“Oddly enough, that didn’t seem to be true on Dinadh. Trompe and I were surprised to see how many vacant hives there were. Dinadh’s population is evidently decreasing.”
He thought about this, his mouth pursing, his eyes squinting. “That would fit the pattern. The Ularian reproductive cycle would start with a growing human population and few Kachis, and the proportions would reverse by the end of the cycle.”
Lutha shuddered. “Through predation?”
“It is a kind of predation,” he mused. “If Saluez is an example. She’s a young woman with an unimpaired body, but as I understand Dinadhi culture, she’ll never have another lover or another child.”
“Why maim her? Why not just kill her?”
“As she is, she can still work in the fields to produce food. Late in the cycle the Kachis probably get the biggest share of what food there is.”
“If it’s cyclical, then some Kachis must have remained on Dinadh to start the process over. Also, we’ve assumed the Kachis are the young of the Ularians. Where are the Ularians on Dinadh?”
He shrugged. “Being offspring of Ularians doesn’t preclude multiple parthenogenic generations. Or even sexual reproduction as immature images—”
He was interrupted by Snark, who darted from the tunnel through which the men had departed. “You oughta go up and watch the show. The little shaggies that came blasting out when you folks came! They’re blowing each other up, like balloons!”
The lure was irresistible. Lutha tucked the blankets close around Saluez’s shoulders and tied Leely’s tether around a stony knob nearby, putting the knot above his reach and jerking it to be sure it would hold. He settled down next to Saluez, curling into the curve of her body, his eyes half-shut, while Lutha and the ex-king went out after Snark.
Beyond the cover of the stones, they got their first daytime look at their hiding place: a dark cleft gaping between enormous, rain-rounded boulders beneath a jackstraw tumble of huge basalt crystals, so dark a gray they were almost black. Gap-toothed shards of similar crystals fanged the ridge.
From beyond that toothy ridge came a thin shrilling, rising and falling in volume, punctuated by explosive sounds. Mitigan and Leelson lay prone at the top of the slope, and the others joined them to peer through the scraggy scarp. They saw a seething caldron of shaggies, great globules of them rising and falling, tentacles whipping like strands of flung lava, the whole punctuated by eruptions in which one or more shaggies were blown apart. The cacophony was underlain by the sodden gulp of the sea, its waves flattened beneath a mat of floating body parts. The slender crescent of rocky beach was piled with clotted, squirming fragments, and more were washed ashore with each vomitous surge.
Lutha averted her eyes from the beach and focused upon the battle. There was a certain horrid fascination in the relentless winnowing. The rain of dead and injured was continuous. Gradually the deafening noise abated. Much of the detritus was sinking. The height of the waves increased, showing patches of clear water and making a more surflike noise.
Snark said, “It’s brood aggression. Sibling murder. Happens with a lot of creatures. Supposedly it maximizes reproductive output. All the rearing effort will go to the strongest.”
Jiacare muttered, “How many will they leave alive?”
“Too many,” said Mitigan and Snark, as with one voice.
“It’s hard to believe they changed shape that much,” Lutha murmured, half-hypnotized by the continuing massacre. “They looked almost human on Dinadh.”
Snark turned slowly, her eyes very wide. “What did they look like. On Dinadh?”
“Small. That is, slight. Very thin, but human in form, with wings—”
“And sharp teeth,” she said. “Right? And their teeth was really poisonous! And they come out at night!”
Lutha nodded.
“We called ‘em scourges,” Snark muttered. “When my people ran off from Dinadh, some of the scourges followed ‘em through the gate.”
“Kachis? In their original form? What happened to them?”
She made an aimless gesture. “There weren’t very many. Mother said our people hunted and killed some of ‘em. The others starved, I guess.”
Above the sea, the carnage had come to an end. Some few ragged forms still floated on the waters, gradually disappearing beneath the waves, while above, the uninjured ones separated and arranged themselves in an orderly grid that stretched to the horizons. By counting how many body diameters would fit in the previously crowded but now empty space, Lutha estimated one out of a hundred of the original number had survived.