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troop. Saldo and two others searched through the herd, making sure the
animals screened no Outsider.
Hunt excitement could not be denied, though. It was evidenced by an
increasing nervousness in the troop and an outflow of external hormones that
began to spook the cattle. More and more, individual cows and then whole
groups of them snorted and ran off with a panicked thumping.
Old Harvey began to regret that he had not included a selective hormone
suppressant in his preparations. The subtle chemical signals that one animal
could send to another had their uses at times, but they introduced
complexities now. He kept his attention on the trees, however, leaving the
cattle for Saldo and the others to scan. Nightsight gave his surroundings a
faint silver cast, as though the light came from within every object he saw.
She will hear us coming and she will try to hide in a tree, he told himself.
It's her style.
He couldn't say why or how he knew this from just one afternoon's observation,
but he felt certain of it. She would hide in a tree.
Old Harvey heard a night bird call from far off to his right and felt his
heartbeat quicken. He was not too old for the sweeps. Perhaps it would be a
good thing to go out occasionally with the workers.
The words of Nils Hellstrom. Unlike other creatures who struggled against
their environment, the insect learned early to seek its protective embrace.
He created an endless wardrobe of camouflage.
He and his environment became one. When predators came, he was nowhere to be
found. So artistic were his methods of deception that predators could crawl
upon his body in their search for prey. He did not choose merely one means of
escape, but countless means. Not for him speed or the treetops, but both of
these, and more.
Tymiena saw one flank of the sweep just as the first searchers saw her,
confirming Old Harvey's prediction. Early in her flight, she had tripped in a
rabbit hole and sprained her left ankle. The pain had forced her to make the
climb into a low oak where she had braced herself in a notch and taken off the
shoe on the injured foot. She sat wedged in the notch about twenty feet up,
the little automatic held firmly in her right hand now. A powerful little
pen-size flashlight was in her left hand, her thumb on its switch.
The ankle throbbed with a fiery pain that made thought difficult. She
wondered if she had broken a bone.
Running cattle gave her the first indication of trouble. She heard them
snorting above the pounding of their hooves as they passed. Then came a
mysterious swish-swish hissing. This sound grew louder until it circled her
tree and stopped. She could just make out the darker shadows of the hunters
in the blackness. They had formed a rough circle all around her.
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In panic, she thumbed the flashlight switch, swept its beam in a short arc
around the part of the circle that faced her. At first sight of the
nightmasks and stunwands, she gasped, recognizing deadly menace. Without
thinking, she began shooting.
The words of Nils Hellstrom. Perhaps, in time we will become fully functional
as are those we copy. We will develop faces without expression; only eyes and
mouth; just enough to keep the rest of the body alive. No muscles to smile
with, or frown with, or in any way to betray what's lurking beneath the
surface.
The little automatic erupted as a monstrous surprise to the Hive's hunters.
Five of them were dead before Tymiena was brought tumbling from the tree by a
concentration of stuns. Old Harvey was among those killed, his nightmask
shattered and a bullet in his brain. Saldo suffered a bullet burn on his jaw,
but his shouted command brought order to the frightened workers. They had
been full of "hunt juice," as the old-timers put it, and the Outsider female's
attack had raised them to a deadly pitch. They leaped in to finish her off
with their hands, but Saldo's cry stopped them. In the end, it was Hive
discipline that kept them off her.
Saldo moved up to the unconscious female, issued swift orders. Someone must
run to inform Nils.
The dead must be returned to the vats. That was what good workers deserved.
Thus, they became one with all. "Into the vats old, out of the vats new."
When his orders were being obeyed, he knelt to examine the unconscious female. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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