The Caterpillars Question

Chapter 14

They were in the cavern headquarters of the Integrator. Two hours ago, he had given Jack and Tappy glasses of a thick and dark purplish fluid to drink. It was a mixture of berry juice and an amount, very small, of the venom of the fly called "quickdeath." By increasing the quantity every day, they should be immune to the venom after twenty days. Meanwhile, they could expect to feel somewhat sick during this period.

"One bite will semiparalyze a person of our body mass," Tappy had told him. "Two bites in rapid succession will kill. The whole honker population has been immunized."

The drinking skull of the shaman came from an upper-class ratcage who had died from the quickdeath's bites.

"The Gaol ruling class seldom leave their ships when they're on this world— in this area, anyway— unless they're wearing heavy nets. They send out their humans and lower-class warriors to do the work. The shaman says we were lucky we didn't get bitten while we were wandering around in the crater."

After swallowing the sweet but foul-smelling fluid, Jack and Tappy resumed their study of the crater-ring model. Jack picked up the page he had been writing on, but he put it down when a sharp pain struck his stomach. A few seconds later, he had a severe headache.

Tappy, who looked as sick as he felt, said, "It'll go away in an hour. But we shouldn't eat anything until suppertime."

Jack's vision blurred. Where there had been one piece of paper there were now two, one overlapping the other by a few inches. Moreover, his hands and feet felt numb. Both abandoned the study to lie down in their cave bedroom. But, as the shaman had said, after sixty minutes, they had recovered enough to go back to the model and their notes.

So far, he and Tappy, aided by a honker who interpreted the notes written by generations of honkers, had plenty of clues, too many. But they had no idea what any of them meant. In that case, as Tappy remarked, how did they know the items were clues? Jack had replied that everything on the ring had to be significant. So far, though, he had found nothing meaningful in the images and symbols on the ring or in their locations on it or their relationships to each other.

Some of the images were of the Makers; some, of the ratcage-bodied Gaol.

There were also representations of the pulsating in-and-out vessel in which he and Tappy had taken refuge. Red wavy-shafted arrows lipped by flames radiated from the ship.

"Maybe those indicate the magnetism which the shaman thought might've drawn you to the ship," Jack said. "Like you were a migratory bird following the Earth's lines of force."

He shook his head. "I just don't know. Our only explanations for all this stuff are just theories. Not even that. Just hypotheses."

"The crater's magnetism drew me through the boulder-gate," she said. "That means that it somehow, uh, leaked through the gate even though this planet must be many, many light-years from Earth."

"But you wouldn't have felt the attraction if you hadn't come near the boulder. That means— might mean, anyway— that your foster parents sent us there because they knew about the boulder."

"I suppose so," she said. "But if they knew about it, why didn't they take me there themselves?"

"They must've had a good reason."

"Why didn't they wait until I was mature enough for the Imago to develop fully?"

"Because," he said, "they knew the Gaol were getting close to finding out that you were on Earth. They had to get you away before the Gaol went any further in their investigation. They had to chance your finding your way to the boulder. Who knows what your foster parents did after I drove you away? Maybe they went through another gate to another world. I don't know."

He was wondering, though, if her foster parents had been agents of the persons who might be working to fulfill the prophecy. Those people could be organized as a cell system. Each cell knew very little about the others. The inferior agents worked in solitude and ignorance except when they received orders from a higher agent. On the other hand, the foster parents might be in the highest echelon.

A few seconds later, a tall rangy honker ran into the cave. He stopped before the Integrator. Though winded, he delivered a long series of honks. The shaman rose from the moss pile on which he had been sitting and began honking at Tappy. His eyes were wide, and he was gesticulating wildly. His excitement infected the beasts on him. The snake reared up and hissed. The dormouse growing from his navel yipped and squeaked and waved its paws. The hairy thing on his genitals split bilaterally, closed, split, and closed. It quivered violently. The hip tentacles thrashed around.

Tappy became pale. Her voice unsteady, she said, "A Gaol ship has landed in the crater. It's either the one that captured us or one just like it."

"The best defense is offense."

That was a cliche. But, like most cliches, it was often valid.

Jack, Tappy, the Imaget, the Integrator, Candy, and sixty honkers were deep under the ground. The large chamber they occupied had been excavated by the Makers. One wall was composed of an immense piece of nickel-iron, a fragment of the meteorite which had formed the crater long ago. Many times during the three-day underground journey to this place, the group had encountered large relics of the fiery falling star. The Integrator said that the Gaol's orbital geosurvey ships must have detected these and the cavern complex centuries or more ago. If they had ever gone down into the subterranean system, it had been so long ago that the honkers had no record of it.

Now, however, they knew, or thought they knew, that the Imago and its host were somewhere in the crater. Instead of trying to keep one step ahead of the Gaol, Jack had decided to attack.

After a conference, the Integrator had agreed that that was the best policy.

The war party was now directly beneath the Gaol ship that had landed several days ago. Sixty feet of earth and meteorite fragments were between the vessel and the chamber housing the Latest and the others.

A report about the Gaol had just been brought by a spy who had climbed down a series of ladders glued to the inside of a ventilator pipe. Its entrance was inside a hollowed-out tree. According to the spy, the Gaol had set up a camp inside the circle formed by the landing-support system beneath the ship. It was composed, so far, of humans and cyborg Gaol. But the cyborgs had gone back into the ship for the night.

"You can be sure," the Integrator said, "that a walking ratcage is in command. This is too important to leave to mere humans and cyborgs."

Jack wondered if Malva was in the crew. Though his empathy for others had gotten even stronger while he was with the honkers, it was not powerful enough to overcome his hatred for Malva. If he could get her neck between his hands, he would squeeze until she died. No way would he ever forgive her because he could feel the motives that drove her. She was as evil as the Gaol she worked for, and she must die.

"Jack," Tappy said, shearing off his detailed thoughts of the revenge he would inflict on Malva. "The Integrator says we should go up soon. It's after midnight."

"Not we. You don't go with us. You stay here where you'll be safe."

Tappy knew that he was right. The Imago was too precious to risk in battle. Despite this, she had been urging Jack and the chief shaman to take her along. Jack suspected that she was not so much intent on fighting with them as she was afraid of being alone. Though she had a bodyguard of four honkers, she was alone if Jack was not by her side.

Looking determined, Tappy honked at the Integrator. There followed a short but savage conversation. The honks could not convey emotion as a human voice could, but her facial expressions and the vigorous gestures of both showed that they were getting hot under the collar, as it were. Finally, the shaman threw up his hands in a quite-human gesture.

Tappy smiled, then turned to Jack. "He says I can go if I don't leave the exit in the hollow tree. Don't you dare try to argue with me."

"What'd you do? Threaten to rip his penis off?"

Instead of replying, she put on a heavy close-meshed net over her bone helmet Jack also donned a net, and both slipped their hands into three-ply leather gloves. Since both were still not immune to the quickdeath-fly venom, they had had to be protected. Their clothing was thick enough to protect against the bites.

"You promise not to get into the fray?" Jack said.

She nodded. He hoped she would keep her promise.

The Integrator glanced around at the war party, seemed to be satisfied with what he saw, and blew three long blasts and one short one.

"The war cry," Tappy said.

The shaman went into the next room, Jack, Tappy, and Candy in single file behind him. The others followed. A moment later, the Integrator began climbing the ladders set up by an advance party. Most honkers were armed with blowguns and poisoned darts, bows and arrows, flint-tipped knives and short spears, and flint axes. Jack and Candy and two honkers carried beamers. Three of them and their batteries had been stolen over the years from Gaol expeditions. They were in soft thick bags strapped to their back. If a beamer should be banged against the shaft wall, it would make no sound.

Jack's big beamer and the small one in his holster had been brought with him from the Gaol ship captured before he came to the honker planet. He would have preferred the weapon he had used against the Gaol in their first encounter, the shadow-death weapon built into Tappy's leg brace. During their flight from the Gaol, he had wondered sometimes about the persons who had installed the radiator in the brace. Also, where had they gotten this weapon?

He had also speculated, fruitlessly as usual, on why Tappy had muttered about it while sleeping. How had the words gone?

"Alien menace... only chance is to use the radiator."

In what way could this weapon be the only thing to vanquish the Gaol?

He had asked Tappy about her other dream-begotten phrase, "Reality is a dream." She did not know what either meant.

Behind him were a dozen or so honkers with glass cages full of flies strapped to their backs. Behind them would be the rest of the party, including some bearing more cages. These would be swarming with insects with other deadly functions than poison. And some Latest were carrying boxes crammed with fungus.

Air was moving downward over Jack as he went up. According to the shaman, who was only guessing, the ventilating mechanism was part of the shaft wall and had no moving parts. Something magnetic in the metal kept me air moving. That was why the Makers' ventilation system never wore out. But the Integrator was great on magnetism. It explained just about everything for him.

The shaft was dark. Not until Jack got near the top of the shaft did he see illumination, and that was dim. When he was helped out of the shaft, he was in a large but crowded room, the hollow interior of a huge tree. The light was from the full moon, but it came through a big hole far up the trunk.

He was pushed gently forward until he was out of the tree trunk and in a grove of trees. He could see better now, though the moonbeams were filtered by the tangle of heavily leafed branches overhead.

Finally, the last warrior came out of the trunk. Tappy was behind him. In a low voice, he told her to go back into the hollow. "And if things go wrong for us, get the hell down the shaft as fast as you can."

"I will," she said softly. She kissed him on the mouth. "God bless you. May He keep you safe."

He hugged her quickly, then turned away, tears blurring his vision. He might never see her again.

"Forget that," he told himself. "Concentrate on what must be done if she's going to be safe."

Nobody except the humans had spoken. It was difficult for the honkers to whisper, if very soft honks could be called whispers. But everything had been planned; everybody had his or her instructions. They could make all the noise they wanted to when bell broke loose.

Straight in front of him, he could see a slice of the Gaol camp. Lights streamed from the windows of dark domed structures. Some of the light fell on a massive shadowy bulk some yards to the east of the camp. That would be the landing structure, a small section of it, anyway. He stepped out to a point just beyond two trees. Their branches kept him deep in their shade. Now he could see about thirty of the domes. They were so large they must be barracks. He could also hear human voices. A door opened in one of the domes, and a man stood in the doorway, the light strong behind him.

He was smoking a pipe, the pleasant but untobaccolike odor of which drifted to Jack. After a few minutes, the man stepped back and closed the door.

A group of machines, their function indeterminate at this distance, was parked in the center of the camp.

Unexpectedly, the camp had no walls. The Gaol did not fear attack. Besides, the landing structure, a vast ring from which pylons rose a hundred feet to the main body of the vessel, formed a very high wall. No lights came from the landing structure or the spheroid body of the spaceship.

The honker spies had reported that the Gaol had not as yet sent out scouts or exploratory parties. Whatever they were up to, they were taking their time. Probably, the technicians in the vessel were probing with their cavity detectors and also with the instruments that assumedly could detect the presence of the Imago. The latter instruments, he hoped, were directed outside of the radius of the landing structure. They would never imagine that the Imago and its host could be inside the structure. If, at the time of landing here, they had probed directly beneath the ship, they would have detected only a hollow beneath the huge meteorite fragments. If, that is, their instruments could penetrate through the nickel-iron pieces.

Jack stepped out to the edge of the shadows of the trees. Honkers followed him. Then the Integrator was standing by his side, his hip tentacles waving languidly like seaweed in a current.

The Integrator watched for a while. Then he bleeped softly, and he moved out into the moonlight. Jack and Candy and the two honkers ran swiftly to the doors of four domes near them. Each pulled out of a bag a small creature the bottom of which was a flesh suction pad. A long tuft of hair serving as a handle for the warriors projected from the back of each. Jack stuck his suckerbug, as it was called, onto the center of the door. Using his beamer, he cut a circular hole in the door. When he was close to completing the circular section, another warrior grabbed the creature's hair tuft. He pulled it and the section away from the door as soon as Jack had finished.

Another honker stuck the front of a glass cage against the hole. He pulled up a slide for a second or two, then closed it. At least two hundred flies, maybe more, had gone through the hole. Jack ran on to the next house while another honker put back the cut section and applied tape across it to hold it to the door.

Meanwhile, some honkers had gone to the parking lot. They had to make sure that none of the motionless machines there were actually cyborgs. In a few seconds, the Latest held clenched hands overhead. That was the signal that all was well in the lot.

Jack and Candy and the two honkers worked swiftly. Already, the first of the parties to enter the domes behind the cutters had made sure no one was alive in them. Now they were going into other domes, and most of them were carrying beamers appropriated from the dead Gaol.

Jack was on edge. He expected an automatic alarm to sound at any time or a Gaol in his death agonies to scream out. That did not happen. After an estimated fifteen minutes, the last warrior had reported to the Integrator. He held one hand up, turning this back and forth, a signal that he had completed his assignment.

Jack's beamer sliced through the thick outer wall of the curving landing structure. Three others also cut several large entrances near the one Jack had made. Then a number of suckers were applied to the wall sections just before they were completely cut. They dragged the pieces rather easily. Though thick, they were of very lightweight material.

The perilous ways were open. A dark corridor stretched before them. If an alarm was sounding in the main body of the ship, the war party could not hear it. But the Latest were going on the assumption that some would soon be activated. Jack was not so sure. The Gaol may not have thought it necessary to activate them.

The party was not in danger of getting lost in the vast maze of the ship. Garth had served on the same type of vessel. Through Candy, he had provided all the information needed to find the places to be invaded. The honkers had made diagrams of the passageways and the control center and where the crew was stationed when on duty and where it slept. While going through the tunnels to the chamber beneath the ship, the war party had studied these. Everyone knew exactly where to go and what he must do and how many he would have to fight.

Nevertheless, as in any battle, things could not only go wrong but doubtless would.