Страница 44 из 130
I was buried in such bodies. I yelled out for horror, bruised, aghast at the writhing under and over me as I became flotsam in that alien tide. “My lady!” I cried, and heard someone cry out in great pain—O Percy! I thought then, with his arm already torn; and where my comrades were in this or where my lady was I could not see. Even the light was cut off, as a body pressed over my faceplate, and then my com went out, so that I had only my own voice inside my helmet, and the murmuring rush from outside.
Then the mass above flowed off me, and I saw light—saw—the giants passing near, next in the alien ranks. One almost trod on me, indifferent, and I clawed my way aside, scrambled atop that heaving mass of dragon-shapes, tumbled then, borne toward the Maid’s gaping lock. I remembered the com control on my chest, pressed the button and had sound again, Lance’s deep voice calling out a warning: “Look out!”
And oh—the giants were not the worst, them with their broad violet bodies like gnarled trees come to life—There was a shape that shuffled along as if it herded them all, a lumpish thing larger even than they, and puffed with delicate veined bladders about its face, its—I could not see that it had limbs in its fluttering membranous folds. It seemed brown; but the membranes shaded off to greens, to—blues about its center and golds about its extremities. It rippled as it moved. There was a wholeness and power about it that—in all its horror—was symmetry.
I saw one of us gain his feet, sword in both his hands. It was Lance: I heard his voice calling after help even while he swung at it to drive it off. Its membranes fluttered with the cuts. I scrambled over bodies to gain my feet; I saw another of us closer, trying to help; but it came on, and on—just spread itself wider and gathered Lance in sword and all; and that other, who must be Gawain—it got him too, and it kept coming, at me. I couldn’t find my spear; but of a sudden my feet met bare decking, the serpents all fled as the fleshy webs spread about me, all dusky now: more limbs/segments—I saw the floods glow like murky suns through the folds as it swept about me. I felt—horror—muscle within those folds, a solid center. I heard one of my friends cry out; I heard someone curse.
And it spoketo us—our Beast: it was nothing else but that. It rumbled deep within and moaned and ticked at us, a sound that quivered through my frame until it was beyond bearing. I yelled back at it— Iscreamed at it, till my throat hurt and my voice broke. I heard nothing. The sound pierced my teeth and marrow, too deep for hearing.
I hit the flooring on my back suddenly, which for all my lifesupport and padding hardly more than jolted me. The veil of its limbs swept on, the sound was gone, and it passed, leaving me lying amid the litter of our weapons. I flailed about getting over on my knees so that I could begin to get up. I heard Viv making a strange lost sound, but she was there. And my lady—“Lady Dela,” I called, trying to reach her to help; but Lance was first, pulling her to her feet. A hand helped me, and steadied me, and that was Gawain. Percy—I looked about, and he was on his feet, with Lynette. I found my spear, or someone’s, and gathered it up. Our Beast lumbered on, into the Maid’s open airlock, as all the rest had done, leaving us alone.
“Modred,” Gawain cried, and he would have gone after, but Lance caught his arm. And Lynette:
“My lady,” she said then, and pointed with her sword the way toward the machine, the way down the passage, that we had hoped to go.
And there amid the smokes stood another rank of giants, no less than the first.
Dela swayed on her feet. The weight we all carried seemed suddenly too much for her. “We’ve lost,” she said. “Haven’t we?” And slowly she turned toward us. I couldn’t see her face: our faceplates only reflected each other, featureless. “Percivale,” she said, “is the arm broken?”
“My lady,” he said, “I think it is.”
She was silent for a moment. “So we’ve nowhere to go.”
She bent down. I thought she meant to sit down. But she picked up a spear from off the ground and stood up and faced toward the giants.
So did we all then. It was that simple. It occurred to me finally that my knees hurt and I was bruised and sore from that battering, when my heart had settled down, when the minutes wore on. One of us sat down, slow settling to the deck. We looked; and that was Viv, sitting there, but not blanked ... “Vivien,” my lady asked, “are you all right?”
“Yes, lady,” Viv said, a small thin voice. She was with us. She had her spear in both her hands. She was just never very strong, except in will. She wanted to live. She fought for that, perhaps. Perhaps it was something less noble. With Vivien I never knew.
But she was there.
It was a strange thing, that none of the rest of us sat down, when it was so much more reasonable to do. When giving up, I suppose, was reasonable. But getting up took so long a time, and we had seen how fast the enemy could move. Besides—besides, there was a sense in us that it was not a thing to do, facing this thing. My hands clenched tight about the spear and while I had no strength to go charging at them, I wished they would come on so that I could do something with this frustration that was boiling in me ... in me, who could feel such a thing.
We should have the ba
But we had nothing. We had no faces to them; and they had none for us, standing like a wall of trees.
And silent.
“Ah!”Vivien cried, a sudden gasp of horror from behind us. I jerked about, nextmost to her—a serpent was among us, loping from out the lock. Vivien hurled herself aside from it, and I did, thoroughly startled; but as I turned to see it pass, Gawain hit it with his sword. It writhed aside and scuttled through with all its speed, evading Lance and my lady and Lynette, ru
“A messenger,” Dela said. “We should have stopped it.”
“My lady— ”A faint voice, static-riddled.
“Modred,” Dela exclaimed. “Modred, we hear you.”
“It ... inside ... the tubes ... I don’t ...”
“Modred?”
“... broken through ...”
“Modred.”
“... tried ...”
And then static overwhelmed the voice.
“I think,” said Lynette, “that’s a suit com.”
“Modred,” Dela said, “keep talking.”
But we got nothing but static back.
“If he’s still near controls,” Percy said, his voice very thin and strained, “he may be communicating with the other side.”
I cast an encumbered look toward the line of giants, fearing thatcoming at our backs. “My lady,” I said, “they’re closer.”
Others looked as I looked back; and then—”The lock!” Percy exclaimed.
It was back, our Beast. It filled the doorway, having to deflate some of its bladders to pass the door; and in leathery limbs like an animal’s limbs it had something white clutched against it and buried in its membranes.
“Modred,” Dela exclaimed in horror.
He looked dead, crushed and still. And the bladders inflated again, in all their murky shades of blue, taking him from view. But then the limbs unfolded and it squatted and let him to the decking, a sprawl of a white-suited figure out of that dreadful alien shape. It spoke to us, a loud rumbling that vibrated from the deck into our bones; and oh, what it was to be held inside it when it spoke, with the sound shaking brain and marrow. It stood over Modred, partly covering him with its membranes. It quivered and rumbled and wailed and ticked, and Lance came at it, not really an attack, but making it know he would. I moved, and the others did; and the giants were a shadow very close to us, coming at our side.