Down in his deepest wine cellar, he came upon Cath m"Lane"s corpse.
It sprawled at the foot of a steep flight of stairs, the limbs twisted as if by a fall. White mobiles were swarming all over it, and as Kress watched, the body moved jerkily across the hard-packed dirt floor.
He laughed, and twisted the illumination up to maximum. In the far corner, a squat little earthen castle and a dark hole were visible between two wine racks. Kress could make out a rough outline of his face on the cellar wall.
The body shifted once again, moving a few centimeters towards the castle. Kress had a sudden vision of the white maw waiting hungrily. It might be able to get Cath"s foot in its mouth, but no more. It was too absurd. He laughed again, and started down into the cellar, finger poised on the trigger of the hose that snaked down his right arm. The sandkings hundreds of them moving as one deserted the body and formed up battle lines, a field of white between him and their maw.
Suddenly Kress had another inspiration. He smiled and lowered his firing hand. "Cath was always hard to swallow," he said, delighted at his wit. "Especially for one your size. Here, let me give you some help. What are G.o.ds for, after all?"
He retreated upstairs, returning shortly with a cleaver. The sandkings, patient, waited and watched while Kress chopped Cath m"Lane into small, easily digestible pieces.
Simon Kress slept in his skinthins that night, the pesticide close at hand, but he did not need it. The whites, sated, remained in the cellar, and he saw no sign of the others.
In the morning he finished the cleanup of the living room. After he was through, no trace of the struggle remained except for the broken tank.
He ate a light lunch, and resumed his hunt for the missing sandkings. In full daylight, it was not too difficult. The blacks had located in his rock garden, and built a castle heavy with obsidian and quartz. The reds he founds at the bottom of his long-disused swimming pool, which had partially filled with windblown sand over the years. He saw mobiles of both colors ranging about his grounds, many of them carrying poison pellets back to their maws. Kress decided his pesticide was unnecessary. No use risking a fight when he could just let the poison do its work. Both maws should be dead by evening.
That left only the burnt orange sandkings unaccounted for. Kress circled his estate several times, in ever-widening spirals, but found no trace of them. When he began to sweat in his skinthins it was a hot, dry day he decided it was not important. If they were out here, they were probably eating the poison pellets along with the reds and blacks.
He crunched several sandkings underfoot, with a certain degree of satisfaction, as he walked back to the house. Inside, he removed his skinthins, settled down to a delicious meal, and finally began to relax. Everything was under control. Two of the maws would soon be defunct, the third was safely located where he could dispose of it after it had served his purposes, and he had no doubt that he would find the fourth. As for Cath, all trace of her visit had been obliterated.
His reverie was interrupted when his viewscreen began to blink at him. It was Jad Rakkis, calling to brag about some cannibal worms he was bringing to the war games tonight.
Kress had forgotten about that, but he recovered quickly. "Oh, Jad, my pardons. I neglected to tell you. I grew bored with all that, and got rid of the sandkings. Ugly little things. Sorry, but there"ll be no party tonight."
Rakkis was indignant. "But what will I do with my worms?"
"Put them in a basket of fruit and send them to a loved one," Kress said, signing off. Quickly he began calling the others. He did not need anyone arriving at his doorstep now, with the sandkings alive and infesting the estate.
As he was calling Idi Noreddian, Kress became aware of an annoying oversight. The screen began to clear, indicating that someone had answered at the other end. Kress flicked off. Idi arrived on schedule an hour later. She was surprised to find the party canceled, but perfectly happy to share an evening alone with Kress. He delighted her with his story of Cath"s reaction to the holo they had made together. While telling it, he managed to ascertain that she had not mentioned the prank to anyone. He nodded, satisfied, and refilled their wine gla.s.ses. Only a trickle was left. "I"ll have to get a fresh bottle," he said. "Come with me to my wine cellar, and help me pick out a good vintage. You"ve always had a better palate than I."
She came along willingly enough, but balked at the top of the stairs when Kress opened the door and gestured for her to precede him. "Where are the lights?" she said. "And that smell what"s that peculiar smell, Simon?"
When he shoved her, she looked briefly startled. She screamed as she tumbled down the stairs. Kress closed the door and began to nail it shut with the boards and airhammer he had left for that purpose. As he was finishing, he heard Idi groan. "I"m hurt," she said. "Simon, what is this?" Suddenly she squealed, and shortly after that the screaming started.
It did not cease for hours. Kress went to his sensorium and dialed up a saucy comedy to blot it off of his mind.
When he was sure she was dead, Kress flew her skimmer north to the volcanoes and discarded it. The magnalock was proving a good investment.
Odd scrabbling noises were coming from beyond the wine cellar door the next morning when Kress went down to check it out. He listened for several uneasy moments, wondering if Idi Noreddian could possibly have survived, and was now scratching to get out. It seemed unlikely; it had to be the sandkings. Kress did not like the implications of that. He decided that he would keep the door sealed, at least for the moment, and went outside with a shovel to bury the red and black maws in their own castles.
He found them very much alive.
The black castle was glittering with volcanic gla.s.s, and sandkings were all over it, repairing and improving. The highest tower was up to his waist, and on it was a hideous caricature of his face. When he approached, the blacks halted in their labors, and formed up into two threatening phalanxes. Kress glanced behind him and saw others closing off his escape. Startled, he dropped the shovel and sprinted out of the trap, crushing several mobiles beneath his boots.
The red castle was creeping up the walls of the swimming pool. The maw was safely settled in a pit, surrounded by sand and concrete and battlements. The reds crept all over the bottom of the pool. Kress watched them carry a rockjock and a large lizard into the castle. He stepped back from the poolside, horrified, and felt something crunch. Looking down, he saw three mobiles climbing up his leg. He brushed them off and stamped them to death, but others were approaching quickly. They were larger than he remembered. Some were almost as big as his thumb.
He ran. By the time he reached the safety of the house, his heart was racing and he was short of breath. The door closed behind him, and Kress hurried to lock it. His house was supposed to be pest-proof. He"d be safe in here.
A stiff drink steadied his nerve. So poison doesn"t faze them, he thought. He should have known. Wo had warned him that the maw could eat anything. He would have to use the pesticide. Kress took another drink for good measure, donned his skinthins, and strapped the canister to his back. He unlocked the door.
Outside, the sandkings were waiting.
Two armies confronted him, allied against the common threat. More than he could have guessed. The d.a.m.ned maws must be breeding like rockjocks. They were everywhere, a creeping sea of them.
Kress brought up the hose and flicked the trigger. A gray mist washed over the nearest rank of sandkings. He moved his hand from side to side.
Where the mist fell, the sandkings twitched violently and died in sudden spasms. Kress smiled. They were no match for him. He sprayed in a wide arc before him and stepped forward confidently over a litter of black and red bodies. The armies fell back. Kress advanced, intent on cutting through them to their maws.
All at once the retreat stopped. A thousand sandkings surged toward him.
Kress had been expecting the counterattack. He stood his ground, sweeping his misty sword before him in great looping strokes. They came at him and died. A few got through; he could not spray everywhere at once. He felt them climbing up his legs, sensed their mandibles biting futilely at the reinforced plastic of his skinthins. He ignored them, and kept spraying.
Then he began to feel soft impacts on his head and shoulders.
Kress trembled and spun and looked up above him. The front of his house was alive with sandkings. Blacks and reds, hundreds of them. They were launching themselves into the air, raining down on him. They fell all around him. One landed on his faceplate, its mandibles sc.r.a.ping at his eyes for a terrible second before he plucked it away.
He swung up his hose and sprayed the air, sprayed the house, sprayed until the airborne sandkings were all dead and dying. The mist settled back on him, making him cough. He coughed, and kept spraying. Only when the front of the house was clean did Kress turn his attention back to the ground.
They were all around him, on him, dozens of them scurrying over his body, hundreds of others hurrying to join them. He turned the mist on them. The hose went dead. Kress heard a loud hiss, and the deadly fog rose in a great cloud from between his shoulders, cloaking him, choking him, making his eyes burn and blur. He felt for the hose, and his hand came away covered with dying sandkings. The hose was severed; they"d eaten it through. He was surrounded by a shroud of pesticide, blinded. He stumbled and screamed, and began to run back to the house, pulling sandkings from his body as he went.
Inside, he sealed the door and collapsed on the carpet, rolling back and forth until he was sure he had crushed them all. The canister was empty by then, hissing feebly. Kress stripped off his skinthins and showered. The hot spray scalded him and left his skin reddened and sensitive, but it made his flesh stop crawling.
He dressed in his heaviest clothing, thick work-pants and leathers, after shaking them out nervously. "d.a.m.n," he kept muttering, "d.a.m.n." His throat was dry. After searching the entry hall thoroughly to make certain it was clean, he allowed himself to sit and pour a drink. "d.a.m.n," he repeated. His hand shook as he poured, slopping liquor on the carpet.
The alcohol settled him, but it did not wash away the fear. He had a second drink and went to the window furtively. Sandkings were moving across the thick plastic pane. He shuddered and retreated to his communications console. He had to get help, he thought wildly. He would punch through a call to the authorities, and policers would come out with flamethrowers and...
Simon Kress stopped in mid-call, and groaned. He couldn"t call in the police. He would have to tell them about the whites in his cellar, and they"d find the bodies there. Perhaps the maw might have finished Cath m"Lane by now, but certainly not Idi Noreddian. He hadn"t even cut her up. Besides, there would be bones. No, the police could be called in only as a last resort.
He sat at the console, frowning. His communications equipment filled a whole wall; from here he could reach anyone on Baldur. He had plenty of money, and his cunning he had always prided himself on his cunning. He would handle this somehow.
He briefly considered calling Wo, but soon dismissed the idea. Wo knew too much, and she would ask questions, and he did not trust her. No, he needed someone who would do as he asked without questions.
His frown faded, and slowly turned into a smile. Simon Kress had contacts. He put through a call to a number he had not used in a long time.
A woman"s face took shape on his viewscreen: white-haired, bland of expression, with a long hook nose. Her voice was brisk and efficient. "Simon," she said. "How is business?"
"Business is fine, Lissandra," Kress replied. "I have a job for you."
"A removal? My price has gone up since last time, Simon. It has been ten years, after all."
"You will be well paid," Kress said. "You know I"m generous. I want you for a bit of pest control."
She smiled a thin smile. "No need to use euphemisms, Simon. The call is shielded."
"No, I"m serious. I have a pest problem. Dangerous pests. Take care of them for me. No questions. Understood?"
"Understood."
"Good. You"ll need...oh, three or four operatives. Wear heat-resistant skinthins, and equip them with flamethrowers, or lasers, something of that order. Come out to my place. You"ll see the problem. Bugs, lots and lots of them. In my rock garden and the old swimming pool you"ll find castles. Destroy them, kill everything inside them. Then knock on the door, and I"ll show you what else needs to be done. Can you get out here quickly?"
Her face was impa.s.sive. "We"ll leave within the hour."
Lissandra was true to her word. She arrived in a lean black skimmer with three operatives. Kress watched them from the safety of a second-story window. They were all faceless in dark plastic skinthins. Two of them wore portable flamethrowers, a third carried lasercannon and explosives. Lissandra carried nothing; Kress recognized her by the way she gave orders.
Their skimmer pa.s.sed low overhead first, checking out the situation. The sandkings went mad. Scarlet and ebony mobiles ran everywhere, frenetic. Kress could see the castle in the rock garden from his vantage point. It stood tall as a man. Its ramparts were crawling with black defenders, and a steady stream of mobiles flowed down into its depths.
Lissandra"s skimmer came down next to Kress" and the operatives vaulted out and unlimbered their weapons. They looked inhuman, deadly.
The black army drew up between them and the castle. The reds Kress suddenly realized that he could not see the reds. He blinked. Where had they gone?
Lissandra pointed and shouted, and her two flamethrowers spread out and opened up on the black sandkings. Their weapons coughed dully and began to roar, long tongues of blue-and-scarlet fire licking out before them. Sandkings crisped and blackened and died. The operatives began to play the fire back and forth in an efficient, interlocking pattern. They advanced with careful, measured steps.
The black army burned and disintegrated, the mobiles fleeing in a thousand different directions, some back toward the castle, others toward the enemy. None reached the operatives with the flamethrowers. Lissandra"s people were very professional.
Then one of them stumbled.
Or seemed to stumble. Kress looked again, and saw that the ground had given way beneath the man. Tunnels, he thought with a tremor of fear tunnels, pits, traps. The flamer was sunk in sand up to his waist, and suddenly the ground around him seemed to erupt, and he was covered with scarlet sandkings. He dropped the flamethrower and began to claw wildly at his own body. His screams were horrible to hear.
His companion hesitated, then swung and fired. A blast of flame swallowed human and sandkings both. The screaming stopped abruptly. Satisfied, the second flamer turned back to the castle and took another step forward, and recoiled as his foot broke through the ground and vanished up to the ankle. He tried to pull it back and retreat, and the sand all around him gave way. He lost his balance and stumbled, flailing, and the sandkings were everywhere, a boiling ma.s.s of them, covering him as he writhed and rolled. His flamethrower was useless and forgotten.
Kress pounded wildly on the window, shouting for attention. "The castle! Get the castle!"
Lissandra, standing back by her skimmer, heard and gestured. Her third operative sighted with the lasercannon and fired. The beam throbbed across the grounds and sliced off the top of the castle. He brought it down sharply, hacking at the sand and stone parapets. Towers fell. Kress" face disintegrated. The laser bit into the ground, searching round and about. The castle crumbled; now it was only a heap of sand. But the black mobiles continued to move. The maw was buried too deeply; they hadn"t touched her.
Lissandra gave another order. Her operative discarded the laser, primed an explosive, and darted forward. He leaped over the smoking corpse of the first flamer, landed on solid ground within Kress" rock garden, and heaved. The explosive ball landed square atop the ruins of the black castle. White-hot light seared Kress" eyes, and there was a tremendous gout of sand and rock and mobiles. For a moment dust obscured everything. It was raining sandkings and pieces of sandkings.
Kress saw that the black mobiles were dead and unmoving.
"The pool," he shouted down through the window. "Get the castle in the pool."
Lissandra understood quickly; the ground was littered with motionless blacks, but the reds were pulling back hurriedly and reforming. Her operative stood uncertain, then reached down and pulled out another explosive ball. He took one step forward, but Lissandra called him and he sprinted back in her direction.
It was all so simple then. He reached the skimmer, and Lissandra took him aloft. Kress rushed to another window in another room to watch. They came swooping in just over the pool, and the operative pitched his bombs down at the red castle from the safety of the skimmer. After the fourth run, the castle was unrecognizable, and the sandkings stopped moving.
Lissandra was thorough. She had him bomb each castle several additional times. Then he used the lasercannon, crisscrossing methodically until it was certain that nothing living could remain intact beneath those small patches of ground.
Finally they came knocking at his door. Kress was grinning manically when he let them in. "Lovely," he said, "lovely."
Lissandra pulled off the mask of her skinthins. "This will cost you, Simon. Two operatives gone, not to mention the danger to my own life."
"Of course," Kress blurted. "You"ll be well paid, Lissandra. Whatever you ask, just so you finish the job."
"What remains to be done?"
"You have to clean out my wine cellar," Kress said. "There"s another castle down there. And you"ll have to do it without explosives. I don"t want my house coming down around me." Lissandra motioned to her operative. "Go outside and get Rajk"s flamethrower. It should be intact."
He returned armed, ready, silent. Kress led them down to the wine cellar.
The heavy door was still nailed shut, as he had left it. But it bulged outward slightly, as if warped by some tremendous pressure. That made Kress uneasy, as did the silence that held reign about them. He stood well away from the door as Lissandra"s operative removed his nails and planks. "Is that safe in here?" he found himself muttering, pointing at the flamethrower. "I don"t want a fire, either, you know."
"I have the laser," Lissandra said. "We"ll use that for the kill. The flamethrower probably won"t be needed. But I want it here just in case. There are worse things than fire, Simon."
He nodded.
The last plank came free of the cellar door. There was still no sound from below. Lissandra snapped an order, and her underling fell back, took up a position behind her, and leveled the flamethrower square at the door. She slipped her mask back on, hefted the laser, stepped forward, and pulled open the door.
No motion. No sound. It was dark down there.
"Is there a light?" Lissandra asked.
"Just inside the door," Kress said. "On the right hand side. Mind the stairs, they"re quite steep."
She stepped into the door, shifted the laser to her left hand, and reached up with her right, fumbling inside for the light panel. Nothing happened. "I feel it," Lissandra said, "but it doesn"t seem to..."
Then she was screaming, and she stumbled backward. A great white sandking had clamped itself around her wrist. Blood welled through her skinthins where its mandibles had sunk in. It was fully as large as her hand.
Lissandra did a horrible little jig across the room and began to smash her hand against the nearest wall. Again and again and again. It landed with a heavy, meaty thud. Finally the sandking fell away. She whimpered and fell to her knees. "I think my fingers are broken," she said softly. The blood was still flowing freely. She had dropped the laser near the cellar door.
"I"m not going down there," her operative announced in clear firm tones.
Lissandra looked up at him. "No," she said. "Stand in the door and flame it all. Cinder it. Do you understand?"
He nodded.
Simon Kress moaned. "My house," he said. His stomach churned. The white sandking had been so large. How many more were down there? "Don"t," he continued. "Leave it alone. I"ve changed my mind. Leave it alone."
Lissandra misunderstood. She held out her hand. It was covered with blood and greenish-black ichor. "Your little friend bit clean through my glove, and you saw what it took to get it off. I don"t care about your house, Simon. Whatever is down there is going to die."
Kress hardly heard her. He thought he could see movement in the shadows beyond the cellar door. He imagined a white army bursting forth, all as large as the sandking that had attacked Lissandra. He saw himself being lifted by a hundred tiny arms, and dragged down into the darkness where the maw waited hungrily. He was afraid. "Don"t," he said.
They ignored him.
Kress darted forward, and his shoulder slammed into the back of Lissandra"s operative just as the man was bracing to fire. He grunted and unbalanced and pitched forward into the black. Kress listened to him fall down the stairs. Afterward there were other noises scuttlings and snaps and soft squishing sounds.
Kress swung around to face Lissandra. He was drenched in cold sweat, but a sickly kind of excitement was on him. It was almost s.e.xual.
Lissandra"s calm cold eyes regarded him through her mask. "What are you doing?" she demanded as Kress picked up the laser she had dropped. "Simon!"
"Making a peace," he said, giggling. "They won"t hurt G.o.d, no, not so long as G.o.d is good and generous. I was cruel. Starved them. I have to make up for it now, you see."
"You"re insane," Lissandra said. It was the last thing she said. Kress burned a hole in her chest big enough to put his arm through. He dragged the body across the floor and rolled it down the cellar stairs. The noises were louder chitinous clackings and sc.r.a.pings and echoes that were thick and liquid. Kress nailed up the door once again.
As he fled, he was filled with a deep sense of contentment that coated his fear like a layer of syrup. He suspected it was not his own.
He planned to leave his home, to fly to the city and take a room for a night, or perhaps for a year. Instead Kress started drinking. He was not quite sure why. He drank steadily for hours, and retched it all up violently on his living room carpet. At some point he fell asleep. When he woke, it was pitch dark in the house.
He cowered against the couch. He could hear noises. Things were moving in the walls. They were all around him. His hearing was extraordinarily acute. Every little creak was the footstep of a sandking. He closed his eyes and waited, expecting to feel their terrible touch, afraid to move lest he brush against one.