Fire with Fire: Chapter Eight

ODYSSEUS

    Two weeks later, the treetop chittering of what Caine had dubbed squirrel-spiders was almost drowning out the bored commo operator back at Site One: “We have CINCPAV COMCENT on the line for another check-in, Mr. Riordan; your signals are being relayed directly through our transceiver. You may proceed.”

    “Lieutenant Brill?”

    “Negative: this is Eli Silverstein. How was day one of your extended walkabout, Caine?”

    “Admiral Silverstein. I’m, uh, honored — and surprised.”

    The answering laugh was gruff, honest. “You’re not Navy, so I’m not ‘Admiral.’ Just Eli — unless you’ve taken a dislike to me.”

    “No, no — Eli.” And thanks for answering yourself today: it will help keep Helger’s head down, keep him from hatching any bright new schemes about “accidents” I might have. He won’t risk pissing off the USSF’s system CO. “Good to hear from you. The new walkabout is going just fine.”

    “No more trouble with your equipment?”

    “No more troubles.” A week ago, just before his second day-trip further north into the valley, Caine had decided to inspect his ammunition. The rifle rounds — dependable, old-fashioned 7.62 x 51 mm — were fine, but he had discovered a potentially fatal flaw in the propellant receptacle of his NeoCoBro machine pistol. The receptacle seal had a deep and recent nick in its gasket: had Caine even test-fired the weapon before checking it, excessive amounts of the exothermic liquid in the propellant canister would have been injected into the catalytic ignition chamber. The resulting explosion would have been dangerous, even deadly. It was a suspicious flaw — particularly since Caine had checked the gasket himself after Brinkley had issued him the weapon as a close-range defense against Pavonosaurs and their ilk. He had not bothered to mention — for everyone implicitly understood the significance — that the only time the weapon had been out of his immediate possession was when he had gone for his drive with Consuela. Helger’s symbolic fingerprints were manifest upon the gasket.

    “Caine, I chose to be here when you checked in today because I want you to reconsider your change in plans. Frankly, I’m not sure how good an idea it is for you to start camping out in the bush at night, rather than always returning to Site One. You’ve got no backup.”

    Caine looked up at the rapidly setting yellow disk of Delta Pavonis, sliced into segments by the palmate leaves adorning the tops of the giant ferns. Silverstein’s worried about both the human and indigenous predators. So am I. “I copy that, Eli. But it can’t be helped. There’s no road access to the northern reaches of the valley, and there’s no place to put down a vertibird: we conducted a close aerial recon for landing sites all of yesterday. No luck. Do you have maps that show otherwise?”

    The pause gave him the answer before Silverstein spoke. “Negative. The few areas that are flat enough are all covered by jungle canopy.”

    “That’s what we saw from the air. But I’ve got to get further in, Eli: round trip in and out doesn’t allow me to push more than about twenty klicks beyond the ruins. And that doesn’t give me any time to look around. I’m just humping my ruck blind through the bush. No recon value.”

    “I copy that, Caine. Listen, do you have enough batteries?”

    “I’m fine, and will check in frequently with Site One.”

    “Who will patch me through every time.”

    A command given for the benefit of Helger, who had not indicated that he was listening to their communiqué. But again, everyone knew better.

    “Okay, Eli. I should be fine. As it is, I’m now about thirty klicks in. First new ground I’ve seen in nine days.”

    “Well, good luck. Keep us in the loop and don’t be shy about calling in. Brill’s giving me all sorts of hell for not sending you out with more equipment.” That was a backhanded reference to the equipment he did have: specifically, the uplink beacon/communicator. It was also a reference that Helger wouldn’t understand: Caine had hidden the uplink/communicator before leaving his room that first morning: its tamper-proof case had never been disturbed.

    “It was good chatting with you, Eli. I’ll keep you posted. Out.”

    “Out.”

    Caine folded in the antenna on his smaller, conventional radio and watched Delta Pavonis wink out behind the sheltering peaks: fronds waved in front of it, their silhouettes coyly assisting the setting star with its farewell fan-dance. The largest of the weed-bushes resisted the dying of that light: the mauve spines of their great, spatulate leaves began to glow faintly. Floral bioluminescence.

    Caine unwrapped a condensed protein chew-stick, gnawed at the exposed end while he unpacked the perimeter motion sensors he had borrowed from Helger’s equipment cache. He hopped down from the broad rocky shelf upon which he planned to sleep: according to most accounts, the Pavonosaurs and their smaller relatives did not like moving across rock. Their heavily taloned, four-toed feet were evolved for maximum traction and turning speed in the thick loams and dense underbrush of heavily vegetated areas. Upon unyielding rocks, their talons were like iron spikes, always at risk of skittering out of control.

    Caine moved fifteen meters away from his little sleeping-mesa, starting walking its perimeter at that range, placing the sensors as he went. It was already deep dusk when he finished his protein stick, placed the last sensor — and heard a noise in the brush behind him.

    Recent practice paid off: he had the shoulder-slung Valmet semiautomatic down and in his hands in a single motion, snapping the safety off as he brought it against his hip. Nothing — yet. Use the seconds you have. Holding the venerable assault rifle steady — his right hand tucking the pistol grip into his body — he reached up with his left and pulled the night vision goggles down sharply from their perch on his forehead. His left hand never stopped moving: leaving the goggles, he brought it down to the rifle’s forestock, then brought the weapon up to his shoulder as he scanned the brush.

    The bioluminescent leaves stuck out like the skeletons of burning green-white trees, courtesy of the light-amplification lenses. The integrated thermal-imaging system showed the body heat of a fading contact — either very small or very distant — receding up the slope, directly away from Caine’s camp. Intriguing, but first things first: he turned slowly, weapon up, scanning the entire perimeter. Nothing else. He swung back to the first contact: gone. As though it had never been there. Very small — or very fast — indeed. Here, as on Earth, and probably on every world where predators had ears, the night sounds reasserted once the rapid motions and urgent activity had passed.

    Caine tilted the goggles back up on his head, felt the darkness wash in around him like a tidal surge of enigma. He hopped back up on the irregular rock platform that was his campsite, stared at his sleeping roll. Before, at the end of a day’s hiking, it had always been a mute promise of sleep.

    Tonight, it looked like a body bag.

    Caine looked up at the sun: almost midday. He finished rolling up the sleeping bag, felt himself smile. Three days ago — his first alone in the bush — he had hardly been able to sleep. This morning, he had slept until noon. Part of that was exhaustion: he had pushed hard the last two days, crisscrossing the land from the western bank of the river to the foot of the mountains as he pressed further north. But mostly, he owed his sound sleep to acclimatization. The nights were quiet here — or had been so far. Dawn and dusk were periods of frenetic activity for the smaller animals, the most plentiful of which were small burrowing lizard-toads (or so they appeared) and arboreal opossum-koalas that were ugly enough to make him wince. He had heard some large animals during the day, but had never seen them. Because he was stalking immobile objects — spoor, further ruins, anything that might signify the past or current presence of an intelligent creature — he made no special attempt to remain silent or unseen. Consequently, the larger animals — whatever they were — obviously saw and/or heard him coming from far away, and elected to maintain their distance. Having slept late, he wondered if any of the larger creatures might have strayed a little closer to him: maybe he would get a glimpse –

    A shuddering crash in the underbrush — not more than one hundred meters further up the valley — triggered an immediate repentance of his curiosity. He snatched the Valmet, snapped the large safety lever down, dropped to one knee, sighted in the direction of the sound.

    Which reprised itself, coming closer. Something was pounding through the bush: a dense thump, thump, thump was punctuating the other intermittent sounds — ferns being smashed aside, tuber-trees squealing out sharp bursts of the air that they held within their hollow trunks, bladderlike. He saw movement — a rustle in the ferntops — at two o’clock, swung about slowly to face in that direction, iron sights raised to his right eye.

    A blackish-brown shape burst out of the brush, well in advance of the approaching thumps. Caine almost fired, then flinched his finger off the trigger — just before he realized it was going too fast for him to hit, anyhow: the creature had already swerved to one side, evidently either avoiding Caine or taking evasive action. Probably evasive action — because the heavy pounding sound was now right behind it.

    The sound seemed to break free of the same dense thicket in a dusty burst of tubers, shoots, and fronds, all erupting away from the Pavonosaur that churned to a stop in the midst of the savaged foliage. The predator searched right and left — and then snapped erect as it noticed something it had evidently never seen before.

    A human.

    Caine stared back at the monster. The Pavonosaur’s body had a narrow cross section, tapering into a long, sharp, paddlelike tail that might have belonged to a monstrous tadpole. Its head completed the suggestion that this creature was built for speed both on land and in the water: the long, thin snout — more reminiscent of a crocodile than a dinosaur — was not scaled, but was the tip of a seamless carapace that swept back around and over the eye-and-ear sensor cluster, ending in a small, bone-finned crest that covered the rear of the skull. The mouth cycled through a panting open-closed motion, revealing not teeth, but a set of serrated ridges, threatening like three serried ranks of wood saws.

    Caine swallowed, held as still as he could, cheated the barrel down a little lower. It’s a young one. Three meters toe to top, at most. Aim low and shoot steady. Twenty rounds in the box, staggered between dum-dums and tungsten-cored discarding sabot. He can’t take more than four or five hits. Can he? Can he? Jesus, let’s get this over with: start your charge, you ugly bast –

    The Pavonosaur’s head swung back in the direction his prey had fled, and with a hissing rattle, he leaped along that course –

    Because the black-brown biped was still there.

    Caine — maniacally focused upon the Pavonosaur — only now noticed that the first creature had not made good its escape. Or, if it had, it had returned. What the hell –?

    It’s trying to help. No other possible reason.

    Caine had swung the gun, tracking the Pavonosaur, before he was aware of doing so. He squeezed the trigger twice, shouted “Hey, HEY!” in the intervals between the recoil of the rounds.

    Neither hit. But the Pavonosaur swiveled its head in his direction so quickly that Caine wasn’t sure he saw the motion: one moment its head was lowered in pursuit of the biped, the next it was staring at Caine.

    Staring back, leaning forward into a challenge posture, wondering if this meant he was suicidal, brave, or both, Caine shouted: “HEEYYY! SHIT-HEAD!”

    The Pavonosaur answered with a painfully high-pitched screech and came streaming over the ground, bent low and forward as it sprinted toward him.

    Caine leaned low into the sights and fired one, two, three rounds –

    The third clipped the Pavonosaur in the shoulder; it came more quickly, if that were possible, without a single waver in its stride.

    Caine was about to start hammering out the rest of the clip but saw a change in the creature’s gait. It was slowing — but not because it was hurt, or reconsidering its charge: it was preparing to gather its legs under it to jump up on the rock that Caine had slept upon.

    Wait: right before it jumps — was an instinct more than a thought. Fortunate, because the Pavonosaur was quicker than human cognition. Even as Caine was realizing that the creature was going to give him a split-second opportunity to fire at a stationary target, the monster had half-contracted into its preparatory crouch.

    Caine saw the torso rise into his sights; he fired three fast rounds. He rode the recoil of the last back down and kept firing, steady and sustained, about one round every second.

    At least two of the first three hit: the Pavonosaur stopped just as it was about to uncoil upwards into its leap, tried to recover, caught another round square in the center of its chest. That produced a dark coppery-purple stain and a screech that was equal parts shock, pain, and indignation. It tried to reset for its jump, but Caine’s steady volume of fire kept the monster from regaining the initiative. Two rounds went wide or high: two more hit its torso — and the animal staggered back, either unaccustomed, or completely unadapted, to a flight reflex.

    That moment of delay was the fateful — and fatal — moment in its attack. Caine’s bullets now hit regularly. More purple spattered outward, this time lower in the belly. Then a thin, pulsing spray — brighter and more coppery — at the base of the neck. Two more hits and the Pavonosaur slumped over with a crash that Caine could feel through the rock under his knees.

    Caine breathed, was ready to indulge in a relieved forward sag — and realized that he had, at most, three rounds left in the clip. And if they hunt in pairs –

    He was on his feet, right index finger pushing forward against the magazine release as his left hand tore open the cover of an ammo pouch and tugged out a fresh magazine. As the expended clip clattered at his feet, he brought the other up into the receiver, wrestled briefly to get it seated correctly, and then gave its bottom a sharp upwards slap. A crisp snap announced it was ready. Caine retrained the rifle on the bush that had vomited out the Pavonosaur: nothing.

    Movement to the left — slow, silent — caught his attention: the biped? Still there?

    He turned his head, careful not to have the barrel of the gun track along with his gaze.

    The biped was still there — possibly staring back at him. Caine couldn’t tell because he couldn’t see anything that looked like eyes. A smallish and tightly-furred head — shaped like an edge-on tetrahedron — topped an improbably long neck that swayed slightly back and forth like that of an ostrich: that had been the motion Caine had noticed. The body, also closely furred, was akin to a wasp-waisted gibbon with comically long limbs and oddly-flanged hip joints. A knee-length, bifurcated tail flexed once, restively — and then each half pursued its own, independent prehensile coilings and unfurlings.

    Now what? Want a nice banana, monkey? Take me to your leader? Let’s pretend this never happened?

    Caine decided not to move, not to speak. Anything could be misunderstood — except what he was doing now. And with all animals — whether intelligent or not — the best outcome for any first encounter is not a breakthrough in communication, or peace-offerings, or an exchange of phone numbers: it can simply be measured by duration. The longer it is, the better it is — and the more likely that neither party will consider a second contact aversive.

    So Caine stood and looked at the biped, which was evidently doing something similar in return. Caine started counting: one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand…

    At “thirty,” the gangly gibbon-with-double-coati-tail was still there, scratching at one — thigh? — with half of his tail. Evidently, this degree of relief was insufficient; he/she/it reached out a hand — or paw, or something — that seemed to writhe at, rather than scratch, the troublesome spot.

    Oh, well, if we’ve become comfortable enough for actual movement — Caine shifted the gun, looked down to check the time — and noted rapid motion from the corner of his eye.

    The biped seemed to speed sideways into the bush, as though it had turned its hips without turning its torso, or had somehow rotated its legs at the hip. Either way, it was gone before Caine could blink.

    Evidently, the biped’s prior decision to engage in unconstrained movement had not indicated a willingness to tolerate the same from Caine. Instead, the creature had reserved the exclusive right to run like hell at the faintest hint of action from the newcomer. Which was a perfectly reasonable choice, Caine reflected: had anyone taken a picture of him during his motionless half minute, they might well have titled the image, “Still Life of Human with Assault Rifle.” After what the local had seen that weapon do to a Pavonosaur, he/she/it had every reason to err on the side of extreme caution.

    Local. I’m calling it a “local.” The assumption of intelligence — that’s a big step. But was it? Bipedal posture, opposable manipulatory digits, a voluntary return to danger in the hope of — what? — luring the Pavonosaur away from the hapless stranger? Or was it all on a par with African mountain gorillas — behaviors that mimicked, yet were not really indicative of, intelligence? One way to find out.

    Caine moved off the rock slowly — both watchful for other predators and determined not to make any sudden motions that an unseen observer might find unsettling — and walked over to where the biped had stood. A quick scan revealed nothing. Caine followed the creature’s exit trajectory into the bush and again saw nothing — except a large, recently snapped frond stem. Caine frowned: odd. The creature seemed so adept at moving in the forests, it was hard to believe that it would have been so clumsy as to break –

    No. That wasn’t what had happened.

    Caine darted into the bush, scanning quickly — and five meters further on, found another freshly snapped tuber. No other damage to the foliage was evident: not a leaf turned back, not a weed crumpled underfoot. Nothing except the freshly exposed pith of the tuber, gleaming like a white trail-blaze. Which is exactly what the local was doing: leaving a trail.

    Caine looked into the forest: yes, they were locals.