Текст книги "Fuzzy Nation"

Автор книги: John Scalzi

Соавторы: John Scalzi
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Chapter Ten

Isabel came up to the skimmer as soon as it landed. “We need to talk,” she said.

“Yeah, we do,” Holloway said, exiting the vehicle. “You think you could stop telling people that I let Carl detonate explosives?”

“What?” Isabel said.

“Stop telling people I let Carl set off explosives,” Holloway said.

“You dolet Carl set off explosives,” Isabel said.

“Yes, but you don’t have to tellpeople about it,” Holloway said. By this time the topic of conversation had come over, tail wagging. Holloway petted him. “I’m apparently becoming famous galaxy-wide for it. I’d rather not be.”

“When you train your dog to blow things up, it tends to be noted,” Isabel said. “And for the record, I don’ttalk about it. The only time I didtalk about it was at that inquest, which I will remind you, Jack, was caused by your own procedural shortcuts.”

“You didn’t have to talk about it then,either,” Holloway said.

“Really?” Isabel said, thinning her lips. “Because I was under the impression that when one is forced to testify at a company inquest and continuing one’s job is contingent on telling the truth, when one is asked ‘What other unusual surveying practices have you personally witnessed Jack Holloway engage in?’ it might be prudent to describe what they are.”

“It didn’t make my problems any easier,” Holloway said.

“Well, I’m sorry my telling the truth about the stupid things you do is inconvenient for you,” Isabel said, in the clipped, quiet voice she used when she was truly pissed off. “Although now that you mention it, your calling me a liar about that and other things at your inquest didn’t do wonders for me,either. When the inquest gave you the ‘not proven’ judgment, Igot a markdown in my employment record. It says that my ‘judgment might be impaired due to close or romantic relationships.’ I suppose that may be true enough, because I waswith you, which was a clear case of impaired judgment. But it wasn’t impaired in the way they thought it was, and I certainly don’t deserve a mark against me because you lied,Jack.”

Holloway watched Isabel, remembering the cold fury she’d shown him after the inquest, which this outburst was a pale echo of. “I told you I was sorry,” Holloway said.

“Right, when you tried to give me that rock,” Isabel said. “And I told you then that I’d be happy to hear you were sorry when you meant it. But you’re still angry with me about something youdid. So I guess I’m still waiting for you to actually be sorry.”

By this time, Baby Fuzzy had come up to Isabel and tugged on her pant leg. Isabel looked down. Baby Fuzzy held out her arms. Isabel picked her up, sat her in the crook of her arm, and scratched her head. Baby Fuzzy seemed to enjoy this.

“She really is like a cat,” Holloway said. The conversation he was having with Isabel had gone bad quickly. Holloway was ready to dump it and start a new one.

“She’s really not,” Isabel said. “That’s what I had wantedto talk to you about, before you started hammering on me about Carl and we got sidelined.”

“Sorry about that,” Holloway said. “That’s a small, immediate apology. I had a meeting with Wheaton Aubrey the Seventh, and it was brought up.”

“I take it the meeting didn’t go well, then,” Isabel said.

“No,” Holloway said. “He condescended to me, I was antagonistic to him, he made a dismissive offer couched in contempt, I threw it back in his face and promised legal action if he tried to cross me again.”

“So, the usual with you,” Isabel said.

“I suppose,” Holloway said.

“The more I know you, the more I realize why you live hundreds of kilometers from anyone else,” Isabel said.

“Let’s get back to the thing you wanted to talk about,” Holloway said. He started walking toward the cabin; he wanted a beer.

“All right,” Isabel said. “These fuzzys. These animals you’ve discovered. I’m starting to wonder if they areanimals.”

“I think you’ll be laughed out of the biologist club if you suggest they’re plants,” Holloway said.

“That’s not what I’m saying, obviously,” Isabel said. “When I say I don’t think they’re animals, I mean I don’t think they’re justanimals. I think they’re something more.”

Holloway stopped walking and turned to face Isabel. “Tell me you’re not about to say what I think you’re about to say,” he said. “Because I knowI don’t want to hear it.”

“I think they’re sapient,” Isabel said. “I think these creatures are intelligent on a level beyond just animals. These things are people,Jack.”

Holloway turned, irritated, and threw up his hands. He resumed his walk to the cabin. “You could have told me that before I turned down half a billion credits, Isabel,” he said.

Isabel followed, confused. “What does that have to do with anything?” she said.

“Zara Twenty-three is a Class Three planet,” Holloway said. He paused at the cabin door and pointed to Baby Fuzzy, who now appeared to be dozing lightly. “If thatis a person, then this becomes a Class Three–a planet—a planet with native sapient life—and ZaraCorp’s E and E charter is suspended. That means everything stops here, Isabel. No more mining, no more drilling, no more harvesting. It means I don’t get paid for the sunstone seam.”

“Well, I’m sorry you might possibly be out a bit of money, Jack,” Isabel said.

“Jesus, Isabel,” Holloway said. He opened the door. “A bitof money? Try at least a couple billion credits. That’s billion,with a b. Saying that’s a bitof money is like saying a forest fire is a nice way to roast some marshmallows.” He went into the cabin. Isabel followed.

Inside the cabin, the other fuzzys lounged about; it had gotten hot and humid outside and Holloway’s cabin had climate controls. As Holloway glanced over, he saw Mama Fuzzy had taken a book down from the bookcase and she and Papa were examining it carefully. Closer examination showed Mama Fuzzy was holding it upside down.

“Maybe they’re not as smart as you think,” Holloway said, pointing out the upside down book to Isabel. He reached into his kitchen cooler to retrieve a beer.

Isabel looked at him, and then set Baby Fuzzy down. She padded off toward the rest of her family; Isabel headed to the kitchen. “Papa,” she said. The fuzzy looked up from his book, curious, then headed toward the kitchen.

“Excuse me,” Isabel said to Jack. She pushed him aside to get at the cooler. From the cooler she retrieved smoked turkey, cheese, mayonnaise, and mustard. She set them on the small kitchen table. She closed the cooler, and then reached over to the counter to take the last two bread slices and placed them on the table. Finally, she opened the utensil drawer and put a butter knife next to all the food. She looked down at the fuzzy.

“Papa,” Isabel said. “Sandwich.”

The fuzzy squeaked in joy.

Four minutes later all the fuzzys were enjoying their share of the sandwich Papa Fuzzy had made, up to and including clumsily wielding the butter knife to make six mostly equal sections, the last of which had been presented to Carl with great gravity.

“You could have taught him to do that,” Holloway said. “I once taught a dog to detonate explosives.”

“Not to take anything away from Carl, whom I love,” Isabel said, “but it’s one thing to teach an animal to step on a detonator panel to get a treat. It’s another thing to teach it how to make a sandwich. Much less then divide it equally among five other animals.”

“A monkey could do it,” Holloway said.

“Name one,” Isabel said.

“ I’mnot the biologist,” Holloway said.

“Really,” Isabel said, mildly. “There’s also the small matter that even if I could have trained Papa to make a sandwich, Ididn’t. I came in here not long after you left for your meeting and found Papa making one. Either he saw you making one or he’s even more clever than I thought. Which would go to my point.”

“He saw me make one,” Holloway said. He started putting away the sandwich fixings.

“So what we’re saying is that this animal, having observed you make a sandwich once, managed to remember where the ingredients were, retrieved them, organized them, and re-created a sandwich recipe from memory, not once, not twice, but three times,” Isabel said.

“Three times?” Holloway said.

“After I caught him doing it, I made him do it again, just to be sure,” Isabel said.

“You’re going to make them fat,” Holloway said, closing the cooler.

“He gave the second one to me,” Isabel said.

“How sweet,” Holloway said, dryly. He took another swig of his beer.

“Which in itselfshows higher-order cognitive function,” Isabel said. “It’s called theory of mind. Papa assumed that when I asked him to make another sandwich, that I was asking him to make it for me, because I was hungry. He was attributing intent and reason to me.”

“I know what theory of mind is,” Holloway said. “You know who else has theory of mind? Monkeys. And some species of squid. Even Carl here tries to figure out what I’m thinking.” From the floor, Carl, hearing his name, thumped his tail on the floor a couple of times.

“Squids don’t make sandwiches,” Isabel said.

“I doubt there’s been a scientific study on that matter,” Holloway said. “The bread gets soggy.”

“Stop that,” Isabel said. “Neither do monkeys, and neither does Carl. And certainly none of them could do it from seeing you do it once. These aren’t just animals, Jack.” She bent down again to get a beer for herself.

“But it doesn’t mean they’re sapient,” Holloway said. “I know these things are smart, Isabel. That’s why I recorded Papa in the first place and gave you the recording. These little guys are a big find. I knew you’d want to see them. But it’s a hell of a leap from ‘smart little monkey’ to ‘sapient people.’ Have you ever heard them speak?”

“They definitely communicate,” Isabel began. Holloway held up his hand.

“Not in contention,” Holloway said. “They squeak and squeal with the best of them, and they definitely have animal-level communication down pat. Given. But is there evidence they have speech? Language? Some manner of communication that goes beyond what we would see in other very smart animals?”

Isabel was quiet for a moment. “No,” she said, finally. She took a drink of her beer.

“You know that matters,” Holloway said. “I was required to take a class in xenosapient law at Duke. I don’t remember that much of it, because it wasn’t going to be my specialty anyway. But I remember Cheng versus BlueSky Incorporated. It’s the one where a company biologist maintained the Nimbus Floaters of BlueSky Six were sapient and went to court in their behalf to stop the exploitation of the planet. The court ended up having to develop a checklist of criteria to judge the sapience of a creature, and speech—or ‘meaningful communication that conveys more than the immediate and presently imminent’—was part of that checklist. It’s canon law.”

“It’s not the only thing on the list,” Isabel said.

“No, but it’s a big one,” Holloway said. “It’s what tripped up Cheng. He couldn’t prove the floaters spoke.”

“You’re not exactly an impartial party on this,” Isabel said.

“No, I’m not,” Holloway said. He motioned out toward the Fuzzys, who had finished their meals and retired to the floor once more, to look at the book or to nap on Carl. “If our little friends here are just really smart animals, then I get to be a billionaire. If they’re people, then I’m just another schmuck out of a job, and I have a very good reason to believe that I’d have trouble getting another prospector gig. So yes, I’d say I’m a pretty interested party.”

“Glad you know it,” Isabel said.

“I do,” Holloway said. “But even if I weren’t, I’d still be telling you to be absolutely sure that what you’ve got is what you think it is. Because the minute you file a Suspected Sapience Report, ZaraCorp is required by law to suspend all activity on this planet. Everything comes to a screeching halt while a court decides on our fuzzy friends’ sapience. It won’t just be me you’ll cost billions. And if the ruling goes against the fuzzys, you’re going to spend the rest of your life as a grocery clerk. So before you say anything about sapience to anyone, you need to be absolutely sure. Are you absolutely sure, Isabel?”

Another moment of silence from Isabel. Then, “No. No, I’m not absolutelysure. I’m not saying I am. I need to study them more.”

“All right, then,” Holloway said. “So study them some more. Take your video and make your observations and do whatever it is you need to do. There’s no need for you to rush any of this. Take your time. Take lots of time.”

Isabel snorted. “Enough time for you to become a billionaire, you mean,” she said.

“That would be nice,” Holloway said. “I could very happily live with that.”

“I know youcould,” Isabel said, and then motioned to the Fuzzys. “But could they?”

“I don’t follow you,” Holloway said.

“This is their planet, Jack,” Isabel said. “If they are sapient, everything we take out of this world is a little less for them to use for themselves. Maybe you’re not aware of how efficient ZaraCorp is at stripping a planet of its easily accessible resources—or maybe you don’t wantto be aware—but I know. I read the biological impact reports on all the planets ZaraCorp exploits. Some of the first planets ZaraCorp received its E and E charters for are already at depletion levels approaching Earth’s, when it comes to rare metals and minerals. Even common ores are being pulled out of the ground at hugely accelerated rates. That’s just a few decades of work. And ZaraCorp is much better now at doing this than it was even a decade ago.”

Holloway thought of how quickly the camp was springing up at the sunstone seam. He took another swig of his beer and finished it.

“So if they are sapient, even if we waited just a year or two, think of how much less they would have to work with,” Isabel said. “Taken before they can use it for themselves.”

“They’re at the level where they’ve just discovered sandwiches,” Holloway said. “Working a sunstone seam is not high on their agenda.”

“You’re missing the point,” Isabel said. She set down her beer. “The point is whenthey are ready, it won’t be there. That sunstone seam you found is the result of millions of years of heat and pressure. ZaraCorp is going to pull it all out of the ground in a decade, if it takes even that long. And that’s it for the sunstones; the creatures whose bodies made them are extinct. And then there are the other ores and minerals. It’ll take millions of years for the planet to replenish these minerals. Some might not ever replenish at all. What does it leave for them?”

“I get what you’re saying,” Holloway said. “And you’re probably right. I still think you should be sure before you try to claim sapience. Not saying you shouldn’t make the claim. Just saying you should be sure. This is me trying to talk to you as a friend, here.”

“Thanks,” Isabel said. “I know. I’m just thinking, is all. Do you ever stop to think how lucky we are that, in this part of space at least, humans were the sentient creatures who got smart first?”

“It’s crossed my mind,” Holloway said.

Isabel nodded. “Now,” she said, “imagine what would have happened if half a million years ago, some alien creature landed on ourplanet, looked at our ancestors, decided that they weren’t actually people, and just took all the planet’s ores and oil. How far would we have ever gotten?”

Isabel motioned to the Fuzzys, who were now all asleep on the cabin floor. “Seriously now, Jack,” she said. “How far do you think they’regoing to get once we’re through here?”

Chapter Eleven

Holloway had two thoughts when the front rotors of his skimmer failed. The first thought was What the hell?This was because while having a single rotor crap out was not all that unusual, having two die simultaneously was.

The second thought was Oh, shit. This was because Holloway was by himself in the middle of nowhere, and he was about to crash-land on the jungle floor, where something large would almost certainly try to eat him.

Holloway smacked the manual override on the autopilot and jerked up the yoke on the skimmer. He’d worry about getting eaten later. Right now he needed to avoid the crash landing. If he could get the skimmer on the ground without cracking it up, he might be able to get it fixed and get out of there. If he crashed and broke the skimmer, his odds of ending the day partially digested rose astronomically.

Holloway reached along the dash of the skimmer for the pullcords for the emergency rotor engines. All the rotors were driven by the same power plant mid-skimmer, underneath the passenger cabin, and controlled by computer rather than by direct manipulation. But drive shafts wore down and computer hardware and programs degrade over time, two facts that presented real problems when one’s conveyance traveled up to a thousand meters above the ground. In the event of emergency, small motors built directly into the rotors themselves could be engaged. The motors were too small for movement, and their power lasted only a matter of minutes. Their only purpose was to stabilize the craft and allow for an immediate landing.

Holloway grabbed the pullcords for the front rotors and yanked viciously. The pullcords tensed and snapped as the tautened cords yanked the activation pins out of the EREs. If Holloway survived, he’d have to have the EREs recharged and the cables and pins reset. It was one of those things that by manufacturer design was impossible to do by oneself and required a trained and licensed professional. Who would insist on recharging and resetting all the EREs, not just the ones that got used. Holloway would have to spend a thousand credits to have it done, cursing as he did so.

None of which concerned Holloway in the least at the moment. At the moment, he was praying the EREs had held their charge since the last time he had gotten them replaced, more than a year earlier.

They had. The front rotors clicked into default position and sputtered to life. A timer flashed onto Holloway’s info panel; he had two minutes and thirteen seconds to land. Holloway minimized the timer and clicked on his undercarriage cameras, looking for a place to park.

The area, which Holloway had been surveying over the last three days per orders, was heavily forested. He’d been having a difficult enough time getting the skimmer through the forest canopy that he’d been relying on small remote-controlled robots to set the acoustical charges and the data collectors. They had gotten the job done, but took far more time than getting the skimmer down and using the digger/driller built into the vehicle.

But now he didn’t have a choice. He was going to have to go in. Holloway nudged the skimmer forward, using its rear rotors, to a patch of the canopy that looked less impenetrable than every other part of the local canopy. He double-checked his seat restraints and then hit the EMERGENCY LANDING button on the dash.

The seat restraints tightened to a breath-shortening degree, and Holloway heard the popas the head restraint inflated and then formfit around his skull, obscuring his vision. Other restraints did the same for his legs and arms. The chair, which generally swiveled, locked in a forward position. Holloway was immobilized; he was now in the hands, so to speak, of the skimmer’s automated systems. Holloway was briefly grateful that he left Carl behind with Isabel and the Fuzzys. It promised to be a rough ride down.

It was. The skimmer lurched sickeningly as it began its rapid but hopefully computer-controlled descent, dropping faster than under gravity alone, using the skimmer’s mass and build strength to snap tree branches when they couldn’t be gotten out of the way of. The jolting of the cabin and the thunderous cracking sound told Holloway there was going to be a pile of lumber when he landed.

Seven meters from the ground, twelve short-burst rockets on the skimmer’s undercarriage blasted on, the thrust of each precisely calculated using the skimmer’s current position to arrest the descent, level the skimmer, and land it more or less gently on the jungle floor. As the thrusters kicked in, Holloway felt the painful tug of his internal organs falling the millimeter or so internally at descent speed before being slowed by the rest of his body. The nerve-rattling thump of the landing informed him that this landing was on the “less” side of gentle rather than “more.”

The seat restraints slackened and the inflatable restraints hissed as they released; the skimmer’s rotor drive shut off. Holloway pulled himself out of his seat and grabbed the infopanel for a status update. The skimmer had registered denting, and the left rear rotor’s maneuvering apparatus was knocked off beam during the landing. If Holloway ever got the skimmer running again, it would be able to provide lift but not forward motion. But overall the skimmer survived. Holloway had landed without crashing.

Holloway registered the fact and then ignored it. Now that he’d landed, he had other things to worry about. He moved through his cabin to one of the large cargo holds, pulled it open, and yanked out the bundle marked EMERGENCY PERIMETER FENCE.

“Here we go,” Holloway said to himself. He lowered the top off the skimmer and legged himself over the side.

When one lands on the jungle floor with a skimmer, via crash or otherwise, it makes a terrific racket. Most of the nearby creatures, evolutionarily designed to equate loud noise with predatory action and other dangers, will bolt to get out of the way. But eventually they come back. The ones that are actual predators come back sooner, intuiting in their predatory way that a big loud noise might, when finished, result in some small helpless creature being wounded or slowed down enough for it to be picked off without too much struggle.

What this meant to Holloway was that he likely had two minutes, give or take ninety seconds, to set up the emergency perimeter fence. After that, something large and hungry would definitely be on its way to see what might be for lunch.

Holloway wasted none of that time. He moved quickly, firmly setting six stake poles in a perimeter around the skimmer, extending them to their full two-meter length. That finished, he unrolled the magnetized fence material, feeling it snap into place at each stake. The perimeter was tight around Holloway’s skimmer. The vehicle was large, and the fence not so much.

Holloway clicked the final bit of fence to the first stake, which held the fence’s power source at its base. Once activated, the power source would do two things. It would strengthen the fence by making it one large electromagnet; as long as the stake poles were reasonably secure it would be difficult for anything to pull down the fence. It would also course twenty-five thousand volts of electricity through the fence whenever it registered a contact, frying whatever touched it.

The power source was rated for twelve hours when fully charged. After what happened to Sam Hamilton (and his monkey), Holloway made sure the power source on his emergency perimeter fence was always charged.

Holloway double-checked to make sure the fence was secure, and then pressed the green button to prime the power source. He stood back to wait for the five-second power-up and the hum of the electromagnetic current.

There was nothing.

Holloway glanced down at the power source. An LED was blinking next to the primer button. Holloway didn’t have to read the lettering next to the light to know that it meant the power source was uncharged.

“Oh, bullshit,” Holloway said, out loud. Holloway knew the power source was charged. He’d checked it during his monthly loadout of inventory.

A bit of movement beyond the fence caught Holloway’s eye. He looked up. Thirty yards away a pair of zararaptors were eyeing him back, with a look that signified curiosity, hunger, or both. Holloway, very casually to all outward appearances, walked back from the tight perimeter of his fence, got himself into his skimmer, and then closed it up good and tight. Then he went looking for his shotgun.

A zararaptor was called such not because the creatures reminded anyone of raptor birds, but because they reminded them of those otherraptors, the smart and predatory dinosaurs that had roamed the earth, thankfully millions of years before humans could be on the menu. Like those raptors, these were reptilian, were obviously carnivorous, and walked bipedaly on powerful legs, which ate up distances on the jungle floor yet were agile enough to leap over and avoid the various obstacles that humans would stumble over. Unlike those raptors, these raptors had blunt, almost feline heads and strong arms that ended with hands featuring opposable digits. Zararaptors could grab at and hold their prey, gripping their limbs so they could not escape fangs.

Upon arrival on Zara XXIII, Holloway and every other new surveyor was made to watch footage of zararaptors attacking and killing unwary humans, in video caught by surveillance cameras, security feeds, and in one case, by a tragically overconfident surveyor himself. That one was the most difficult to watch, in no small part because the surveyor’s blood had spattered up on the lens, obscuring the view. But it brought home the point that human brains, fine though they might be, were no match for the zararaptor’s speed, grip, and teeth.

In the now-covered skimmer, Holloway pretended he wasn’t on the verge of panic and knelt next to the small storage area by his seat. He opened it and fished out his shotgun. It was a small, blunt thing with a short barrel; it’d be useless at anything other than a very short distance. Holloway suspected at the moment it’d be perfect for his situation. He’d purchased it when he arrived on Zara XXIII but had never had to use it. It looked like there was a first time for everything.

He opened the barrel to load in shells and looked into the storage area for the box of ammunition that always lay nestled next to the shotgun.

It wasn’t there. Holloway felt a chill.

There was a metallic rattle outside the skimmer. Holloway looked up at the noise. The zararaptors were at the fence, pulling at it.

The fence.

Holloway suddenly had a crazy and desperate idea, because crazy and desperate ideas were the only things left to him at the moment. He grabbed for his infopanel as one of the zararaptors separated the fence material from the stake posts.

In most ways Holloway’s skimmer was basic. He’d purchased it from another surveyor who had gone bust and was looking to make any sort of money he could before dragging his ass back to planet Earth. The skimmer was built for purpose rather than for beauty, with a large cargo area and a spartan interior covered by a standard retractable roof/window combination. Four large rotors, cowled so as not to julienne unwary flying creatures or surveyors, were stationed at the corners of the vehicle, providing lift and maneuvering capability.

Holloway had done almost nothing to improve the skimmer after he purchased it. He liked a flashy conveyance as much as the next guy—he had been a lawyer, after all—but part of the point of a flashy conveyance was showing it off, and on Zara XXIII, there was no one to show off to. People there were obsessed with the getting of money, not the exhibition of it. So there was nothing to prove in the direction of ostentation. In a way it was freeing.

Nevertheless, Holloway had splurged on one thing. The skimmer’s previous owner had equipped it with a single utilitarian speaker, for likewise utilitarian use—announcements from the skimmer and the infopanel, communication with his contractor rep, and so on. Holloway had blanched at this. If he was going to be spending most of his time in the skimmer, he was going to want to listen to music and audiobooks and other things that would keep his brain entertained while his eyes and hands and everything else were busy. Holloway wanted a sound system.

The sound system he got was ridiculously expensive, not because he wanted that particular system, but because it was the only one the ZaraCorp general store carried. Most surveyors, he was told, listened to their music on earbuds and went for the utilitarian speakers for their skimmers. The shopkeep offered Holloway what he assured him was a nice deal on a pair of formfitting earbuds. Holloway, who disliked the idea of sticking anything smaller than an elbow into his ear, bit the bullet and paid for the ridiculously expensive sound system.

The zararaptors had torn down the emergency fence and were now circling the skimmer, trying to make some sort of sense of it, and determining how to get past its hard outer shell to the soft chewy treat inside. Holloway focused on not wetting himself and on calling up his sound system’s diagnostic software.

One of the things that made the sound system so expensive, or so the general store shopkeep explained to Holloway, was that the system put out sounds above and below the human range of hearing—the range of the system was in fact 2 kilohertz to 44.1 kilohertz. The point of this range was that even if humans couldn’t hear in those ranges, there were psychoacoustic effects that propagated above and beyond human hearing range, effects that were lost in conventional sound systems whose speakers reproduced less than the human hearing range. This sound system reproduced everything, the shopkeep said, allowing for the best sound performance short of real life.

At the time, Holloway told the shopkeep that he suspected that was all just a bunch of sales bullshit. The shopkeep agreed that it probably was, but that Holloway was paying for it anyway, so he might as well know the excuse for it.

The zararaptors began pounding on the skimmer windows with their hands, first in open palm smacks and then with fists. The windows rattled but held; they were composite windows built to survive bird impacts at nearly 200 kilometers per hour. They could handle an animal fist.

One of the zararaptors broke away from the skimmer. Holloway, despite himself, watched the thing go. Its gaze was fixed on the ground, as if looking for something. Suddenly it paused and bent down and came up with an impressively large rock. It looked back at the skimmer and then swung its arm back in a frighteningly accurate simulation of a cricket bowler.