He decided to lubricate his mental processes F with another glass of wine. As he finished it, an inspiration came to him. He went to the tank and made a few adjustments to the humidity controls.
By the time he fell asleep on the couch, his
m
wine glass still in his hand, the sand castles were melting in the rain.
Kress woke to angry pounding on his door. He sat up, groggy, his head throbbing. Wine hangovers were always the worst, he thought. He lurched to the entry chamber.
Cath m'Lane was outside. 'You monster,' she said, her face swollen and puffy and streaked with tears. 'I cried all night, damn you. But no more, Simon, no more.'
'Easy,' he said, holding his head. 'I've got a hangover.'
She swore and shoved him aside and pushed her way into his house. The shambler came peering round a corner to see what the noise was. She spat at it and stalked into the living room, Kress trailing ineffectually after her. 'Hold on,' he said, 'where do you . . . you can't . . .' He stopped suddenly horror-struck. She was carrying a heavy sledgehammer in her left hand. 'No,' he said.
She went directly to the sandkings' tank. 'You like the little charmers so much, Simon? Then you can live with them.'
'Cath!' he shrieked.
Gripping the hammer with both hands, she swung as hard as she could against the side of the tank. The sound of the impact set Kress's head to screaming, and he made a low, blubbering sound of despair. But the plastic held.
She swung again. This time there was a crack, and a network of thin lines appeared in the wall of the tank.
Kress threw himself at her as she drew back her hammer to take a third swing. They went down flailing and rolled over. She lost her grip on the hammer and tried to throttle him, but Kress wrenched free and bit her on the arm, drawing blood. They both staggered to their feet, panting.
'You should see yourself, Simon,' she said grimly. 'Blood dripping from your mouth. You look like one of your pets. How do you like the taste?'
'Get out,' he said. He saw the throwing sword where it had fallen the night before, and he snatched it up. 'Get out,' he repeated, waving the sword for emphasis. 'Don't go near that tank again.'
She laughed at him. 'You wouldn't dare,' she said. She bent to pick up the hammer.
Kress shrieked at her and lunged. Before he quite knew what was happening, the iron blade had gone clear through her abdomen. Cath m'Lane looked at him wonderingly and down at the sword. Kress fell back, whimpering. 'I didn't mean . . . I only wanted . . .'
She was transfixed, bleeding, nearly dead, but somehow she did not fall. 'You monster,' she managed to say, though her mouth was full of blood. And she whirled, impossibly, the sword in her, and swung with her last strength, and Cath m'Lane was buried beneath an avalanche of plastic and sand and mud.
Kress made small hysterical noises and scrambled up onto the couch.
Sandkings were emerging from the muck on
his living-room floor. They were crawling across Cath's body. A few of them ventured tentatively out across the carpet. More followed.
He watched as a column took shape, a living, writhing square of sandkings, bearing something-something slimy and featureless, a piece of raw meat as big as a man's head. They began to carry it away from the tank. It pulsed.
That was when Kress broke and ran.
Before he found the courage to return home, he ran to his skimmer and flew to the nearest city, some fifty kilometers away, almost sick with fear. But, once safely away, he found a small restaurant, downed several mugs of coffee and two anti-hangover tabs, ate a full breakfast, and gradually regained his composure.
It had been a dreadful morning, but dwelling on that would solve nothing. He ordered more coffee and considered his situation with icy rationality.
Cath m'Lane was dead at his hand. Could he report it and plead that it had been an accident? Unlikely. He had run her through, after all, and he had already told that police to leave her to him. He would have to get rid of the evidence and hope that Cath had not told anyone her plans for the day. It was very unlikely she had. She could only have gotten his gift late last night. She said that she had cried all night, and she was alone when she arrived. Very well, he had one body and one skimmer to dispose of.
That left the sandkings. They might prove more of a difficulty. No doubt they had all
escaped by now. The thought of them around his house, in his bed and his clothes, infesting his food-it made his flesh crawl. He shuddered and overcame his revulsion. It really shouldn't be too hard to kill them, he reminded himself. He didn't have to account for every mobile. Just the four maws, that was all. He could do that. They were large, as he'd seen. He would find them and kill them. He was their god; now he would be their destroyer.
He went shopping before he flew back to his home. He bought a set of skin thins that would cover him from head to foot, several bags of poison pellets for rock jock control, and a spray canister containing an illegally strong pesticide. He also bought a magnalock towing device.
When he landed late that afternoon, he went about things methodically. First he hooked Cath's skimmer to his own with the magnalock. Searching it, he had his first piece of luck. The crystal chip with Idi Noreddian's holo of the sandking fight was on the front seat. He had worried about that.
When the skimmers were ready, he slipped into his skin thins and went inside to get Cath's body.
It- wasn't there.
He poked through the fast drying sand carefully, and there was no doubt of it, the body was gone. Could she have dragged herself away? Unlikely, but Kress searched. A cursory inspection of his house turned up neither the body nor any sign of the sandkings. He did not
have time for a more thorough investigation, not with the incriminating skimmer outside his front door. He resolved to try later.
Some seventy kilometers north of Kress's estate was a range of active volcanoes. He flew there, Cath's skimmer in tow. Above the glowering cone of the largest volcano he released the magnalock and watched the skimmer
