The Incompleat Nifft (51 page)

We gazed and gazed, aghast. The brutal, plundering work we had come here to do seemed to us in those first moments to be the most arrant lunacy imaginable. How dared we slay the babes of such awesome brutes even while they came and went in plainest view? We stood frozen.

When we essayed some movement, we were timorous and tentative in the extreme. We grew bolder by only the tiniest degrees. At length, though, when we had grown confident enough to dance and jig and wave our arms at a Nurse who stood not four rods distant from us, we saw in her eyes' black, faceted globes her utter nescience of our existence.

We could no longer doubt our freedom to begin the awful work we'd come to do for Costard. Only after we had provided him with some sap could we absent ourselves on Bunt's far more lucrative errand. With fear and loathing, then, we turned to the task.

The tap lines, or "suck lines" as they are also called (all eight of them of course dyed orange), radiated like spiderlegs from the drill-hole's port in the chamber ceiling. The lines, at regular intervals along their lengths, were attached to ceiling bolts by tough, elastic tethers. Using a long, hooked pole known as a crook, a tapper could snag and pull down a given line over his chosen larva; when he was done with it and released it, or if it slipped from his control by any accident, the tethers snatched the line safely back up against the ceiling and out of harm's way, for though these hoses were invisible to them, Nurses blundering against them would quickly tear them down in a natural litter-clearing reflex.

Our task, in brief, was to mount a grub with the help of steel climbing spurs, hook a line down from the ceiling, drive home the line's Spike (or "suck-nozzle") into the larval dorsum, and then use the signal cord in our operations nook to tell our partners topside to start pumping.

We disburdened ourselves of our bandoliers of gear, and bore only our weapons strapped to our backs. We awkwardly lashed the climbing spurs to our insteps and calves, and hefted our crooks. "Well. . . ." My voice sounded hopeless, hesitant. "What about that smallish one there? It looks quieter too, less twitchy than the others."

"Good idea," rumbled Barnar. "Start small and easy."

Though by now we already felt deeply submerged in this inhuman realm, we did not truly enter Behemoth's world until that moment when we touched her flesh. The grub's hide was finegrained, translucent, and supple, like oiled parchment to our palms. We slipped and floundered till we learned to drive our spurs home fiercely. I was slow to believe in the young giant's indifference to my steel's negligible bite. Climbing her, I felt her slow, seismic heartbeat, and withal, something else: a gurgly unrest, as of troubled digestion, within her.

At length, we stood unsteady on the grub's dorsal hump; the blubberous footing made us falter, and our first efforts with the Crooks were awkward. But at length we pulled down the nearest suck-line, with the suction spike on its tip. I gripped the line at mid-length to give Barnar a slack end. Two-handed, he raised the Spike high. "All right then," he grunted, and drove it home in the grub's blubbery hide.

Our terrified suspense as to the outcome of this stroke may be imagined, as may the depth of our relief when we felt scarcely a tremor of response in the larva under our feet. Its heart thrummed steadily away; its guts gurgled perhaps a shade more vigorously, but that was the grub's sole reaction to the setting of the spike.

One heartbeat . . . two . . . three thrummed away. We heaved a sigh and grinned at one another—and then I saw Barnar's jaw drop. I turned, squawked with terror, and hauled out Ready Jack from his scabbard between my shoulders.

Almost too late, as a brambly black bug-shape, twice the size of the biggest 'lurk, loomed down on me, fangs high. I swung Jack with not an eyelash of space to spare, and clipped a fang and foreleg from the fearsome larval parasite—for such it was, a Sucking Star, the brood-bag on its abdomen swollen fat with eggs. It retreated scarce one step, rearing high, full of fight, its thorny palps darting for me. The Star was not about to quit this host; we had found the parasite with its bag full, just on the point of burrowing inside the luckless larva, there to hatch its eggs hidden from Nurses. With its clutch of eggs ripe and its habitat secured, the monster was not about to retreat. Barnar, freeing the spike and flinging the line ceilingward, swept out his mace, Jolly Breaker, and crippled two more of the Star's left legs. Then, seeing something I did not, he bellowed, "Nifft! Jump!"

I have more than once dodged death by instantly heeding that tone of voice in my friend. I vaulted backwards and trod thin air. We plunged down into the shadows between two neighboring larvae. High overhead, a Nurse's globed eyes peered down. Her jaws plunged and reared aloft again, the Sucking Star between them, a writhing meal that dwindled as those jaws scissored.

But this was the least of the Nurse's sanitary labors. She bent as if to sniff the flaccid grub, her antennae making dainty-quick inquiries. Then with jaws and forelegs she seized up her infested grub and began to devour her outright. The larva hung in that terrible grip, its slack meat like a moon above us that dwindled as we watched, while its rich larval sap drizzled and spattered down to the stone before us.

Such was the remorseless, perfect economy of the Nest, the failed spawn consumed, regathered to the tribal body, not one pulse of energy wasted. The Nurse even lowered her jaws and grazed up the debris from the chamber floor. One of her eyeglobes hovered not five strides away from us. Her eyesight touched us, and possessed us not. When she was done, she rose and sped away.

Where Aim and Act do inadvertent battle,
Unsteady is the hand that robs the cradle
!

WE MADE a glum meal in our operations nook: execrable jerky, chalky hardtack, and sour wine. Apparently, the Superior Sap Mine, when it came to its workers' provisions, spared every expense. After this repast Barnar and I took a second stroll along the margins of the larval shoals. Our eyes were now alerted, and we began to discern significant details.

To our more searching gaze, larval parasites proved not uncommon, once we learned their trick of attaching themselves to the shadowed under-surfaces of the grubs. And, as often as not, the parasitized grubs displayed clear symptoms of their affliction: flaccidity, dulled color, deficient size. A further discovery, once we had watched a while longer and strolled a little farther, was that the Nurses not infrequently seized and devoured parasitized larvae which showed these symptoms to a marked degree. This gave us double reason to identify and avoid infested grubs.

After spotting another loathsome Sucking Star, its brood-bag swollen with eggs, in the very act of eating its way into its host's flank, I was moved to shudder, and remark, "Our competitor-parasites are an ugly lot."

"Yet their work has exactly the same result as ours: an empty bag of larval skin."

"Be as philosophical as you like," I rejoined, "but our vampirism is in every way more elegant than what these spiny horrors do. Ugh!"

"Yes. Or at least, our way would be more elegant if we got around to doing it."

But still we delayed, wandering through the larval trove, watching. We learned it was well to avoid areas where the natural nest-litter (larval droppings, and the feeding debris of such tougher demon parts as horns, barbs, hooves, spikes, and jaws) had not recently been cleared up. Nurses were likely to visit these untidy areas to devour the mess. Similarly, those parts of the chamber's walls where the patches of luminous fungi had most recently been nourished with the Lickers' spittle gave off a more robust light; these more visible areas seemed also likelier to draw Nurses.

Having made these useful observations, we could no longer delay making our next attempt at tapping. Our second choice was a large, healthy-looking grub lying in a litter-free area that was not over-well illuminated, and was neighbored by equally healthy-looking grubs exhibiting no visible parasites.

We spurred our way up her flank with creditable address, and trod pretty steadily across her dorsal hump. Determining the exact midline, I marked the spot with a spur-sliced "X" in her hide. Again our crooks plucked down the nearest suck-line. Again Barnar lofted the spike, and drove it home. The larva didn't even twitch. I dogged down the suck-valve with four little hooked pitons hammered into the hide.

Tapping protocol now required me to stay on the grub, standing by the spike-valve and maintaining its security, while Barnar went back to our operations nook and used the signal cord to call for the pumps to start. I watched him go. I was uneasy standing alone atop the larva, and I kept a restless eye about me. I recalled certain most unsettling descriptions of the Crab Rat, the Sucking Star's chief parasitic competitor for Behemoth broodmeat.

Barnar emerged from the nook, and waved to indicate that it was done, that the pattern of pulls on the signal cord, calling for suction on line three, had been performed, and acknowledged by the appropriate pattern of clicks from Costard.

Long moments passed without event. It was a pause protracted enough to reawaken in me gloomy fears of Costard's incompetence in the above-ground part of the operation. I was about to signal Barnar to repeat his sending, when the suck-line surged powerfully, and the larva shuddered under me.

The pump was geared far too high; it drank with such fierce greed that it deeply dented the grub's dorsum, and threatened my footing—the more so because the galvanized infant began wriggling powerfully. Dropping to all fours to keep from toppling, I bellowed, "Half power! Half power! The grub's throwing fits!"

The instant I'd howled this out, I shrank in fear of what my outcry might draw down on me, coupled with the Nurse-beckoning effect of the grub's convulsions. For half an eternity I clung to that heaving hill of oily flesh.

Then the pump cut off—in time, apparently, since none of the Nurses moving in the distance seemed to be heading my way. Now our victim lay far slacker than she had, almost a quarter diminished in her mass. She still twitched, but far more feebly than before. We waited, Barnar and I, our suspense uniting us across the chamber.

Again the line jerked—recoilingly this time. I stood uncertain for a moment, a sickening suspicion growing swiftly in me. A moment more, and there was no mistaking. The grub was swelling back up—swelling up rapidly, my meaty floor rising underfoot. "The idiot's on blow!" I bellowed. "Reverse pump! Reverse pump! He's got it on blow!"

Again Barnar dove into the operations nook. I scanned the chamber. Had one of those distant Nurses twitched her antennae in my direction? Perhaps not. The larva still swelled alarmingly, lifting me. I knew that the pump's plod-driven bellows were gated to blow out the lines when declogging was wanted. Now the air, at cruel pressure, was a swelling bubble in the larva's innards that crushed out what might remain of her vitality. Her tapered head and tail tremored, and were still. Up, up, up bulged her oily, pliant integument. Already she was half again the size of her largest neighbor.

"Still on blow!" I howled.

"No acknowledgement!" Barnar boomed back to me. "I've signaled four times!
Look
at it, Nifft! Jump, by the Crack! Jump!"

And jump I did, right on the instant. Afterwards, my incompetence was glaringly, comically plain to me. A single swordstroke would have saved the grub, and still left suck-lines a-plenty to work with.

But flustered as I was, I jumped—and at the last possible moment. Before I'd even reached the ground the larva exploded, her dorsum erupting in jagged tatters and a spew of cloudy oils and fatty tissue that sprayed almost ceiling-high, and then came smacking down in loathsome abundance. A great rag of fat fell on me and pinned me to the ground.

I fought up through the weight of my greasy mantle. I had scarcely cleared my face to see about me, when two Nurses filled my little sky, their eyeglobes glinting, their jaws and antennae probing.

Their decision was swift. They instantly fell to devouring every tatter of the burst grub. I lurched to rise, and very plainly I saw that one Nurse
noticed
me. I froze at once, understanding: smeared with tissue, I was a visible piece of moving larva-meat. Moreover, moving or not, I was something to be eaten systematically as soon as the Nurse got to me.

Fixed where I lay, I dared to start scraping—carefully, carefully!—the fat from my face and hair, and then off my neck, and, inchingly, down my chest . . . From the head down I stealthily became orange again, cautiously sculpting off my adventitious larval luster.

All the while the great jaws whickered and clicked and flensed. Seizing, sectioning, sucking in, the Nurse's jaws were the frugal hands of the Nest, gathering in the waste life to stoke the still-living. The impersonal grandeur of it moved me, even in the terror of my predicament. I felt Behemoth and her inscrutable providence all around me, felt the Nest-life like a single spirit filling every tunnel, glinting from every worker's eye, feeding with a million-million jaws.

I had not stripped the last betraying slime from my legs and boots until the Nurses were scouring the very stone beside me for larval tatters, their jaws rattling like weaponry on the rock. Then, a last scrape, and I was up, and diving into the shadows of the larval shoals.

"One more grub," Barnar vowed, back in the nook, as I sluiced myself down with a waterskin. "If that idiot subjects us to the slightest further mishap, we leave forthwith on Bunt's mission." I touched up my coat of dye from one of the flasks with which we were plentifully supplied, and we went forth and made our third pick.

Well versed as I already was in this trade's catastrophes, I felt like a seasoned tapper as we clambered up our next larva's flank, and I marked her midpoint with my spur. We rammed the spike valve home, and dogged it down, then both of us dismounted. "I'm damned," I grumbled, "if I'll `man the valve' until I see that they can work the pump!" I accompanied Barnar back to the nook and he signalled for half suction on line five.