Chapter 21

THE ROUNDUP

Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.

FRANCIS BACON, "Of Nature in Men," Essays

Justin sometimes felt as if he were tap-dancing through a minefield when he talked with Jessica. There were subjects that were simply taboo:

Her relationship with Aaron. Her relationship with Cadmann. Her relationship with Justin.

Ouch.

Katya had come over with a plate of beans. She pinched him again.

He let his pensive mood fade. "Hi, Kat."

She bowed, and sat next to him. Her flannel shirt rubbed against his shoulder. Tau Ceti was particularly fierce, and the distant mountains wavered in the heat.

But this was safe—at least from grendels. Their distance from water guaranteed that. Whatever other dangers lurked out there... well, that was another question.

He drew a little horseshoe in the dust with his toe. "All right," he said. "Twenty-five klicks west. Jungle starts there, but it's mostly fed by underground streams. The closest surface water is still eight kilometers distant. Lots of slow moving ground animals, so we figure it's a grendel-free zone. We're going to find the spider devils. The question is the proper means of capture. Any suggestions?"

All three of them stared at the crude map for a few minutes, then shook their heads.

Little Chaka strolled over. He looked larger than life, and dusty, and extremely happy. No question why! In the last month he had begun the generations-long process of categorizing the life forms on the mainland, shipping samples back to Camelot a dirigible-load at a time. A labor of love, the beginning of a life's work.

He said, "Father has some ideas about the spider devils. The first thing is... we're going to have to lose one of the piglets... "

"Ahhh."

"And I was just getting attached to the ugly little bastards," Justin said.

"Well, go find the ugliest one and say your good-byes. By this time tomorrow, it will be an ex-piglet."

Jessica bounced up to plant a kiss on his cheek. "Rest time is over.

Let's go and take a look at this."

"They're up there," Chaka said.

The sound sensors picked up the web spinners as they chattered to each other. Jessica, Justin, and Chaka were eighty meters to the east, as close as they could get without scaring the creatures away. It was plenty close enough to let them pick up the chittering and constant, oddly sensual singing.

"All right," Chaka whispered. "Let the piglet go."

The snouter looked confused. It carried enough tranquilizer in its belly to stupefy a battalion of grendels; but the membrane holding the toxin had not ruptured. It also wore a collar of Chaka's design. A needle ran from it into an extremely sensitive cluster of nerve endings in its snout.

When the cage door lifted, the snouter sniffed freedom and set off running. It got five steps when the first jolt of pain clobbered it. It flopped over onto its side, and wobbled back up as if it couldn't quite believe what had happened to it. It tried running north again, and got another shock.

Down it went.

"Meanie," Jessica whispered.

"That's me," Chaka agreed heartily.

The snouter turned and ran south. It got another eight paces before Chaka zapped it again. It fell over as if pole-axed.

Now one very confused little snouter, this time it tried to walk west, toward the trees. It got six paces, and then stopped—sniffed as if asking the air a question.

"That's the direction," Chaka agreed. "Nice snouter." If it hared off line, he zapped it, but softer this time, and it began going right where they wanted it.

It stopped just short of the trees.

"He's making visual contact with the spiders," he said. "Or vice versa. And there goes the music." It was louder now, and pitched lower, almost echoing the snouter's snorts.

"What do you think?" Justin asked. "If an animal is raised or nurtured by its parents, what are the chances that it is conditioned to respond to something that sounds like its mommy's voice?"

"The spiders are singing it a lullaby," Jessica laughed.

"How quaint."

The snouter hardly needed prompting. Dazed, it wandered into the forest one halting step at a time. It stopped to nibble on something green, then took another couple of steps, and trotted happily into the forest.

Justin's war specs automatically followed the creature until it was swallowed by trees.

"They'll be focused on the kill," he said quietly. "Let's get a little closer."

The brush had a jungle flavor to it, fan-shaped trees and spiky bushes, a dense tangle of greens and yellows. They crawled forward to a new position, where they could see through the tangle of brush. Justin suddenly heard a snort of pain and betrayal, of sudden, massive fear.

The snouter was caught in a web. It was thrashing and twisting frantically, to no avail at all.

Justin focused in. The strands were green and white, and apparently quite strong. The snouter made a frantic, heroic effort and almost tore itself free before something dropped on it from above. Something broad and fibrous: a net, or a coarser version of the web.

Helpless now, it rolled over onto its side and quivered.

They moved in from the shadows. One, two, three, four, five... six black stick figures. Justin had wondered if they would be yet another Avalon crab, but they weren't. In motion the web spinners did look like great spiders, with small torsos, tiny heads, and four long, long limbs.

"Perfect," Chaka said.

The things were closer now, and the snouter had ceased struggling. They sang, and the song was hypnotic, in perfect tune with the snouter's own sounds. Calming. Dreamlike. Almost anesthetic.

"Jesus," Jessica said. "Kill it, will you?"

Chaka laughed. "You have no sense of drama. Cassandra. Trigger the implant."

The snouter heaved once, massively, crashed back down, and was utterly still.

The largest spider devil came a little closer, probing. It didn't seem to like the sudden stillness, but the nearness of fresh meat was too much for it. It descended, sank fangs, and went to work. The others followed, and the scene turned into a general feast. An entire colony of the spider devils was home for dinner.

After five minutes, Chaka stood. "Let's go," he said. "Motion sensors?"

"Nothing larger than ten kilos. No sudden shifts in wind."

"All right. Let's go."

Rifles at the ready, they entered the forest in a modified wing formation.

Spongy loam underfoot. Smells of camphor and lemon. Everything seemed to smell more vibrant than the colors that exploded around them. The forest canopy wasn't particularly high here, but every tree limb was ripe and heavy with leaves, and vines, and fruit... or things that looked like fruit.

Just out of Justin's reach hung something purple and bulbous, like a cluster of fused grapes, or a blackberry. He reached out and prodded it with the tip of his rifle, and it dissolved into a colony of marble-sized purple leggy things that swarmed up the branch to re-form a few feet farther away.

He wondered what would have happened if he had touched it with his naked hand.

That wouldn't be possible right now. They wore lightweight membrane suits that covered their entire bodies with a thin, tough barrier impenetrable to all but the most determined attacker. An entirely reasonable precaution: Chaka had already categorized at least twelve deadly plants and identified three toxic species. Small things, with a biotoxin about a dozen times stronger than a wasp. Not lethal to an adult, they would still grant a few days of truly memorable sensation.

A couple of lizard-like things perched on branches. Unclassified.