Wilding hallucinated.
He sensed his environment as if every detail were engraved in crystal. He had infinite time to pore over his surroundings and rotate them through his viewpoint.
Pores on Brainard's cold face as the ensign knelt with his back to the water.
Pressure blotches where the enlisted men gripped Brainard, four scarred hands holding each of his.
Individual scales jeweling the sides of fish. Sunlight shone through clouds and clear water to turn fanged horrors into things of miniature beauty.
Wisps of sand drifting in vortices near the mouth of the tunnel fifty feet away, marking movements of the monster within the plenum chamber.
"Right," said Brainard. "Is everybody ready?"
Yessir/Yeah/Uh-huh/Yessir
A wide variety of syllables, timbres, volume—and it all had the same meaning. You are willing to die for us, so we will stand by you. A computer would not understand, but men understood.
Hal Wilding understood for the first time how Nature ordered the jungle—and what it meant to be a man.
"Mr Wilding," said Brainard. His voice trembled minusculely with fear and anticipation. "Are you ready?"
Wilding nodded. "I'm ready," his voice said. His mind marveled at the precise normality of the words. "I understand."
Doubt flecked the corners of Brainard's eyes, briefly there—and gone. No use worrying, and no time for it either.
"All right," the ensign said. "I'm going in." He lurched backward into the glassy water.
Large fish swirled shadows at the limits of visibility. They were drawn by sound and movement aboard the hovercraft, but they sensed also the huge moray which laired beneath the vessel. They would not attack—unless enough blood scented the water to overwhelm their instinct for self-preservation with the desire to kill.
Crabs marched closer in the shallows. Their legs stirred the fine sand of the bottom into a smoky ambiance through which the flat, spike-armored carapaces drifted sideways. The crabs' outstretched fighting claws scissored open and closed, for the moment cutting only water.
The moray's tunnel was still and dark. The hovercraft shivered as a slimy body brushed its underside.
Ensign Brainard kicked, stirring the surface.
The four enlisted men looked more like corpses than they did able-bodied humans. The cuts, scrapes and sores that covered their bodies were individually minor, but the cumulative effect would have sapped the will of the strongest of men. Their faces were stark. They knew that they would have to pull their commander out of the water more swiftly than the moray could strike; and all of them doubted their ability to succeed.
"Has the eel . . . ," Brainard asked, pausing to kick again. His exhausted muscles trembled with the effort of keeping his head out of water, but his eyes were indomitable. " . . . shown itself?"
"It's moving inside the plenum chamber," Wilding said. His tone was calm, soothing. He was a part of Nature. "It'll come soon."
All of their clothing was in rags. Leaf knelt beside the officer-trainee. His feet were turned outward. The soles of his seaboots were a synthetic which combined a gummy grip with the toughness of mild steel and stability at temperatures up to 880o.
A purple fungus had devoured half the thickness of the right sole and was sucking a dimple from the heel of the left boot as well.
"Do you know what we're fighting for?" Wilding asked softly.
A twenty-foot shark curled in toward the hovercraft. A rifle on the deck beside Wilding pointed out over the sea. He knew the weapon was unnecessary at the moment.
The shark banked and fled toward the safety of its distant fellows, showing its pale belly. Its pectoral fins were spread like wings.
"For our lives, you bloody fool!" Leaf gasped. "That's what we're fighting for!"
Sweat blinded the motorman. He was desperately afraid that the sweat sliming his palms would cause his hands to slip when Ensign Brainard's life depended on him.
"No," explained Wilding, "that isn't why we're still fighting, still here."
His fingertips knew the surface of the grenade. On the deck lay the safety pin. The grenade's spoon handle pressed upward against Wilding's palm, straining to ignite the fuze train. The safety pin could be reinserted if the moray refused the bait . . . but Wilding knew that the beast would come.
Soon.
"Any one of us would have given up long ago if he'd been alone," he said aloud. "Even you, sir. Even you."
It was a wonder the way his tongue shaped to the words.
"For God's sake, man!" Caffey snarled. "Are you watching for the fucking eel?"
"I'm ready," Wilding said. "I understand."
Brainard's face lifted toward the officer-trainee. The ensign's face showed no concern; no expectation, even. Only the physical strain of making his wracked muscles kick the water to bring the jaws of a multi-ton monster down on him. . . .
Miniature fish darted in and out, confused by the thrashing. One of them snatched at the pus-soaked fabric of Brainard's sock. The scavenger's jaws stayed clamped although a kick lifted it from the water. When the fish splashed down again, one of its fellows sheared through its body just behind the head.
The torpedoman muttered a curse or a prayer.
"We're fighting for each other," Wilding said. "That's good, but it's not good enough. When we get back, we have to fight for all Mankind."
The crabs scurried away like a mob fleeing a madman with an axe when Brainard started to kick. They resumed their sidelong advance, each moving individually but marching in lock-step because identical imperatives ruled their rudimentary minds.
The crustaceans pulsed forward and dashed back; but a little closer with every cycle. Soon one of them would spring from the sea floor with its claws wide to seize the man in the water. . . .
"Otherwise we're part of the jungle," Wilding said. "And the jungle will win."
"Oh God!" Leaf cried in despair. "I can't hold—"
It was the moment.
"Now!" shouted the officer-trainee. As the word came from his mouth, electric motion slid out of the tunnel.
The moray was green. Its jaws were open. The ragged fangs were up to ten inches long.
The sharks and lesser fish at the edge of vision vanished. The ranked crabs exploded backward behind a curtain of sand, tumbling over one another in their haste to escape nemesis.
The moray struck through the sea more swiftly than gravity could have pulled a boulder in thin air. The undulant movement slapped water violently against the hovercraft.
The grenade left Wilding's fingers as if it were playing its part in a marionette show in which strings connected all existence.
"Hah!" shouted one of the enlisted men as the four straightened and lunged backward in unison. Ensign Brainard lifted toward the shell-torn gap in K44's railing.
Brainard was still in the air. His head and shoulders were over the deck, but his legs flailed above the sea.
The moray's head slid out of the water. Its palate was a cottony white. Leaf threw himself forward to block the monster's spearpoint teeth with his body. Wilding knew what was about to happen. He held the motorman's shoulders with the strength of a madman.
The grenade went off in the moray's throat. The creature's head flew apart. The thick slime coating its body was bright yellow, and the scales beneath were blue.
The spray of the moray's blood in the air was red, and the spreading red blur in Wilding's mind overwhelmed his consciousness.
Wilding watched Francine's coiffure echo the fireworks with increased intensity. Charged strands woven among the hairs trapped and re-emitted the light a band higher on the spectrum.
When the fireworks flashed silver, Francine's hair sparkled with all the colors of the rainbow.
She turned to face him. Her body moved against the balcony rail like that of a cat rubbing itself, and the smile on her broad lips was feline as well.
"What are you thinking about, Prince Hal?" she asked in a purring chuckle which admitted she knew what any man was thinking about when he looked at her.
She was here with Tootles. Neither she nor Wilding wanted to arouse the hostility of the Callahan Family; but she would flirt and he—
He had invited her out on the roof of his penthouse.
Members of the Twelve Families and their entourage partied two levels below. A drunken mob of common people spilled onto the street from the ground floor of Wilding House, keeping Carnival in their own way.
More fireworks burst against the dome. Sparks spun down in varicolored corkscrews, and the crowd howled.
Wilding grinned, cat-smooth himself. He pointed a languid finger toward the boulevard. "Oh," he said, "I was thinking about them, Francine. What is it that they really want?"
The woman's stance did not change, but all the softness went out of her features. "Why ask me?" she said in a brittle voice. "How would I know?"
They were no longer flirting.
"Because you should know," he said. "Because I want to know."
Since he was host, he had not drunk heavily. There was enough alcohol in his brain to free the sharp-edged knowledge that he usually hid under an urbane exterior: he was a Wilding. For all practical purposes, he was the Wilding.
While Francine was a tart whom Tootles, Chauncey Callahan, had lifted from the gutter.
Her dress was a metallic sheath. It fitted Francine's hard curves as a scabbard of hammered silver would fit a scimitar. The natural color of her hair was black, and she wore it black tonight. It formed a pair of shoulder-length curls to frame her face, heart-shaped and carefully expressionless at this moment.
A door opened onto the balcony below. Half a dozen slurred, cheerful voices prattled merrily. "And then," Glory McLain trilled, "he wanted her to lie in cold water, I mean really cold, before she came to bed, and—"
The McLain girl's voice lowered into the general babble. The balcony was thirty feet below the penthouse roof; the partiers were unaware that there was anyone above them.
Francine moved away from the railing with a sinuous motion. She did not glance down to betray her concern about being seen—by Tootles, by someone who would mention the fact to Tootles.
Wilding stepped to the side also. "Don't they ever want a better life, Francine?" he said softly.
Fireworks began to spell letters across the dome: W-Y-O. . . .
Common people cheered and drank, while aristocrats gossiped about necrophilia.
The penthouse roof was planted with grass and palmettoes. The seedstock had come to Venus in the colony ships rather than being packed into terraforming capsules. It had not been exposed to the actinic radiation and adaptive pressures which turned the Earth-sprung surface life into a purulent hell.
Francine spread the fingers of one hand and held them out against a palmetto frond, as if to compare her delicacy against the green coarseness.
"They don't want anything better," she said. She turned to look at Wilding. "They don't deserve anything better," she added fiercely. "If they did, they'd have it, wouldn't they? I bettered myself!"
There was a pause in the fireworks and the sound of the crowd in the street. " . . . and I don't mean young girls, either . . ." drifted up from the balcony.
Wilding turned to look out over the railing. He stayed back from the edge so that he could see the half the width of the boulevard while remaining hidden from the partiers on the balcony. In the boulevard women who might have been prostitutes danced a clog-step with partners of all ages, accompanied by a hand-held sound system.
"They've got energy," Wilding said. "They could do. . . . something. Instead, what they get is a constant round of shortages and carouses."
He felt the warmth of Francine's body. When he turned, she was standing next to him again.
"Artificial hatred of neighboring Keeps," he went on, astounded at the harshness in his own voice. "Artificial wars, fought by mercenaries—"
Francine's dress had a high neck and covered her ankles. The fabric was opaque but so thin and tight that the shimmering fireworks displayed her nipples with nude clarity. She was breathing rapidly.
"—under artificial conditions," Wilding said, "so that war can be entertainment but not destroy the planet the way Earth was destroyed. But that's not the only way Mankind can die, is it?"
"Prince Hal," the woman said in whispered desperation. She took his hands in hers. Her palms were clammy.
He'd drunk too much, or—
But he must have drunk too much. "Those people down there could colonize the surface some day," Wilding said. He enfolded the woman's tiny hands in his own, trying instinctively to warm her. "They could colonize the stars. All they need are leaders."
"Prince Hal," Francine begged, "don't talk like this. Please? You're scaring me."
"You're afraid of change," Wilding said. "The mob's afraid of change, everybody's afraid of change. So Wyoming Keep has the Twelve Families, and all the other Keeps have their equivalents. Comfortable oligarchies determined to preserve the status quo until the whole system runs down. And no leaders!"
Francine lifted Wilding's hand to her mouth. She pressed it with her teeth and lips, an action somewhere between a kiss and a nibble. He could feel her heart beating.
More fireworks went off to amuse the Carnival crowd.
"It's nothing but a jungle life," Wilding whispered.
The woman stepped back and raised her hands to her neckline. There was hard decision in her eyes. "All right, Prince Hal," she said. "You want a leader? Then I'll lead you!"
Francine touched a catch. Her garment slid away to become a pool at her feet. She was nude beneath it. Her body was hairless and perfect.
"And you'll like where I take you, honey," she added with practiced enthusiasm.