The Leagacy of Heorot

Alarms went off all over the stronghold. Up at the house the dogs snarled and bayed. Cadma

Terry felt great. Adrenaline flowed. A year of calm, two years, and we'd have rebuilt all the hospital stuff. I'd have new legs. And a working prick.

Downstream the water parted in strange places, new ripples and eddies where there weren't any before.

His comcard buzzed.

"Terry. Stay still. Maybe they won't notice you." Joe Sikes was trying to talk like Cadma

"Not if I can shoot something."

They weren't just eddies in the Amazon now. They were dark shapes, dark shapes coming upstream. I called them. General Weyland, sir, we've lured the enemy within range.

"Terry!"

There were shapes on both sides of him now. "I'm cut off. Watch out for the little stream! They'll be in your living room!"

"Terry, hold on, we'll get someone down there."

Someone. There's only one someone who'd come here, now. "Don't. You're about to be up to your neck in grendels, you idiot!" Terry turned and faced up the small stream. His spine was barely that flexible above his immobile legs. He fired toward the house. Something exploded from the water. Another shape shot forward and grabbed it. There was gunfire from the veranda.

He turned back to the Amazon. "There's a lot of them. In the Amazon, and up on both sides of it. You are infested!"

"Any on speed?"

Cadma

"I see shadows," Terry reported. "The ones you can't see, they're not on speed. Fifty, and that's just near the house."

"We're sending up the Skeeter. Look, Terry—"

"I've figured it out, Cadma

The grendel jumped at the impact. It was instantly on speed, charging from the water. The rest charged after it, tore it apart, and, shying from each other, lowed pieces of their sibling back into the stream. The water foamed red. Terry snarled to himself, at himself. Then he took out the card again. "About forty left the water. Some are fighting, some are coming your way. Do you hear?"

"I hear," Joe Sikes said.

"Good." Quite deliberately, he bent his comcard in half, destroying it. Never liked the damn things. Whatever happened to solitude?

Gunfire from above. Off to the side more grendels, grendels on speed, grendels blurring over the lip of the bluff. More shadows in the water, lying low, avoiding each other. And two grendels in line coming upriver toward him. One looked up. Its eyes met his. Then it moved.

A gray-brown dust plume whizzed over the rocks, headed directly for him. Terry squeezed off one shot, a second, with no effect. He threw the change lever over to full automatic and held the trigger down. Shots rippled out. The barrel heated. The grendel leaped straight into the air, blood streaming from its back and shoulders. Two others snapped at it, then began rushing in frantic circles. Others came up the stream.

Terry aimed and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He checked the breech. Empty.

Quite calmly, he searched his pockets. There were no more clips, but it was always best to be sure.

More grendels below him now. They fought. Fighting to see who gets me. He wished there were some way to disappoint them. He wished he'd asked them to patch him through to Geographic, to Sylvia, before it was too late. But they'd said everything there was to say.

He wished he could see Justin again, but at least the child was safe.

One of the grendels had won the battle below.

It moved up the rock. Terry didn't want to look at it. He turned to look toward the house. Skeeter One was rising from behind the house.

The Skeeter floated downslope. Stu kept it low enough to gain some advantage from the ground effect. He had only a quarter charge, and when that was gone they'd be down there with the grendels.

Mits was behind him, sitting on one of the tanks of speed soup. He said, "When you give the word."

"Hold off."

"Lots of grendels below."

Stu could see that. Thirty or forty grendels on speed were streaking out of the water, snapping at the corpses of grendels already dead, snapping at each other, circling back to the stream. Several clustered around a white rock: Terry must be dead already. A few slow ones crawled upslope at their leisure, following the scent of men and cattle.

He said, "Keep your head, Mits. We don't want grendels going on speed near the house. We want them on speed down there, where they'll burn themselves out."

"Yeah. Sorry. The goddamned stream is seething with them. I would have bet anything it was too small for that."

"Really? Anything?"

"... No. O-o-oh, Lord."

Stu looked back. Grendels were into the minefield now. He could see the explosions—and a line of grendels tracing the zigzag that marked the safe path. Following the markers. Following the smell left by men's shoes.

The house receded. The water was growing denser with grendels. A few must have followed the taste of human garbage in the water, but the rest had followed garbage and grendel blood too: the taste of territory to be taken.

They were almost halfway to the drop-off. "Now," said Stu.

He didn't have to look. The stink told him: Mits had the stopcock open and was spraying along the river. The Skeeter blades scattered the stuff; it must be falling over a path a hundred meters wide.

And every speed sac they'd put through the blender had been quite flat. Grendels used up their speed when they were dying. That mist must be as thin as hope.

Grendels surged from the water. It worked beautifully! Half the grendels were murdering the other half! No, not quite. But the flying was easy, and Stu freed one hand to touch his comcard.

"Anyone there?"

"We're kind of busy," said Joe Sikes. "They're coming through the fucking mine field."

"I'm halfway down to the bluff. We're spraying. The grendels are all on speed. This stuff is magic. I'd say only about half of them are reacting to it, but they set the others off. We're going to lose about two thirds of them in an orgy of murder."

"Good news."

"Bad news is, about a third of them are just ru

"I read you. A hundred and fifty coming."

"We're getting close to the drop-off and... the batteries read dead. I think—"

Mits called from aft. "I've got the other tank in place. It's ru

"Sure is. Joe, we'll stay up as long as we can and then try to get away from the stream."

"I copy. You think the Skeeter cabin will hold?"

"Sure."

"That's a relief." Trace of sarcasm there? "Stu, Mits... ah... on behalf of all of us and world civilization, I want to express our thanks."

"Don't be pompous, Joe. Save it for the victory speeches."

Joe shouted something incoherent. Then there was only the popcorn sound of gunfire, and not enough of that, and it was dwindling.

Grendels seethed in an orgy of murder. Some of the warier grendels had sprinted away from the water before the spray reached them. At a good, safe distance from the battle, far from the stream, they watched the Skeeter. More and more of them, left and right of the river, watched Stu in the Skeeter cockpit.

The batteries had to be on their last gasp. Stu veered left, away from the stream, and angled uphill too. Grendels that had been watching were suddenly in the spray pattern. Stu gri