Metamorphosis Read online

  "At least, I think that was the sound I made. We had both stopped in midsyllable, mouths open, because the voice we heard then seemed to come from everywhere. It was female, and there was something slightly familiar about it. It was mostly alien and cold, yet with an arrogant undertone to it."

  "I also got the feeling, somehow, that its words were being transmitted to and echoed by some multitude that spoke with a single voice, subordinate to the main one. And I know this is strange, but-it sounded like a stage voice to me, like somebody doing Lady Macbeth through a lot of voice-processing equipment."

  "It said, 'Humans, your time on this planet is almost spent!'"

  "We were both looking around for the source of the voice. And then I felt cold night air on my neck, because the hair there was standing up, because Annie came to a sitting position, arms folded across her chest.

  "She was still facing away from us, the firelight playing over the hair that looked so straggly after a day of roughing it in that sweaty theme park."

  "Scott began, 'Um, Annie, are you feeling all-'"

  "That voice came again. 'The age of Humans is coming to an end!' What sat on the ground turned toward us, but the features we saw weren't Annie's anymore. It was something old and malign, using her face and form."

  "'Now,' it gloated, 'a new era begins on Earth!'"

  "'What's she babbling about?' I said, but I didn't mean Annie."

  "'Rand, she-sounds possessed,' Scott swallowed. And I had been

  hoping he would have some idea what we should do."

  "The thing using Annie's body rose to its feet, standing across the camp fire from us. 'Humans, you do not know the extent of our power!'"

  "With that, the fire expanded, the flames leapt high above our heads.

  Scott and I backed off a step or two, shielding our faces."

  "We saw Annie across the flames from us as she let them die down a bit, her hair floating as if windblown, her hands making passes as if she were a sorceress."

  "'Humans are merely a dead end in the great scheme of evolution!' Annie gestured, and all of a sudden, so help me, we were seeing a moving form silhouetted in the blaze, a female form that didn't look quite Human. It threw its arms high in triumph, while that chilling voice went on exultantly."

  "'The Earth is entering an era of domination by a different form of life, which has traveled a different evolutionary path.' The thing laughed evilly. 'Be warned...'"

  "But then the voice trailed away, until it was Annie's, moaning, and the expression on the face was one we recognized. Annie slumped, and we rushed to her."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Those which we call monsters are not so with God

  Montaigne, Essays, Vol. II, XXX

  The team's search patterns turned up nothing. Exhausted, they stopped for a few hours' rest before they would continue with a night-sweep.

  Lunk couldn't seem to stop himself from repeating the same thing over and over: "What coulda happened to em?"

  "I don't know where else to look," Lancer admitted tiredly. "Our best hope is that they just-show up." He ran his fingers through his long purple hair.

  Lunk sat down next to him, leaning against the same boulder in the firelight. He gnawed noisily on a drumstick that they had scavenged from Wolff's supply depot. "I suppose that's all we can do."

  He looked to where Rook was curled up, a lithe form in a blanket. There was only a single stray curl of strawberry-blond hair showing, brilliant in the firelight. "Isn't she even worried about them? How can she sleep at a time like this?"

  Without turning over, she said, "I can't sleep, if you sit there blabbing and gorging yourself all night. How can you eat at a time like this?"

  Lunk wore a hurt look. Lancer told him in a whisper, "The real reason she's awake is because she's worried, too, Lunk."

  Rook lay watching the moon, listening to Lunk complain about how spooky it all was. After riding as a loner for so long, she was feeling again that special torment that she had promised herself she would always avoid-fear that harm had come to a loved one; an all-consuming concern for people who had become, though she had never meant to let it happen, family.

  Annie came around again in a second or two, but when Rand and Scott

  told her what had happened, she claimed that they were both imagining things. As far as she was concerned, she had been having some crazy dream in which she married an Invid who looked like her old boyfriend.

  That was Annie, mind never too far from the marriage that would, she was sure, let her live happily ever after. What the two men were telling her was upsetting her, and she gave them a wounded look, asking if they couldn't just drop the whole issue. Scott and Rand backed off.

  But they would have had to stop talking about it anyway; just about then, a battle of the bipeds started up. In the dim nightlight glow from the haze overhead, they could just make out some big meat-eaters tangling with each other, probably over a kill or some carrion. Rand thought it was between two Ceratosauruses and a larger Allosaurus, but couldn't see for sure and wasn't interested enough to stick around and find out.

  Dangerous as it was traveling at night, the men snapped on their armor, started the Cyclones, and the moved out. They found the dry water course they had been traveling on, but they had no sooner increased their speed than the air was full of pterosaurs of all sizes and shapes, swooping and diving, beaks napping. Scott couldn't figure out if they had been stirred up by the blood and noise of the fight, or if the Invid were somehow sending them at the Humans.

  Luckily the flying things were getting in each other's way, so that evasive maneuvers saved the Cyclone riders for the moment. And lucky was the word; Rand saw one that had a fifty-foot wingspan. Scott's voice came over Rand's helmet phones, "You and Mint find cover! I'll fight them off and catch up!"

  Rand couldn't argue; the armor gave the men a lot of protection, but Annie was completely vulnerable. Rand rogered and increased his speed, peeling away and heading for some tree cover. The soaring hunters concentrated on Scott.

  Scott switched to full Battle Armor mode, rising on thrusters, Cyclone components becoming part of his powered suit. One blast from the H90 sent a small Pteranodon tumbling to the ground. With the flock hesitating,

  surprised at the blast, Scott landed in a blaring of backpack thrusters, to fight from the ground.

  He blasted the wing off another as it stooped, but then had to duck and roll aside as a third came at him from the left. Its beak and wicked teeth would have taken off an unprotected arm, but the Robotech alloy saved him. He rolled onto his back, holding his H90 in both hands, firing at any pterosaur that came near.

  The things shrieked as the blue bolts quartered the air, seeking them

  out.

  "Scott's doing okay," Rand said, from the shelter of the trees, dividing

  his time between watching Annie and keeping an eye out for strays. "I don't think he needs our help."

  "I...I kind of feel sorry for those creatures," Annie confessed. "Aw, Mint, gimme a break!"

  Scott was back on his feet again, shooting this way and that with a high degree of accuracy. Dead and dying soarers, whole or in pieces, lay all around him. As Rand and Annie watched, he nailed one that was coming straight down at him with folded wings; he got it dead center and its head exploded.

  Then Rand noticed, from the corner of his eye, a glow coming from the foot of the nearby cliff-wall. It pulsed brightly, waned a bit, and brightened again.

  "Hang on, Annie; we have to check something out."

  High on a cliff ledge overlooking the savage battle, an Invid Shock Trooper mindspoke to itself and its companion. It was the Regis's voice, the same voice that was heard through Annie.

  "The Human life-forms are most determined! Their will to survive is strong!"

  Like the Zentraedi and the Robotech Masters, the dinosaurs were discovering that Humans weren't as easy prey as they looked. Yes, it seemed all this experimentation with life-forms from Earth's past a
nd mutations of

  various ones from its present was pointless.

  There would have to be further study of the Humans, to find out if their form would suit the Invid despite its aberrant behavioral patterns. But as for the ones below, they had done enough damage in the Genesis Pit. It was time to rid the place of contaminants.

  Rand stopped some distance from the tunnel, which was at ground level. From the mouth of the tunnel, the light and heat pulsed so strongly that Annie hid in the lee of his armor except for an occasional peek.

  "I knew something like this had to be here!" Rand cried. Heat, light, the energy field-perhaps even the force that kept the stupendous stone ceiling up-they had to be powered by some source. Some Invid source. Rand armed his forward Scorpions.

  "Rand, what are you doing?" Annie asked sharply. "It's time for 'Last Call at the Lizard Lounge,"' he said.

  Eventually the pterosaurs broke off their attack, the slaughter having been too much even for them. Scott stood on the battlefield, the smoking remains all around him, fitting a fresh charge into his H90.

  He rolled a body over with his foot, inspecting his work. "Must've been something he tried to eat."

  Rand appeared, Annie still clinging to his waist, the Cyc skidding to a stop. "Are you all right?"

  "All right so far."

  "Listen, Scott, I've gotta tell you-"

  But before Rand could get out his story about the Invid power source, or control center, or whatever it was, a new chorus of sounds came to them. They looked up to see that the sky was filled with every possible flying creature: dragonflies and other insects as well as pterosaurs.

  "Something's stirring them up," Scott said. "Something's got 'em all on the run!" Annie shouted.

  They peered into the haze-light and, sure enough, the whole population

  of the strange sanctuary seemed to be headed their way.

  "Looks like we're going to be right in the middle of rush hour," Scott was saying. Suddenly the ground began to tremble and dance beneath them. There was nothing they could do except lurch and teeter, trying to keep their balance.

  "Earthquake!" Rand yelled. This wasn't the time to tell Scott about the two rockets he put into the Invid cave installation, or of the terrific secondary blast they had set off-or of the dark silence in the cave afterward. They could hear the grinding and cracking of uncountable tons of bedrock all around them.

  A tree swayed like a giant flyswatter, and came down smack atop a Triceratops that just ignored it and kept bulldozing along. A big conifer broke the back of a smallish Stegosaurus; passing meat-eaters ignored it, continuing their flight. A boulder the size of a bus, falling from the ceiling, squashed an Iguanodon.

  As the herd passed by, Rand and Scott changed modes and soared overhead on thrusters. Then they fell in behind the beasts, letting them lead the way.

  "Scott, doesn't it occur to you that being in the middle of a dinosaur stampede could be bad for our health?"

  "We don't know where we're going, Rand; maybe they do. Any better ideas?"

  Rand muttered, "Oh, brother..."

  Clouds of dust rose from the ground and fell from the ceiling. The haze began to grow dim. Rand figured that the energy field was losing the last of its power. It took every ounce of their skill to keep the Cycs going, but Scott insisted that they stay on the ground. The air was a storm of flying things that would have blinded them and perhaps even knocked them out of the sky.

  Two big Tyrannosauruses some distance in front of them simply disappeared, tails flailing, and Scott barely had time to give a warning. There was no time to brake, and the two Cyclones went off the edge, into the

  abyss that had opened in the ground before them. All three howled, Annie loudest of all.

  As the armored men mechamorphosed, rising on their backpack thrusters again-the Cyc wheels repositioning up on their backs, out of the way-and Rand held Annie in his arms, something rose out of the chasm with them, flashing past.

  "Invid Shock Troopers!" Scott shouted. Rand couldn't quite find the time to say, Toldja. In the distance, a thin, incandescent pillar of light suddenly stretched from the floor of the Genesis Pit up to its ceiling and beyond.

  The Invid mecha swept out and around for an attack. "We'll have to take 'em on," Scott said grimly. Rand zoomed off to one side, to drop Annie off to safety on some rocks.

  As Scott landed, one of the big, purple alien mecha came his way, firing annihilation discs from the bulky cannon mounted on either shoulder. Scott leapt clear with an assist from his thrusters, rolled, and came up with his H90 in his hand, firing. The Invid dodged his shots and came in at him.

  Rand was standing shoulder to shoulder with Scott by then, the two trying to aim their shots while the ground heaved and jostled under them. Scott jumped off to the right and Rand launched himself high, barely eluding a swipe by a colossal metal pincer on a forearm the shape of a ladybug. Rand put more rounds into it, but the trooper crouched in a defensive posture beneath him, shielding itself with the thickest parts of its panoply.

  Annie was screaming, pointing to the pillar of light. "Look, look!

  There's the exit, but it's disappearing!"

  The energy field that had blocked the way out was gone. But the opening was shrinking, and the pillar of light was getting narrower.

  "It's our only chance!" Scott called to Rand.

  Rand was so distracted that he was nearly mashed into the ground by a blow from an Invid. As it was, the mighty forearm got a piece of him, sending him sprawling. Rand managed to drive it back with wild shots from

  his sidearm, but the second Shock Trooper was angling for a shot of its own. Rand back-flipped as Scott rushed in, the trooper getting off near misses, sending both men reeling back. Scott's targeting module deployed from its external shoulder mount and swung into place before his eye; he was staring at the Invid through a sighting reticle. He released a pair of

  Scorpions that missed, but drove the Invid back.

  Suddenly, the invaders broke off the fight, turning and zooming off into the air, ignoring the Humans. "They're heading for the opening!" Rand saw. "We've gotta stop them, before they close it behind them!"

  "Take care of Mint," Scott called back, already aloft. "I'll go after them." As he rocketed after them, he saw that the exit was closing quickly.

  The Shock Troopers apparently realized they couldn't outrun their pursuer and turned to fight. Scott dodged another pincer swipe, just as Rand caught up, having dropped Annie off again. Scott evaded the swipe and vaulted to land atop the second Invid's crablike head. The first Trooper was so caught up in the battle that it swung again, missing Scott, who hurtled clear, but struck its comrade instead.

  Scott dispatched another missile just as the first Trooper prepared to unleash its annihilation discs. He blasted it right through the optical sensor that was its cyclops-eye. The warhead was a dud, but the missile penetrated the glassy circle, shattering it.

  Green, thick nutrient fluid poured from the Shock Trooper, and it went flailing back like a falling scarecrow and hit the ground. The second Trooper charged at Scott, but Rand, in a close pass on raving thrusters, lashed out with his feet and smashed that one's eye, too.

  "Hurry up!" Annie shrilled. "The exit's almost closed!" The entire place was shaking, raining boulders and dust, cracking apart, as monsters roared and bleated.

  Rand lifted her up, and the three blasted through the air toward the shrinking ray of light. As they entered it, they were seized by the force that had drawn them into the Genesis Pit earlier, only this time it pulled them upward.

  Within the Genesis Pit, the roof began to give way. The shallow waters churned, throwing up waves and living things that would soon be dead. The great beasts of land and sea threw their heads back and bellowed their agony to the world that had obliterated them once and was now doing it again.

  The cliffs and ceiling gave way; the floor of the Genesis Pit fissured open, letting forth the magma the Invid had diverted to heat
the place. A surge of molten fury gushed up the exit shaft behind the three Humans, threatening to overtake them.

  Then the two armored figures and the little girl in her oversized battle jacket were flying upward under the moonlight. The magma stopped its upward motion and spread, igniting fires, and then it began draining down into the Pit once more.

  All three Humans were laughing and cheering. Scott and Rand flew far away from the site to a distant hillside. The moon was full, but it looked to Rand as if rainclouds were moving in. Good; those fires wouldn't last long. "Isn't that a beautiful moon?" Rand said wonderingly.

  But Annie's attention was elsewhere. "Look at the mountains!"

  "The whole mountain range is sinking into that Pit," Scott said quietly.

  The ground rumbled and moved again, clouds of dust obscuring the mountains, as a huge area went into subsidence, filling in the Genesis Pit. "That one was close" was all Scott could find to say.

  Annie said mournfully, "But what about the poor dinosaurs?" She looked at Rand. "The Invid created them," he told her. "And I think it's just as well that they left the dinosaurs down there to be destroyed. Conditions up here aren't right for them; there's just no place for them to survive anymore. Time simply passed them by."

  Annie intertwined her fingers behind her back and scuffed the ground with one toe. "Y'mean, it's the same as when the Invid talk about the Human race being all finished?"

  Rand was starting to nod when Scott interrupted. "No! Earth belongs to us; it's the Invid who are going to be extinct!"

  He sounded ferocious. Rand knew all about Scott's fierce hatred of the species that had killed his fianc 閑 and wiped out his unit, but this was no time for propaganda speeches. "All right, Scott; all right-"