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.There were creatures that looked reptilian—nothing too large, but several packs of animals that momentarily darkened the plain, then broke and ran at tile first touch of Robor’s shadow.Here, the brush thickened to jungle density.Her heart leapt.There had been virtually no exploration of the mainland forests.Almost no categorization of flora or fauna.Little mapping, save by satellite.Except for territory immediately surrounding the mining concerns, there had been precious little of anything.And now.a lot of that was going to change.Lunch came and went before they caught sight of their destination.It emerged from a smoky haze, mist so thick it was almost like volcanic ash.The mountain was bare and weathered, curved and hollowed, spotted here and there with patches of green until it resembled a mossy skull.Pterodons arced gracefully through the heights: a touch of something familiar, thank God.Jessica’s hands moved by themselves, checking her rucksack, as she gazed out.This land, this whole land, was theirs for the taking.It seemed that Aaron was reading her mind.“They don’t want it,” he said, shaking his head as if in amazement.His strong, sure fingers dug into her shoulders.It hurt, just a little bit.That was like Aaron.He hurt, a little.It was difficult for him to remember just how strong he was.So strong, so smart.so sure of himself.It was no wonder that she was in love with him.His air of remoteness only increased the temptation, and the value of the prize.The burr of the skeeter engines grew throaty.The floor vibrated beneath her feet as Robor took an eastern heading, sliding along a table of mountains.It was the warm season, and everything was green and brown and yellow-blue.Later in the year, there would be snow.Farther inland there were higher ranges, but here, barely two hundred miles from the coast, was a rich supply of ore.Robor passed over the first mining camp.Jessica wandered up to the control center, where Linda and Joe were reviewing telemetric reports from the site.“Anything new?” she asked.She ducked her head to fit into the low-ceilinged room.She watched the computers and screens as Linda pored over them, completely absorbed.“Ah.nothing.Everything is just fine.We’ll be at the site in less than an hour.Check there first, and then we can look back and check the others.”“Any additional information?”“Not sabotage.”“Why?” she asked, trying to keep the relief from her voice.“The vibration signature.It’s more like black powder than any of our standard blasting compounds.If somebody was going to booby-trap our mining equipment, they wouldn’t use some kind of unstable low-yield compound.They’d use something concentrated, neat, reliable.That’s what I’m thinking.This is just weird.”Jessica laid a hand on her shoulder.“Oh well.You’ll have your chance to inspect things close up in.““Thirty-seven minutes,” Linda said.“Then we’re over Grendel Valley.Aaron should be thrilled.”Chapter 8THE GRENDEL GODGod answers sharp and sudden on some prayers, And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face, A gauntlet with a gift in ‘t.ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, Aurora LeighOld Grendel was hunting.She lay covered in mud under a mash of water and rotting vegetation.The river lay almost half a mile behind her, but the ground was soft.She’d burrowed her way up from the river over many days, clawing through the dirt, allowing the water to follow her.And here, so far from moving water that her prey must consider themselves safe, she waited.One was nearby.Large enough to last for three days, becoming truly sweet only on the last day.A snouted thing with hoofs and big ears and large eyes.The snout quested about, testing.Ah, gently, gently.If the wind shifted in the wrong direction, then Snouter would scent, and Snouter was fast enough to lead a merry chase.But not fast enough to evade Old Grendel, no, not even in these days of sluggish blood, of slow heats and rapid cooling.Old Grendel still had speed.Old Grendel had murky memories of her youth, when she had first emerged from the water, a dim-brained beast, before a sickness caught in the high water had opened her eyes.To the degree that she was capable of such things, she felt an almost reverential awe toward those high waters.Something there made her itch, made her head hurt until she thought she would die of the pain.She could do little but wallow in her agony, unable even to hunt effectively.Even the depths of cool water helped little.But when the pain receded.She could see differently.She didn’t know how else to think it.In her youth, Old Grendel had seen the world in basic gradients of scent and taste, of need and satiation.Her life cycled: hunger forced speed, speed created heat, heat forced her back to water.But after the change, after the swelling of her head, and the pain.She’d come out of it mad with hunger, too weak to fight the lake monster, until the patterns showed her what to do.Then she was the lake monster, and there was prey everywhere, everywhere she hadn’t looked.Hunting was easier.She used speed less often.Fights for territory became less bloody.She saw everything more clearly, and understood what she saw.In those days she had been sleek, and as fast as rainfire.She was absolute death, the empress of her domain.She had given life to a hundred thousand children, and perhaps ten had survived to maturity.Those she had driven upstream to the heights, when she could.Two had tried to return, to challenge their mother on her own ground.Those, she gutted without mercy, the killing flare in her head and in her body stronger than thought or reason, stronger by far than any rudimentary maternal instinct.Those had been good days, and perhaps her greater intelligence was a curse.She was not what she had been, and she knew it.No longer so fast, so strong.Her wounds no longer healed as swiftly.For any creature unaware enough to be caught within her kill radius, she was a flash of teeth and claw and pebble-textured black armor and spiked tail.Sixteen feet long and a quarter ton of instant murder.But speed drained out of her more quickly these days, and the generated heat stayed longer.She was afraid to go as far from water as once she had.There were advantages to the Change.A grendel ahunt is a grendel whose mind is lost to speed.There is no thought, only action.Chase and fight and kill, a race against the heat inside; get the prey to water, and feed.Years ago the sight of prey would madden her, would drive all caution away.It was sometimes so now, but not so often.She could think ahead, imagine the consequences of actions.In sane moments she wondered if the tree-dwellers knew this.These wretched creatures would lure a desperately hungry grendel far from water.They darted high up into one of the thorn trees when the grendel blurred toward them, leaped from tree to tree when the grendel tore down the tree trunk.Old Grendel remembered that she had almost died.The creatures had led her from one tree to another until she’d nearly cooked herself [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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