“Why maim her? Why not just kill her?”
“As she is, she can still work in the fields to produce food. Late in the cycle the Kachis probably get the biggest share of what food there is.”
“If it’s cyclical, then some Kachis must have remained on Dinadh to start the process over. Also, we’ve assumed the Kachis are the young of the Ularians. Where are the Ularians on Dinadh?”
He shrugged. “Being offspring of Ularians doesn’t preclude multiple parthenogenic generations. Or even sexual reproduction as immature imagos—”
He was interrupted by Snark, who darted from the tunnel through which the men had departed. “You oughta go up and watch the show. The little shaggies that came blasting out when you folks came! They’re blowing each other up, like balloons!”
The lure was irresistible. Lutha tucked the blankets close around Saluez’s shoulders and tied Leely’s tether around a stony knob nearby, putting the knot above his reach and jerking it to be sure it would hold. He settled down next to Saluez, curling into the curve of her body, his eyes half-shut, while Lutha and the ex-king went out after Snark.
Beyond the cover of the stones, they got their first daytime look at their hiding place: a dark cleft gaping between enormous, rain-rounded boulders beneath a jackstraw tumble of huge basalt crystals, so dark a gray they were almost black. Gap-toothed shards of similar crystals fanged the ridge.
From beyond that toothy ridge came a thin shrilling, rising and falling in volume, punctuated by explosive sounds. Mitigan and Leelson lay prone at the top of the slope, and the others joined them to peer through the scraggy scarp. They saw a seething caldron of shaggies, great globules of them rising and falling, tentacles whipping like strands of flung lava, the whole punctuated by eruptions in which one or more shaggies were blown apart. The cacophony was underlain by the sodden gulp of the sea, its waves flattened beneath a mat of floating body parts. The slender crescent of rocky beach was piled with clotted, squirming fragments, and more were washed ashore with each vomitous surge.
Lutha averted her eyes from the beach and focused upon the battle. There was a certain horrid fascination in the relentless winnowing. The rain of dead and injured was continuous. Gradually the deafening noise abated. Much of the detritus was sinking. The height of the waves increased, showing patches of clear water and making a more surflike noise.
Snark said, “It’s brood aggression. Sibling murder. Happens with a lot of creatures. Supposedly it maximizes reproductive output. All the rearing effort will go to the strongest.”
Jiacare muttered, “How many will they leave alive?”
“Too many,” said Mitigan and Snark, as with one voice.
“It’s hard to believe they changed shape that much,” Lutha murmured, half-hypnotized by the continuing massacre. “They looked almost human on Dinadh.”
Snark turned slowly, her eyes very wide. “What did they look like. On Dinadh?”
“Small. That is, slight. Very thin, but human in form, with wings—”
“And sharp teeth,” she said. “Right? And their teeth was really poisonous! And they come out at night!”
Lutha nodded.
“We called ’em scourges,” Snark muttered. “When my people ran off from Dinadh, some of the scourges followed ’em through the gate.”
“Kachis? In their original form? What happened to them?”
She made an aimless gesture. “There weren’t very many. Mother said our people hunted and killed some of ’em. The others starved, I guess.”
Above the sea, the carnage had come to an end. Some few ragged forms still floated on the waters, gradually disappearing beneath the waves, while above, the uninjured ones separated and arranged themselves in an orderly grid that stretched to the horizons. By counting how many body diameters would fit in the previously crowded but now empty space, Lutha estimated one out of a hundred of the original number had survived.
She was about to mention this when she gagged, sickened by a sudden, horrible taste.
“Down, quick!” Snark spun her around. “It’s the big Rottens!”
They made it down the ridge and into the rocks before the creatures appeared—though barely. When they came to the sleeping chamber, each of them found a water bottle and a wiping rag and sat down well away from one another, each careful to look away from the others as they drooled and wiped. The few pale rays of sunlight that penetrated the piled stones now stood almost erect, disappearing one by one. All scarcely breathed as the rays reappeared.
“No clouds today,” said Snark unclearly but matter-of-factly. “That was a big Rotten goin’ over. Floatin’ and danglin’.”
“Is there a place we can safely watch from?” asked Leelson, wiping his lips. “I’d like to see a big one.”
Snark dug her heel into the sand and twisted it as she considered. “This rockfall piles higher the farther east you go. Clear at the east end, it’s right on the ridge. We can try working through in that direction.”
Lutha had stacked the provisions in a neat pile, away from the stove. Disregarding these efforts at order, Mitigan tumbled the stack, tore open one of the personal kits, and burrowed inside it to find a full water bottle. Snark wiped her filthy face with the back of one hand and went scrambling off with him in pursuit, looking from the rear more like four-legged creatures than two-legged ones.
“Be back,” said Leelson as he followed them into the dark.
Jiacare Lostre shook his head, muttered fragmentary phrases of fastidious annoyance, and set about picking up the scattered contents of the personal kits.
“This isn’t a kit knife,” he said. “Whose knife is this?”
“What knife?” Lutha asked, swiveling toward him.
He held a knife into the light of a slanting beam. Lutha saw it, and saw beyond it, where the severed end of Leely’s tether hung white against the gray stone she had tied it to. The knife belonged to Saluez. She carried
