Destinys Road by Larry Niven

Author:Larry Niven [Niven, Larry]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Sci-Fi
Published: 2010-02-16T19:41:20+00:00

18 The Windfarm

Something in the ocean is absorbing or precipitating potassium. What it is doesn't matter: we couldn't possibly counteract it in time. We'll have to 100k elsewhere.

-Cordelia Gerot, Xenobiology

Ferocious winds and stinging rain held him crouched and crawling and nearly blind. Lightning sputtered continually, like settler magic gone bad. It was all black and gray rocks tilted at all angles, and it had gone on forever.

He slid on slippery smooth surfaces. In places he found a surface like foamy rock. Traction was good, but it lacerated his knees and would have torn bare hands and feet to ribbons. His shoes and gloves were worth his life here.

It was another world, as alien as pictures of Volstaag and Hogun taken by crawler probes.

Yet there was life all around him. The rocks were cracked everywhere; and wherever there were cracks, wherever mud could accumulate, dwarf forest clung to the cracks and the flats.

Jemmy found he could cling to the spiky plants and follow the cracks.

Shadows blew past him on the wind, like kites with broken strings. He couldn't spare attention for what must be fragments torn from Destiny plants. But he had to keep ducking to protect his eyes, so he never got a good look. Now flurries of shadows dipped and darted about him as if a malevolent whirlwind sought his death.

He ducked a shadow and it slashed his pack.

He'd barely glimpsed its shape. It was not an Earthlife bird.

He could huddle close to the black-and-bronze plants. Birds had to veer from the plants, and Jemmy got a better look at them. What seemed to be feathers certainly weren't. They looked more like a chicken than an eagle: more compact, less likely to fly. He ducked slashing claws, and peered after the bird as it wheeled and came for him again. How many legs did that thing have?

Furtive creatures were looking him over from within the brush. Maybe his scent would keep them clear. . . but it wasn't stopping the birds.

A lovely, brilliant creature posed on a rock to watch him crawl toward it.

In the sputtering blue-white light it stood out like a bonfire, scarlet and yellow with bands of electric orange. When he came close it stood upright and spread short wings, and now there were threads of blue in the pattern. It looked too big to fly. It was patterned like a butterfly, iridescent in this light. It turned its head sideways to look at him, and snapped a beak like needle-nosed pliers.

He stopped a few meters away, wondering what defense could give it such confidence. It never gave ground. Destiny birds veered clear of it, and so did Jemmy.

He was crawling blind along a curve like a huge snake. He forced his eyes open and found he'd run up against a smoothly curved surface, a tube of rock.

He crawled into it, out of the rain.

It ran for meters before it became too narrow. As soon as he stopped moving, he was asleep.

Thunder shaped nightmares. He'd wake with a scream he couldn't hear, and remember where he was, and sleep again.

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