DEBRIS RAINED DOWN around the tractor. The shower included small items like the three-ton shed roof which narrowly missed them, and tiny things like whole slowshielded Maggots. It also included big things, in small pieces—like the whole of the hilltop. The bats dived for shelter and clung under the trailer. Chip wished he could do the same. Instead he was obliged to hunch his shoulders, think turtle thoughts, and keep steering around the fallen rocks.
Fal, clinging now to the wheel arch, looked back at the crown of leaping flames around the once-winefarm and sniffed, his dark eyes clouded with sorrow. "The waste is very great," he intoned tragically.
The moon was down, hidden behind the mound-walls, with only the high ground of the far ridge still bathed in its brightness.
None of them saw the hole until Behan cried a warning. "Stop!"
Chip dropped the blade as his foot found the clutch. With a screech and sparkstream they halted. The front of the tractor hung over the edge of a vast crater where the road had once been. Now the blade had nothing to act as a brake on . . . and they were rolling slowly forward. With eyes like saucers, Chip frantically fumbled for reverse gear. With a jerk that nearly stalled the tractor, they backed off.
Fortunately they went back a good nine yards from the crumbling lip before the trailer jackknifed. Still more fortunately, Chip was riding the clutch. The impact pushed his foot flat, and stopped them from breaking the hitch.
There was just enough space to edge forward and around the crater. After struggling across the earth and tar debris, they were able to get back onto the road.
"That's it," said Chip with finality. "We'll have to slow down. We just can't travel that fast." The back of his shirt was wringing wet, for all that it was a cool night. "Second gear, and that's max."
They pressed on, much slower now. A few minutes later the first bat returned.
"Chip, you've got to go faster," Siobhan pleaded, tugging at his shoulder with a wing-claw. "Maggots are coming in diagonally. They'll get ahead of us if you don't move it up."
He ignored her.
She put her wings over his eyes.
He swatted her away. "Will you stop that! I can't go any damn faster! I dare not. Goddamn headlight batteries are dying."
"And the Maggots are coming to cut us off. Choose, Bezonian," said Pistol, peering into the dark. Even with only one eye he could still see better than Chip. After that last incident all eyes strained to see the dark road.
"I can't see properly," said Chip, angrily. "Are you going to tell me where to drive?"
Pistol nodded "Yes. Methinks that's a fine concept."
"Are you fucking mad?"
"We cannot continue with this drive in the darkness," the Korozhet piped up. "It is not safe!"
"You're right," agreed Siobhan.
"Yes!" Chip opened the throttle. "We might be hurt or killed. Oh, thank heavens Professor Crotchet is here to guide us."
"Methinks there is no need to be sarcastic to the Professor," reproved Doll severely. "He's just trying to look after all of us, because you can't see where you're going."
"Left, left. Bear left. Hard!" shouted Siobhan from where she clung to the headlight.
Cursing, Chip swung the wheel over.
"Army left! Moron!" bellowed Eamon.
Chip swung the wheel the other way.
"Why don't we just put the headlights on?" asked Virginia.
Chip had no immediate answer for that. "Um. Er. Maggots might see us."
"More left!" yelled a bat.
They skidded onto gravel. "Not so much!" shouted a rat.
"Even if they see us, we'll crash without light. I think it is one of the buttons on the dashboard." She felt for buttons and hit them. The one working headlight lit up and . . .
"HEEEHAW! HEEEHAW!"
The horn brayed electronic jackass. The joke of some dead Vat-mechanic nearly had them all off the tractor. Fluff jumped from Virginia's shoulder to the rear of the swaying trailer and back again, squealing all the while. Very poor form, actually, for a machogalago.
In the backlight from the dash, Virginia saw Chip crack a grin. "Not a bad battle cry for us. Effing appropriate." For all the fright of the moment, she felt her heart suddenly leap. There was nothing Heathcliff-heroic about the dirty, wiry man sitting next to her, his hands wrestling with a steering wheel. Just—
Hers. By damn—and she would see to it!
Bronstein came diving in. "To be sure, let them find out how hard the jackass can kick!"
"And bite!" added Melene, showing teeth.
They came to an upgrade. Now, had Chip been even slightly more experienced at driving he would have downshifted the gears, or accelerated sooner. Instead he just kept hoping. . . .
Their gallant steed was losing revs . . . She wasn't going to get to the brow of the hill . . . She was going to stall. Chip gritted his teeth. The diesel coughed, spluttered, missed. He hastily put his foot on the clutch.
Well, that stopped them from stalling. But . . . they were rolling backwards already. He got the blade down hastily. They stopped.
Chip realized that he faced that nightmare of all inexperienced drivers: The hill-start. And worse . . . The hill-start without a handbrake . . .
"Get some rocks, quickly! Put them behind the wheels."
The rocks were in place. The bats fluttered about like anxious dishcloths. Chip wasn't a religious man, but he did some praying as he put the tractor into first. Trying his best to let the clutch out gradually, he did it a bit too fast. She jerked, and the blade gave a metallic screech against the paved roadway. The tractor hiccuped. Chip thrust his foot on the clutch again. "Ginny, you'll have to lift the blade while I deal with this clutch."
She bit her lip. "Just tell me what you want me to do."
" 'Tis not everyday you get that sort of offer, hey Chip?" Pistol winked from his post next to the air filter.
Chip ground his teeth. "Oh, shut up! There must be some time when you don't think about sex."
Pistol gave that fair consideration. "Well, I'd liefer think about sex and drink. But two things at once is beyond you, eh, Connolly? Still, I must care for the whoreson who owes me ten cases of whiskey . . ."
"Just ignore him," Chip said to Ginny. "Here. It's these two levers. I'm going to count to three. Start pushing this one up first; then, up slowly on two. Then the other fast on three. Can you manage that?"
Virginia could do calculus in her head. This was far more alarming. "I will do my best to give satisfaction, sir."
He snorted. The rats chortled. "You do choose your words, don't you Ginny?"
She was desperately glad he couldn't see her blush. She didn't choose her words. Something in her head chose them for her.
"One. Two . . . three . . ." And, with scarcely a jerk, they were off, and lumbered over the top. He gave her an unconsidered hug. "You were great. We're the `A' team, huh?"
She smiled like a child and hugged him back.
" 'Ware Maggots!" shouted O'Niel.
"WereMaggots! Argh! Not wereMaggots!" shouted Chip. Snarling: "If we shoot them with silver bullets do they turn back into Shareholders?" The tractor was going straight for the fifteen long-legged spindly stilt-runner-Maggots.
Virginia ground her teeth and dropped the hand from Chip's waist. He was as sensitive as a brick! On good days . . .
He hit the horn. And it brayed out a challenge.
The slowshield has a perimeter area in which incoming kinetic energy is absorbed. Inside that is the area where that energy is dissipated as a temporary "hard" shell. The shield is shaped to fit the wearer—in a closest-fit ovoid shape. Low-slung Maggots inevitably included a substantial piece of the ground in their shield. Upright humans didn't have much of the ground in theirs. The argument against tank warfare was that hitting Maggot shields would be the equivalent of hitting concrete bollards.
In broad theory, especially if the Maggots acted in concert, that was true. Chip proved, at least in the case of these thin upright Maggots, that in practice it was a lot of crap. Accompanied by the bray of the horn, the tractor sent the Maggots sailing like so many tenpins hit by a strike.
Eamon dropped in. "Slow down. If you get there in less than two minutes there won't be a hole to drive through."
"Speed up, slow down," grumbled Chip. "Will you make up your minds?"
He eased the pace.
They came around the corner just when Eamon wanted them to. A hundred yards farther up the valley stood a choke of solid Maggots. They stood stark and sharp-edged in the headlight beam. That lot would be enough to stop a tank.
When they were thirty yards from the Maggot-mass . . . the wall of the mound blew. Through the settling dust a hole full of lumifungus-green light beckoned. This was no time for finesse and careful aiming. Chip didn't even dare ease back the throttle. At the last minute he closed his eyes.
And he didn't scream alone.
Fortunately the bats had erred on the side of caution with their shot placement. The hole would have taken a six-lane freeway. Chip barely brushed the edge on the way in, before they started falling . . .
The tunnel floor was a good fourteen inches lower inside than the outside ground level. They bounced. Bounced again. And then, humping and mounting, galumphed their way over bits of fallen Magh' masonry.
"Deploy a roll of barbed wire!" shouted Bronstein, above the racket of their blundering progress.
Nym and Fal were on the trailer in a bound. Between them and Fluff the first roll of barbed wire was spooled out, with a rock tied onto the end. It was released—and snapped back into anything but a neat coil.
"Molotov," called O'Niel. "And light for me, Fal. And get more ready!"
Glancing back, Virginia saw the first Maggots, trapped in the tangle of rusty wire, firedancing with limb-tearing frantic effort.
The horn brayed. "Maggots. In front of us!" shouted Chip. "Hold tight!"
They bounced and bounded onwards, belching diesel smoke into the maze. Deeper and deeper into the tunnels of the scorpiary. Chaos trailed along behind them. And in front of them spread panic. For the first time in many years a scorpiary-organism knew fear.
\