CHIP STOOD AT THE head-end of the old quarry, in plain view of the advancing Maggots. There were more this time. At least there were no diggers. Most of the pursuit seemed to be the long-legged sun-spidery ones. If Chip remembered his sketchy boot camp training correctly, those were the ones called Magh'urz. According to the Korozhet who had brought the warning of the oncoming Magh' invasion, each variant and subspecies of the quasi-arthropods had a different suffix to delineate them.
But Chip hadn't paid much attention at the time, and had never had occasion to regret the loss. As far as he and every other grunt was concerned—Vat, rat and bat alike—Magh' were Maggots and they only came in two varieties: dangerous ones and all the rest. The dangerous ones always attacked and the others never did.
These, as it happened, were dangerous. Which, under the circumstances, was exactly what Chip wanted. But—
Damn! The stupid bastards!
The things had somehow not spotted him. They were veering away from the rocks, following the route the rats had taken. Chip cursed under his breath. He didn't enjoy being bait, but if he was going to play worm on a hook, the least they could do was notice him.
He took a deep breath and bellowed. "HEY! MOTHER-FUCKERS!"
One of the Maggots paused, as if considering the statement. At face value, of course, the accusation was absurd. As far as human xenobiologists knew, fighter Magh' had no sex life at all.
Chip blew it a raspberry. Now, it was obvious that all the Maggots had heard him. They had all stopped, skittered around, and were staring up at him.
Dammit, do they think this is one of Doc's philosophical discussions?
The last thing Chip wanted was to set the Maggots thinking. They might realize that the bait was bait. But how did he stir them into action? How did he taunt a Maggot?
When in doubt . . .
The old ways are always best.
Chip turned around, dropped his pants, and mooned them. The Maggots stormed forward, stridulating loudly. Plainly he had at last bridged the Maggot-human communication gap. It didn't sound like it was going to lead to an instant outbreak of peace. . . .
The Maggots were just beneath the shaky cliff-corner. The bats reckoned that one well placed satchel-charge would bring it all down. If it didn't, he was going to have to "please explain" that last gesture to the Maggots.
"Now!"
The explosion sounded tiny. For a moment it looked as if it would be totally ineffective. Chip's legs tensed and his heart sank. Damn those know-it-all bats! Then, with a tiny spurt of dust from the cracks, the entire cornice quivered. And fell.
Even where he stood, three hundred yards off, the ground shook and rocks tumbled all over the quarry.
Bats fluttered up, peering down into the dust. Several of the rats were leaping down already. Only three maggot-survivors had escaped the rockfall. In vain—the bats were swooping upon them.
"Heh. Got nearly every last one of the whoreson achitophel!" Fal rubbed his ratty paws. "Those flyboys know how to use their powder! Got that rockpile right on the G-spot. Did you see how it quivered!"
"Did the earth move for you too, Fal?"
The rat chuckled. Licked his lips. "Well, I must go down and grab a haunch or two before the others snaffle it all. Most of the meat is buried."
Chip shuddered as the plump rat showed what a turn of speed he could display for food. The Company biochemists had said that the Maggots were nontoxic, except for their poison sacs. The rats and bats came from insectivore lines. Even so, eating their enemy . . .
Chip decided he'd wait until his bellybutton was closer to his backbone.
Ten minutes later, they were legging away across country, the rats showing that table manners were not part of their download.
Chip flopped down. They were now miles further in between the high red walls of the Maggot tunnel-mounds. There was no doubt about it: away from the trench-and-heavy-shelling warfare of the front, the combined skills of the human, rats and bats could lick five times their number of Maggots. Maggots were so goddamn stupid. Well, so was frontal slugging away at each other in trenches. That kind of warfare suited Maggots. There it was numbers and sheer blind determination and ferocity. Out here, in the broken country, even right inside their own backyard, Maggots were getting their asses whipped. But they just kept on coming. That was Maggots for you. They didn't run.
"I've found another fine site for an ambush, indade. Another quarry. Fair number of quarries hereabouts. The Maggots're about an hour off." Eamon was flourishing on this diet of mayhem.
Chip staggered to his feet. "Jesus, Eamon. We can't go on like this. That cliff section you dropped on the last party was brilliant, and we nailed every single survivor. But they're back onto us again. Twice as fast, I'll swear. I've got to get some sleep. You and the rats can manage on half an hour snatches, but I'm running out of steam."
"Sleep. We'll prepare this one. I'll leave O'Niel to keep a vigil." It was a measure of the respect that the sole surviving human had won, that the big bat would even suggest this.
Chip was tempted. Then he shook his head. "We shouldn't split up," he said regretfully. "But I'd love to know how in the hell they keep on following us. And so quickly."
Bronstein had fluttered up, quietly. "It must be the smell."
"Are you suggesting that they smell a rat?"
"Belike they smell a stinking human," snapped Behan.
"Speaking of keeping together, where is the fat rat?"
"And Doll . . ."
Chip raised his eyes to heaven. "Both of them! We're in the middle of a war. Lost behind enemy lines, with half the Maggot army after us, and fat Fal's chasing tail."
"Envy makes you nasty, Connolly," said Phylla, preening her whiskers.
"AAASKKKEEECCCH!"
They were nearly flattened by seven of the long-legged Maggots they'd seen foraging, busy collecting literally every scrap of organic material. The running creatures paid them no attention, but ran on, fleeing as if their trousers were afire.
The bats were still fluttering in confusion and the rats scampering for cover when the reason for the panic came blundering through, stridulating blue murder. It was an eighth Maggot. And its trousers were on fire. Well, its hind-end was alight, anyway. Maggots didn't wear trousers, or anything else for that matter.
"Man, look at that thing go!" cheered Nym.
"Got its afterburners on!" sniggered Pistol.
Even Eamon was impressed. "Indade, 'tis not often you be seeing them from behind."
"Not often!" Melene was smiling toothily. "Why, Fal said he'd give up drinking if he ever saw one run away."
Pistol curled his own thin lips in the savage way that showed amusement. "And you said the only way he'd see them run was to give up drinking in the first place. To which he replied that he'd see a lot of other things too if he did. And then you—"
"We'd better go and look for those rats," interrupted Chip, scrambling to his feet.
The bats located the portly rat and Doll not seventy yards away, in a neat little hideaway that Fal had plainly organized. He and Doll were still lying on Chip's jacket, their tails entwined. Chip hadn't even noticed that the rat had stolen the jacket. The two were alive, and intact . . . it was just their wits that seemed to have gone begging.
For once even the fat rat was at a loss for words. And the brassy Doll's voice quivered when she finally found it. Her first question was addressed to Fal. "Art thou not hurt i' the groin?"
Fal just stared wide-eyed. Finally he shook himself. "I' faith that was bad timing!" The fat rat shook his head, untwisted his tail, stood up, and stared at the broken glass. " 'Tis a great waste," he mourned.
Pistol poked him in the gut. "Your waist is very great—but just what did you do to those whoreson Maggots?"
Fal paid the questioning Pistol no attention, and instead scrabbled among the rocks. "My lighter! It's got to be here somewhere."
Chip leaned over and picked up a pseudo-antique zippo. The gadget was designed for rats: smaller, overall, than the human version, but with an oversized striker to suit the relatively clumsy "fingers" of a rat's forepaws. It was inscribed: Ours is not to do or die, ours is but to smoke and fly. In some ways, rats were sticklers for tradition.
"That's mine!" cried Fal.
"And that is my jacket you swiped for your little bit of private whoopee-nest," said Chip, grimly. "Now, let's have the story."
"Gimme."
"Story." Chip held the lighter up, out of reach, and then, when Fal bared his teeth, he tossed it to the fluttering Bronstein.
"All right," muttered Fal. "Give it and I'll tell you. That's a genuine heirloom, that lighter."
Chip jerked his jacket out from under Doll. "After he's told us, hey, Bronstein."
"If ever," said the bat.
The plump rat glowered at them. "All right. Well, we just slipped off for a bit of . . . privacy, and I was just lighting up, after, when this Maggot stuck his face in. Well, I thought we were dead. . . . Doll threw my bottle of 160 proof." Fal looked at her reproachfully. "She missed. It hit that rock over there, broke and showered over the Maggot. The falling liquor was slow enough to go through the thing's slowshield, obviously. Then I must have lost my grip on my lighter."
"Panicked and threw it when he was trying to get up and run," interpolated Doll, obviously feeling more like her usual obstreperous self again.
"WOOF . . . next thing the Maggot took off like . . ."
"Like its tail was on fire."
"Exactly. Now can I have my lighter back?"
"I guess. So you're giving up drinking, Fal? Now that you've seen one run?" Bronstein asked.
The rat's whiskers drooped. He looked mournfully at the broken glass. "For now I am."
There were easily twice as many Maggots this time. They took one look at the quarry and, even with Chip playing bait, did not enter it but set off around. Chip and the rats and bats had to flee, the trap unsprung.
"They knew," said Bronstein, clinging to Chip's shoulder again.
Chip shook his head. "But how? We killed every single one, last time"
"Comms," the bat said, quietly.
"But they don't carry anything." It was true enough. By comparison the naked bats and rats were overdressed. They carried small packs and bandoliers. No Maggot lugged any hardware at all.
Bronstein gave the bat equivalent of a grimace. If anything, it improved that face. "Not that we've seen, anyway."
"Where could they hide them? I mean between you and the rats you've eaten whole Maggots. If there was anything there you'd have found it." Chip grinned wryly. "The rats would have shat it out by now. Like they do the slowshields."
"Maybe they're built into the slowshields," she said pensively, rubbing her chest over the spot where her own slowshield was implanted. "Ours don't have anything like that, but . . ."
Chip shrugged, nearly dislodging her. "Well, whatever it is, they communicate. Even when they're dying. And even if we win every fight, we're getting into a worse and worse situation, Bronstein."
The bat looked around at the tunnel-mounds that walled in the half mile wide strip of wasteland they'd found refuge in. The mounds were higher, and the strip narrower. "We need to break out of here," she said.
Chip voice reflected his tiredness. "We need to stop being chased."
"They won't stop until we're dead," mused Bronstein. Her face folds wrinkled even further. Chip thought that if there was anything in the world uglier than a bat's face, it was the face of a thinking bat. Then she said slowly . . . "So maybe we should die for them, then. Let them tell their commanders we're dead."
Chip snorted. "What do you suggest? We hold them over a fire and make them say: `The enemy are dead, Commander'?"
"Something like that," muttered Bronstein. "I'll think of something . . ."
The next ambush centered on a roll of barbed wire, either a relic of the war or a leftover from when this had been farmland. It was impossible to tell. What had once been fertile fields dotted by the occasional farmhouse had been completely ravaged—first by the fighting, and then by the typical Magh' methods of expanding their scorpiaries.
The party of Maggots that were closest and had to be ambushed were foragers or scouts. Probably scouts, because there was nothing left to forage. This area had already seen intensive work from the foragers. Not so much as one blade of grass survived. The Magh' always removed any organic material and stowed it somewhere in their scorpiaries. Metal scraps, however, were usually ignored.
Hence the roll of barbed wire that Chip had literally stumbled upon.
He swore.
"Not tonight," piped Melene immediately. "I've got a headache."
Chip grinned. "You'd be so lucky."
God help him, he was starting to enjoy his flirtation with Mel. If only she'd been a human female. Sigh . . .
He examined the wire, as Doc with blessed silent efficiency cleaned and strapped the slash on his leg. The wire was tightly spooled. A memory of Chip's only attempt at fencing came back to him. He'd unrolled the pig wire carefully. As he'd been cutting the stuff, the brick he'd left on the other end, to keep it unrolled, must have got up and walked away.
It was not a nostalgic moment. Still . . .
"Hey, Eamon!" he called out. "What about this idea?" Chip explained how the newly unwound wire sprang back.
"You cannot be using that stuff. It'll rip our wing membranes," said Behan, one of Eamon's pack-followers.
"Indade, it's a fool you are, Behan. 'Twill tangle the Maggots up, not us." Eamon's head was a closed shop—except for taking in ideas for generating mayhem. There he was as sharp as . . . as batfangs.
"Why should we wear them, when the bats don't?"
"Because they can fly, Phylla." Chip knew he was going to lose it soon. The rats were being cranky about Bronstein's idea. The wire ambush had been a resounding success, but they'd been able to watch how the Maggots, dipping their long feelers to the broken ground, had been able to track them, step-by-step. They plainly followed a scent trace.
The rat-girl looked at her feet, encased in strapped-on pieces of Magh' pseudo-chitin. "But they're so . . . ugly."
"Look good on you, Phyl," Nym rumbled.
That was enough. Nym's rare comments were valued. "Do you really think so?"
"Yes. Give you a bit of extra height."
"But they're not really my color."
I'm going to lose it! Chip concentrated on making himself a pair of exoskeleton sandals, while the rats debated not the clumsiness or the slipperiness of the "shoes," but their sex appeal.
They hid out on the hillside and waited and watched. A purposeful mob of Maggots arrived within twenty minutes.
"They knew exactly where to come. I told you. Comms, built in," said Bronstein.
"It does seem the logical conclusion," concurred Doc. "Philosophically valid, too. All the great logicians agree on the supremacy of mind over matter. I suggest we are observing, in action, Immanuel Kant's famous noumenon, the thing-in-itself unknowable to the mere conscious intellect."
Going to lose it . . .
"Doc," grated Chip, "would you mind giving me a translation? Before I just tell you to shut up?"
The rat reached up a stumpy forepaw and adjusted his pince-nez spectacles. "To put it crudely—inaccurately—we are seeing racial telepathy at work."
Chip stared at the Maggots. The Magh' fighters stood and muddled around their dead, or what was left of them. Eventually the mob split into little search parties, wandering hither and thither, plainly searching scent traces.
"See," said Bronstein. "They don't know where we've gone. I told you so."
It wasn't a popular statement, because it never is, but it was true. "They'll still find us," muttered Chip. "There are just too many of them."
He glanced down at G.W.F. Hegel, perched on his hip and peering over the boulder. "And if Doc's right . . ."
"Any time we fight one, the rest of them know about it," concluded Bronstein. Oddly, however, the thought seemed to cheer her up.
"But meanwhile"—she nodded toward the Maggots wandering aimlessly across the torn-up landscape below—"it gives us time."
"Time for what?" snorted Chip. "Time to sleep?" He found himself yawning.
"No," replied Bronstein firmly. "A time to die. Philosophically speaking, that is. Even—" She fluttered her wings. "Artistically!"
"I'm going to lose it," muttered Chip. "Completely."