Fourteen
Zhondro and I finished our checklists, and had everything stowed on the C-lift, by midmorning. Cutler wanted to leave Eden for the Line immediately, and drive all night. Kit recommended that, once we cleared Eden’s Triple-A umbrella, we only drive during daylight.
The Abrams, with the C-lift in tow, made eighty miles outside the city limits of Eden along the dirt single track road that led out to Kit Born’s Line section. That put us twenty miles south of Kit’s Line camp, and would give us plenty of daylight the following day in which to travel the remaining distance.
At fifteen minutes before End of Evening Nautical Twilight, we laagered for the night.
The fifteen minutes allowed for the four of us to exit the Abrams, button it up, then get buttoned up inside the Sleeper before full dark. We had electrified nets to set out, but Kit told us not to bother. The good news about the hours of darkness on Dead End was that the gorts didn’t fly at night. The bad news was that the reason they didn’t was that night on Dead End was too dangerous for them.
To Cutler, the Sleeper was ‘‘a Boy Scout camp in an armored box, and a damned cramped one.’’ To a Yavi like me, the Sleeper was a capacious and luxurious portable apartment for four, though Zhondro prayed to his God for dispensation to bunk stacked four-high, separated from a woman not his wife only by a forearm’s length and a thin foam hammock.
Evidently Zhondro’s God returned calls promptly, because thirty minutes after we four finished dinner, he lay snoring in his bunk.
Kit and I sat facing Cutler across the Sleeper’s fold-down dining table while we sipped coffee, ours from thermcups, his from private stock he had brought along. Outside, something—several somethings—snorted, then thumped the armor plate hard enough that my coffee sloshed. Cutler’s eyes widened. I suppose mine did, too.
Kit waved her hand as she shook her head. ‘‘Woogs. Closest thing to grazing vegetarians on Dead End. They actually eat plant matter, which doesn’t nourish any animal on Dead End. It’s the insects inside that actually nourish the woogs. But that means they move and eat all day and all night, every day and every night, to process enough fodder to survive. A mature female weighs six tons. Think your electric fence would have bothered them, Parker?’’
Another woog bellowed as it brushed the Sleeper.
I steadied myself with a hand against the wall. ‘‘Something’s bothering them.’’
Kit shrugged. ‘‘Would it bother you to crap a pound of sand every time you ate a raisin?’’
Cutler asked, ‘‘How long will this go on?’’
‘‘All night, probably. Herds average twenty thousand inside the Line. Two predator species eat woogs. Grezzen, and stripers, which are kind of six-legged tyrannosaurs. If there’s a grezzen around, the stripers look for smaller prey. Beyond the Line, there’s no doubt about who’s the species-in-charge.’’
Cutler paused. He cupped his chin in his hand, stared at her, and asked, ‘‘Why do you think the grezzen have been so dominant for so long?’’
She shrugged, stared down into her cup. ‘‘Speed. Power. Size. Durability.’’
Cutler asked, ‘‘You think it’s that simple?’’
She shrugged again. ‘‘Why not? Grezz are perfectly adapted to an ecosystem that’s been static for thirty million years. On Earth, sharks have succeeded for even longer.’’
Cutler asked, ‘‘But these robot bombs have upset their applecart. Why do you think that is?’’
Kit shifted in her chair, then stared at Cutler. ‘‘Why do you think the grezz have done so well?’’
It was Cutler’s turn to shrug and stare into his cup. ‘‘I suppose you’re right.’’
Zhondro mumbled in his sleep.
Cutler stretched, then exercised his droit du seigneur and claimed first dibs on the sanex.
After Cutler was gone, I turned to Kit. ‘‘If either of you actually believed what you were saying just then, I’m a duck.’’
Kit just stared at me. Then Zhondro muttered in his sleep again, louder. Our company medic had said that Tassini did it because they smoked janga, which superanimated their dreams. Whatever. They all talked in their sleep.
The same night breeze that carried wobblehead stink up the dune to me also carried sleepy female murmurs. One woman seemed to yelp in her sleep, and the kid with his nightshirt pulled up looked away from his business in response.
Third Platoon’s engines were in whispermode, softer than cat farts, and the wind blew toward us. But at that moment, Red Four, jockeying forward to come on line with the other four tanks, poked its prow beyond the military crest of the dune.
The kid below leaned toward us. Maybe he couldn’t hear us, but he could see Red Four. The thermal’s magnified image showed his mouth open as he stared up in the dark. He couldn’t see us as clearly as I saw him, but he saw enough. He turned, then ran back to the tents, shouting and pointing back and up at us.
My gunner reached across the turret and tapped my bicep. ‘‘Jazen, they may not be combatants, but they’re sure as hell combatant dependents. They got a radio down there tied in to their tank column. If you don’t take the shot right now—’’
Bam.
In the Sleeper, Cutler banged open the sanex door, yawned, and rolled into his bunk. He waved the lights low, pulled out his Reader, and lay bathed in its glow, absorbing bed-time stories.
Kit sidestepped past him, then closed the sanex door behind her.
Somewhere distant, something very large and un-wooglike bellowed so loudly that the Sleeper’s wall armor vibrated. Then the ground beneath the Sleeper shook, as thousands of woogs stampeded in response.
In his bunk, Zhondro thrashed beneath his sheet, muttering in Tassini.
Kit slipped out of the sanex like a shadow in the dimmed light, visible for a blink wearing thoroughly utilitarian skivvies that on her looked anything but. She vaulted herself into the rack just below the one that would be mine, like a silent gymnast, and vanished beneath the sheets.
As Cutler lay on his back in his bunk, studying his Reader, he said to me, ‘‘Big day tomorrow, Parker. Sleep well.’’
Fat chance.