Its multiple engines screamed up to a frenzied pitch, and it rolled out along the strip at increasing velocity. Its huge wheels narrowly missed a dead fighter slewed across the way. Its tail went up.
Naturally, the queen ships wouldn"t be dependent on the nerve-center of the hive that had sp.a.w.ned them; for each of them carried within itself the full-grown robot brain, the nucleus of a new hive....
Shooting began again raggedly, the gunners caught unawares. Perhaps the great machine was. .h.i.t--but to stop it would take more than one or two hits.
It reached and pa.s.sed the end of the runway, its wheels barely clearing the ground as the paved strip ended. Black smoke belched from its engines as it spent fuel lavishly, fighting heavy-laden for alt.i.tude. It rocked with the concussion of sh.e.l.ls bursting all around it, and then it was soaring out over the Barrier, dipping and rolling perilously in the downdrafts beyond the cliffs. But it steadied and flew on, out of range of the guns, rising and dwindling until it was a speck, a mote vanishing into the western sky....
But no more queens escaped that day. The cannonade resumed with redoubled fury, and the guns did not fall silent until nothing was left to stir amid the gutted and blazing wreckage that had been the citadel of the drones.
Morning wind blew over the plateau, clearing away the reek of battle, bringing air that was cool and clear as it must have been in the morning of the world.
In that breeze like the breath of a new creation, it somehow seemed not at all strange to Dworn that he should be walking in the open under a daylight sky, among a mult.i.tude of excited strangers, men and women of all races, who mixed and exchanged greetings, laughed, shouted, slapped one another on the back ... then, perhaps, drew away for a moment with eyes of wonder at their own boldness....
Nor did it seem strange that Dworn strolled round the smoldering drone fortress hand in hand with a girl of the spider (who was by that token his hereditary foe,) and that he turned and kissed this enemy on the mouth, and she returned the kiss.
They stood with arms around one another, on the edge of the jubilant crowd, and looked out across the vast litter of smoking wreckage where scarcely a sh.e.l.l-holed wall stood upright now, from which the Enemy would no longer come to threaten the life of the Earth.
"One got away," said Qanya soberly.
"Yes. Somewhere it will all be to do over again." Dworn glanced toward the empty west, whither the queen flier had disappeared--where, perhaps, by now it would have crash-landed two or three hundred miles away, to spew forth its cargo of pygmy workers and (if the inhabitants or the area where it descended didn"t discover and scotch it in time) to construct more workers, fighters, a hive no less formidable than the one that had perished today.
Dworn said, brow thoughtfully furrowed: "But maybe there"s a good reason, even for the drones. Maybe they serve a purpose...." He faltered, unable to phrase the idea that had come to him--a thought that was not only unaccustomed but downright heretical. According to tradition the drones were the sp.a.w.n of ancient evil and themselves wholly evil--but, Dworn was thinking, perhaps their existence produced good if, once in a generation or in ten generations, they came to remind the warring peoples that fundamentally all life was one in its eonlong conflict with no-life.
But he sensed, too, that that idea would take a long, long time to be worked out, to be communicated, to bear fruit....
Qanya"s hand pressed his, and she said softly, "I think I know what you mean."
On one impulse they turned their backs to the ruins and gazed out across the throng of people, milling happily about, rejoicing, among the grim war-machines that stood open and abandoned on every hand. Near by, a crew of pill-bugs had tapped containers of the special beverage they brewed for their own use, and were inviting all pa.s.sers-by to pause and drink.
"Your people are here somewhere," said Qanya. Her eyes on Dworn were troubled. "Over there to the south, I think I saw some beetles parked.
Do you want to visit them?"
Dworn sighed. "Your people are here too."
"I know."
Neither of them moved. They stood silent, their thoughts the same; in a little while now, the Peace of the Drone would be over, and all this celebrating crowd would grow warily quiet, would climb back into their various fighting machines, close the hatches and man the guns and creep away in their separate directions. The world would go its way again, a world in which there was no place left for the two of them....
Dworn blotted the image from his mind"s eye and bent to kiss Qanya once more, while the Peace lasted.
A voice called, "Dworn!" A familiar voice--one that couldn"t be real, that must be a trick of his ears.
He turned. A little way off stood a small group of people watching them, and in the forefront was a stalwart man of fifty, in the green garment of a beetle with a golden scarab blazoned on his chest--
"_Father!_" Dworn gasped unbelieving.
They grasped one another"s hands and looked into one another"s eyes.
Dworn was only dimly aware of the others looking on--among them the hard-faced Spider Mother, and the grizzled chief scorpion whose cohorts had struck the decisive blow in the battle.
Yold smiled with a quizzically raised eyebrow. "You thought I was dead, no doubt? You came on the spot where we were attacked and you saw--"
Dworn nodded and gulped. "I couldn"t have been mistaken. I saw your machine there, wrecked.... And now I"ve lost mine." His voice trailed off miserably.
His father gave him a penetrating look. "I see. You"re supposing that means everything is over."
"Doesn"t it?"
The chief smiled again. "When you departed for your wanderyear, you were still a boy, though you"d learned your lessons and your beetle traditions well.... But now you"re a man. We don"t tell boys everything."
Dworn stared at his father, while understanding dawned like a glory upon him. To live again, the life he"d thought lost--
"So far as I could learn, your beetle was disabled through no fault of your own. In fact, by what these strangers tell me--" Yold nodded towards the Spider Mother and the scorpion chief--"you"ve proved yourself worthy indeed, over and above the customary testing. Of course, there will be the formality of a rebirth ceremony--which I have to undergo, too, so we can both do so together."
Dworn couldn"t speak. Once again he had to remind himself that a beetle warrior didn"t weep--not even tears of joy.
Then the Spider Mother spoke up, her voice brittle and metallic. "The girl will naturally be returned to us. After this business, I am going to have to take pains to restore discipline in the Family."
Dworn saw Qanya"s desolate face, took one step to the girl"s side and put a shielding arm around her. He felt Qanya trembling, and glared at the Spider Mother"s implacable face.
"I won"t go back!" Qanya cried vehemently. "I"ll die first! I never wanted to be a spider, anyway!"
"And I," growled Dworn, "won"t let you take her. I won"t let her go--"
his face was pale, but he went on resolutely--"even if it means I can"t return to my own people."
The beetle chief surveyed the two young people gravely, then turned to confront the old woman. He said, "I don"t see that you have any further claim on the girl. According to our customs, she too can be "reborn"--this time into the beetle horde, as one of my people--and my son"s."
The head scorpion, looking on, nodded approval and grinned encouragingly at Dworn.
The Spider Mother and the chief exchanged a long, stony look--on either side, the look of a ruler used to command.
"It would be too bad," said Yold softly, "to mar the Peace. But my warriors are within call, and...."
The Spider Mother turned away and spat. "Have it your way. Who wants weaklings in the Family!"
The chief glanced sidelong at Dworn and Qanya, and saw that they were wholly absorbed in one another. With an open-handed gesture he invited the Spider Mother to follow him.
"Shall we go, then," he suggested politely, "and--while the Peace still reigns--find out whether the pill-bugs" beverage is all they claim it is?"
THE END