The skalkit that was attacking him bellowed and charged. Denton was not afraid, but he was a little disconcerted by its speed. He dodged away, but he was not fast enough and the thing got ahold of his left arm. The teeth burrowed into his flesh and it hurt, but mostly he was just annoyed that it had gotten him. He brought up the knife in his right hand and plunged it again and again into the skalkit’s head.
Most of the blows glanced off the thick skull and teeth. But the skin was cut and ran blood, and the skalkit was surprised by the resistance. It yelped and almost let go. Then it seemed to remember that it was big and Denton very small, and it dug into his arm again with grinding intensity.
It freaking hurt. He was eye to eye with the thing and its huge head was ugly and smelly and meaty. A wicked eye glared at him, blindly, cold as the bowels of space, grinding, applying pressure deliberately, about to break his arm.
Denton screamed, full on, leaning into the skalkit’s face. Then he plunged the knife into the creature’s eye, not once, but over and over, even as the thing let go, howling in pain, even as it tried to get away.
He grabbed onto its neck with his bitten and bleeding arm as it raised its head, unwilling to let it escape. It lifted his feet off the ground and still he hung on. Still he plunged the knife into the bloody, gaping eye socket.
The skalkit shook its head, hard, trying to shake him loose. He clung tighter. The other eye was rolling and he went for that one, too, taking it out with one hard thrust.
And then the thing whipped him loose.
He landed on the ground again with bruising force. His bitten arm sent shock waves of pain up his shoulder, but he pushed it aside. Nothing was seriously injured. He could still use the arm and he would.
The skalkit was staggering around the clearing, both eyes out, blood streaming down. It was letting out blood-curdling sounds and, not far away, the Sapphians had to be hearing it. Denton was glad. He stood up, the adrenaline pumping through him. Eyanna came to him and hugged him. He could see on her face that something had changed for her, too. She pulled on his arm, wanting to go to the boy, ready to leave.
But he was not ready to let go of it yet. This was the finest moment of his life, damn it, and he would ride it to the end.
“One minute, Eyanna.”
He picked up his knife from where it had fallen when he’d been thrown and headed for the blinded skalkit.
The boy revived and, beyond cuts and bruises and a bit of trauma, was basically all right. They left him at the clearing to wait for them, and Denton and Eyanna walked into the gorge. Denton carried a heavy load from his good hand.
They saw several Sapphians through the trees as they approached. They quickly disappeared again, faces aghast. But by the time Denton and Eyanna reached the main circle, word had spread and the entire village was huddled there in a tight, silent mass.
Denton and Eyanna stepped into the clearing. They crossed to the central fire. The Sapphians, their eyes huge, backed away.
Denton cast the head of the skalkit in front of the bonfire. He was still covered with blood, as Eyanna was. He wanted them to see it.
“This is a skalkit. This is the terrible death you send your sons and daughters to every week. I thought you should know.”
No one said a word. Some of the Sapphians looked away, at the woods, and the sky, anything.
“And we’re taking Eyanna’s children.”
They were there, in the crowd, clinging to two Sapphian females. Eyanna approached them with a mixture of eagerness and anxiety. Denton knew the girls might be frightened and not want to go. But Eyanna spoke to them softly, kneeling, and within a few minutes she had gotten them to transfer their clinging arms to her. She stood, holding the two of them, one against each shoulder.
Denton looked around at the Sapphians one last time. He saw anger in a few eyes, anger at him. He smiled. “Let’s go, Eyanna. This is a terrible place.”
He took the youngest child from her and together they walked away from Sapphia.
20.3. Seventy-Thirty Jill Talcott
The alien got into an air car that was parked outside the antenna field and Jill got in as well, her butt poised half in and half out of the narrow seat. As with the elevator, there was hardly any sense of lift. The car glided through the buildings like a whisper of air. Jill watched the streets carefully and only realized after a moment that she was looking for Nate. She didn’t see him, but there was no reason that she should. He was probably not in this section of the City at all.
“What do I call you?” she asked, trying to establish some kind of personal contact.
“My designation does not translate. If you find it necessary to address me, you may use ‘Cargha.’ ”
“Cargha. My name is Jill Talcott.”
“Yes. I do not find any sense to your name in your language.”
“It’s just a name. What do you call this planet?”
“Difa-Gor-Das.”
He glided the car smoothly to a landing. It was difficult for Jill to judge how far they had come, though she had been paying attention. The City was so mindlessly the same and the air car’s speed so much faster than she was accustomed to.
She followed Cargha into a tall building and onto the elevator, which they rode up a dozen floors. They exited into a large room filled with computers and enormous box-shaped machines.
“Are these storage units?” Jill guessed, crossing to one of them.
“Yes. It is the insulation that makes them large. These units are protected against high degrees of radiation. That one stores ten billion data files.”
He sat down at a computer, his fingers flowing over the screen. The screen’s data changed so rapidly Jill couldn’t catch a word of it. He looked as if he were conducting music. His expression was glazed.
Jill pulled a seat closer and sat down. Although it still made her uneasy to be physically close to such a strange being, she was determined to watch him operate the computer. “What are you doing?”
“We estimate that it will be only an additional three-point-four centuries before the planet is completely depopulated. The legacy must be ready by then, so I have no time to waste, even though statistically I will be among the last survivors. That was why I was chosen for this office.”
“I see.”
Jill found it disturbing how calmly Cargha accepted his species’ demise. In fact, now that he was back at work—his fingers flew while he conversed—Cargha seemed willing, even eager, to talk about it.
“Statistically, it is probable that proper recipients will arrive to retrieve the legacy within one million years. However, the legacy will be fully protected for twice that long, two-point-two million years. The chance that proper recipients will find it in that time is ninety-three percent. We are comfortable with that percentile. To get to one hundred percent we would have to protect the legacy for twenty-point-six million years, a time frame outside our capability.”
“Even so—two million years! What exactly is in the legacy? Do you have any great masterpieces? Or maybe books by great scientists?”
Cargha contemplated this while his fingers never hesitated. His head tilted to one side as if searching through her mental concepts to find something he could relate to. “I do not understand.”
“We have great works of art, for example, paintings of famous historical battles or portraits…”
This was getting no response.
“Okay, what about books? For example, we had a scientist named Charles Darwin who wrote a famous book on the evolution of species. Surely you have similar works. Maybe on wave technology?” she added hopefully.