things that float.”

Next to dinner, that was the highest priority. There were few clues to what they might use floating down the river itself, so they used what light was left to test various pieces of wood, particularly those that looked as if they had floated down a fair piece.

As this was going on, they walked upriver along the riverbank, looking mostly down for a couple of kilometers, after it was clear that there was a significant bend there that might trap flotsam and jetsam. Harker found himself in the lead, and he rounded the curve and suddenly stopped dead still in his tracks. He put up a hand that silenced those coming behind him, and they approached with a lot more stealth.

Mogutu got to him first. “What is it?” he barely whispered.

Harker gestured. “Up ahead, maybe fifty meters. Look at the mud.”

It was fairly flat and soaked through, pretty much like the part they were walking on, and it didn’t take a moment for first Mogutu, then the others to see what had spooked Harker.

Just as they had left footprints in the wet mud behind them, there were footprints in the mud just ahead. Footprints that ended at just about the fifty-meter mark, stopped, then turned and walked back diagonally and into the brush.

“Think they’re new?” Kat asked him apprehensively.

He nodded. “This close to the sea is tidal. The area gets washed over now and again. I’d say those tracks aren’t much older than ours. It’s possible that they were coming toward us and heard us.”

Mogutu nodded. “If they’re still here, they’re very good,” he said, continuing the whisper. “I can’t see anything at all ahead and I’m a damned good hunter.”

“They’re there,” the colonel breathed. “Don’t ask me how I know, but I’ve stayed alive this long by sensing such things. We’re being watched right now. I can feel their eyes. Just in the grass.”

“Want me to flush ’em, sir?” Mogutu asked him, tongue licking his lips in tense anticipation of a real bit of action at last.

“No, you wouldn’t be able to,” N’Gana replied. “They would just pull back into what could be an infinite field of grass until they suckered us into a trap on their ground. No, Sergeant, let’s make them come to us.” He straightened up and added in a more normal tone, “Sergeant, cover our back. Harker, take the edge of the grass. Doc, I want you and the Father, here, behind me. Don’t look around or give them any sense that we know where they are.”

“If they attack?” Mogutu asked him.

“Then we defend ourselves. Otherwise, we go back to a point on the other side of the highway ruins and dig in there. Anyone coming at us will have to do so in the open.”

“Or wait until night, or the predictable storms,” Kat Socolov added worriedly.

“Cheer up, Doctor,” the colonel said. “If they don’t kill us or run from us, you might just get your first chance to use your skills in native contact.”

She shook her head. “I’d bet on them running. If they’re as primitive as I think they are, they won’t want any strangers around. Remember the rule? Draw no attention to yourself. Why risk a fight? Besides, Colonel, no offense meant, but the ethnic population here was entirely Greek and what was called Near Eastern and Caucasian, because that’s where the ethnic roots came from. There might have been some Hamitic types from Ethiopian Coptic stock, which Sergeant Mogutu might be taken for, but most likely they’ve never seen anyone who looks quite like you, Colonel.”

“She’s right, Colonel. There were diplomats and traders, certainly, but no native Australian, African, or Asian types outside the city trading centers and spaceports, and they’d have gotten out.”

The colonel grinned. “So I’m a monster, am I? I kind of like that. It starts us off with some fear and respect, I think. That’s if they really saw me, though. Hard to say. Some of your skin flaps and other oddities might make you seem a bit odd, too, come to think of it. I think, though, that we’ll play games and go back and forth, but I doubt that these people want contact. I didn’t sense that there were very many of them. Two or three, perhaps. Four tops. Hardly a hunting party or a tribe.”

Still, none of them would get the sleep they had been looking forward to only a little earlier. Not this night.

Mogutu was thoughtful. “You know, Colonel, we could use that storm. How about it?”

“Just what do you have in mind?” N’Gana encouraged him.

“I could get up and around, using the storm for cover, then, when they’re still drying out, I could make a godawful demonstration that might panic them right toward you.”

“Possible. Equally possible is that these people, born and raised in this environment, will do the same to us instead, or simply come after you with everything they’ve got including knowledge of the terrain, weapons, their numbers, your position, and so forth. Not a good option. Still, I shouldn’t like them on our back if we have to cross that damned river and swamp combo. I keep giving mental commands to my combat armor and deploying my heat and motion detectors.”

Harker smiled slightly when he heard that. He’d been doing the same thing.

Finally, Kat Socolov cleared her throat. “Um, Colonel? You and your bloodthirsty sergeant here keep treating these people as if they are lions in some imaginary ancient jungle. Have you considered speaking to them instead?”

N’Gana looked completely baffled. “Speak to them? What the devil do you mean?”

“You know—talk. Like we’re doing now.”

“But these people are—are…”

“Stone Age primitives? Probably, but it’s also true that, even in a worst-case scenario, they are only a few generations removed from us. From the Helena of the Confederacy and Father Chicanis. Knowledge can die with frightening suddenness, and ignorance can march in a heartbeat, but, Colonel, changing your language takes a lot longer than this. Conquered nations held on to their native tongues even if they had to learn the speech of their conquerors, and those languages survived even when there was a conscious effort to suppress them. You came from this highly civilized background a couple of worlds removed from your ancestry, yet what was the language spoken in the streets of your homeland during your youth?”

“Uh—well, around the house they always spoke Tuareg, a Berber language. Of course, we all spoke English.”

“And you, Sergeant?”

“Well, it was a dialect of Ethiopian, actually, although everyone also spoke French because there were so many dialects and nobody would ever standardize on one. Yes, I begin to see what she means.”

Even the usually quiet Hamille, whom they tended to forget most of the time, was in tune with this concept. “My people speak—” It gave a series of sounds no human could ever utter. “There are many other tongues on my world. No one speaks human speech except to humans.”

Socolov looked at Harker, who shrugged. “I always talked like this,” he said.

“Well,” said the anthropologist, “as someone who speaks both Ukrainian and Georgian, I think I’ve made my point. Father, what would they speak around here? Greek? Turkish? Confederacy Standard, which is really a form of English although they never admit that?”

“Why, Greek was common, but everyone used Standard, too, because the fact was that this was an attempt to recreate an ideal of a rich family’s past and they came from Greece. Still, there were a number of ethnic languages even on Helena, so Standard was everywhere. I feel certain that they would understand it, at least if you didn’t use any words or terms that might be outside their experience. I suspect much of our technological jargon would be meaningless to them, but if you kept it basic, I see no reason why, using your logic, they wouldn’t understand something. And, if it’s Greek, I can certainly help there.”

“So can I,” she told him. “You simply can’t get a degree in my field without Greek and Latin even if you intend to excavate the ruins of the third moon of Haptmann circling Rigel.”

“I think we are elected then,” the priest responded, ignoring N’Gana and Mogutu. “We’re also probably the least threatening.”

“That is why one of us must accompany you,” N’Gana told her. “If they attack—remember the man who sent the message that brought us here!—someone who will react without hesitation is necessary. Harker, why don’t you go? You’re—nonthreatening but capable, I think.”

“Thanks a lot,” Harker sighed. “But if we’re going to do it, we’d better move. I doubt if we’ve got a half hour’s light left.”

Feeling a little like targets in spite of the moral certainty of their position, the pair walked cautiously back out along the riverbank and up toward where the footprints had been seen. As they did, the trio of military men spread out and, from whatever concealment they could muster, they slowly closed in on the same spot to give the pair some invisible cover.

Kat Socolov was suddenly wondering if this was a good idea after all. What if they were some sort of savages, the survivor dregs who had kept going by killing off and preying upon the other, weaker groups?

Although feeling some doubt himself, Father Chicanis repeated some favored prayers and decided that it was his job to initiate contact. If, of course, anybody was still there.

There was no reason why anyone should or would wait around the place. It didn’t have a great deal of food, the water was far too muddy to be of practical use, and there was a dead end for most who reached its shore. Still, both of them felt eyes watching them, eyes that were not a part of their own group, eyes that studied and calculated their every move.

They stopped near the footprints they’d left before and looked ahead and to the right into the brush.

“Hello!” Kat Socolov called in what she hoped was a confident but nonthreatening voice. “If you can hear me and understand me, please speak to me! We mean you no harm.”

Father Chicanis frowned. “What the devil is that?”

She shook her head. “I dunno. Sounds like clicking. I’d say it was insects only we’ve been here long enough and nothing I’ve heard sounds like it. Sounds almost like… code.”

He nodded. “What would make sounds in code? And why? Surely this isn’t something of the enemy!” He projected his voice. “I am Father Aristotle Chicanis! I was born and raised near here, but I was not here when the world was conquered. I return bringing the hope and faith of God to my native soil!”

Still no reaction, but more clicking.

“How many do you think there are?” she whispered to him, not taking her eyes off the brush.

“I can’t tell,” he admitted in the same low tone. “Certainly no more than three. If they are going to make a move, though, they better do it. I don’t think we should stand here and risk sundown with our backs to the water.”

It was growing dim. “One last chance, then we back off,” she hissed.

“Look! Come, be friends with us! We only wish to learn from you and we will help you with your needs if we can! Please! It is now or we must leave for the night!”

More clicking. They were moving around, whoever or whatever they were, but slowly, as if positioning themselves in a semicircle. That was clearly a hostile formation; they didn’t need it to protect or defend.

“I think we back out now,” she said to the priest, teeth clenched. “There’s already one behind us. I want to do a slow but steady back-out. Ready?”

“I believe you are right,” he answered, and together they both began to back up, slowly, hoping that the others in the team would cover their backs.

In the bush, the experienced Mogutu had zeroed in on the nearest one, the one moving to cut off the retreat of the pair on the riverbank. He was good at his job, and he’d crept to within no more than a few meters of the one closest to them and the camp.

What he saw startled him. It looked like the back of a young girl, hair long and wild and tangled, the body so thin that it seemed emaciated, yet there was strength in it, and the toughness of weather-beaten skin. She was making the clicking sounds, and getting responses from others, but he couldn’t see what she was making them with.

Suddenly she froze, and he sensed at the same instant that she was now aware of him. It was difficult for him to feel threatened by such a tiny waif, but he also knew that small size meant nothing if one were an expert knife thrower or had other weapons.

He crouched there, watching tensely, waiting to see her move. Suddenly, with an animal-like agility he would have thought impossible, she whirled, turning in midair while hurling herself in his direction. The movement and the sight of her face and hands startled him, so unexpected and horrible were they, and he was a split-second slow in responding and rolling right. Her left foot struck his shoulder with great force; she hit the ground and with cat-like agility flipped, rolled, and was back at him.

They all heard Mogutu scream, and this was taken by the others in the bush as an attack imperative. They launched themselves out into the open, toward the pair on the riverbank, and so agile and catlike were the moves and so terrible the visage the two Hunters presented to them that Kat Socolov screamed and Father Chicanis uttered a cry of dismay.

With the bodies of young girls, the faces were a mixture of human and animal. The mouths were wide, somewhat extended, and seemed full of sharp pointed teeth, while the eyes glowed with a feline fire in the reflection of the setting sun on the river. Most awful were the hands, whose fingers were not of flesh but of long spikelike claws twenty or more centimeters long, and not only pointed but barbed as well.

One bounded for the anthropologist as she turned and ran in panic back toward the ruins of the old road. Clearly Socolov was going to lose the race, but suddenly, from out of the grass, a large, long, rounded shape hurled itself with the same force as the Hunters and aimed right at the Hunter as she was within centimeters of driving her claws into Kat Socolov’s back.

The Hunter was taken aback, barely realizing that she was being attacked until the Pooka struck her directly in the belly—and kept on going, literally drilling a bloody hole straight through the attacker with a whirling motion and a very different kind of toothed action.

The Hunter still made no sound although she was now thrashing about in agony and striking at the alien form that penetrated her. She was dying, yet she flailed away at the back end of the creature and even tried to get to her feet with the thing still in her while staring, with hate-filled eyes, at Kat Socolov.

The anthropologist saw that the Pooka that had saved her was now in need of saving itself, and although almost transfixed by the single-minded violence in the Hunter, she ran toward her attacker, steel gun barrel in hand, and lashed out, striking first one of the clawed arms, then reaching the head. The thing kept trying to get at her, which so terrified Socolov that she continued swinging at the head until finally the only motion coming from the Hunter was from Hamille trying to get all the way through.

Father Chicanis hadn’t had as good a rescuer, and the Hunter had actually reached him and dug her claws into his left ann. With his right arm, he brought up his gold-plated cross and used it as a club. It wasn’t very effective, but it slowed her just enough for Gene Harker to swing another gun barrel at full strength right into the back of her head. So great was the force he used that part of the Hunter’s skull caved in, yet, stunned and badly wounded, she nonetheless turned on him and attempted to claw and bite him with fanatical fury. Only, his own hand-to-hand combat training and reflexes had saved him from also being badly slashed, and once the Hunter was down he brought the barrel down again and again and again until she finally twitched in the mud and lay still.

“Father? You all right?”

“Hurts like the very devil!” Chicanis responded. “My God! She’s peeled some of the flesh away from my arm! Oh, Lord! How it hurts!”

“Let me check on Kat and then I’ll tend to it,” he said, running a few meters farther on, where Hamille had finally managed to get out of the Hunter’s middle from the other side and now lay there, its whole center length undulating up and down as if breathing hard.

Kat Socolov knelt in the mud and just stared at the figure of the Hunter lying dead in the mud, and she was crying uncontrollably. Harker went to her, knelt down, and asked, “Are you hurt? Kat! Were you wounded?”

She was simply too far gone to respond, but his quick examination showed only some scratches and what was going to be a whale of a bruise in a day or so.

Satisfied that she was all right, at least physically, and unable to tell if the Pooka was or not, he returned to Father Chicanis, removed the vine belt from his waist, and began using it as a tourniquet on the arm. It looked ugly, but it could have been worse.

“Come on, Father! We’ve got to get back to the road!

It’s almost dark! We’ve still got some basic medicinals, I think. Come! Can you walk?”

“I—I think so. Please—help me to my feet.”

The priest was unsteady, but he managed, and they walked back to Kat Socolov, who was just staring now, apparently all cried out.

“Kat—you have to come with us,” Harker said as gently as possible.

She trembled a bit, then looked up at him. “They’re just children, Gene! Little girls! What have these bastards done to our children?”

“Come on! From the sound of things, we have at least one more wounded. Hamille, thank you. Are you all right?”

“Some punctures. They will heal,” the creature responded. “Tasted terrible, too.”

Back at the old roadbed, they found Colonel N’Gana tending to his sergeant. Mogutu did not look very good. He didn’t look good at all.

Socolov kept trying to get control with deep breaths and finally managed it. “The larger wounds need cover,” she managed. “We don’t have major bandages, or a portable surgical kit that works, so we’ll have to make do with what’s here.”

“The skin’s almost flayed in areas,” N’Gana noted. “What can we use that could cover them all and allow healing without infection or bleeding?”

“Mud,” she answered. “We have plenty of it. Gene, come on—you can be both bodyguard and mud carrier. We have to get a lot of it from the river, preferably just inside the waterline. We want it thick, goopy, and organic. Come on! I’ll show you how!”

It probably looked awful, but they could barely see. Both the wounded men were placed in a sheltered area underneath the remains of the roadworks. If they were lucky, the night’s storms wouldn’t wash away the mud packs.

“You really think that’s going to work?” Harker asked her.

“No, but it’s all we have and it’s a traditional treatment. We have no idea how much damage was done internally or how much blood was lost or whether or not those things were also poisonous, but if we’re lucky it can work. It’s an ancient remedy.” She sighed. “Now you know why I’m along!”

“I doubt if this was anticipated, but I’m still glad you’re here,” he told her.

It was pitch dark, and there was the rumbling of thunder and the flash of lightning not far away.

He sat there next to her and for the first time put his arm around her and gave her a hug. “You did good, kid. From the very start.”

“I brought them on us,” she retorted.

“No, they were stalking us from the start, I think. We forced their hand. I think they were going to wait until dark, or maybe even until the storm, and then jump us. When you consider their single-minded homicidal maniac approach and if you saw the eyes you’d know they can probably see okay in the dark, at least in starlight or moonlight. No, I think you saved all our lives.”

“But not deliberately,” she replied, unwilling to grant him a point.

“That’s the way it is in a war or any operation. What’s intended isn’t the point. The only things that count are success and the objective. At least we know one thing now that the whole Confederacy didn’t know before.”

“Huh? What?”

“The Titans know we’re here. They know us, maybe all too well. You don’t evolve like that in under a hundred years, and you sure don’t see that kind of consistency in mutation. I didn’t really have much time to study them, but I swear those two were twins. Identical twins. There’s only one way you can get that kind of change in a short time—they were bred. Bred to be just what we saw. Genetically reengineered and, when they had what they wanted, probably cloned.”

“But why? Why would they do it?”

He shrugged. “We still know nothing about them, and we may never understand all their motivations. Still, I can think of some practical reasons. Surely they know that some humans survived and still survive in tribal groups. If you wanted to keep the population down and ensure only the strongest survive, that’s one good way to do it.”

“But why not just wipe every survivor out? They could do it in a moment and you know it.”

“True, but I don’t think they want to. Why? Again, if we understood them maybe we could find a way to at least hurt them. Maybe we’re good lab animals, or maybe pets. It might be as simple and cold-blooded as that. Sheer sport. Or it might be that they want a sampling of only the strongest and best for their own use. Whatever the reason, I don’t know any way of asking them and getting an intelligent answer.”

The rains came at that point, making it useless to keep talking. She didn’t really feel like talking anymore, either. For the first time on the trip she needed something more from Harker, and she made it perfectly clear to him in the rain.

“You were right about the cloning,” Kat Socolov told Harker in the morning, after they had examined the remains of the fight. “I looked at the pattern on the big toe of both of them and it’s identical. So is just about everything else I could find. I also examined them as much as I could. I wish we had a medical doctor along or could get these two to an autopsy room. Neither of them have any grinders at all. All canines. And the tongues are smooth and extremely long. The whole mouth structure suggests that they can eat only meat. Ten to one they can only digest meat. They’re not only bred to be killers, they have to kill.”

He said nothing to that, but he did have a wider concern. “I wonder if anybody here is still human? That’s only one variety, I suspect, but what about the others? They preyed on somebody. Were the prey bred, too? This is getting more complicated than we figured.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. There’s so much we just don’t understand of all this.” She came over close to him and said in a lower, softer voice, “Thank you for last night.”

He smiled and shrugged. “Anytime.”

“I don’t want you to take it any way but one, though. I—I just needed it. It was pretty strange, really. It happened once after I heard that my father died, but that was the only other time. It’s a strange reaction.”

“It’s a human reaction,” he assured her. “It’s nothing to feel guilty about. It’s just a part of being human. This is greater stress than even I ever thought I’d be under, and I always thought I was a gutsy type of guy. I can even see it getting to N’Gana, and I always thought of him as an organic machine.”

Again they said nothing for a bit, then she asked, “That woman Marine you talked about. Bambi something or other?”

“Yeah? What about her?”

“You ever do it with her?”

He thought that an odd question, but he answered it anyway. “No, of course not.”

“She doesn’t like men?”

“Oh, I think she likes men all too much. And almost anybody and anything else when off-duty. No, she’s an enlisted soldier. Officers and enlisted may have respect for one another, or contempt, but they don’t get personal. There’s good reasons for that. Nobody can sleep their way up the chain of command, nobody can use sex to force someone else to do what they don’t want to do, and, on a different level, you don’t want to have a personal relationship if you can help it with anybody you might have to order into possible or probable death.” He sighed. “I wish I had her here, though. She was damned good at her job.”

Even though it was a part of his life, it was hard to think that he was separated from her and his old shipmates by almost three years, even though it had been only a matter of weeks to him. The realization made their isolation on Helena seem even more acute.

They walked over to check on the two wounded men. Father Chicanis was actually recovering rather well. He was in considerable pain, but nothing major had been damaged that could not be repaired. He was certainly functional. The same could not be said for Mogutu, whose abdomen had been penetrated by those barbed claws. Under normal battle conditions, he would already have undergone surgery and been put in a tank, recovering perfectly, but these weren’t normal conditions. They had nothing with which to diagnose his wounds, and no physician to do anything about them anyway. All they had was some powerful painkillers and sterilizers, and precious little of those.

“It is a mercy that he remains unconscious,” the priest commented. “Feeling my arm, just thinking about what he must feel with those wounds is chilling. There has to be a great deal of internal bleeding. Those poor creatures were designed for quick killing; they hadn’t the strength or sheer power for a real fight. They pounce and by their ferocity and those claws and teeth they became killing machines. What a terrible life they must have had. I hope that God gives them the peace and joy they were denied here.”

Colonel N’Gana was taking Mogutu’s condition hard, but he was the consummate professional. “Father Chicanis here insisted on going back out to the little terrors and giving them last rites,” he said, shaking his head in wonder.

“You disapprove, Colonel? You do not believe in such things?” The priest knew the answers before he asked the questions.

“They were animals. I don’t risk anything to pray over dead vicious animals, no. And, frankly, I’m not certain what I believe in any more. At least, that’s partially true. I don’t know if there’s a God, Father, and I’m not certain I’d like a God who could create a universe so full of misery. I never could quite accept your idea of God, anyway. It never made any sense. If such a God were wholly good and the epitome of perfection, why does everybody keep rebelling against Him? Such a God is also the father of evil.” He looked down at the unconscious Mogutu. “Now, evil is something I believe in. I’ve seen it, heard it, smelled it, fought it. Most people haven’t believed in evil for a thousand years or more. Everybody’s misguided or misunderstood. You think of those things as victims. Perhaps, but they did not evolve, even unnaturally, from a state of grace, Father. They were designed as instruments of evil.”

Father Chicanis sighed. “I am sorry you feel that way, Colonel. To me—well, the basic genes that were used to create them could have been from my own family. I do not believe that a creation of evil who has no choice can be held to a moral standard they cannot comprehend. That is the key difference between the devil and his minions and those poor creatures. The devil and his followers chose their path. A god of love is not a god of rigid order and discipline, a dictator creating sycophants. Worship, love, all that is of value is meaningless if it is not freely given. And if it is to be freely given, then the option not to give it, to reject it, must be present. No, Colonel. Those who choose evil define it. That is the key.”

N’Gana shook his head sadly. “And in the meantime, in your universe, creatures of evil kill men of good and all’s right with the cosmos.” He paused a moment. “We must leave him to die, you know. Or kill him out of mercy lest he awaken and die in agony.”

The priest looked stricken. “Colonel! We can’t just abandon him! What were we just talking about? I’ll not accept a choice like that!”

“Then you can stay with him if you like. We cannot bring him. I’m not sure how we’re going to get across this river yet, but we must do it and do it today. We’re sitting ducks here and the stakes are too high. The remains of Sparta are just over there, and beyond them the hills, and then Ephesus. Ephesus has what we are here to get, but it is also one anchor base of the Titans. The sergeant understood, as I did, that the mission was the only thing that mattered. He’s a liability to that mission now, and he can be of no help to anyone. The best we can do to honor his gallantry is to complete the mission. Still, I will not leave him here to die in agony. He deserves better than that. So, either one of us stays or he is mercifully sent to his reward, whatever and wherever that is. I’d rather not spare anyone, and I can’t spare the others, but the choice is yours.”

The priest sighed. “I cannot morally sanction such an action, yet I understand your position. I will stay. It is probably for the best anyway, as I can’t possibly swim with this arm. If he dies, I shall give him last rites and a Christian burial and then I will try and find what remains of my people to restore God’s mercy to them. If he lives, we shall go together.”

N’Gana shrugged. “Suit yourself. But be aware that Sergeant Mogutu was never a Christian. At best we might call him a lapsed Moslem.”

“Colonel—it is the same God.”

“I suppose it is at that. Very well. We’ll leave what we can here for you, but that’s precious little.” He stood, looking down at his longtime companion, and for a moment there was a slight quiver in the lip, a stray trace of emotion in a man who considered it a weakness. He then stood erect, saluted the unconscious sergeant, and walked away toward the others.

“Come, then! We have a river to cross!” he announced.

Neither Harker nor Kat Socolov liked leaving the two behind, but there was little that could be done and, as N’Gana said, it was the mission that mattered. All of them were expendable if those codes could be broadcast.

Now they stood by the riverbank looking out and trying to guess a possible route.

“It’s a young river,” the anthropologist noted. “In fact, I’d say it hasn’t been here for very long at all. Possibly it’s another that’s shifted its course, but it’s clear that very little has been dug out. You can see where some trees and even bushes poke out of the water.”

“Yes, but how deep is it?” N’Gana asked rhetorically. “If the tall grass was typical in height, so if we see the top fifteen centimeters of grass then we can assume the river is no more than two, maybe two and a half meters deep in that area.”

“Shallower, I think,” Harker said, looking out at the expanse. “Lots of mud bars, whole areas of minor silt build-up, and even some rises that are original and still above water. Our big problem, I think, won’t be the depth but rather that it’s so damned muddy we can’t see what we’re walking on.”

N’Gana nodded. “Let’s walk up a bit. There seems to be more of the original slope still—”

His voice trailed off, and his hand instinctively went to the gun barrel truncheon around his waist. The others made similar moves as they saw what the colonel had suddenly spotted.

“I didn’t hear anything at all,” Harker whispered. “Where in hell did they come from?”

“They’re not like those others,” the anthropologist noted. “They look like kids. Kids out of some text on ancient human origins, but kids.”

The two girls and a boy presented a bizarre sight. Burned a deep leathery brown by the sun, with long, stringy hair and wearing only ornaments of stone and bone, they nonetheless showed scars of a harsh and violent life. What was most striking was that their bodies bore elaborate mosaiclike tattoos that seemed designed to eventually cover them. The boy had the most, up both legs and on his stomach and back as well.

“Hello!” the boy called to them, apparently unafraid. “What Family are you from? We have been searching for someone for many days!”

The speech was oddly accented, with certain differences in tone, pronunciation, and emphasis, but it was clearly based on the Standard tongue the others all knew and understood. If anything, it was more familiar than they had expected.

“We are from different families,” Socolov responded, trying to sound calm and friendly. “But we are here working for and representing a family called Karas.”

All three of the natives looked astonished. “That is impossible!” the boy said at last. “We are of the Karas Family, and we know everyone in it!”

The anthropologist thought for a moment. Clearly “family” to them was synonymous with “tribe.” Just how much did they know of their past?

“We are not of the family that stayed and survived,” she told him. “We are of the ones who left the world before it was conquered.”

The boy was thunderstruck. “You are from—up there?” She smiled and nodded.

And then he said, in a tone of wonderment that made them all feel a true sense of what had been lost here, “We did not believe you would ever come back for us.”