hit the guards forward at the same time. One way or another, the fight was on. There was nothing you could have done. They did come to kill us.” He paused, looking at the creatures. The dark color he’d noticed the night before was a brownish purple and the light was a yellowish orange. Weird, but probably well suited to the dingy water they lived in. They wore no clothes and had no implements, no ornaments of any kind. There was no physical evidence that they harbored any intelligence whatsoever. But last night they’d employed what could have been a damned effective tactic, and their “operation” had been well coordinated. “Throw some more water on them,” he said, and when it was done, he watched the creatures’ reactions closely. Four of the six didn’t seem badly injured, and they continued staring at him with their weird, almost fluorescent eyes, but it seemed to him that the water did give them some relief. They weren’t gasping as much, anyway.
“I wonder,” Russ said quietly. There were still a few dead monsters on the fo’c’sle that hadn’t been dumped yet. He called for one. When it arrived, carried between two disgust-blinking Marines, he had them lay it down in front of the prisoners. They showed no reaction, but of course there were several weapons pointed at them. “Jannik,” Russ said, “I want you to poke your sword in that thing’s tongue and make it flop around. Make it look like it’s striking.”
Jannik looked at him and blinked, but then did as he was told.
“Ben, shoot it in the head.”
For a moment, Mallory didn’t think he’d heard right, then he grinned. As soon as Jannik stepped back, he blasted away one of the still dully glowing eyes. The report of the pistol and what it did to the corpse caused the creatures to flinch, but that was all.
“Now, Jannik, grab its arm and make like it’s clawing the deck.” He did so, understanding beginning to dawn. Again, after he’d done it for a moment, Russ had Ben shoot it again, nearly blowing the dead skull apart this time.
Taking a breath, Russ pulled his own pistol out and pointed it at the creatures. He took a couple of steps forward, within easy range of their tongues, and squatted down to face them.
“Are you nuts?” Ben exclaimed, pointing his Colt, ready to fire if any of them even twitched.
“I think I know what I’m doing,” Russ said. Still staring into the closest huge yellow eyes, he pointed the pistol away. For an instant, while the thing’s eyes followed the pistol, he figured he’d just committed suicide, but then the eyes came back to rest on his and he knew it understood. “Well,” he said, a little shakily. “Bring some polta paste. Sammy, let them see you smear some on your arm before you try to put any on them.”
“You think they’ll let him?” Ben asked. Sammy was clearly keenly interested in his answer as well.
“Yeah. Like I said, let them see you put it on your wound, then point at one of theirs. Do it slow and gentle. Easy does it.”
“Easy does it, you betcha!” Sammy said sincerely.
After the wounded creatures were successfully doctored, Ben stepped over to Chapelle. “So. Now what? We’ve gotten them to let us smear some ooze on their oozy skins. You think that’ll make a difference?”
“No.” Russ shrugged. “I don’t know. It would to me, but we can’t think like that. Look, I ain’t a philosopher, I’m just a torpedoman at heart. You’re the one born with the big officer brain, but it just so happens I’m not a bad sailor, so they gave me a ship. That doesn’t mean I feel qualified to speculate on stuff like this.” He paused, still staring at the “frog-lizards.” “You know, we never could really figure out how the Japs think, even with Shinya to try and explain it to us, and at least they were humans. We still don’t have a clue what makes the Grik tick. I think it’s pretty amazing that us and the ’Cats are on the same wavelength on most things.” He nodded at the strange creatures. “For all we know, not killing them and doctoring them up might make them hate us even more.”
“So what do we do with ’em now?” Ben asked. “It’s going to be a hot day, as usual. We can’t just keep throwing water on ’em. The guys have too much work to do, both guarding and trying to refloat this tub. I guess we could put ’em down in the forward hold, but I was kind of hoping, if we raise steam, we might get it pumped out a little.”
Russ rubbed his eyes. “Let ’em go,” he said.
“Let them go?”
“Yeah. We might have a whole other batch to deal with tonight. But we know they talk to each other… sort of.” He shook his head and smiled. “Sorry. Tired. I’m rambling, I guess. Maybe what I’m hoping is that they’ll think things over. They came at us and got creamed. We treat their wounded and turn ’em loose, maybe that’ll at least confuse them enough to leave us alone for a while.”
Ben chuckled. “So you are hoping they think a little like us?”
“I guess. At least on the basic, ‘don’t sit on the blowtorch twice’ level.”
The natives were still restless, but now they were afraid, and somewhat perplexed. The attempt to recover the Warren had gone horribly wrong. The strange creatures that infested it possessed inconceivable magic, and capable notions of the art of territorial conquest and defense. The natives considered themselves practiced students of that art. They used it every day to hunt and simply survive. How else had they managed to maintain complete control of such a vast body of water as their lake for so long? Now, after the terrible losses of the night before, their very hegemony over the lake itself might be at risk. They couldn’t possibly mount another such attempt to retrieve the Warren. They’d be hardpressed just to defend their territory from others of their own kind. They had no doubt they would succeed; they practiced the art well, but it would be difficult for a time-and they would, of course, require a new Great Mother sooner than they’d hoped. It was all so inconvenient.
Their perplexity had more to do with the behavior of the strange creatures after the combat was over than anything else. First, to their amazement, the strange creatures-clear victors in the contest-did not consume the dead, as was their right. Instead, they threw them into the water for the natives to claim, almost as an offering to a respected adversary. The corpses were duly retrieved. Food was food, after all, and it wouldn’t do to refuse such an odd but flattering gift. The most perplexing thing of all, however, was that the strange creatures also released the wounded. This had almost never been done before. Ancient legends told of such deeds, often recounted when the natives gathered together in times of plenty to softly croak and wheeze their tales of mythic heroes. A favorite of these, and one of the oldest remembered, recounted the tale of a supreme Hunter and practitioner of the art who, after rending their own earliest ancestors in fair and honorable combat, displayed a barely remembered and vaguely understood virtue known as Mercy, before guiding their ancestors to this very lake and gifting them with its bounty.
Evidently, the strange creatures were not only consummate practitioners and students of the art, but they understood the mythic virtue of Mercy, even when they were the victors after a combat they did not start. Most odd.
That night, virtually every native of the lake gathered around the Warren, their bright yellow eyes staring in wonder at the magical spectacle before them. The strange creatures had somehow literally brought the Warren to life! It gasped in the darkness with luminous smoke and sparks spiraling upward like the distant burning mountains! Many bright white eyes glared from it in all directions, and the strange creatures moved about beneath them, tending the living Warren’s needs. Another string of floating things arrived, shortly after dark, bearing even more of the strange creatures, but the floating things were left in peace. The natives conversed in a muted rumble, so many voices at once, and came to the consensus that they’d been wrong to combat the strange creatures.
When the Warren first arrived, it had been sickly and wounded. The strange creatures had left it here. Presuming it to be a corpse, the natives had used it as they used all things in the world-for whatever it seemed best suited. They turned it into a shelter. It never occurred to any of them that it might be still alive, suffering the indignity of their trespass. Now the strange creatures had returned to what might even be Their Great Mother, with the sole intention of healing it-as they’d attempted to heal the wounded natives that attacked them!
Slowly, as the night wore on, yellow eyes dipped beneath the surface of the water and disappeared. Food was not a problem, thanks to the benevolence of the strange creatures, but a new Warren, of a more traditional style, would have to be begun. It would not be as convenient or enduring, but it would be theirs. Most would begin the work in a somber, meditative mood.
CHAPTER 14
Eastern Sea
