Silverrock

Kathryn Hoff

Copyright © 2022 by Kathryn Hoff.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places, or events is purely coincidental.

Cover Design by JD&J Design © 2022 by Kathryn Hoff

Silverrock / Kathryn Hoff.—1st ed.

KathrynHoffBooks.com

Contents

The Ruins

Scorpidons

The Ranch

The Bull Scorp

The Glyphs

Shots Fired

Potsherds and Flint Knives

Hide the Pea

Postmortem

Quakes

Edict

Echoes

Trash

Trouble

Telepathy

Funeral Feast

Evidence

Intelligence Tests

Reading Lesson

Confrontation

Sapience

Audience with the Queen

Fireworks

Scorpidons

Negotiation

Rescue

Pain and Death

Molt

The Pumpstation

Peace Plan

Battle of the Queens

Invasion

Escape

Autumn on Silverrock

Author’s Note

Other books by Kathryn Hoff:

Acknowledgments

Dedicated to my family

CHAPTER 1

The Ruins

IN THE ETERNAL NIGHT of a deep cavern, our spotlights created islands of light. The archeologists flitted among the ruins like moths dancing around lanterns, their wristlamps casting wavering shadows over the meandering pathways and ancient stone walls. The clinking of tools and scuffling of feet echoed ominously, as if invisible people surrounded us, mirroring our every move.

We were surrounded—by creepy-crawlies. I nudged a fist-sized sandbug off my boot. Underlying the human clatter and chatter, thousands of sticklike feet rustled in the crevices. Planet Silverrock’s local vermin—hard-shelled, many-legged creatures of assorted sizes—loved the cave’s cool moisture. The air was sharp with their concentrated tang.

“Hey, Booker,” Lucien called. “I need more light over here.”

“Right.” Gritting my teeth, I repositioned a bank of lights to shine on a hieroglyph-inscribed wall.

The new kid was proving to be a pain in the ass. The ink was barely dry on Lucien Harbin’s PhD, but Professor Ambrose had said he was a linguistics prodigy and to give him any help he needed. Fair enough—I was no archeologist, just the dig’s facilities manager, hired to look after housing, security, and equipment. Even so, I didn’t take kindly to Lucien bossing me around as if I weren’t fifteen years older, two militia hitches wiser, and strong enough to bench-press a lightweight like him.

With a final tweak to the high-resolution tomographic scanner, Lucien keyed the control. Out shot a dozen needle-thin laser beams. With painstaking slowness, the lasers tracked over the wall’s metal surface, tracing the deeply carved hieroglyphs down to the molecular level.

All around us, the ancient structures rose like giant termite mounds. Although we were far from Earth’s adobe villages, the fitted stone walls and empty windows had inspired Professor Ambrose to name the underground archeological site “the Pueblo.”

While the scan was running, Lucien walked to the other end of the inscribed wall. Removing a glove, he poked a finger deep into one of the complex incised glyphs.

“Ambrose says not to touch the wall without gloves,” I said. “Something about the oil from your skin damaging the surface.”

Lucien twitched one side of his mouth into a slight sneer. “Good scientists don’t limit themselves to what they can see. Besides, the wall’s been sitting in rockskipper excrement for fifty thousand years—I don’t think my pinkie’s going to hurt it.”

If the little wiseass had been a member of my militia squad, I’d have taught him some manners.

Atop a nearby structure, Professor Ambrose looked up from his collection of potsherds. “Quitting time, folks.” A thin, stoop-shouldered academic, Ambrose had energy that belied his gray hair. “Wrap up what you’re doing and start stowing your gear.”

His three student interns emerged from trenches, groaning like senior citizens as they stretched cramped muscles.

“Professor?” Lucien called. “I just started this scan. I need another twenty minutes.”

Objections rose from the interns. We worked twelve-hour shifts on Silverrock, pushing to clear the archeological site before the miners would move in to dismantle the mountain. Everyone was ready for a shower and a hot meal.

Ambrose shook his head. “Tomorrow, Lucien.”

The kid’s lip pouted out. “It’s either twenty minutes now or a wasted hour tomorrow repeating the setup. But I don’t need everyone to stay, just Booker to help with the lights.”

Sure, call on Booker, jack-of-all-unpleasant-trades.

Ambrose raised his bushy brows. “Would you mind?”

I was tired and hungry too, but Ambrose had been particularly anxious that Lucien be given a free hand. “All right. Leave one of the hoppers for us—and make sure you save us some supper.”

“Thanks, Booker.”

Chattering cheerfully, Professor Ambrose and his three interns shouldered their daypacks and exited into the access tunnel for the hike to the surface, leaving me and Lucien alone.

As the human sounds faded away, the stirring of the small creatures around us seemed louder than ever. To distract myself from the feeling of being watched, I nodded to the glyphs on the wall. “So, what do you think it says?”

Lucien fingered his bare chin like an ancient sage stroking his beard. “It could be a manifesto of sorts—the Builders’ way of staking a claim, of proclaiming their right to exploit the planet’s minerals. Or maybe a monument of thanks to their gods for the bounty.” He’d lightened up a little with the opportunity to show off his expertise. “Whatever it says, it was important. See how sharp and clear the glyphs are? The Builders threw their buildings together from the local limestone, but they etched the inscriptions into titanium alloy. Even after fifty thousand earthyears, the glyphs look like they were just carved.”

Humph. For all we knew, the alien words said “no loitering.” But ever since humans had developed a stardrive and reached beyond our home solar system, the non-homs of the Stellar Coalition had treated us like ugly puppies in need of housebreaking—stay in your corner, don’t dirty our worlds, no sharing our technology. The university must have been desperate to glean anything possible from an alien civilization, even one that had been dead for fifty thousand years.

As Lucien started the scan for the next section of wall, the scratching of the sandbugs and rockskippers ceased. A deep stillness fell over the cave.

From deep within the mountain came a dull boom, followed by a rumble almost too low for human ears. The spotlights trembled.

Lucien tensed, eyes wide. “What the hell? An earthquake?”

Slowly, the tremor faded. After a few seconds of silence, the Pueblo’s small vermin resumed their feeding, probing the rock crevices for algae.

“Miners,” I said. “No one’s supposed to blast anywhere near the ruins, but some of the miners figure a little nighttime digging is worth the risk of getting caught.” I’d already filed complaints with the sheriff and even installed seismic sensors to prove that night mining in the restricted zone was becoming a local sport.

From the shadows at our left came sharp, staccato clicks.

We spun, shining our wristlamps into the gloom. The noise had been louder than the rustling of the sandbugs and lobsterlike rockskippers that infested the caverns.

“There, a scorp.” My light picked out a meter-long antenna poking from a cleft in the cavern wall. A scorpidon—the local alpha predator, a hump-shelled, ten-legged crab as big as a coyote. It had a dozen whiplike antennae, a scorpion’s stinger in its tail, and one big, snapping claw.

Lucien took a step back. “Shit, it’s a big one.”

“It’s after sundown—that’s when they get active. Or maybe the noise disturbed it. Turn your light off for a second.” I switched my lamp to ultraviolet.

Dusty gray in normal light, the scorp glowed a lovely blue under the blacklight, its eyes glittering like diamonds. “They’re kind of pretty, in their own way,” I said.

“Not to me.” Lucien tossed a handful of gravel. As it spattered against the wall, the scorp retreated. “It’s ridiculous that we have to work in an infested hole. Why haven’t you exterminated them?”

The kid was getting on my nerves. “They’re useful scavengers. Keep to the lighted area and you’ll be all right.” Out of habit, I touched the collapsed stun rod hanging from my belt. A jolt from that would be enough to discourage any curious critter from getting too close.

“Gods, I hate this place,” Lucien muttered. “The sooner I can get all the inscriptions imaged and cataloged and go back to Prime, the happier I’ll be.”

You and me both, kid. I hoped this bad apple would finish his research and leave Silverrock before he infected the interns with his attitude.

It was nearly an hour before Lucien pronounced himself satisfied and let me lock up the equipment. We shouldered our packs—mine held tools, first-aid supplies, extra water, and spare power cells for my prosthetic legs—and made our way through the Pueblo’s crooked pathways.

When we reached the ledge that overlooked the cavern, Lucien paused to catch his breath and I took a moment to enjoy the view. The Pueblo structures were ruins only in the sense that they were ancient and abandoned. They still rose solidly, walls intact, some as much as five stories in height. The Builders must have had an aversion to straight lines—every wall was bent and bowed, every path curved and humped. Even the rounded windows lacked any uniformity in size or placement. It was weirdly beautiful, the ancient towers mirroring the stalactites that hung from the cavern’s ceiling.

“Ready?” I asked. “Go ahead. I’ll be right behind.”

Once Lucien entered the access tunnel, I keyed the switch to turn off the cavern spotlights, enveloping the Pueblo in a night more absolute than any that would be experienced by surface-dwellers.

Out of the dark depths came clicking, scrabbling, and clacking: the sounds of exoskeletal legs and claws scrambling about. Sandbugs, rockskippers, and the big scorpidons—hundreds of crawling creatures, thousands, tens of thousands; not just on the floor of the cavern but on the towers, the walls, the ceiling.

As I followed Lucien into the tunnel, my neck prickled as if all those eyestalks and antennae were watching.

The access tunnel wound upward for more than a kilometer. It was just one of many shafts left behind by the Builders after they’d burrowed into the limestone mountains to dig out the minerals some meteor strike had salted into the planet’s crust. The remnants of those rare minerals in that one mountain range were all that made Silverrock worthwhile for humans to colonize.

According to Professor Ambrose, the Builders had been tall, thin, insectlike creatures similar to praying mantises. They must not have had a problem with tight spaces—the access tunnel had more headroom than even a tall fellow like me needed, but it was so narrow I had to take care not to scrape the sides. I kept my eyes on my feet. The floor had been carved into a myriad of tiny steps, easy to stumble over, especially with my prosthetic legs. Despite the cool breeze blowing through the tunnel, by the time we got to the top my back was drenched in sweat.

We exited into night. Silverrock’s daily cycle was almost thirty hours: the team left our ranch house just after dawn, and by nightfall we were usually relaxing back at base. With no clouds in the sky and no moon large enough to stand out from the field of stars, Silverrock fell quickly into darkness.

“Ugh. That tunnel gets longer every day,” Lucien griped. “Wait for me a minute, will you?” Tossing his pack into the hopper, he ducked behind an outcrop of rock to the latrine.

I switched off the tunnel lights and locked the barred gate over the entrance to keep out pothunters and lazy miners. Signs in several Earth languages warned the curious to stay away.

As I turned to the hopper, the beam of my wristlamp caught a jackal-sized scorpidon perched on the hood, its long antennae tapping on the windshield as if it were asking to come in. Its humped shell would have made a nice footstool. It held high a claw the size of my boot, no doubt very attractive to the female of the species. Unless that was a female—I had no idea how to tell them apart or even if the species divided themselves up that way.

“Scram, you.” I shucked off my backpack and slung it by the strap, knocking the scorp to the ground. The critter clattered to the dirt and scurried under the hopper.

“Hurry it up, Lucien! I’m hungry.”

A strangled cry came from behind the outcropping.

“Lucien?” I rounded the rocks, sweeping the shadows with the beam from my wristlamp.

A huge scorp blocked my way—a lion-sized scorp. Its hard back faced me, its shell as big and solid as a boulder. And behind its many legs, backed up against the cliff face, I glimpsed Lucien’s boots.

Bloody guts! The damn scorp had the kid jammed against the wall.

He screamed, “Get it off!”

I unhooked the stun rod from my belt and extended it to a meter’s length. Jabbing it into the scorp’s nearest leg, I triggered a shot. Bzzt.

The leg twitched, but the big scorp didn’t move other than to snap its claws. Claws, plural. Instead of the usual single display claw, this scorp had two giant snappers, each as long and nasty as garden shears.

Something slashed at the back of my left leg, snagging the canvas of my pants.

What the hell? It was the other scorp, the one from the hopper, nipping at my knees.

Too bad for you, buddy. It would find only metal prosthetics under the fabric. I zapped the scorp away as I moved tighter to the cliff face.

From that angle, I could see more of Lucien. He had his back to the rocks, his mouth open in a soundless scream, his eyes wide, arms limp. Pinned like a butterfly, with the scorp’s tail-stinger stabbed into his chest.

I edged close enough to jab the stun rod into one of the scorp’s hip joints and triggered a jolt. No effect. For the first time since I’d come to Silverrock, I yearned for my old service pistol.

A zap to one of the antennae made the scorp turn and snap its two big claws at me. I shone my wristlamps straight at the monster’s eyes, shooting my stun rod as fast as it could recharge.

In no hurry, the big scorp withdrew its stinger and clambered over the rocks, its companion scrambling after.

Lucien crumpled to the ground, his eyes open and staring.

CHAPTER 2

Scorpidons

I KNELT BESIDE Lucien, shining my wristlamp into his face, praying to any deity in range. Please, not dead.

At my touch, he struck out blindly. “Get off, get off, get off!”

I bear-hugged him until he calmed. “It’s gone. Let me check your injuries.”

Under his shirt was a narrow wound, like a slit from a stiletto. Not good. I’d never heard of anyone dying of scorp venom, but I’d never heard of anyone being stung over the heart, either.

I tried for a reassuring smile. “It doesn’t look too bad. Can you walk?”

He rubbed his chest. “Suffering gods. Just get me out of here.”

Shaky but walking, he made it to the hopper. I covered him with my jacket. “Keep warm. I’m taking you to the hospital.”

The road from the archeology site was nothing more than a rutted track winding down the foothills, one that required the hopper to pick its way by slow bounces over the boulders. All around was scrubby wasteland, thick with spiny brush that had roots deep enough to suck up water from the aquifer below. Here and there, the hopper’s spotlights caught a grazing scorp foraging in the browse.

It was early spring, the beginning of the dry season. The long winter—on Silverrock, each season lasted more than a full earthyear—had brought enough spates of rain to coax a little new growth from the greenery. The night was cold and dry, but I sweated, worrying about the injured kid beside me.

At ten kilometers, the road improved to dirt and gravel, level enough for the hopper to skim over the surface. As we went, I put in a call to Professor Ambrose with a hasty explanation. A second call alerted the hospital in Sweetwater City that we were on our way.

So far, Lucien showed no signs of dying. He huddled under my jacket, rubbing his chest. “I told you! I told you those damn scorps are a menace!”

“You were the one who insisted on staying after dark.”

But why would a scorp attack him like that? Usually they scuttled away if you made a move toward them. In all the time I’d been on Silverrock, I’d never heard of a scorp attacking anything bigger than a goat or a dog.

Maybe it was just bad timing. Most days, the team was well away from the cavern by sunset, when the scorps became active. Maybe it was just bad luck that Lucien had come upon that ugly, two-clawed scorp right as it was emerging from its burrow. It was like stepping on a rattler or coming across a bear without warning; it was only natural for an animal to react defensively.

The university wasn’t going to like it.

When we got to the paved road, the hopper joined a train of ore haulers heading from the refinery toward the transit depot. Our lights passed over the garbage dump at the edge of town, scattering the feeding scorps. None were as big as the one that had stung Lucien.

Lucien scrunched into the corner of the hopper’s cab, face pinched and eyes shut. “Can’t you go any faster? I don’t feel so good.”

“Almost there.”

At that hour of the evening, Sweetwater City was jumping. The bars and brothels on Venture Avenue did a roaring trade, with light, music, and drunks spilling onto the street. I cursed them all as the hopper maneuvered around jaywalking pedestrians.

The medical center was at the end of Venture Avenue. It called itself a hospital, but that was just typical frontier optimism. It had eight beds and two exam rooms, one of which doubled as the operating room. The small staff handled injuries from work accidents and barroom brawls, sexually transmitted diseases, and a sprinkling of maternity cases. Any pretense toward sterility was purely aspirational. The surgeon in charge was Dr. Tim Slade. I knew him well as a drinking buddy. He was good at that. As a doctor, he was good enough.

“Knife fight?” Slade asked as I helped Lucien to the exam table.

“It was a scorp,” Lucien said. The kid’s face had paled to a dusky gray. “A huge one. It stabbed me with its tail.”

Slade grinned. “Don’t tell me you got bit by a bull scorp?”

I glared at Slade for his levity. “Not bit. Stung.” A “bull scorp” was the local version of a yeti: a giant scorpidon seen only in the darkest part of night by the most unreliable of witnesses. “I saw it myself. The scorp rammed its stinger right into his chest.”

“Whatever you say.” Slade examined the puncture. “Doesn’t look too bad. This may sting a little . . .”

As a nurse pushed me toward the waiting room, Lucien grabbed my hand. “Booker, tell Professor Ambrose I want out. The first transport going back to Prime, I want to be on it.”

I nodded. “No problem.”

In the waiting room, I folded myself into a stiff chair as far as possible from crying babies and a miner trying to stifle his hacking cough. The walls were decorated with yellowing posters depicting clogged lungs and pus-filled sores. It was a great place to be sick.

For a full earthyear, since even before Professor Ambrose had arrived with his three eager interns, I’d been the dig’s facilities manager. I’d liaised between the university and the Sweetwater City authorities, set up the base of operations, and built the site facilities. I kept to the budget and filed regular reports to the university. I made sure the staff got paid, everyone had a place to sleep, and food was provided at regular intervals. I took pride in following my own personal Rule One: If you’re going to do something, do it right.

During all that time, there had been no major hitches—until now. I took it personally.

Maybe I should have remembered Rule Two: Even if you do everything right, something will go wrong.

I pulled out my mocom to begin an incident report but found it hard to concentrate. My “legs” were hurting—phantom pains where my legs had once been, a reaction to all the excitement. I triggered the stimulators on my prosthetics; a mild electrical current on the stumps was usually enough to stop the severed nerves from jangling.

Dictating the bare facts of the attack into the incident report was straightforward, but I paused when the form asked what steps would be taken to prevent a recurrence. With some reluctance, I switched to a different form: an application to the sheriff’s office for a license to carry a firearm.

Reason for request: protection of university research team. Source of danger: scorpidons.

It wasn’t long before Sheriff Mick Ugarte appeared in the hospital doorway, scoping the sprinkling of patients-in-waiting. He sidled over to take the seat next to me. “Evening, Booker. ¿Qué tal? What’s this nonsense about you wanting to carry a shooter?”

Ugarte was another drinking buddy—wherever I was posted, I tried to stay on drinking terms with the local law. His hair had gone sparse and his muscles were sagging, but in a town full of tough guys, Ugarte kept a lid on the bullies.

“One of my team was injured by a scorp tonight. My stun rod wasn’t enough—I practically had to pry the scorp off the kid.”

A corner of his mouth lifted. “You shoulda told them—no petting the wildlife.” Ugarte was smiling, but his eyes were sharp. “This town’s already got too many damn fools spooked by scorps and wanting to shoot something. I didn’t think you’d be one of them.”

My ears perked up. “Why? Have there been other scorp attacks?”

“Nah. Just the odd drunk swearing that a bull scorp was wandering in the alleyways.”

The nurse caught my eye and waved me back toward the exam room.

Two orderlies were transferring Lucien to a gurney. The kid was a deadweight, out like a light.

I turned in alarm to Doc Slade.

“Don’t worry,” Slade said, washing his hands. He nodded a greeting to Ugarte, who’d followed me in. “The young man was a little agitated, so we gave him a sedative. I’ve pumped him full of antimicrobials. We’ll see how he is in the morning.”

“What about an antidote for the poison?” I asked.

Slade shook his head. “Nobody ever bothered to develop one. Scorp venom’s mild. Usually, it barely raises a reaction.”

“Lucien collapsed when I managed to scare that scorp away—I’d call that a reaction.”

“Shock, probably. How long was he in contact with the stinger?”

It had seemed like an hour, but time is like that in an emergency. “Twenty or thirty seconds. Not more than a minute.”

“Hmm.” Slade stroked his upper lip the way he did when he had an iffy poker hand and was trying to decide whether to fold. “Usually, a scorp sting is a quick hit-and-run. Leaves you with a few hours of swelling, a mild fever, and a hangover headache. But if the lad got an unusually large dose, that might explain his agitation.” He slapped my shoulder. “Don’t worry. He’ll get a good night’s sleep and probably be fine in the morning.”

As the orderly tucked the sheet around him, Lucien stirred and mumbled in his sleep.

I bent over his bed. “Hang in there, kid. You’re safe now.” The orderlies wheeled him away.

Back in the corridor, I hard-stared Ugarte. “Well? What about my permit to carry?”

He rubbed his jaw. “I guess you can be trusted not to shoot up the town. You already got a weapon?”

“My service pistol,” I said. “A PQ52, locked to my palm so no one else can use it. Believe me, I’d rather not kill any living creature, but Professor Ambrose expects me to protect his team.”

Ugarte nodded and tapped an approval into his mocom. “All right. I’ll authorize it. Straight projectiles, no explosives. And be sure not to kill anything but scorps. You can kill all you want of those.”

CHAPTER 3

The Ranch

I’D ESTABLISHED the archeology project’s base of operations in a rented ranch house near the foothills. By the time I arrived—tired, dirty, and hungry—Professor Ambrose was relaxing in the parlor with Emma Dewinter, a university exobiologist who’d come to Silverrock to conduct a biosphere survey. She’d arrived at the same time as Lucien and was sharing quarters with us. That was fine with me: she was in her midthirties, and I liked her dark eyes, feline smile, and quirky sense of humor. Since she had three university degrees and I had none, my interest was probably one-sided.

Our teenage landlord, Lydia, placed a bowl of leftover rockskipper stew in front of me while I briefed Ambrose and Emma on Lucien’s condition. Only Ambrose, Emma, and I frequented the parlor’s battered couch and easy chairs—the interns preferred to congregate in the dorm module I’d added to the main house. It said something about Lucien’s lack of popularity that none of the interns bothered to come to the parlor to ask about him.

“The wound doesn’t look bad,” I said, mopping up the last of the stew, “but the doctor’s worried about infection. We’ll just have to see how he responds to medication.”

Lydia sniffed, dallying over clearing my now-empty bowl. “You shouldn’t of kept that poor boy up in the hills after sundown, Booker. That’s when them scorps come outa their holes.” At seventeen, Lydia was hard-eyed and stringy-haired, and so petite her apron strings wrapped twice around her.

Poor boy? Why would a personable young woman like Lydia go for a sullen lout like Lucien? But then, as my ex would attest, I’ve never understood women.

“I didn’t keep him,” I said. “He kept me. Lydia, you’ve lived here longer than any of us. Have you heard of scorps attacking anyone?”

She thought a moment, gazing at the ceiling and sucking her lip. “Not other than folks tripping over them in the dark, like. But they’re smarter than you’d think. My daddy had to pour a concrete floor in the chicken house to keep the scorps from digging under to get to ’em.” Lydia’s father had come to Silverrock with high hopes and a flock of goats, but scorps had preyed on the crops and livestock until he’d been forced to turn to mining. His death in a mining accident had left Lydia with the ranch and a pile of debt. The rent the university paid wasn’t much, but on Silverrock it made the difference between destitution and scraping by.

After Lydia had taken my plate to the kitchen, I turned to Ambrose. “Lucien said he wants to go back to Prime.”

“After everything I went through to get him here?” Ambrose’s bushy eyebrows drew into a scowl. “Damn it, he’s only been here two weeks. He can’t bail at the first little hiccup.”

“Do you really need him on Silverrock?” I asked. “Couldn’t somebody else run the scanner and let Lucien analyze the scans from Prime?”

Ambrose harrumphed. “Looking at scans isn’t the same as being on site. I need him here.”

Emma laid a calming hand on Ambrose’s arm. “I’ll talk to him. He knows how important this work is.” She’d traveled from planet Prime on the same transport as Lucien and must have befriended him during the five-day trip.

“No pressuring him,” I warned. “If he wants to go home, he goes home. That goes for the interns too.”

Ambrose’s thin frame stiffened. “This is my project. I’m in charge of the interns.”

I nodded. “Your project, your interns. You can hire them and fire them. But my job is safety and security, including making sure the rules are followed. Anyone who feels unsafe is entitled to quit.”

Emma narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re pretty good at laying down the law, aren’t you?”

“Just doing my job. And Professor Ambrose, from now on, no more working late at the dig. I want everyone off the site well before sunset. I’ve already gotten permission from the sheriff to carry a weapon.”

Ambrose ran a hand through his scant, graying hair, making it stand on end. “You’re overreacting. We’ve been working in the caverns for the last six months without any problems.”

I nodded. “True, but you’ll get a lot less flak from the university if my accident report shows we’re taking steps to prevent a repeat.”

Ambrose and Emma exchanged a glance.

“I suppose a report is inevitable.” Emma patted Ambrose’s hand. “Booker’s making sense. A little, um, tightening of procedures seems to be in order.”

Ambrose folded his arms. “All right. But this dig is extremely important. Don’t let your damn rules get in my way.”

I’d chosen for myself one of the smallest rooms in the old ranch house, letting the university types have the more comfortable dormitory module. The room suited me: it had just enough space for my bunk, a desk, and a few shelves to hold my kit. If I stretched my arms, I could touch the ceiling. The walls had originally been painted a cheerful pink, but the alkaline air had aged them to a mellow beige. I’d left the original curtains—white with pink hearts—on the small window. They reminded me of my sister’s room, back when we were growing up on Prime.

There was a vid message from her, waiting for me to answer. It had been sitting there a couple of days already. I knew Claudia had my best interests at heart, but her ideas of what was best for me didn’t jibe with mine.

Still, answering her couldn’t be put off forever. After I posted my incident report to the university—all very bland and full of assurances that we were doing everything possible to avoid further scorp interaction—I took a deep breath and replayed Claudia’s message.

“Hey, baby brother!” Claudia’s smile was artificially bright. No doubt she found dealing with me as trying as I found her attempts to organize my life. She pattered on for a minute or two about her son’s dance recital and her daughter’s science project before getting to the point.

“It’s a good position. Logistics supervisor for the agro export terminal on Prime. I’ve already spoken to them about your military and management experience, and they’re interested.” She held up a hand. “I know, I know. You’re saying you have a job. But what kind of job is it, babysitting student diggers? Out on some backwater planet too primitive for any civilized species to care about? Here’s a chance to do something meaningful. After all, it’s time you settled down.”

Settle down. That’s where Claudia always ended up. I’d tried settling down once, with Rita, but that hadn’t worked out so well. A desk job on Prime, regular hours, comfy home . . . until I’d become so bored I couldn’t stand it.

I’d put off answering Claudia to give her the illusion I was thinking it over, but the truth was I preferred the frontier, where I had a chance to see something being built from the ground up—and where I might make a difference for the better.

No, settling down was not for me. I fired off a thanks-but-no-thanks message to Claudia, assuring her that Silverrock wasn’t as primitive as she imagined. So maybe I exaggerated a little about the planet’s natural beauty and the cultural opportunities in Sweetwater City, but I didn’t want her worrying about me.

Before going to bed, I took my old service pistol from my trunk and cleaned and loaded it. It still fit comfortably in my hand—not a mere stunner but a PQ52 projectile launcher with enough power to bring down a man at a hundred paces. Not that I ever wanted to do that again.

Why had I kept it? I hadn’t even handled it since my medical discharge. But my stun rod hadn’t had much effect on that big double-clawed scorp. When it came to security, overcautious was better than underprepared. To protect my team, I needed firepower.

The next morning, the duty nurse at the hospital reported that Lucien was running a fever but was well enough to complain about the bed, the food, the nursing, and life in general. I promised to visit him later.

When the hoppers brought the team to the foothills to begin the day’s work, the area around the tunnel entrance was clear—no sign of the attack except for the scratchy scorp tracks around the rock outcropping. I told the team to wait at the top of the access tunnel while I did a quick recon.

My service pistol nestled comfortably in my hip holster as if it belonged there.

It felt strange to make the trek down the access tunnel alone. Alone, that is, except for the vermin. Every little rustle had me pausing at the corners and looking over my shoulder, as if a scorp might be waiting in ambush. But other than my nerves, everything was normal.

When I got to the overlook, I switched on the cavern lights, sending thousands of little sandbugs and rockskippers scurrying into the nearest crevice. A few scorps took their time retreating into the side passages, melting into the cracks and dark places.

Nothing unusual. No outsized scorp brandishing double claws and a stinger, just ordinary wildlife picking over the rocks for tasty bits of algae.

I called into the ruins, “We’re back.”

An echo answered: Back . . . back.

I shouted again. “I don’t want any more trouble.”

Trouble . . . trouble.

Feeling foolish, I ended my announcement with a mumble. “We have a job to do.”

After that, work went on as usual, except smoother without Lucien’s persnickety orders. Hauling around the scanner and lights for intern Amy was much less stressful.

Ambrose called a halt to work well before sundown. No scorps lurked around the tunnel exit. When we got to base, I pulled rank to be first in the shower and took one of the hoppers to Sweetwater City.

As I drove down Venture Avenue, the traffic and pedestrians that had irked me the night before now seemed warm and friendly. Tidy shops sold the newest imported goods. Grocers displayed produce from the hydroponics farms. Well-dressed men and women bustled between the Empire Hotel and Venture Mining’s gleaming offices, strategically situated next to the Sweetwater City town hall. Cranes and scaffolding marked the construction of a new hotel.

This was the street that greeted hopeful newcomers. The pawn shops and cheap rooming houses huddled on the side streets, just out of sight.

The planet had been named Silverrock by some enterprising promoter eager to recruit colonists to a world where gray was the dominant color. The ubiquitous limestone left pale dust everywhere. Even the sunlight tended toward the bluish end of the spectrum, lending a washed-out, gloomy cast to scenery and residents alike.

Silverrock’s first colonists—company prospectors and wildcat miners—had settled at the only freshwater spring anywhere near the mineral-rich hills. When the surveyors confirmed that the Builders had left behind enough heavy-metal deposits to make mining worthwhile, Venture Mining had bought the planet’s mineral rights and begun recruiting workers.

Sweetwater City had sprouted like mushrooms after a rain. Venture Mining provided Silverrock’s only town with everything a frontier planet needed: a transit depot for ships to carry settlers in and ore out, a general store to sell supplies at inflated prices, an assay office and registrar to analyze ore and keep track of mineral rights, a mayor, a sheriff, and a medical center. The saloons and brothels had followed on their own. The churches mostly hadn’t bothered.

That evening, even the hospital seemed calmer. I bypassed the waiting room and its sprinkling of worried mothers with fretting toddlers to find Lucien ensconced in a room at the end of the hall.

Lucien scowled at me from his bed. “I want to get out of here. This isn’t a hospital, it’s the fast track to the morgue.” His roommate snored from the other bed.

I pulled the visitor chair closer. “What’s Doc Slade say?”

“Humph. I have a little fever.” His hand caressed his wounded chest. “He’s giving me some meds on the off chance they’ll help—like throwing darts blindfolded, hoping one will hit a bullseye.”

I laughed. “Better not say that to Slade—you’ll need his medical clearance before you’re allowed on a transport going off planet.”

“About that . . .” His gaze shifted to the black square of window. “I didn’t mean it, what I said about going back to Prime.”

Damn Ambrose. “Look, if the professor’s been pressuring you . . .”

“No, it’s not that. I want to go back to work. To the inscriptions.” Pink spots flushed on Lucien’s otherwise pale face. He peered at me as if it was important for me to understand. “I think I’m close to a breakthrough. All the time I’ve been lying here, I’ve been thinking about the glyphs. I’ve already categorized most of them by shape, by complexity, by size, depth, orientation, location, proximity to others . . .” His fingers clutched at the sheet. “Once I can see them and touch them again, I’m sure they’ll start to make some sense.”

On the monitor, his heart rate flashed a little faster. His temperature ticked a fraction higher.

“Sure,” I soothed. “If you want to stay on Silverrock, that’s fine. Professor Ambrose was hoping you’d stay with the team. I’m just a little surprised you’d be ready to head back down to the Pueblo after everything you went through.”

“The cavern.” His gaze wandered back to the window, his hand rubbing his chest. “I suppose I have to go down the tunnel again. It’s just that I feel so . . . so vulnerable.”

I tried for a hearty smile. “No need to rush any decisions. Let somebody else handle the imaging. You can work on the analysis from the ranch.”

His eyes darted to the corners of the room as if looking for an escape. “I need to go in. I want to go in. The inscriptions—I need to see them, to touch them, to really understand them. I’m so close to understanding.” Sweat glistened on his brow.

While I appreciated his dedication, I didn’t want to have to carry him out if he collapsed inside the cavern. “If you think touching the glyphs would help, why don’t we just replicate part of the wall?”

His eyes widened. “Can you do that?”

“Sure. With all the data from the high-res scanner, the fabricator can make you an exact copy, right down to the cracks in the stone. The color won’t be the same . . .”

“Color doesn’t matter.” A ghost of a smile crossed his pale face. “All right, let’s do it. And get me out of here.”

After we ran out of small talk, I left him to get some rest and loitered in a hallway until Doc Slade had a free moment.

“How’s Lucien doing?” I asked. “He wants to go back to work.”

Slade scrubbed his hands over his tired face. “There’s nothing specific I can pin down. He has a slight fever. At one point, he complained of dizziness and a terrible migraine, but it subsided after a few minutes. I did a brain scan, just to be safe. It showed a lot of activity—what you’d expect from a patient who’s mentally active and scared to death—but no clots, no tumor, no aneurysm. Unless he gets worse overnight, he can go home tomorrow. Frankly, I could use the bed.”

Passing through the waiting room, I stood aside as Mick Ugarte ushered in a drunk with a broken nose.

A burly nurse took charge of the patient. “You want him back after we’re done with him, Sheriff?”

Ugarte brushed dust off his hat. “Nah, send him home. A broken nose and what his wife will do to him ought to be punishment enough for any man.”

After the nurse had steered the patient to the back, Ugarte walked over to me. “How’s the kid?”

“Slade says he’ll release him tomorrow. You have time for an ale?”

“Always.”

As we walked toward the Oak Leaf Tavern, I asked if he’d heard any more bull scorp stories.

“Too damn many,” he growled. “I got better things to do than chase after dumb animals.”

“I hope one of those things is cracking down on miners blasting near the caverns. Have you been keeping an eye on the seismic monitor?” I’d programmed it to ping the sheriff’s office whenever someone blasted too near the archeology site. “There have been more incidents than ever, and closer to the caverns.”

Ugarte scowled. “I don’t have enough goddamn deputies to police the goddamn town and the goddamn mountain range too. You can’t blame miners for wanting to make a living.”

“So long as we’re working the dig, they need to make their living somewhere else. You must know the likely culprits, Mick. Talk to them.”

Ugarte’s eyes shifted. “You don’t know miners. Talking don’t make a dent. Take my brother—he’s obsessed. Every time Berto picks up a shovelful of gravel, he thinks there’s something special in that gravel that’s going to make him rich. No matter how many shovelfuls of crap he’s seen, he always thinks the next shovelful will have a giant nugget in it.”

At the tavern door, I paused. “Look, I don’t want to go over your head on this—”

Ugarte’s face reddened. “Is that a threat?”

I backed off a little. “Of course not—but the blasts are shaking the caverns and making my people damn nervous. The ruins have been there for fifty thousand years. There’ll be hell to pay if they collapse on your watch before the archeologists finish studying them.”

He expressed his opinion of archeologists at less than a roar, so I took it as a win and held the tavern door open for him.

Halfway through, he paused as his earmic lit up with an incoming call. He listened a moment, his face grim. “All right, issue rifles. I’ll be right there.”

He glanced at me. “I’ll take that ale another time. It looks like I’ll be chasing dumb animals tonight after all. Scorps have broken into the waterworks.” He nodded at my holster. “You want in?”

CHAPTER 4

The Bull Scorp

SWEETWATER CITY’S SPRING was capped with a nice, hygienic purification plant. Usually the waterworks were brightly lit at night, but now the place was dark except where the headlights of a deputy’s rover illuminated the grounds.

“It’s scorps,” Deputy Chang yelled as we rolled up, “a whole passel of ’em. They cut through the fence wires and got into the plant. Scared the night operator silly.”

The night operator was nearby, flapping her hands and describing her horrifying experience to a nervous deputy.

“It’s a bull scorp, Sheriff,” she called. “Big as your rover! I saw it plain. You got to get ’em out of there so I can purify the tank. Folks drink that water!”

Ugarte sent the operator to inform the newscasters that there would be a temporary water stoppage “for technical adjustments.”

The deputy gave us a more coherent rundown. “The power’s out, but I could see in the window with my flashlight. It’s a pack of scorps. The operator’s right—one of them’s enormous, a big, ugly brute. They’re messing the place up bad.”

Ugarte went to look in the window with the help of a flashlight. Whatever he saw made him swear in a couple of languages. “Get me some flares.”

While we waited, I got the blacklight and night glasses from my hopper and peeked in the window.

Under the ultraviolet light, the scorpidons glowed an eerie blue. There were eight that I could see, maybe more in the corners. They climbed over the equipment, tore into boxes of supplies, scattered tools, and munched from the operator’s lunch box. One scorp clambered over two others, trying to reach the top of the water tank. Another crept out from under a cabinet—a place that looked too narrow for it to squeeze into.

The big one squatted in the middle of the room, glittering under the blacklight. It had one enormous claw and bristled with legs and antennae. It was huge, much bigger than the one that had stung Lucien. The hump of its shell stood at least as high as my shoulder. It towered over the scorps around it like a buffalo among a flock of sheep.

“Gods below, I thought bull scorps were just a legend.” I handed my night glasses to Ugarte. “I wouldn’t want to meet that in a dark alley.”

The sheriff looked in the window. “Goddamn. I don’t believe it—a real live bull scorp. What d’you suppose it wants in there?”

“Maybe it’s thirsty.”

A few more deputies showed up, carrying rifles and an armful of flares. They were accompanied by volunteers, as excited as boys at a carnival shooting range.

Ugarte issued terse orders. “Chang, get that loading dock door open—we want to give them an easy way out. Deputies, get a vantage point and make sure you know where your bullets are going. Try to hit the bull scorp—it must be the pack leader. Don’t bother trying to kill the rest of ’em—we just want to run ’em back to the hills where they belong. If any of the smaller ones come at you, turn your lights on ’em to herd them back out of town. All you civilians, get back out of the way.”

The volunteers grumbled at their loss of sport.

“Where do you want me, Mick?” I asked.

He handed me back my night glasses. “Hang by the loading dock and make sure they all leave.”

When we were in position, Ugarte strolled up to a window, casually broke it with his rifle butt, and threw in two lit flares.

With most animals, you’d expect a squeal or howl or some other alarm call. With scorps, all we heard was the snapping of claws and the skittering of hard, sticklike legs. But the flares did their work—a few smaller ones came scampering out, streaking for the shadows, followed immediately by two more. A trigger-happy deputy got a couple of shots off without hitting anything.

“Hold your fire, asshole!” Ugarte roared. He threw in two more flares, aiming for the darker corners.

Three scorps came out together. They didn’t scatter like the others but stayed in a clump and went straight for the nearest deputy.

The deputy didn’t bother with his rifle; he just turned and ran. The three scorps ran after him, reaching with their claws and clipping at his legs until he managed to jump atop a police rover. Other deputies, ignoring Ugarte’s shouts, fired at the scorps.

Meanwhile, the big ugly one rushed out with four more scorps around it.

“Shoot, dammit!” Ugarte yelled. “Get that big bastard!”

Shots rang out. Most ricocheted off the thick shells, but one well-placed bullet blew a chunk of shell off the bull scorp.

My pistol stayed in my hand, unfired.

I could have shot the damn thing—for a moment I’d had a clear line to the bull scorp. Maybe if it had been the double-clawed bastard that attacked Lucien, I’d have tried to kill it, but this was just a native creature in the wrong place. Like a moose in a vegetable garden, it was an expensive inconvenience rather than a danger. Since it was already heading out, I let it go.

None of the deputies’ shots stopped the bull scorp. It and its fellows moved in a solid phalanx into the darkness behind the building. There was a fence there, but the scrabbling sounds didn’t even slow. Within seconds all the scorps were lost in the night.

“Idiots!” Ugarte yelled. “Incompetent, insubordinate, shit-brained morons!”

While he berated his troops, I checked out the inside. The place was a shambles of trashed supplies and smelly scorp leavings. Using the blacklight, I found a little scorp hiding under the operator’s console and poked it with a broken chair leg until it scuttled away.

“Clear,” I called.

Ugarte walked in. “What a mess.” He eyed me narrowly. “You didn’t get a shot off?”

“Didn’t have a clear line of fire,” I lied. “Any injuries?”

“Humph. Chet’s got a nasty gash on his calf. Daoud got a graze from a stray shot.” He pushed his hat back and ran his hand through his hair. “A bull scorp! I guess I owe an apology to a couple of folks. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes . . .”

“Send me whatever images your shouldercams caught, will you?” I asked. “We got a biologist at base now, doing a wildlife survey. Maybe she’ll be interested.”

“Right.” He grinned and gave me a nudge. “Anything for science, eh? Good luck, compadre. I’ve seen your biologist. She’s outa your league.”

At the ranch, Emma’s work space was littered with a jumble of plant clippings, roots, rocks, and soil samples. Although she’d left her door open, the way her bunk was piled with a messy heap of blankets and discarded clothes made me feel like I was breaching her privacy.

I knocked on the doorframe. “Do you mind if I interrupt? The sheriff asked if you’d take a look at the images of the bull scorp we saw in town.” Her dark curls had been pulled into a bunch at the nape of her neck, exposing neat ears and a hint of laugh lines at the corners of her eyes.

“A bull scorp?” Emma’s computer displayed in microscopic detail some sort of plant cell that looked complicated enough for an architectural plan. She frowned up at me. “Nothing like that was listed in the initial planetary survey.”

To me, even her frown looked attractive. “To be honest, I thought bull scorps were just a local legend. You know how it is—everybody’s heard of somebody who’s seen one, but the story’s always thirdhand at best. I figured they were a way to scare the kids into staying close at night.”

She switched her display to the images from the deputies’ shouldercams. The blurry images held only glimpses of the bull scorp as it scurried past, the scene spottily illuminated by the lights from the police rovers.

Pausing on one image after another, she hummed little comments to herself. “Big one, aren’t you? Standard scorpidon morphology, eyes, claw, antennae. Close association . . . unusual if they’re a competing species.” I liked the way her fingers managed the controls: competent, no hesitation or dithering.

Emma replayed the clearest sequence of the bull scorp as it hustled away. Half-hidden by the normal-sized scorps around it, the giant seemed to lumber, perhaps handicapped by its size. It had only one claw, but that claw looked big enough to take off an arm.

She ran the clip again and again. Over and over, bullets blasted a hunk off the bull scorp’s shell, making my legs twinge in sympathy.

“Maybe it’s a new species,” I suggested, “and you’ll get to name it.”

She grinned up at me. “No such luck. But it does need a new name. Not a bull scorp. Look close.” She magnified the still image and pointed. “See there, where you can glimpse the underside of her carapace? She’s carrying eggs.”

“Eggs.” I sat on the rumpled bed, feeling a little sick. “You mean we targeted a pregnant mom?”

“Yep. With hundreds of potential babies.” She tented her fingers and fell into lecture mode. “Most arthropods follow a reproductive strategy of high number, low investment. They release huge clutches of eggs, provide no parental care, and rely on sheer numbers to ensure that a few offspring survive to produce the next generation.”

I shook my head, unable to imagine abandoning a ton of offspring to their fate. “I’ve been here a full earthyear. Why haven’t I seen a scorp like this up to now?”

She shrugged. “How often do you see a queen ant or a queen bee? The queens’ only function is to produce eggs, so they generally stay deep in the nest, where they’re fed, pampered, and protected by the others.” She wrinkled her nose. “A rather boring existence, I’ve always thought. I suspect scorps have a similar social structure. Lots of males, but only one breeding female in the hive.”

“So what was this one doing running around Sweetwater City?”

“She might be a rogue queen, a superfluous female ejected from the hive by a stronger queen, or one who’s somehow lost her nest.”

“Lost her nest?” I rubbed my chin, considering. “Maybe because humans are encroaching on scorp territory? Sweetwater City’s grown a lot lately. Nobody’s given a thought to how that might affect the native animals. Something else to chalk up to human greed.”

Emma cocked her head, eyeing me like a curious robin. “That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?”

“I figure if you’re going to do something, you should do it right. I’d hate to see humans start wiping out native species on Silverrock the way we did on Earth.”

She twitched a little smile. “A man with a conscience. For a soldier, you’re kind of softhearted, aren’t you?”

I bridled at that. “I’m a soldier, not an exterminator. Encouraging stray scorps to go back to their holes is one thing. Taking aim at a whole generation of eggs is something else.”

She absently drummed her fingers on the table. “You say this was at the waterworks? Was there ever an actual spring in Sweetwater City? Water that rose to the surface?”

“Sure. That’s why the first settlers put their town there. When Venture Mining took over, they deepened the well, put in pumps, and built the water treatment plant. A couple of earthyears ago, they expanded it to serve the hydroponics farms.”

Emma nodded. “That’s probably it, then. A lot of arthropods lay their eggs in water. Silverrock’s been settled for what, thirty earthyears?”

“About that.”

“Since Silverrock’s seasonal cycle is 4.7 earthyears, that makes this only the seventh occurrence of spring since humans have occupied the planet. This female may well have hatched somewhere near the original water source and might be instinctively seeking out the same place to lay her eggs.”

“And now her nesting place is gone because the town’s grown.” I found that depressing as hell. “We’ve denied her the one thing every creature wants most—to have progeny.”

Emma patted my knee, frowning momentarily at feeling unyielding metal under my pants instead of flesh. “Don’t take it so hard. There will be other scorp queens brooding eggs somewhere else. Anywhere there’s fresh water is my guess.”

I shook my head. “Fresh water’s hard to find on Silverrock. The seas are salty. Winter’s over, and it won’t rain in this hemisphere for another three earthyears. Any pond or creek will be dry long before that.”

She seemed unconcerned. “I doubt scorps are in danger of dying out. You see them in the caverns, don’t you? Those caves were formed by water—likely there are still some underground reservoirs.” She switched her screen to a close-up of a leaf. “Thanks for getting the images to me. I’ll add this information to the biosurvey. You might tell your buddies in town that their ‘bull scorp’ is just a working mom. They should fence off any potential freshwater source unless they want a few hundred scorp eggs hatching in their nice little town.”

At the door, I paused, thinking this was as good an opportunity as any to face the awkward part of getting better acquainted. “By the way, in case you were wondering, they’re prosthetic. Both legs, amputated just above the knee.”

“Oh?” Her eyes twinkled at me. “What about the rest? All present and in good working order?”

I felt my face flush. “A little rusty but still serviceable.”

She turned back to her work with a grin. “Good to know.”

CHAPTER 5

The Glyphs

THE NEXT DAY, Lucien returned to the ranch carrying a bag full of antimicrobials, anti-inflammatories, pain meds for his headaches, and instructions from Doc Slade not to push himself too hard.

Instead, Lucien pushed me. He’d barely settled into his room before he had me feeding data from the tomographic scanner into the fabricator. While he recuperated, Lydia fussed over him, offering him pillows and making him soup. Emma looked in on him from time to time, taking a biologist’s interest in his injury.

Soon a replica of the Pueblo’s inscribed south wall sprouted in the parlor, growing eerily block by block while the team was away in the caverns. Reconstructed in three-quarter size to fit into the room, it looked like a work of art, its surface reproducing in gray polymer every fine line that had been etched into the original titanium alloy. It used up reams of composite material and monopolized the fabricator’s processing capacity, but Professor Ambrose told me to give the kid whatever he wanted. As the wall expanded, it displaced the couch and side tables until all that was left of Lydia’s cozy parlor was an easy chair, Lucien’s linguistics computer, and the wall of hieroglyphs.

At supper a couple of days after Lucien returned, the team reported on their progress in mapping the ruins. Ambrose sat at the head of the table, Emma at the opposite end. Lucien and the three interns clustered along the sides while Lydia slotted herself in next to Lucien. I claimed the chair next to Emma on the excuse that I needed a corner seat to accommodate my legs.

“I’ve identified five possible tunnel entrances on the north side,” intern Gupta said. “They’re partially choked with rubble. No way to tell how deep they go.”

Ambrose spooned up some rockskipper marinara. “Low priority. Just note them on the maps and concentrate on delineating the structures. Miko, any more ceramics in your trench?”

“No, and I’m scraping bedrock.”

“All right, we’ll consider that trench finished. I found a garbage midden beyond the wall to the north that looks promising for ceramics. I’ll lay out a new trench and you can start digging there tomorrow. Amy, how are you doing on Epsilon tower?”

The youngest of the interns shrugged. “I’ve scoped and measured the rooms. There are some glyphs in a narrow passage near the top of the tower—Booker, maybe you can help image them?”

“Sure,” I said, foreseeing another day of scrambling up scaffolds and crawling into inaccessible holes. “But we’ve got limited time to clear the site before the miners take over. Do we really need to image all the inscriptions? Some of them are just three or four glyphs.”

“I need them,” Lucien said. “Short messages can help define the essential components of a meaningful communication.”

“Like how many glyphs it takes to make a sentence?” Amy asked. It was just like Lucien to make something simple sound complicated.

“Kinda like a stop sign,” Lydia suggested shyly. “That’s only got one word.”

To my surprise, Lucien responded to her seriously. “Exactly. Four white letters, all the same height, placed in a specific order on a red octagon. Without context, it’s meaningless. But if you see a hundred signs, all identical, all located at intersections, the meaning begins to come through.” He was still pale but looked stronger since Lydia had been pushing food at him.

“What headway have you made on the translation?” Ambrose asked.

Lucien squirmed as if uncomfortable with the direct question. “My analysis confirms that each glyph is a full word, not a sound or syllable. So far, I’ve isolated thirty-two base glyphs.”

Emma frowned. “Only thirty-two words? That’s a very limited vocabulary.”

“That’s just counting the base glyphs. There are seven different forms of hooks and spikes that can be added to modify the meaning, either alone or in combination. That exponentially increases the possible number of words.”

Gupta sniffed. “Sounds like math, not language.”

“It is math,” Lucien snapped. “I’ve got raw data, but to find the meaning, I have to identify the patterns. The more data I have, the greater likelihood the patterns will become evident.”

“The written symbols may not be very logical,” Amy said. She dictated into her mocom: “The weather in Sweetwater City tomorrow will be cold, sunny, and breezy. Just like every day on Silverrock.” She turned the message toward the rest of us. “Take a look. Five words are capitalized, at various positions in the sentence. Four punctuation marks, two at the end of a sentence and two in the middle. Dots occur over the i’s as well as at the ends of sentences. It would be hard for someone who didn’t know the language to find the pattern there.”

Lucien looked at the mocom, musing. “Beginnings and endings. We would put the first word of a message at one edge and read linearly, so that frequently used word combinations tend to appear in the same order. It is. I want. But the glyph combinations I’ve found could appear in any order—horizontal, vertical, or diagonal.”

Miko glanced toward the polymer wall that had taken over the parlor. “So, as far as you know, that wall could be anything from a campaign speech to instructions for cleaning the cesspool?”

Lucien flashed a one-sided smile. “I think we can rule out the cesspool. The south wall is beside a major pathway.” He looked around at the team. “Think about it—what sort of messages do we put on our main streets?”

“Welcome to Sweetwater City,” Lydia offered.

Gupta grunted. “More like Drink Stapley Ale.”

“Speed limits,” I said. “Directions to the depot and to the hospital.”

Lucien’s finger traced a figure on the table as if he were touching one of the glyphs. “Something far more complex and substantial.”

“A public proclamation,” Gupta suggested. “Like the Rosetta Stone or Hammurabi’s code.”

Ambrose nodded thoughtfully. “In ancient Egypt, prominent inscriptions recounted the battles won and deeds done by the pharaoh. In other places, there are religious texts or statues of military heroes. They all serve the same purpose: a public assertion of cultural heritage that justifies the society’s actions. We could have a whole Builder history on the south wall, proclaiming their right to come to Silverrock and extract the planet’s resources.”

“Propaganda,” I said. “But why would they need it? A bunch of aliens come from another star system to Silverrock, spend a few years digging out the minerals they want, and then go home. They’d all know their own history, wouldn’t they? They’d understand their mission. Why waste a lot of energy writing it all down?”

Emma cocked her head. “Booker has a point. The very existence of the inscription suggests a stratification of the population between those who control the narrative and their intended audience.”

“Could there have been a sapient species already living on Silverrock?” Miko asked, eyes round. “Could the Builders have been speaking to them?”

The very question made me uncomfortable—if there ever had been a native population, the Builders had probably wiped them out.

Ambrose shook his head decisively. “Other than the Builders, there’s no sign Silverrock was ever occupied by sapient life.”

“I agree,” Emma said. “If there had been evidence that a higher species evolved on Silverrock, the non-homs in the Stellar Coalition would never have let humans settle here.”

Lydia frowned. “They musta been talking to somebody.”

“Slaves,” I said. “The Builders must have come in some sort of spaceship. They weren’t planning on settling permanently, so why build an underground village instead of just living in the ship? I’m betting the people in charge, the ones who felt the need to explain something to the cave residents, were living comfortably on the surface or in their ship. The people who lived in the Pueblo had been brought here for only one reason—to dig out the minerals. They lived where they worked.”

Emma sent a sunny smile my way. “The Pueblo as slave quarters? An intriguing possibility.”

Feeling like I was on a roll, I pushed a little further. “And what about the material? Why would they need to engrave their message in titanium?”

“I have a theory about that,” Lucien said. “The glyphs vary in depth. I think that’s part of the meaning—perhaps emphasis, like printing something in bold letters. In order to fully understand the message, the glyphs had to be touched, not just seen. That meant they needed a material much more durable than limestone.”

“Reading by touch,” I said. “No light in the cavern.” The idea of a village of slaves blindly feeling their way through a huge panel of hieroglyphs gave me the shivers.

Ambrose nodded solemnly. “That’s a distinct possibility. You are making progress, Lucien.”

Lucien sighed. “I need more data. How many more inscriptions are left to image?”

Ambrose pursed his lips. “We keep finding more. As Amy said, some of them are badly placed for imaging.” In the last few days, the archeology team had diverted their efforts from collecting Ambrose’s tiny bits of pottery to catering to Lucien’s demands for every morsel of the Builders’ inscriptions.

Lucien put down his fork. “Maybe I should go with you to help.”

“Absolutely not,” Emma said. “You’re far from fully recovered.”

Ambrose nodded. “We’ll handle the camera. You’re more valuable spending your time on the analysis.”

With a gasp, Lucien stiffened, letting his fork clatter to the floor. Raising his hands to cover his ears, he swayed in his chair, eyes shut tight.

Lydia sprang to her feet. “Another headache? I’ll get your pills.”

Emma knelt beside Lucien, concern furrowing her brow.

As Lydia returned with the vial, Lucien shuddered and opened his eyes. “Gods, why does that keep happening? It’s like being hit on the head with a rock.”

Lydia shook out a pill. “Here. You’ll feel better in a minute.”

He tossed down the tablet, chasing it with a swallow of coffee. After three deep breaths, he’d recovered enough for a rueful smile. “I better go lie down for a bit.” He let Lydia escort him to his room.

As the interns drifted out toward the dorm wing, Ambrose and I both turned to Emma.

“I know,” she said. “His headaches are very concerning. He’s had at least one every night since he’s been back. Each migraine is over within minutes, but they leave him nauseous and understandably irritable.”

“Is it some sort of seizure?” I asked. “Does the medication help?”

She fingered the vial left on the table. “This is just a painkiller. It tends to put him to sleep, but it does nothing in terms of prevention. I’ve told him to go back to the hospital for another brain scan, but he seems to have taken a dislike to the doctor.”

“Maybe he should go back to Prime,” I said.

Ambrose shrugged. “That would mean five days in a transport—by then the headaches might have stopped. Let’s leave the decision to him. I think you’ll find he prefers to stay here until his job is done.”

The next day found me back in the underground city, five meters above the cavern floor, atop a scaffold I’d bolted together from lengths of fabricated piping. I squeezed my shoulders through one of the rounded windows to position the camera on an improvised shelf. By craning my neck to the right and pointing my wristlamp upward, I could just see the spidery glyphs carved into a smooth metal plaque. Each no bigger than a thumbprint, the glyphs formed a scatter as dense and random as stars in the night sky.

“See what I mean?” Amy said. “What kind of aliens would place an inscription near the ceiling in a room the size of a closet? Who did they think would read it?”

I squinted up at the glyphs. “Maybe it was like putting a magazine next to the toilet.”

“Thank you for that image.”

When I’d backed out, Amy keyed the equipment to begin the scan. The lasers shot out, scanning the wall millimeter by millimeter, penetrating to a four-centimeter depth to catch every nuance of the carving.

Amy brushed a stray sandbug off her leg. “Ugh. I hate these critters. All legs and antennae, like a chubby shrimp. It’s enough to put me off seafood forever.”

Miko called up from the floor of the cavern. “I found another inscription. Booker, if you’re done up there, I need some more lights.”

Amy nodded. “Go ahead. This scan will take another hour.”

Miko—smiling and dirty—led me to the north side near Epsilon tower.

“It’s near the base of that wall.” She pointed with a trowel. “There’s a hole big enough to crawl into. I haven’t fully cleared the entrance yet, but a flexcam showed some glyphs inside.”

She was right about it being hard to get to. I moved a bank of lights closer, but the hole was still uninvitingly dark.

Kneeling, Miko groped in the hole, probing with the long, camera-tipped cable to try to find the extent of the inscription. I hoped like hell no one would expect someone my size to poke around in a little place like that.

“The inscription extends inward a couple of meters,” Miko called, her voice muffled by the tight space. “We may have to excavate before we can image this properly.” She wriggled in a little deeper. “I think the writing goes on another meter or so . . .”

The undercurrent of sandbugs rustling in the cavern crevices stopped.

Damn. “Miko, out!” I grabbed her belt and pulled her out of the hole.

The soles of my boots vibrated even before I heard the boom of a miner’s blast.

The sound came in waves, seeming to emanate from the stone walls surrounding us. On the ground, Miko cried out and covered her ears.

After long seconds, the echoes faded, like the passing of a low-grade earthquake.

From the other side of the cavern, Ambrose swore.

I helped Miko to her feet. “Are you all right?”

“Fine.” Her voice shook. “Thanks for getting me out—the sound’s much worse when you’re lying on the ground.”

Atop the scaffold, Amy called, “Damn it. I’ll have to reset the camera. Somebody lend me a hand.”

“I’ll go,” Gupta offered. He always seemed happy to assist Amy.

Click, click.

I froze, peering into the shadows. A scorp lurked near the cavern wall maybe four meters away. The giant brute had a shell a meter and a half wide, with legs extended so its back leveled off at the height of my chest. Four javelin-like antennae twitched toward us. As the beam from my wristlamp struck the creature, it lifted two huge claws as if to shield its eyes.

Two claws. Unless it had a twin, this was the same double-clawed monster that had stung Lucien.

It snapped at me. Click, click.

I pulled my service pistol. “Everybody watch your backs—that blast stirred up the scorps.”

Miko muttered, “Goddess, I’ve never seen one that big.” She unclipped the stun rod from her belt, extending it to a meter’s length.

The scorp took a step closer, its antennae waving. Just curious or preparing to attack?

I slid to the bank of lights and adjusted a spot to shine directly at the scorp’s eyestalks.

“Booker, are you all right?” Ambrose called.

“Let’s not tempt fate. Call it a day, Professor.” I dreaded the thought of someone else getting stung like Lucien.

“You heard the man,” Ambrose snapped. “Pack up.” Atop the scaffold, Amy and Gupta bustled about, stowing equipment.

The scorp extended a couple of legs in my direction. It moved fluidly closer by a meter.

“Back off,” I growled to the scorp. “Miko, stay close.”

We stepped backward together, half pace by half pace.

With every step we retreated, the scorp moved forward. I could see its stinger now, arced over its back, business end waving like a cobra about to strike.

I took my eyes off the scorp for a quick glance at the path behind us. Hell. Epsilon tower blocked the rear. The nearest path to safety was five meters to the left.

“Heads up,” I called. “I’m going to take a warning shot. Miko, when I say go, run left.”

Miko nodded, stun rod in hand, her eyes riveted on the scorp.

I didn’t want to hurt it unless I had to—and from what I’d seen at the waterworks, it might take a lot of shots to penetrate a shell that thick. Noise, on the other hand, might do the trick.

Crack! My shot hit the limestone floor just in front of the scorp. The sound reverberated through the cavern.

The scorp rose on its hind legs, antennae waving wildly, massive claws snapping.

My shots blew chunks of limestone off the wall to its right and left.

“Go!”

CHAPTER 6

Shots Fired

MIKO AND I scrambled to the top of a one-story dwelling to join Professor Ambrose. He didn’t even try to stifle his grin at our undignified rush to safety.

“It’s not funny,” I growled. The big scorp had disappeared, retreating into one of the tunnels that honeycombed the cavern walls, but I spotted three others lingering in the shadows.

I craned my neck, straining to find the other interns. “Amy? Gupta?”

“Up here!” They were on the Epsilon tower scaffold, Gupta clutching the high-res scanner. “We need some help.”

“Professor, stay here with Miko. I’ll bring the others.”

As I started toward the tower, a scorp rushed in from the right, only to veer away before it came in range of my stun rod.

Amy pointed from atop the scaffold. “Booker! Behind you!” While I was distracted, a larger one had come creeping up from the left. I put a shot into the ground right in front of it.

“Hurry!” Gupta called. With Amy at his back, he faced the scorp, bravely brandishing his stun rod like a sword. In their retreat, they were nearly to the end of the scaffold.

Reaching the bottom of the scaffold, I climbed—a slow process with my prosthetic legs—until I was right behind the scorp. Its stinging tail was much too close for comfort.

I never liked killing anything, but I didn’t see another way to get the kids safely back onto the ground. Making sure my bullet wouldn’t go anywhere near the cowering interns, I blasted a hole straight through the scorp’s shell.

It fell off the scaffold, legs still twitching.

“Come on, let’s go.” I eased myself down the ladder, Gupta and Amy following.

My mocom buzzed insistently. “Lydia? This isn’t a good—‍”

“Somethin’s wrong with Lucien!” she cried. In the background, Lucien howled in anguish while Emma pleaded for him to calm down. “He’s screaming, sayin’ to stop the noise, but there ain’t no noise!”

My neck hairs prickled.

“We’re leaving the cavern now,” I told Lydia. “Just try to keep him calm.”

Amy and Gupta were already running to join Ambrose and Miko. The scorp I’d shot lay upside down and twitching, part of its carapace blown off. Already two smaller scorps were on top of it, using their claws to dismantle its legs, even as its antennae waved in the air. My stomach churned in disgust. Efficient scavengers, not hesitating to cannibalize one of their own.

Once we were all together, I told Ambrose to lead the group to the access tunnel while I watched our rear. The day my squad had been ambushed on Canton, I’d let someone else take rear guard. I wasn’t about to make that mistake again.

We marched in a clump toward the overlook, Ambrose in front, Gupta still carrying the camera he hadn’t had time to stow in the lockers, Miko and Amy clinging together. Already the scorps were quieting, reverting to their usual skittishness.

We’d just reached the ramp to the overlook when Miko screamed. A wolf-sized scorp leaped down from a rooftop, landing right next to us. Its big claw was as long as my forearm and rimmed with toothy serrations.

Gupta scrambled backward, crashing into Amy and Miko and sending them all to the ground. Ambrose yelled as a jagged-toothed claw clamped onto his leg.

My shot drove the scorp backward, leaving a long furrow where the bullet dug into its carapace. My second shot shattered one of its legs.

The three interns ran. I dragged Ambrose to his feet and supported him as he limped into the access tunnel, his leg oozing blood from a long gash.

The kilometer-long climb to the surface seemed a lot farther with Ambrose leaning on me. I had to slow down; even with my support, the professor’s breath came in gasps. I wondered how old he actually was. He always seemed so full of wiry energy that despite his gray hair, I’d never thought of him as an old man.

Once we reached the outside world, the team reunited with a combination of shock, bravado, and embarrassed laughter at being rousted by a bunch of oversized cockroaches.

I wasn’t chuckling, but I was glad to see the interns bouncing back quickly. For most of them, that little bit of excitement was probably the closest they’d ever been to real danger.

Slumped on the hopper’s seat, Ambrose grimaced as I poured disinfectant over his wound. “Damn the buggers. Swarming like bees. What is it, breeding season or something?”

“More like egg-laying season,” I said. “Maybe the scorps we saw are like worker ants, protecting the nest. I didn’t see anything as big as a bull scorp—a queen scorp—but there could be one hidden deep underground.” I plastered a medipatch over Ambrose’s gash. “That looks deep. You need a trip to the clinic.”

“Wait.” Ambrose pulled a batting-stuffed box from his pocket. “The ceramic shards I was working on—take them to base for me, will you?”

“Sure.” Academics and their priorities. While I’d been holding scorps at bay, they’d been rescuing cameras and potsherds.

Gupta volunteered to take Ambrose to Sweetwater City in one of the hoppers while I used the other to ferry Amy and Miko back to base. I spent the ride thinking . . . and worrying.

Ever since the dig began, we’d seen scorpidons lurking in the cavern’s dark places. But only individuals—until now. And they’d stayed out of the light and away from us—until now. Any attention from us had sent them scurrying back into hiding—until now.

The scorps had become bolder, more aggressive. Slinking around the town and even invading buildings, like that rogue queen in the waterworks. The big double-clawed one that had stung Lucien—I called him Pinch—appearing again to threaten me and Miko. And the even more aggressive scorp that had wounded Ambrose right in front of me. I’d know that one again if I saw it—my bullets had left it with a crippled leg and a long scrape on its back. Rogue, Pinch, and Scrape. It was a bad sign that I’d seen enough scorp skirmishes to give nicknames to the ringleaders.

When we got to the ranch, Amy and Miko headed for the showers. My legs were aching and I would have liked to do the same, but Lydia and Emma ambushed me outside Lucien’s room. Emma’s brow was creased in concern; Lydia looked haggard.

“Lucien had a bad headache,” Lydia whispered. “The worst yet. All of a sudden, he was moaning and telling us to stop the noise, but we couldn’t hear nothing.”

“I’ll talk to him,” I promised.

Emma held my arm. “He’s calm now, but before the painkiller kicked in, he seemed genuinely terrified. He was crying, screaming about noises only he could hear.” Her mouth compressed into a grim line. “I think he was hallucinating.”

“Shit. I’ll take him to the clinic tomorrow,” I promised. “Lucien and Ambrose: we’re keeping Doc Slade busy.”

“Ambrose?” Emma’s eyes widened in alarm. “What happened to him?”

“A scorp gashed his leg. He’ll be fine.”

She grimaced and rubbed her forehead. “He’d better be. What a mess.”

I chased Lydia out of Lucien’s room and pulled a chair to his bedside. “Hey, buddy. I’m sorry you had a bad spell.”

He blinked at me, his eyes unfocused from the meds. “I’m not crazy,” he said. “Tell me what happened in the Pueblo.”

He must have heard the interns yammering on the way to the shower. I did my best to soothe him. “Nothing you need to worry about. Some miners’ blast stirred up the scorps, and they got aggressive. I had to take a few shots to scare them off.”

He nodded, his eyelids drooping. “Shots. That would do it. Did you . . . did you kill them?”

“One of the small ones. Wounded a couple more. Maybe it’ll keep them from getting too close to people for a while.”

“Maybe.” He nodded sleepily.

“I’m taking you back to the doctor tomorrow. We need to stop these headaches of yours.”

He roused a little. “No, I’m fine now. I’ve got to work on the glyphs. I’m close, so close.”

“Sure, buddy,” I said. “Get some sleep. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

By the time I’d showered and changed, Gupta was on his way back from the hospital. He reported that Professor Ambrose’s leg had been cleaned and stitched but Doc Slade was keeping him under observation overnight to watch for infection. That reminded me of Ambrose’s precious box of broken crockery. I left it on his bed, where he’d see it as soon as he got back.

Climbing ladders, rushing up the access tunnel, too much stress—my severed nerves were still twitching. I retreated to my cubby and activated the stimulators on my prosthetics to ease the phantom pain.

The more I thought about what had happened in the tunnels, the more concerned I got. Ambrose had said the scorps were swarming like bees, but that wasn’t what I’d seen. They were more like a pack of wolves, one charging in from the front only to back off at the last moment while others circled from behind. As if they had planned an attack strategy. And that double-clawed Pinch—he could be some sort of pack leader.

After the first attack on Lucien I’d thought it was just bad luck, the kid happening on a scorp in the dark like that. But theoretically, Pinch could have been lying in wait. And the other scorp that had distracted me at the hopper while Pinch attacked Lucien . . . could it have been a coordinated ambush?

And the infestation at the waterworks, the way the little scouts had come out first and drawn fire so the rogue queen could get away. The way she’d been surrounded by smaller scorps as if they were her bodyguards . . .

And now an attack in the cavern itself, despite all the lights. During the day, when scorps had always hidden. Chasing people, when previously scorps had always scuttled away.

Like Emma said, what a mess—and the mess was on me. Security was my job. Maybe I should have had more lights—although the lights I’d installed had been sufficient up to now. Maybe I should have put bars over the side tunnels—but the cave was riddled with clefts and crevices. We could never block them all.

Maybe I should have listened to my sister and settled down with a nice, tame job on some civilized world. Maybe I should never have left Prime.

In need of answers, I wandered into the dorm wing to knock on Emma’s door.

“Come in.” Her welcoming smile dimmed. “Oh. I thought you might be Ambrose coming back.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

She clicked her tongue. “I’m just worried about him, that’s all.” She switched off the microscope screen she’d been studying—some cellular structure as complex as a wiring diagram—and turned to me with a professional smile. “What can I do for you?”

Her bed seemed to be a staging area for packing samples into crates for transport. When she made no move to clear a place for me to sit, I settled for leaning against the doorframe. “How much do you know about scorpidons?”

Her eyebrows rose. “Except for the information about the queen, not much more than was in the pre-settlement biosphere survey. Apparently, specimens are hard to find—they scavenge their own dead.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen that myself. What about their intelligence? Is there any chance scorps are smarter than we thought?”

Emma’s gaze sharpened. “Why do you ask?”

“In the cavern today, I saw scorps using diversionary tactics, like feints and flanking maneuvers.”

She relaxed, smiling indulgently. “Ah, I see. With your military experience, you’d naturally look for that sort of pattern. But coordination requires communication, and scorpidons don’t have that ability. Their antennae are sensitive to vibration and electrical fields but little else. They have no vocal capability—they can’t even yip or growl—and they’re nearly blind. Those big eyes can’t do more than distinguish light from dark.”

I rubbed my jaw, thinking back on the tactics they’d used in their attack. “They converged on our position—that wasn’t just coincidence.”

She nodded. “Not coincidence, just individual scorps reacting to a common stimulus—in this case, to vibrations from people moving in the cavern.”

I wasn’t convinced. “Lions coordinate their hunts even when they can’t see or hear each other.”

“And it takes them years to learn how. Cats learn to hunt because they are pure carnivores—they have to hunt to live. But scorps are grazers and scavengers with no natural predators. They never evolved to be clever because they’ve never needed to be clever. At night, they forage for food. During daylight, they retreat underground—all driven by instinct and simple input patterns.”

That sounded logical, but I wasn’t satisfied. “If scorps don’t hunt, what’s that big stinger for?”

She shrugged. “Scorp venom isn’t strong enough to subdue prey. The stinger could be vestigial, handed down from some smaller ancestor. It probably evolved to be used defensively, like the barb of a stingray.”

“Tell that to Lucien.” I paused, remembering our panicked exodus from the tunnel. “Random or not, today the scorps showed more aggression than I knew they had in them. The interns signed up for field experience and course credits, not a running battle with the local wildlife.”

“All fieldwork has hazards. It’s just a matter of managing the risk.” Emma eyed me narrowly. “Booker, I hope you’re not thinking of doing anything . . . drastic.”

“You mean like suspending the dig? I have to think about it. I’m responsible for the safety and security of the team. Now two of our people have been injured by scorps. I can’t ignore that.”

“You’re overreacting.” Her finger hovered over the microscope switch, but she didn’t turn it on. “Ambrose will have a shit-fit if you even suggest something like that—he’ll probably get you fired. Today was an aberration. After all, the dig’s been in progress for six months without a major incident, isn’t that right?”

“That’s the point,” I said. “Something’s changed. Look, I’m just a retired soldier with no degrees in anything, but this is the third scorp attack on people in a matter of days, even though everyone here says scorp attacks are virtually unknown. When you start to experience hostility from a previously neutral source, somebody has to pay attention.”

She nodded slowly. “Pay attention, yes. But your response should be proportionate. This dig is important, not just to Ambrose’s career—although that’s certainly true—but to the future of human colonization. The Stellar Coalition is watching what we do on Silverrock. We need to show the non-homs that humans can do more than rip apart a planet to exploit its minerals, that we’re also here to conduct responsible research. If you suspend the dig, you know what will happen.”

I rubbed my chin. “You have a point. The Pueblo was built right on top of the richest mineral veins. The only reason miners haven’t leveled the mountain already is because the settlement authority promised to let the university excavate the ruins before letting miners in.”

Emma tilted her head. “That being the case, perhaps you should focus on causes and prevention. Why do you think we’re seeing an increase in scorp aggression now?”

I suddenly felt shy, like a schoolboy trying to impress a pretty teacher. “I think the mining’s getting too close. There was a blast just before I saw that big double-clawed one this afternoon. The way sound travels through rock, it could be driving them out of their burrows. Like that rogue queen in town: we’re disturbing the nesting sites, right in the season when the queens are trying to lay their eggs.”

Emma tented her hands, lightly tapping her index fingers against her lips. “Possible. Definitely possible. With the scorp sensory system attuned to vibration and electrical fields, the blasting could be very disturbing. But now that you’ve hypothesized the cause, there must be some steps you can take to protect the team short of shutting down the dig. Tell the authorities to keep the miners under control, at least until nesting season is over.”

Right—except that on Silverrock, the spring season lasted a full earthyear. And since the police force on Silverrock was paid by Venture Mining, Sheriff Ugarte had little interest in curtailing illegal mining.

“I’ll think about it,” I said, shoving off from the doorframe. “I appreciate you letting me sound off.”

“No problem. I appreciate you being so conscientious about the team’s safety. You ought to drop by more often.” The glimmer in Emma’s eyes and the invitation in her smile made my breath come a little quicker.

It was then that I got a call from Doc Slade. “I’m sorry, Booker,” he said tiredly. “There must have been a preexisting condition.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The archeologist.”

“Professor Ambrose. Right, he had a bad gash—‍”

Slade sighed. “Booker, he died.”

I felt like the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. “It’s just a gash, Doc.”

“I’m sorry. His fever spiked with the infection. He had a massive heart attack. We tried everything, but . . . I couldn’t save him.”

CHAPTER 7

Potsherds and Flint Knives

PROFESSOR AMBROSE: demanding and dedicated. Respected and feared by twenty years’ worth of archeology undergraduates. Gone.

I failed. The safety of the team was my responsibility. I’d failed Lucien, and now I’d failed Ambrose.

Emma, pale and red-eyed, went to tell Lucien. Feeling twice my age, I broke the news to the rest of the team. The three interns huddled together, weeping and talking about going home; Lydia was so upset I bear-hugged her and let her cry on my shoulder.

The dig might be as important as Emma had said, but with the lead archeologist gone, it was over. I told the interns to start pulling together their data and maps to be transferred to the university. I’d arrange transport for them to return to Prime.

Back in my office-bedroom, I began to dictate a fatality report for the university. It looked like my sister would get her wish. Soon I’d be back on Prime, sleeping on her couch and looking for a job.

At least the miners would be happy. The only reason they’d been banned from the foothills was to preserve the ruins long enough for Ambrose to finish mapping and collecting his bits of pottery. They’d be delighted to get access to the caverns a full earthyear earlier than planned.

I’d just posted the bad news to the university when Lucien barged into my room without knocking. He loomed over my desk, leaning on his knuckles like an angry gorilla. “I’m not going home. Not yet. I still have work to do.”

Emma arrived in his wake. She slumped onto my bunk, rumpling the squared-off blanket.

“Sit down, Lucien,” I said. “You’ve been sick. A couple of hours ago you had a migraine so bad you were hallucinating. Going home would be the best thing for you.”

“I wasn’t hallucinating. Just . . . overly sensitized to noise, that’s all.” He made a visible effort to calm himself, but his fists stayed clenched. “The headache is gone now. I’m learning how to deal with them. But I need to stay here to work on the glyphs.”

“I’m glad you’re feeling better. You can still work on your translations, but you’ll have to do it from Prime.” I turned to Emma, who sat dejectedly on my bunk, elbows on knees, her chin resting on her fists. “I’m sorry for your loss—I know you and Ambrose had become close. The dig may be over, but there’s no reason to disrupt your biology research. I’ll find you a more convenient place in town . . .”

Lucien slapped a hand down onto my desk. “If I have to, I’ll go into the caverns and finish the imaging myself. You have no idea what’s at stake.”

“Lucien, sit.” I scowled until he plopped himself into my visitor chair, mouth tight and arms folded. “Without a professional archeologist, no one will be going into the ruins except me—and I’m only going in to collect whatever gear was left behind. The dig is—was—Professor Ambrose’s project. He’s the one the university approved to conduct research in the ruins. He’s the one who brought you to Silverrock. Without him, there is no project.” I shot a glare at Emma. Addled though Lucien was, she could have explained the facts to him without involving me.

She just sat there, eyes distant.

Lucien nudged her foot. “Tell him.”

My jaw tightened. “Tell me what?”

Emma sighed, then leaned in as if sharing a secret. “Booker, we’re not being callous to Ambrose’s death. But truly, the dig is important—too important to shut down. The Silverrock dig could change the future of the human species.”

I stared into Emma’s eyes. “Bullshit. It’s just a dig. It’s not even a human site.”

She gazed back, dead serious. “This dig could be the key to humans acquiring advanced alien technology.”

“Crap. The ruins are just a bunch of empty houses the Builders left behind.”

“Not true.” Emma’s lips twitched in a catlike smile. “We’ve kept it quiet, but when Ambrose did his preliminary survey of the ruins, he found something important. You know those little ceramic pieces he’s been collecting? They’re not ceramics. They’re biotechnology—very sophisticated circuitry encapsulated in organically grown structures.”

“Organic structures?”

Emma fiddled her fingers as if knitting a miniature sweater. “It’s as if the Builders figured out how to engineer a tortoise to pattern neuron-based circuits into its shell. That’s what I’m really doing here, tracing the circuitry patterns in Ambrose’s little bits of what-looks-like-ceramics to try to figure out their logic.”

“So . . . you’re not really a biologist?”

She wrinkled her nose at me. “Sure I am. Exobiology with a specialty in neuroscience. The point is, my research has to be done in secret. If the non-homs in the Stellar Coalition knew we’d found technology from star-traveling aliens, they’d close us down in the blink of a gill. You know it’s true: even if the stuff we’ve found is nothing but an ancient can opener, the Coalition would confiscate those scraps of tech to keep humans subservient for a few more millennia.”

I sat back. Bloody guts. Advanced alien technology.

Two generations back, in a burst of optimism and pride, humans had finally developed a stardrive. But once we made the big leap into interstellar travel, we’d found others there first. The Stellar Coalition had been policing colonization rights on habitable worlds for millennia.

We’d no sooner drifted into the nearest star system with a habitable planet than the Coalition had intercepted our ships and laid down the law. They’d wasted no time in putting us humans in our place: the newest and stupidest kids on the interstellar playground. If we wanted to expand beyond Sol’s star system, the Coalition would dictate the rules, impose supervision, and conduct trials to see if we were worthy.

On Earth, humans had been alpha predators. In space, among a sea of advanced species competing for resources, we were bottom-feeders.

After we’d promised to be good little colonizers, the Coalition had let us build a base on an unoccupied corner of planet Prime and had given us the right to settle on a few low-resource worlds nobody else wanted. But when we asked to share in the technology developed by other species, the answer was a resounding no. All technical advancement had to be self-generated; no jumping the line.

“Compared to the non-homs,” Emma said, “humans are scraping along with the technological equivalent of flint knives. We’ll be charity cases, the poverty-stricken dimwits of interstellar space, until we develop our own technology . . . or until we can beg, borrow, or steal it from somebody else.” She leaned forward. “If we can decipher a little of the Builders’ tech, no matter how antiquated, it could mean a leap in the human trajectory like the discovery of fire.”

“But our ability to do that,” Lucien said, “depends on getting some clue about how the Builders’ minds worked, and that depends on my being able to understand the glyph language.”

“Why, the old fox.” I’d underestimated the professor. Ambrose had known from the beginning the importance of what he’d found—and he’d let everybody think the Pueblo was just a run-of-the-mill dig to clear the site before the miners’ drills and dredgers destroyed it all. Letting his innocent interns deliver to him fragments of technology more precious than pearls. To think, I’d held a whole boxful in my hand and left it just sitting on his bed.

Emma smiled. “Ambrose called it the old shell game. You know the scam: hide a pea and shuffle the cups around. The mark bets he can find the pea—but the con man uses a little sleight of hand to take the pea off the table altogether. Ever since Ambrose realized what those shards were, he’s been hiding the pea. He’s filled his reports with maps and diagrams of the structures in the Pueblo, all the while concealing the fact that the ‘ceramic’ shards are worth far more than all the minerals Venture Mining might ever extract from Silverrock.”

Lucien vibrated with tension. “A few key people in the university have been smoothing the way, keeping the importance of the site on the down low. They arranged for Emma to come here under the pretense of updating the biosurvey and for me to come here to work on translating the Builder language.”

I unclenched my jaw enough to ask, “Why didn’t he tell me?”

Emma bit her lip. “Ambrose said you were a straight-arrow, by-the-book guy. Ex-military and all. He wasn’t sure you’d go along with our cover.”

“By-the-book doesn’t mean stupid. I understand that when you’re dealing with non-homs, it’s good to have an ace or two up your sleeve.”

“So you’re with us?” Lucien’s eyes burned with fanatic intensity. “You’ll help us? Until we know more about the Builders’ thought processes, about the Builder language, all our tech samples are puzzles without clues.” He eyed me like a bull eyes a red cape. “I’m making real progress, but I need to maintain access to the caverns, and to complete the high-res imaging of the inscriptions.”

“And to collect as many tech samples as we can,” Emma added. “Ambrose identified Miko’s trash midden as a great place to look for more tech. And it’s important to maintain a base here for our research—a place away from the prying eyes on Prime.”

Impossible. “You’re asking for miracles,” I said. “We can’t run a dig without an archeologist. How long will it take your friends on Prime to line up a replacement for Ambrose?”

“To find someone we can trust and convince them to spend the next year here, on the backside of nowhere?” Emma looked gloomy. “A few months. Maybe half an earthyear.”

I shook my head. “By that time there won’t be a site to dig. The ban on drilling and blasting in the foothills only lasts as long as someone’s working the archeology site. Once the word goes out that the dig is closed, even temporarily, the miners will come swooping in faster than you can say hold my ale. These mountains are the only place on the planet where those minerals exist, and the Pueblo was built at the heart of the richest deposits. It’s the whole reason the Builders came to Silverrock in the first place. All those tunnels they left behind? The miners will gouge them out for every gram of leftover minerals.”

Lucien looked sick. “They’ll destroy the buildings, the inscriptions, everything.”

“Aren’t you friends with the sheriff?” Emma demanded. “Can’t you get him to do his job? To protect the site until a new archeologist comes?”

“Mick Ugarte is a decent lawman, but he’s a pragmatist. The sheriff’s department gets its funding from Venture Mining. If Ugarte gets too enthusiastic about curtailing the mining, the company will just replace him with someone more pliable.” It was a shame—humans were about to fulfill the Stellar Coalition’s worst expectations, placing short-term profits over the value of preserving a unique and beautiful ancient site.

“There must be a way,” Lucien said. “We have to keep the dig going. All we need is time.”

Muttering, Lucien paced the tiny office: two steps left, turn, two steps right. Emma gazed at the black squares of the window while she chewed on a thumbnail.

While they ruminated, I jotted down the beginnings of a to-do list: take care of Ambrose’s personal effects, arrange transport of the interns back to Prime, inventory the dig’s equipment. It wasn’t just the student diggers and the university conspirators whose plans were being disrupted—Lydia would be losing her high-paying tenant. No one else was likely to want a ranch so close to the scorps, especially if they continued to be troublesome. I added help Lydia find a job to my list.

“Maybe we’re thinking too narrowly,” Emma said. “Our cover doesn’t have to be archeology. It could be another sort of research project in the Pueblo.”

Lucien flopped into the chair. “Another project? Like what? And what new project wouldn’t take months to get approved by the Coalition?”

A knowing smile touched Emma’s lips. “Research into something urgent and of overriding importance. Something Booker brought up.”

“Me? I’m no academic.”

“All the more reason your suggestion will be believed.”

I blinked at Emma in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

Emma folded her hands primly. “Your suggestion that scorpidons are intelligent. That the Stellar Coalition made a huge mistake when they approved human settlement on Silverrock: they overlooked the presence of an indigenous sapient species. That this is a first-contact situation.”

CHAPTER 8

Hide the Pea

LUCIEN BOGGLED at me. “You suggested scorps are intelligent?”

I scowled at Emma. “I was thinking smart like wolves, not like people.”

“So you embellish a little.” Emma’s eyes turned serious. “Go by the book. That’s what you’re good at, isn’t it? As a representative of the university, you have an obligation to report scorp behavior that suggests greater intelligence than the initial planet studies led us to believe. So, report it. I’ll volunteer to investigate further to make sure there’s no risk that scorpidons possess both the intelligence and cultural capability to meet the definition of sapience under the Stellar Coalition standards.”

“Sapient scorps . . .” Lucien stroked his chin thoughtfully. “A first-contact investigation would justify lengthy forays into the Pueblo to observe scorp behavior in their natural setting. A perfect cover for completing the imaging and rooting around in the trash midden.”

Emma grinned. “I’m sure I can stretch the investigation out for a few months before declaring that scorps are just big, ugly, stinging brutes. By then, our friends at the university will have a new archeologist lined up to take over the site.”

She made it sound simple . . . too simple. “You were pretty quick to squash the idea that scorps were working together,” I said. “What makes you think anybody else will buy it? Won’t they suspect your ‘investigation’ is just a sham?”

Emma sobered. “Maybe. But Ambrose’s death changes the calculation. The university will be looking for a way to deflect blame—and who better to take the blame than the Stellar Coalition? I’ll alert our friends to express great dismay that the Coalition should have been so sloppy as to miss the signs of sapience. The Coalition will have to support an investigation, if only to cover their own anal orifices.”

“But that could put Silverrock under a microscope, giving you just the kind of scrutiny you want to avoid.”

Emma waved a hand like a magician. “Simple misdirection. As long as everyone is focused on the scorps, they won’t be watching what else we’re doing. Like the shell game: the moving cups are just a distraction while you remove the pea.”

I harrumphed. “That only works if nobody looks under the cups.”

“You worry too much,” Emma said. “Who do you think will be peeking over our shoulders? Silverrock is designated as a human planet; the quarantine rules will make it hard for any non-homs to visit. And why should they bother? I’m the perfect person to conduct an investigation: a qualified exobiologist, already on planet, but newly arrived enough to be objective. I’ll do like Ambrose: produce regular reports about scorp activities, enough to show that we’re being responsible about following Coalition protocols—and enough to justify holding off mining near the caverns a while longer.”

“What about me?” Lucien asked eagerly. “Maybe you should suggest that scorp antennae-waving might be signals. You can request that I remain here to provide linguistic support.”

“Good idea. The cover will keep the dig safe, and we can use the time to capture more images and dig for artifacts.”

“Us? Dig?” I looked at the two of them. “We’re not archeologists. Ambrose would have a fit if he knew amateurs were spoiling his site.”

Emma laid a hand on my arm. “Don’t think of it as a dig. From now on, it’s a salvage operation.”

Lucien’s hand caressed his chest where Pinch’s stinger had gone in. “Are you sure scorps aren’t smarter than, say, wolves?”

Emma’s expression softened into sympathy. “What happened to you was terrible, but no more premeditated than a bee sting. Scorps can’t be sapient: without language, the possibility of learned culture is negligible. But at least for a while, we’ll have cover to go in and out of the caverns and maintain our base here.”

For a minute we three looked at one another, considering the possibilities.

I broke the silence first. “What about the colony? There are ten thousand miners and farmers living on Silverrock. If the Stellar Coalition takes us seriously, they could revoke permission for humans to colonize the planet.”

“You don’t need to worry about that,” Emma said. “Venture Mining supplies minerals to some of the non-hom Coalition members. They won’t let anyone interfere with mineral extraction without ironclad proof that scorps are sapient. And don’t forget, I’ll be the one making the evaluation. I’ll go through the motions for as long as we need, then tell everyone it’s a false alarm. No harm to anyone.”

“Except my career will be over,” I said bitterly. “Once you tell everyone I raised a false alarm about a first contact, I’ll be lucky to get a job sweeping floors.”

“We’re all putting our careers on the line,” Emma said softly. “Humanity’s future is at stake.”

Easy for her to say—she’d have a soft landing in some cushy biology lab.

“I’m in,” Lucien said. “As long as I can keep working on the glyphs.”

I stared at the night-darkened window. Outside, the wind moaned.

The idea was crazy. To trigger an official investigation of scorps, maybe threaten the existence of the whole colony, just for cover while a couple of hapless conspirators made a few forays into the caverns. But what was the alternative? I had no doubt that once we were gone, the Pueblo would be overrun with miners, drilling and blasting until there was nothing left of the ancient ruins or any of the Builder technology left behind.

Rule One: If you’re going to do something, do it right. It would require a lot of juggling to keep anyone from getting too curious about what we were doing in the caverns.

Rule Two: Even if you do everything right, something will go wrong. All my efforts to keep the dig running safe and smooth hadn’t been enough to prevent injury and death. If we were going back into the caverns, I couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t happen again.

But I had a Rule Three, honed during multiple deployments on frontier worlds: Rule Two doesn’t mean doing nothing is better than doing something.

On Canton, I’d seen the explosives-laden hopper coming our way only moments before my squad marched into the rebels’ trap. Running back to set it off before it reached the column had cost me my legs—but that action had saved most of the squad. I’d make that trade-off again in a heartbeat.

Humanity’s future, its chance for a jump-start into advanced technology—that opportunity was worth some risk.

I nodded. “All right. I’m in.”

Emma grinned. “Excellent. Report what you saw, Booker, playing up the coordinated tactics you thought you observed. Tell the Stellar Coalition that scorpidons are clever little monkeys. I’ll alert our friends at the university that losing Ambrose doesn’t mean losing everything.”

I spent half the night writing—never my strong point. I packed my account with eyewitness details about Lucien’s injury, the invasion of the waterworks, and scorp aggression in the Pueblo.

Reading my draft, Emma’s brows rose to her dark curls. “Rogue, Pinch, and Scrape? You gave them names?”

“I had to call them something.”

“They’re not pets,” she grumbled. “You might as well call them Fido and Fluffy.”

The interns added their observations to pad my report. Amy said she’d been too scared to notice anything, but Gupta and Miko declared that the scorps had attacked like an invading army. Emma contributed her deductions about scorps’ hivelike social structure based on her observation of an egg-burdened queen. Lucien declared his willingness to assist in interpreting any of the scorps’ nonverbal communication while he continued to pursue his translation of the hieroglyphs, stating that his translation would be a fitting memorial to Professor Ambrose.

By the time I got up late the next morning, the university had left messages of shock and sympathy at Ambrose’s death and requested me to return the interns to their panic-stricken parents on Prime as soon as possible.

With respect to our report raising questions about scorp intelligence, the university gave cautious support for Emma taking a closer look at scorps, with Lucien’s help as needed, and promised to send the remote-sensing cameras Emma had requested. While they were sure the Stellar Coalition would not have approved humans to colonize Silverrock if there had been signs of sapience in a native species, they would forward the report to the Coalition.

Emma harrumphed. “That’s what bureaucracies do best—pass the decision to somebody else.”

“What about your family?” I asked Lucien over toast and coffee. “Have you told them you’re staying?”

“I don’t have any family.” His eyes strayed toward the parlor, where the replica of the hieroglyph wall loomed. “When are we going back to the Pueblo to work on the imaging?”

“Tomorrow. I’ve got a lot to do today.” I noted his pallor and his twitching fingers. “Have you had any more headaches? Maybe you should go back to see the doctor.”

“That butcher? No thanks. They’re just migraines. I can handle them.”

I didn’t relish the prospect of him having some kind of seizure while we poked around in the Pueblo. “Are you sure you’re ready to go back into the caverns?”

“I’ll be all right,” he said. But he didn’t meet my eyes.

Fear. Totally understandable after his experience.

I gave him a confident smile. “Rest up today. Tomorrow we’ll tackle the imaging.”

It didn’t take long to gather Ambrose’s personal effects for shipping back to the university. I’d done the same task for members of my squad who’d fallen in the line of duty, and my battle buddy had done the same for me after the explosion on Canton. I hadn’t expected to have to perform that service here on Silverrock for the head of the archeology team.

Emma had taken charge of Ambrose’s collection of what-looked-like-ceramics. That left only his clothes and spare boots, his field notes, an old-fashioned printed copy of The Iliad, and an onyx scarab I found under his pillow—the remains of a full life, all fitting easily into a single suitcase.

The interns were quiet on the drive to the Sweetwater City depot to catch the noon transport to Prime. I spent the time thinking about my prospects. Deciphering the Builders’ technology might give humanity a better future, but my job on Silverrock and my personal future with the university could soon be gone. Maybe my sister was right and it was time for a boring, steady job somewhere safe. Maybe, when our little charade was over, I should re-up with the militia for desk duty, even if my prosthetics and lingering post-trauma twitchiness left me unfit for the front lines. The thought made my phantom legs ache.

At the depot, saying farewell to the interns was harder than I’d expected. Amy hugged me and told me to stay in touch. Gupta kissed me on both cheeks.

Miko kissed only one cheek, but she held on to my hand, blinking up at me with moist eyes. “Thank you for keeping us safe, Booker. You pulled me out of that hole when the blasting started and you kept us together, watching our backs while we escaped. Professor Ambrose never had a chance to thank you properly, but I’m sure that somewhere in the universe, he’s grateful too.”

I mumbled something about taking care and good luck and watched them walk through the departures gate, feeling like hell. If I’d really kept them safe, Ambrose would still be alive.

Emma had blithely left it to me to talk to Sheriff Ugarte. “You know the fellow, Booker. You don’t have to persuade him of anything except to maintain the status quo: keep the miners out of the caverns.”

Right. And hope he wouldn’t shoot me for raising the possibility that scorps were secret geniuses.

The sheriff’s office was behind town hall, which itself was practically an annex to Venture Mining’s offices. Ugarte sat behind a desk covered with dirty cups, hand-scribbled notes, and evidence bags. His consoles flickered with a silent barrage of bulletins from the central sector. None of the bulletins would be relevant to Silverrock, but I supposed Ugarte liked to keep up on things.

He looked up with slightly less of a scowl than usual. “Booker, I’m sorry to hear about the professor. I appreciate your copying me on the fatality report.”

“It was bad, Mick.” I cleared some evidence from a chair to sit. “It was like that scene at the waterworks, except we were trapped there in the caves with them. We had to fight our way out. Something’s going on with the scorps.”

He frowned. “Your report said Ambrose died of a heart attack.”

“After being chased and wounded by scorps. Mick, have scorps ever come into town before? Been that aggressive?”

He waved a hand. “That’s not going to be a problem. I appreciate your biologist warning us that the queen scorp was looking to lay eggs. I put out a bulletin—any scorp bigger than usual is to be shot on sight. I’m sorry it’s too late to help Professor Ambrose, but . . .”

“You can’t do that.”

Ugarte’s eyes narrowed—he wasn’t used to anyone telling him what he couldn’t do.

I took a breath. “This might be a first-contact situation.”

He blinked. “First contact with what?”

“Scorps. It’s possible they have more reasoning capability than we’ve given them credit for. A report about the attack that killed Ambrose has already been sent off-planet. Emma Dewinter wants to investigate whether there’s a chance scorps are sapient creatures.”

Ugarte stared, his face so red I feared he’d have a stroke. “Sapient? Are you out of your mind? You start talking like that and first thing you know, they’ll be wanting to make them a protected species. Do you have any idea what that’ll do to the mining?” He leaned forward, practically hissing. “There are thousands of people here—miners, farmers, tradesmen. Families, people with nowhere else to go. Without the mining, this whole planet dies.”

“It won’t come to that.” At least, I sincerely hoped not. “But after what we went through yesterday, questions have to be asked. Emma’s going to observe the scorps in the caverns. So even though the dig is on hiatus . . .”

“Hiatus? What, you’re expecting your professor to come back from the dead?”

“ . . . until another archeologist can complete Professor Ambrose’s work”—I ignored Ugarte’s disgusted grunt—“you need to continue to keep the miners away from the caverns.”

Ugarte scowled ferociously. “Is this just some kind of stall? Those foothills hold the richest concentration of ore. Folks have waited a long time to drill in there.”

I drew myself up primly. “No one should be trying to exploit Ambrose’s death just to get to the minerals a little faster. The university will send another archeologist to complete the dig soon—and the sooner the dig’s complete, the sooner the miners can have the cavern. In the meantime, Emma’s doing the responsible thing, assessing scorp behavior in compliance with Coalition protocols.”

“This is bullshit,” Ugarte growled. “People have lived on this planet for thirty years—it’s a little late to be talking about first contact, isn’t it?”

“Humans and scorps have stayed away from each other up to now. Maybe this is the first time we’re getting close enough to get to know them.” I felt like a traitor, trying to persuade Ugarte to protect the creatures that had been responsible for Ambrose’s death.

Ugarte rested his hand on his holster. “These ain’t fluffy pandas. The scorps are mindless, stupid vermin. Dangerous vermin.”

“All I know is that we’ve never had this kind of aggression from scorps before. Something new is happening, and we’d better find out what it is.”

“I got a better idea,” Ugarte said. “Kill them. Kill ’em all and be done with it—before they kill us.”

CHAPTER 9

Postmortem

FEELING LIKE I’d been beating my head on a cast-iron wall, I made my way to my next stop: the hospital. Bypassing the crowded waiting room, I carried Ambrose’s suitcase down the rear stairs to a basement room that most people hoped they’d never see: the Silverrock morgue.

The morgue attendant led me to one long box among others and pulled back a panel.

Ambrose’s face was peaceful, perfectly composed—a well-meaning lie, courtesy of some kindly nurse, to disguise the agony of sudden death. I was grateful for it. I touched Ambrose’s cold hand and leaned closer. “Don’t worry, Professor. We’ll look after things for you.”

The attendant shuffled his feet. “Do you identify this individual as Kai Derbyshire Ambrose?”

“I do.” It felt like a marriage vow to a corpse.

“Sign here.” A few more formalities ensured that Ambrose’s ashes and personal effects would be shipped back to Prime, for whatever comfort that might bring his friends and family.

On the way out, I lingered outside an exam room until Doc Slade finished with a patient.

Slade drooped when he saw me. “Booker, I’m sorry about the professor. Some latent heart defect—he probably never knew he had it.”

“Thanks. If you can take a break, I’m buying.” When he paused, I added, “This isn’t about Ambrose. There’s something else I want to pick your brain about.”

He perked up. “Deal. I’ll meet you at the Oak Leaf in half an hour.”

The Oak Leaf Tavern was Sweetwater City’s classiest saloon. The walls sported large leafy shapes painted in red, yellow, and orange. Silverrock’s bluish daylight tended to wash out all the warm tones outdoors, leaving everything looking cold and gray, but the Oak Leaf’s artificial light mimicked Sol’s sunlight. Its warm colors were friendly reminders of Earth.

I snagged a pitcher of ale and two mugs from the bar while Slade commandeered a booth in an out-of-the-way corner. Once we were seated, Slade took a long draught. “I appreciate this. I’m getting too old to be rousted out of bed every time some damn fool finds himself on the wrong end of a knife or a gun.”

The waiter delivered two plates of the daily special, rockskipper hash.

“You’ve been on Silverrock a while, Doc. You know anything about scorps?”

“Some. More about rockskippers.” He took a delicate bite of hash. “Shortly after I arrived here, I got pulled into a harebrained scheme to raise them for market.”

“That doesn’t sound harebrained.” The Oak Leaf menu called it Silverrock Lobster, but rockskipper meat was in everything from chili to lasagna.

“Yeah, well, it didn’t work out.” He arched an eyebrow at me. “You know what you get if you put a bunch of rockskippers in a tank with plenty of grain and rocks and things to hide under?”

“More rockskippers?”

“I wish.” He pushed his plate aside. “What you get is half the rockskippers. The damn things eat each other.”

“They didn’t breed?”

“I observed them over weeks, different times of day and night. Never saw breeding. Finally, I dissected a few. As near as I could tell, they were all males, had little sperm-transfer legs. I guess now I know why—if they’re like scorps, then they must have had a queen to do all the breeding somewhere underground.”

“People have lived here thirty years—you’d think they’d have figured that out a long time ago.”

He shrugged. “Thirty earthyears, but that’s just six full Silverrock years. If rockskippers only breed underground once a Silverrock year, it would be easy to miss.” He sipped his ale. “Why all the interest? The professor’s wound was a contributing factor, but he died from heart failure.”

I dropped my voice. “The university’s asking questions.” Might as well spread the blame a little. “They’re wondering if scorps might be sapient.”

“Impossible. They’re brainless.”

I laughed.

“I mean that literally,” Slade said. “I dissected a scorp once, trying to see if any parts were edible. They don’t have a central brain, just nerve bundles distributed throughout their bodies. That’s what makes them hard to kill. Their main sensing organs are their antennae and legs, where they pick up vibrations and smells and pass them to the nerve bundles.” He put his hands next to each other and wiggled his fingers in imitation of scorp feelers. “They act purely on instinct—one touch and they snap. Tell your university folks to relax. Scorps are no more sapient than your prosthetic legs.”

That evening, with just me, Lucien, Emma, and Lydia left at base, the old ranch house had a hollow feel. At supper, the four of us huddled at the foot of the table, leaving Ambrose’s chair at the opposite end empty and lonely.

“I don’t like it,” Lydia said, passing around the rockskipper primavera. “Lucien’s not well enough to go messin’ around in the caves.”

“Stop fussing,” Lucien murmured. “I’m perfectly fine.” But he picked at his food, pushing the pasta around with his fork.

I helped myself to seconds. “Emma and I will be there to look after him. Just for a little extra protection, I’ve resurrected the body armor I used in my militia days and fabricated sets for Emma and Lucien too. With stun rods and my service pistol, we should be safe enough.”

“And you.” Lydia glared at Emma. “Ever since you got here, all you do is stay in your room, peering at little bitty things under that microscope. What are you gonna do, way down in the dark?”

Emma smiled benignly. “Look after Lucien . . . and watch the scorps.” She went on to tell a long story about cave-diving on Septus 3 to survey the extremophiles in the thermal springs, but I was keeping an eye on Lucien.

Lydia was right to be worried. In the few weeks he’d been on Silverrock, he’d become driven, almost obsessed by the glyphs. I understood his dedication to helping figure out the Builder tech, but he was very different from the arrogant, spoiled know-it-all he’d been at first. Even physically he seemed to have aged; he’d gone gaunt, with a haunted look to his eyes.

When Emma took her tea to her room and Lucien wandered back to the parlor to play with the glyphs, Lydia’s gaze followed him unhappily. I hoped he was treating her well.

She sighed. “Is this what it’s gonna be like, Booker? Just the four of us in this big place?”

“Take your pick of the empty rooms,” I said. Emma had already expanded her quarters into the vacant room next to her lab. “It should be easier for you now with fewer to feed.”

Lydia sniffed. “Poor Professor Ambrose. He was always polite, not taking me for granted like some.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “The university will still pay me the same, won’t they?”

“Of course they will.” I wondered if I’d been one of the ones taking her for granted. “But sooner or later, the university will close the dig. Have you thought about how you’re going to manage after the research project’s done?”

Lydia’s chin set, and she looked twice her seventeen years. “Don’t you worry about me, Booker. I’ll get by when y’all are gone. Once they allow mining up in the foothills, I figure I can turn this place into a rooming house so the miners can be close to where they work.”

“Maybe you could sell the ranch and move to town. You’d have more of a social life. You could even move to Prime and make a fresh start.”

Lydia clattered the dirty dishes together. “No, sir. This ranch is my home. I’ll stay here on my land as long as I draw breath.”

I took my coffee out to the porch and sat on the step. Looking up at the night sky was one of the few delights on Silverrock. With no moon and the air too dry to make clouds, the night sky was a panorama of stars and galaxies. Their light had traveled for eons to be viewed by me, an insignificant man sitting on a porch on a rocky little planet.

Emma, wrapped in her jacket, walked onto the porch, cradling her cup of herbal tea. After a moment, she sat beside me, scooching me over with her hip. “Everyone just calls you Booker. No other name?”

“None that I care to use.” My cheeks grew warm. I felt like a teenager, wondering what to talk about with an attractive woman. “So, what came first: biology, neurology, or rebelling against the non-homs?”

She gazed at the sky, as if looking for a familiar constellation. “Oh, I started out starry-eyed. Dazzled by the prospect of learning from species a hundred times more ancient than ours. They’ve eliminated hunger and pestilence and war on their worlds and achieved wonderful things. I thought if only we could understand them better, we could learn their wisdom. I dived into exobiology with a vengeance, learning everything I could about how alien minds work.”

“And?”

“And I found out. The Coalition members think of us the way I think of toddlers: whiny, underfoot, and always on the verge of doing something disastrous. They have no interest in teaching us, just in containing us.”

At my chuckle, she edged a little closer. “Now I file the Stellar Coalition in the same category as the gods: remote and inscrutable, capable of miracles but equally capable of squashing us for a reason we’ll never understand.”

Her cynicism was as dry and chilly as the night breeze. I put my arm over her shoulders to keep her warm. “So when someone whispered to you that there might be a way to pilfer a little ancient wisdom from the Builders . . .”

“I leaped at the chance.”

A meteor shot across the night and winked out, reminding me of Professor Ambrose’s abrupt end. “Plenty of humans still believe in the gods,” I said. “Or at least they still hope the gods exist and are inclined to mercy. In the militia, most of us figured it was better to err on the side of belief.”

She cupped her hands around her warm mug. “Not for me, thanks. I’d rather take my chances with a universe that imparts catastrophe randomly than pray to gods who are fickle—or worse, vindictive.” She side-eyed me. “And after the militia? Weren’t you yearning to couple up in some nice, safe home and start a family?”

I’d tried that, but my battles with Rita had been more stressful than the front line. “I like the frontier,” I said. “I like to see things being built from the ground up.”

Emma smiled like she knew a delicious secret. “Ah, I know the type. And when humans have civilized Silverrock, you’ll move someplace else equally primitive. The stone who keeps rolling, terrified of gathering a little moss.”

I squirmed at that. “I’ll settle down when I’m ready.” Maybe.

She grinned and stood, wrapping her jacket closer. “Sure you will. When you’re too old to do anything more than spin yarns about your wild frontier days.”

With that, she went in the house. I stayed out a while longer, warming myself in the memory of her smile.

CHAPTER 10

Quakes

THE NEXT MORNING, Emma, Lucien, and I took the hopper up to the foothills. My armor was as warm and comfortable as an old friend. Emma wore hers like a veteran. In the set I’d fabricated for Lucien, he looked like a kid in a commando costume.

I shouldered my pack, reflexively touching my stun rod and holstered pistol. My pack carried the heavy scanner as well as my usual gear.

As I turned on the tunnel lights, my eye was on Lucien. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

His face was damp in the morning’s cool air, but he nodded. “I’m ready.”

I had to admit, the kid had guts. “All right. Emma, the tunnel’s about a kilometer long and too narrow for more than single file. Watch your footing—it gets steep in places. I’ll go first. Lucien, take the rear. Stay together.” I led the way into the long, sloping tunnel.

Emma coughed. “Gods, it stinks.”

I’d almost forgotten how foul the air was. The humidity in the tunnels made the guano scent cling.

We hiked down the steep, twisting trail. It was quiet except for the soft clicking and rustling in the side openings.

“What’s that noise?” Emma asked.

“Sandbugs, feeding on the algae.” I pointed my wristlamp into a crevice to show the fist-sized sandbugs backing away from the light.

After a quarter hour of hiking downhill, we came to the overlook. I switched on the excavation lights.

In the Pueblo, all was quiet, as if the attack on the archeology team had never happened. The familiar rustling and scratching of the sandbugs and rockskippers was almost comforting.

“Beautiful construction,” Emma said. “Ambrose’s images didn’t do it justice.” The ranks of limestone towers seemed to go on without end, with their haunting curves and oddly eyelike windows.

“All right.” I consulted the map that Miko had marked with the locations of inscriptions that still had to be imaged. “We’ll start at Gamma tower—there’s something in one of the rooms. Emma, the midden is over there on the north side of that wall. Once I get the camera set up for Lucien, I’ll move the shaker over to that side and we’ll start screening dirt for artifacts.”

Emma scuffed the pathway with her boot. “Dirt is a euphemism, I take it. This isn’t soil; it’s rockskipper manure.”

“The glamour of archeology. The shovels are over there.”

With little chatter, Lucien directed me where to position the camera and lights. While the scans were running, he did a little shovel work, helping Emma scoop “dirt.” But mostly he spent the time examining the south wall, the original of the model in Lydia’s parlor, as if it were speaking to him.

Emma and I worked at the Builders’ trash midden, with me shoveling guano from the midden into buckets and dumping them into the shaker. The shaker vibrated, sifting the dirt through a series of three screens of increasing fineness. I removed the screened dirt to the cavern corner that Ambrose had designated as a disposal site while Emma examined anything larger than a pea to separate rocks from scraps of tech.

After eight hours, Lucien was looking peaked and Emma, though she didn’t complain, was rubbing sore muscles. “That’s enough for today,” I said. I handled the lights and took rear guard as Lucien led the way slowly up the access tunnel.

After a quiet supper at base, Lucien went to his computer to sort through the images we’d compiled.

I stopped in to see Emma. Despite having annexed an extra room, her digs were as messy as ever, as if her clothes and samples had expanded to fill the available space.

“What did you think of the Pueblo?” I asked.

“Gloomy, smelly, and dirty. But then, I’m no archeologist. Ambrose thought it was wonderful.” She rotated her right arm, holding it like it was sore.

“Here, I can help with that.” I stood behind her chair and massaged her trapezius muscles. “Poor Ambrose. If he’s watching from somewhere in the universe, he must be stewing.”

She leaned her head back, eyes closed. “Mmm. That’s better. Don’t you think he’d appreciate our efforts to save his site?”

“What we were doing today wasn’t saving the site—it was looting the site. For archeologists, trash middens are gold mines. We should have been carefully uncovering the layers with trowels and paintbrushes, imaging the stratigraphy, and making precise notes of the location of the artifacts. Instead, I shoveled like a ditch digger.”

Her lips turned up. “Good old Booker. Are you always so responsible?”

“My personal Rule One: If you’re going to do something, do it right.”

She opened one eye. “What’s Rule Two?”

“Even if you do everything right, something will go wrong.”

She laughed, a throaty chuckle, with her head still tilted back. “In that case, maybe we should just relax and take advantage of our opportunities as they come up.”

Even I couldn’t mistake an invitation like that. I kissed her upturned lips.

Emma wrapped her arms around me, her eyes lit with mischief. “I like your first rule better. How about you give me a real massage?”

After that, life on Silverrock got much, much more interesting.

Over the next five days, the three of us spent long hours in the Pueblo. From time to time, we’d spot a scorp in the shadows, but I made sure our work area was well lit and the scorps kept their distance. At my insistence, we were out of the caverns every night well before sundown.

In the evenings, Lucien haunted the parlor, reviewing the images we’d captured that day. Lydia often sat with him and let him natter on about classification parameters and basic morphemes. Twice he had headaches, but he said they passed quickly and he went back to work, peering into the computer while Lydia hovered nearby.

Emma spent the evenings manufacturing scorp observations and poring over the day’s artifacts under the microscope, as if she could puzzle out the tiny circuitry by sheer force of will. I moved one of the spare beds next to Emma’s so we had a modicum of comfort, but some nights one or the other of us preferred to sleep alone. In Emma’s case, she said it was tiredness from the unfamiliar physical labor. In my case, it was phantom limb pains or the red-tinged edginess that heralded a night of bad dreams and flashbacks. I knew the symptoms—sometimes I just had to go outside and patrol the perimeter fence until dawn, as if I were still on guard duty on a moon far, far away, listening for approaching enemies.

On the seventh day after Ambrose’s death, Emma pulled me and Lucien into her room to listen to a vid from our boss on Prime.

In the recording, the pinch-faced university official stared out from the screen. “I’m afraid you’ve caused a small plasma storm with your suggestion that Silverrock might host a sapient species.” Her mouth twitched, just a bit. “The Stellar Coalition assures us that you cannot be correct—after all, they approved human settlement. Venture Mining has also expressed grave objections to any interference with mineral extraction, pointing out the value that Silverrock’s mining operations provide to the interstellar economy.”

Clearing her throat, the official glanced at someone outside camera range. A Venture Mining troubleshooter had probably been glowering at her from the sidelines as she recorded her message. “Nevertheless, after consultation with colonization authorities, the Coalition has agreed that an investigation of scorpidon capabilities is warranted.”

Emma nudged me. “Told you.”

“We are grateful for Dr. Dewinter’s offer to conduct further study of the scorpidons and for the support of the university’s linguistic and facilities staff on Silverrock.” The official managed a frosty smile. “I’m sure we all understand how imperative it is that humans are seen to behave responsibly toward a potentially sapient species. To ensure that scorpidons are protected during the assessment period, the Coalition has issued an edict, effective immediately, prohibiting humans from entering areas inhabited by scorpidons.”

My head jerked up. “That’s more than just the foothills. That could mean the whole damned town!”

Lucien frowned, hunched in a corner.

The vid droned on. “Further, to ensure that Stellar Coalition protocols are rigorously applied, the Coalition has assigned Dr. Charlotte Havens as the first-contact assessor to take control of the inquiry. Please consider yourselves under Dr. Havens’ authority until the assessment is complete.” She ended with a few trite phrases about the importance of maintaining good relations with the Coalition.

They were sending us a minder? Bloody guts. I should have known Emma’s strategy would backfire.

“Charlotte Havens?” Emma was already flipping screens on her mocom. “It looks like she’s some sort of liaison to the Coalition. Exoanthropology doctorate from thirty earthyears ago, went through a Stellar Coalition development program, attached as an aide to the Coalition office for human affairs . . .” She looked up. “Not good. She looks like a pro-Coalition brownnoser. And she and her assistant are already on their way, by special Coalition transport straight from the Haruch system. They’re arriving in two days.”

“Two days!”

For a minute we just looked at one another. Three conspirators, soon to have an adversary not merely in our midst but supervising our every move.

I massaged my thigh, thinking through the complications. “It’s over, then. We were counting on Emma managing the assessment herself, not having a Coalition watchdog looking over our shoulders. And that edict prohibiting humans from entering scorp territory? That puts the caverns off limits. We’ll never be able to visit the Pueblo without getting questions we don’t want to answer.”

“A temporary setback,” Emma said. “We wanted to keep the caverns from being turned over for mining, and we’ve succeeded in that. The edict will protect the caverns while this Havens person goes through the motions. Meanwhile, our contacts in the university are already working on getting the dig going again. Lucien, can you make do with the images you’ve got for a while? Focus on the analysis?”

Lucien squirmed. “Sure. In fact, I’ve made a breakthrough of sorts. Come to the wall and I’ll show you.”

Lucien led us to the parlor, where the replica south wall stood sentry in gray polymer. Tiny colored stickers dotted the surface like confetti. “Look at the glyphs marked in orange. They’re different sizes and orientations, but it’s the same glyph in eight places on the wall.”

“They’re not the same,” I said, looking more closely. “This orange one is spikier than that one.”

“Correct.” Lucien beamed like I’d come up with the right sum in school. “The spikes aren’t part of the basic glyph. We add prefixes and suffixes to a word to change its meaning, like making a noun plural or changing a verb’s tense. The Builders added hooks and spikes. Part of the difficulty in deciphering the glyphs has been to determine what part of the glyph is the root symbol and what’s an add-on. These eight glyphs all have the same root, with various hooks and spikes added.”

“That’s something,” I said. “Does that get you closer to understanding the meaning?”

“There’s more.” Lucien rubbed his hands together like a magician about to begin his latest trick. “I believe the spikes are connectors. A spike points to a nearby glyph, indicating a relationship between the two glyphs. As you can see, some glyphs have multiple connectors, indicating a relationship to several other glyphs. That means the glyphs aren’t meant to be read linearly, up and down or left and right. Instead, you can start at any glyph and follow the spikes in multiple directions to understand how the whole is connected.”

Emma nodded. “Very efficient. That would allow complex relationships to be expressed in a compact form.”

Lucien pointed to some of the spindly lines. “As you can see, the connectors vary in width, perhaps indicating the strength of the connection. And there’s another parameter—something I could never have seen without the high-res tomography. There’s a directionality to the connectors, indicated by subtle changes in depth.” Lucien paused, the magician about to lift the veil and show us the rabbit. “They’re vectors. The fact that the connector increases in depth as it approaches the orange glyph means . . . well, it means something.”

“A sequence?” I suggested. “Like A comes before B?”

“Or causation.” Emma’s voice was hushed, as if in the presence of something sacred. “A causes B. Oh Lucien, this is terrific.”

Lucien grinned. “What’s significant is that these glyphs, the ones marked in orange, are always on the deep end of the spike. That holds true for all the inscriptions we’ve imaged. In all instances where this glyph appears, it’s on the deep end of every connecting vector. Whether it’s a sequence or cause-and-effect, the orange glyph is always at the end of the chain.” He stood back, waiting for the applause.

Emma actually gave it to him, making little clapping motions with her hands. “Wonderful. A true breakthrough.”

“Not so wonderful,” I said. “We’re about to have a Coalition spy living here at the ranch. Lucien might as well go home where he can work on the translation instead of pretending to talk to scorps or whatever else this Havens person will want you to do. That leaves Emma and me stuck here, with no opportunity to find more tech and carrying out a first-contact assessment for no reason at all.”

Lucien said tentatively, “I need to stay here. I have an idea about . . . oh!” He raised his hands to his temples, eyes shut tight.

I steered him into a chair. “Another migraine?” A bad one, by the look of it.

“Do you need a painkiller?” Emma asked.

“No!” With a couple of deep breaths, Lucien straightened. “It’ll pass. I’ll just lie down for a bit.”

I walked him back to his room and got him settled onto his bunk. “Rest a while. Anything I can get you?”

Wincing, he shook his head. But as I turned to leave him in peace, he grabbed my hand. “Check the seismic monitor,” he hissed. “Don’t say anything to Emma.”

Moments later, in my office, I checked to see if there had been any recent vibrations in the cavern.

A tremor had occurred two minutes before.

CHAPTER 11

Edict

THE STELLAR COALITION’S edict fell on Silverrock like a meteor, kicking up dust and covering everything in gloom.

The duty to transmit the bad news to the people of Silverrock belonged to Mayor Irene Pappas, a clever widow who had taken the post to supplement a tiny pension. Since Venture Mining owned most of the town and made all the important decisions, the office of mayor was largely ceremonial. The edict was probably the worst thing she’d ever had to cope with in her official duties.

Voice shaking in front of the news cameras, Pappas read the Coalition’s edict:

The Stellar Coalition, acting under Section 3479.887 of the Coalition Development Standards, has found cause to assess whether the indigenous species known as scorpidons are sapient within the meaning of said Standards. All humans on planet Silverrock are hereby ordered to cooperate with said assessment.

Until such time as the Coalition has made its determination, it is hereby ordered that:

1. All humans shall avoid contact with scorpidons and any and all of their breeding, feeding, and sleeping places.

2. Killing and injury of scorpidons is prohibited, other than reasonable force used in defense of sapient life.

3. There shall be no new settlement of or immigration to Silverrock.

4. There shall be no new construction of any dwelling or place of business on Silverrock.

5. All human activity in or near the underground caverns east of the village of Sweetwater City, including mining and archeological research, is prohibited.

Violators will be subject to criminal penalties, including fines and deportation. Failure to comply with the terms of this edict may result in the withdrawal of the Stellar Coalition’s consent to human occupation of planet Silverrock.

Emma didn’t seem surprised or concerned about the edict, but I listened with a sinking heart, wishing I’d never asked her about scorp intelligence. I’d expected an investigation to close the dig and crack down on illegal mining, but a block on immigration? A ban on new businesses? Frontier towns thrived on growth and optimism. Even a temporary halt on development could put the colony into a downward spiral that would take years of recovery.

Within hours, a crowd had gathered in front of the mayor’s office, shouting and shoving. The townspeople were livid, demanding answers—or at least a sacrificial victim. The mayor was the popular choice for scapegoat.

Under pressure, the mayor announced a town meeting. At Sheriff Ugarte’s insistence, I agreed to go in case there were any questions about the attack in the caverns.

The meeting was held in the community chapel, which was shared by the few religious organizations that had a presence on Silverrock. There were probably more people attending the meeting than the chapel normally saw in a month. I sat in back, close to an exit.

The mayor tried to keep the meeting informational, stressing that the edict was temporary until the Stellar Coalition could assess whether the scorps were sapient.

The townspeople shouted their opinion of the Coalition; the mayor urged calm. Otis Odom, the Venture Mining representative, preached persuasively about overreaching bureaucrats and vowed that Venture Mining would fight to have the edict rescinded.

From there, the meeting deteriorated to allegations that non-homs wanted to keep humans under their control, claims that off-planet interests were destroying local business, accusations of underhanded dealing by the Venture Mining’s supply store and ore buyers, and complaints of general stupidity and corruption. Odom, beard bristling, grinned with an oily smile and blamed everything on the Coalition.

“Who speaks for us?” a farmer yelled. “The non-hom bucketheads make the rules, but they don’t live here, and they damn sure aren’t out in the hydroponics barns!” Soon the meeting became little more than a shouting match between farmers and miners. Odom scuttled out the side, and deputies had to help the mayor escape.

“What did you expect?” Ugarte thundered at me afterward. “We’ve lived here for a generation, built up a decent town—a decent life!—out of nothing but rock and dust. Now we could lose it all. Have you seen the crowd at the depot? Some folks are already packing up and leaving. And who do you think is buying up claims on the cheap?”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Venture Mining?”

“Damn right! Otis Smiling Bloody Odom. And he’s practically giving them away to anyone willing to stay and keep the ore coming. And what about the ones who’ve got nowhere else to go, what about them?” He ran his hand through his scanty hair. “Have you seen the fines on anybody found mining in the hills?”

“The miners aren’t supposed to be in the hills anyway,” I reminded him.

“Ha,” he said. “It just means that they’ll try harder not to get caught. Ore prices are going up, not down, and the chance of making a good find is too good for them to pass up just because some buckethead bureaucrat has a soft spot for a bunch of oversized crabs.”

“The scorpidons may have objections as well.”

Ugarte fixed me with a hostile stare. “We never had trouble with them until your scientists came here. For all we know, they’re stirring up the scorps just for the hell of it. I’m telling you: watch your back.”

On the way through town, traffic was snarled at the transit depot with passengers trying to make the evening’s outgoing transport to Prime. Colonial investors who’d weighed Silverrock’s prospects must already have decided to look for more promising opportunities elsewhere.

I went back to the ranch with a load of guilt and a hopper full of metal struts to reinforce the fence around the compound.

In the morning, with no expedition to the Pueblo to worry about, I felt restless, like waiting on the front lines for the orders to come: attack or retreat?

“I don’t like it,” Lydia told me when I wandered into the kitchen for coffee. “Poor Professor Ambrose dying. Half the house leaving, and now new folks coming.” Arms crossed and backed into a corner, she was on the defensive in her own home. She turned to the sink, mumbling, “Folks turning on one another.”

That worried me. I sat on the kitchen chair to bring myself down to her height. “Somebody was rude to you?”

She sniffed, her back to me. “Old lady Faro, down at the grocery. Said your lot was causing trouble and I should be ashamed to let you stay at my place.”

Oh, hell. I’d expected things to get ugly, but not this fast. “I’m sorry, Lydia. It’s not fair for her to blame you just because the Coalition decided to do an assessment.”

“Huh. I don’t let the likes of old lady Faro bother me. I told her off—said that if scorps were coming into town and putting folks in the hospital, then somebody should be taking a hard look at ’em and she’d know it if she had any sense.”

I grinned. “Good for you. But if renting to us is going to cause you trouble, I could move the team someplace else.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t you dare. I don’t let nobody tell me who I can do business with. Besides, that edict has the whole town in an uproar. Who else you think is going to rent to you?”

I settled into my office with my coffee and a plate of toast, contemplating the security improvements I hoped to finish before Dr. Havens’s arrival. I’d barely taken a bite when Emma came in, towing Lucien.

She took the visitor chair with a scowl. “Lucien won’t talk to me without you.”

That made my eyebrows rise.

Lucien slumped onto my bunk. “You’re my witness, Booker. I don’t think she’ll believe me without you. Did you check the seismic monitor when I asked you to?”

“Yeah.” I turned to Emma. “I don’t know what it means, but yesterday the monitor pinged a detonation near the caverns at the same time that migraine hit Lucien.”

“So?”

Lucien rubbed his arms like he was cold. “These headaches—they’re like thunder rolling in my head, wave after wave until it gradually fades away. At first it was terrifying, like the ground was turning to jelly under my feet. It took me a while to make the connection, but now I know the cause. It’s the blasting in the foothills. Every time there’s a blast, I get a migraine.”

Emma raised her chin, arms folded. “Coincidence does not prove causation.”

“Do you think it’s some sort of extreme sensitivity?” I asked. “That even this far from the caverns, you can somehow hear the blasting?”

His laugh held no mirth. “Remember the last day the team was in the Pueblo? The day Professor Ambrose was injured? There was a blast then, wasn’t there? That’s what started the scorp aggression.”

Not a day I was likely to forget. “There was a blast. It stirred up the scorps. Pinch—that double-clawed scorp—came too close.”

Lucien nodded. “The same one that stung me.”

I thought back. “And you had a headache then—Lydia called me just as we were preparing to leave the site.”

“Yeah. But that time the headache didn’t go away. It started to fade, but then there were these sharp pains, over and over. I panicked, thinking it would never end. Emma had to give me a tranq.”

“You were hallucinating,” Emma murmured.

Lucien kept his eyes on me. “It wasn’t until you came back and told me there had been shooting that I knew what had happened. Don’t you see? The miners’ blasting started the headache, but it was the shots that kept it going. Bullets hitting the cavern walls, starting the vibrations all over again.”

I shook my head. “You can’t possibly have heard a gunshot ten kilometers away, buried under a mountain.”

“Not the shot—the impact on the rock. And it wasn’t me that heard it, it was Pinch. He heard it.”

Silence.

Emma scowled. “Let me get this straight. You’re claiming to have formed some sort of psychic connection to a scorpidon?”

Lucien nodded slowly. “It did something to me, the scorp poison. Rearranged my brain somehow. I think I hear what Pinch hears.”

CHAPTER 12

Echoes

EMMA WAS VERY still. “Lucien, you realize what this sounds like?”

He nodded. “Aliens beaming thoughts into my head. Delusion. Psychosis. That’s why, once I began to suspect the connection, I checked the seismic records. I’m not just hearing things.”

“We’ll send you back to Prime,” I said. “If you’re right, then getting you off Silverrock would be the best thing for you. And if you do need treatment, Prime has doctors who can help.”

“Not yet.” Sitting on my bunk, Lucien was vibrating with tension. “The glyphs. At first I thought I was figuring everything out myself. Brilliant young linguist, cracking an alien language in a few short weeks. But it’s not me—not all of it, anyway. It’s Pinch. He knows what the glyphs are. The only reason I’ve figured out as much as I have is because of the little bits that I’ve gleaned from what he understands. I think the scorps can read the glyphs.”

“You think scorps can read,” Emma deadpanned.

Lucien leaned forward eagerly. “We hypothesized that the Builders created the inscriptions for an enslaved population. It’s now clear that the glyphs’ subtle differences in depth and texture are part of the meaning. Don’t you see? The glyphs were meant to be read by feel, not by sight. The inscriptions are precisely the form of communication that an advanced species might use to record a message meant for creatures who rely on touch, like scorps.”

Emma chewed her lip as she thought it over, gazing out the window toward the black cliffs looming in the east.

“If scorps were smart enough to read, wouldn’t the Stellar Coalition have known about them?” I asked. “They wouldn’t have missed something like that.”

Lucien shrugged. “Why not? The archeological site wasn’t discovered until humans started mining in the hills. If the Coalition didn’t know the inscriptions existed, they couldn’t consider whether scorps might be reading them.”

“But scorps don’t even have a brain! Doc Slade told me they only have nerve bundles scattered throughout their bodies.” I turned to Emma. “You could dissect one yourself to confirm it.”

“I’d love to dissect one,” Emma snapped, “but that would violate the terms of the edict.” She took a breath. “In any case, the morphology would tell us little. A minimum number of neural connections is necessary for sapience to arise in a species, but how those neural connections are arranged in the body is irrelevant.” She bit her lip, drumming her fingers on the arm of the chair.

What a mess. I’d only agreed to send the university that suggestion about scorp intelligence because Emma had sworn scorps couldn’t be that smart. “I suppose it’s too late to tell the Coalition it was all a mistake and cancel the investigation?”

“But this is good!” Lucien insisted. “Don’t you see? To understand Builder technology, Emma needs insight into Builder thought processes. Now we’ve got a better opportunity than ever to understand them. Using my connection to Pinch, I think I’ll eventually be able to read the inscriptions. Nothing will get us closer to the Builders than that.”

I felt like pulling out my hair. “But what about the first-contact assessment?”

Lucien smiled as if the answer were obvious. “It’s perfect! It’s just what we need. This is first contact. Havens will surely support research into whether scorps can read, and that will give me time to make progress on the translation.”

Bloody guts. Deciphering the Builders’ technology depended on Lucien’s ability to translate the glyphs—and he was showing textbook symptoms of psychosis. He might be on the verge of handing humans the greatest technological breakthrough since the invention of stardrive, or he could be lost in delusion to the point that any “translations” he made would be nothing more than the ramblings of a sick mind.

For a long minute, Emma stayed quiet, fingers still drumming.

At last, she looked up. “We can’t stop the first-contact assessment. At this point, our best option is to use it. Havens is an anthropologist. She’ll be interested in the theory that the inscriptions were intended for scorps. But you can’t mention telepathy, or she’ll send you to Prime on the next transport. Frankly, I don’t buy it either.”

Lucien’s fists bunched. “So you think I’m psychotic.”

“I think you’re recovering from a serious injury and illness,” Emma said smoothly. “Your analysis of the glyphs is brilliant and the theory of scorp reading is at least plausible. As you suggest, we’ll use that theory to allow you to make as much progress on the translation as possible while Havens conducts the assessment.”

Lucien nodded. “You don’t believe me, but you’ll let me work anyway. Fair enough.”

Feeling an overwhelming need to hit something, I spent a few hours pounding in struts to reinforce the compound’s perimeter fence. Lydia’s father had erected the palisade when he was trying to raise livestock, but it would do just as well to discourage any rowdies from town who might want to make trouble for the assessment team.

When I returned to my office, I found a message waiting from my sister. The vid was blurry, but clear enough to show Claudia wasn’t happy. “Why in the name of twenty gods are you still on Silverrock? Somebody died. You said yourself that the dig has closed. What the hell are you waiting for?” She sniffed and glowered, using her I can see right through you look. “You know, I saw Rita the other day. She asked about you. Don’t you think it’s time you grew up? Come home. Settle down and start behaving like a responsible adult.”

Rita. For a moment, hope glimmered. She’d asked about me. Maybe it could still work out between us.

My more rational mind stomped that idea into the ground. Don’t be an idiot. Remember all the arguments, all the tears? Remember that Rita was the one who left? Remember how it felt when she walked out, slamming the door behind her? Why would I subject myself to that again?

Besides, my job on Silverrock wasn’t done yet. The Builders’ technology was more important than the off chance that Rita and I could somehow be a family again. Humanity was counting on me to give them a fighting chance to compete among the galaxy’s space-traveling species.

I sent Claudia a soothing message and went to visit Emma.

“Do you have time to talk?”

“Of course.” She turned away from the microscope. “I hoped you’d come by, once you finished pummeling the fence into submission. Who are you worried about now, Lucien or the good people of Silverrock?”

“When I first suggested that scorps were coordinating their attacks, you said they couldn’t be, because they have no means to communicate. But if Lucien’s right, they could have been coordinating telepathically.”

She shook her head. “There’s absolutely no reason to think scorps are a telepathic species. Lucien’s only evidence of telepathy is that he thinks a scorp is communicating with him. That’s not possible. There’s just no mechanism for matching thought patterns between two individuals as different as another species. There are a few members of the Stellar Coalition who are capable of limited telepathic communication among their own kind, but never with a species from another world.”

“So he’s suffering from some sort of mental illness?”

She gazed at the window as if the dark hills might hold an answer. “I’m afraid so. Not too surprising, I suppose, given his history.”

“What history?” As far as I knew, he was just a stuck-up kid.

“He went through university on a scholarship for Canton survivors.”

“Canton?” Phantom pains shot up my missing legs, a reaction to mere mention of the colony. I massaged my thighs, surreptitiously triggering the stimulators.

Emma didn’t seem to notice. “You remember the rebellion, don’t you? He was one of the colony’s children.”

“I remember.” As if I could ever forget.

“He told me a little about it when we journeyed together from Prime. He was twelve when the civil war broke out. He witnessed his mother being killed and suffered some injury himself before his father managed to carry him to the transport. That’s his last memory of his parents—his father stayed behind so more children could get out. So you’ll understand if I’m a little skeptical of Lucien’s emotional stability.”

A swampy moon in a double star’s Goldilocks zone, Canton had been deemed habitable for humans, but with a dizzying rotation that set steamy day following sultry night every five hours. The religious sect that established the colony there had aimed to bring out the best in humanity. Hoping to create an agricultural paradise, the colonists had deliberately banned weapons from the payloads of equipment they’d brought.

But humans did as humans do. When religious schisms erupted into violent power struggles, the colonists scavenged fertilizer to make bombs and broke down plows to make spears and swords. When the barbarity reached its peak, a few brave souls highjacked the last available transport to send away as many of their children as they could. Sometime after that, the rebels hacked the remaining population to pieces before being forced to surrender.

My militia unit had been part of the Canton cleanup. For weeks my squad went from house to house, turning over furniture and peering into basements and closets, alert for booby traps and lingering pockets of rebels as we gathered the dead for identification. For weeks we collected and reassembled human remains. I still had vivid dreams of turning over debris from blasted houses only to find a hand, a foot, or an unidentifiable heap of human innards—or a bit of homemade explosive, ready to blow.

During the mission, I lost two members of my squad to improvised bombs and rebel ambushes. And I personally lost two gnarled, hairy legs.

The Canton rebellion was ten years in the past, but its effects were still severely limiting humanity’s future: after the massacre, the Stellar Coalition had sternly informed us that humans would get no settlement rights on any new worlds until we grew up.

“Lucien was right about his headaches coinciding with blasts in the hills,” I said. “I know something about post-traumatic stress. It doesn’t make him crazy or a liar.”

Emma side-eyed me. “It doesn’t make him psychic either.”

I stared out the window at the craggy foothills. “So we’ve opened a hornets’ nest with a first-contact assessment and threatened the livelihood of thousands of people, and our crucial translator may be mentally ill.”

She cocked her head at me. “Ah, you’re worried about both Lucien and the good people of Silverrock. You really take things to heart, don’t you?”

I closed my eyes. “I wish I’d never brought up the whole concept of scorp intelligence. You’re focused on figuring out the Builders’ tech, but I can’t forget that I have friends here on the planet. If scorps can read, that would make them a sapient species, wouldn’t it? The Coalition will evict every human on Silverrock.”

Emma’s mouth twitched in a half smile. “Would that be so bad? It’s not much of a planet.”

“It is when it’s all you’ve got.”

She laid her warm hand over my cold one. “Maybe we have better things to think about.”

I wrapped her in my arms. She fit there, very neatly. I kissed her hair until she turned her face up, eyes twinkling.

“That’s what I like,” she murmured. “A man of action.”

CHAPTER 13

Trash

I DIDN’T HAVE to worry about recognizing Dr. Charlotte Havens—the transit depot’s departure area was full, but she and her assistant were the only two passengers coming through the arrivals gate.

Havens looked like a spritely grandmother, all bones and cropped gray hair. Her sharp eyes reminded me of one of my schoolteachers, the one who always knew exactly which boy was going to throw the first spitball. Her assistant was a young fellow named Samson Marley—his first name being wholly at odds with his spindly, nervous frame. He had the hair for it, though: a halo of dark curls.

I introduced myself and collected their baggage—two crates of equipment, but only two suitcases apiece. I took that as a hopeful sign that the assessment wouldn’t last long.

“Can I ask what equipment you brought?”

Samson hunched forward. “A bunch of components for constructing tests of reasoning ability. Stuff for observing a nocturnal species, like remote cameras for operating in the dark. Night-vision helmetcams. We don’t want to spook them with lights while we’re conducting research.”

At that moment, I was spooked. Our walk through the depot had set people to staring and pointing. Looks of deep resentment accompanied whispered comments from the travelers lined up to leave the planet: “Coalition hacks . . . non-homs ruining our lives . . . killing our business.”

“Are you sure you want to pay an official visit right away?” I asked. “The colonists aren’t happy about the edict.”

Havens walked briskly, head high. “Unhappy? Or actively resisting?”

“A little of both.” Somebody had painted Scorp lovers and a few other rude remarks on the fence at the ranch the night before. I’d barely had time to paint over them before heading to the depot.

“In that case,” Haven said, “it’s even more important that we show our resolve immediately.”

The drive into the center of town showed how quickly fortunes can change on the frontier. On Venture Avenue, where shoppers had strolled a few days before, knots of people conversed on the street with hunched shoulders and sullen faces. Construction on the new hotel had ceased. Scattered storefronts already sported Going Out of Business signs.

When we arrived at town hall, the mayor met Havens in the presence of the town council, a news reporter, and Odom, the Venture Mining representative.

With the news camera running, the mayor said stiffly, “Of course we will comply with the Stellar Coalition’s demands. However, we have already lodged an official protest at this extreme overreaching. Silverrock has been designated a human planet—non-homs have no business interfering in colony affairs.” She glared directly at me. “The persons raising these questions are newcomers who arrived here within the last earthyear. If anyone had bothered to discuss with the town leaders our experience with scorps, we would have set them straight. They are a nuisance, but a nuisance we have lived with for thirty earthyears. A few more fences are all that’s needed.”

Havens smiled all through those remarks, then requested a more private meeting with the mayor to discuss the community’s concerns about the assessment. The mayor huffily declined.

As we filed out, Odom grinned, muttering, “See you in court.”

Everywhere we went, people pointed at us—or pointedly avoided us. Sheriff Ugarte was out of the office, unavailable, and no one knew when he was expected back. Shopkeepers locked their doors as we walked past. I began to worry that we’d have to order food from off-world sources. Even Doc Slade flatly refused to discuss with Havens anything about the incidence of scorp injuries.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “Patient confidentiality. And please, don’t come back unless you need medical treatment. I don’t want my patients to think I would speak to you.”

As I drove Havens back toward the ranch, I felt the need to apologize. “I’m afraid you wasted your time.”

“Not at all,” she replied, unperturbed. “I fully expect the assessment to be unpopular with the colonists. The point is that we have followed procedure. I don’t need the town’s affection, merely their compliance.”

On the outskirts of town, I stopped the hopper at the dump. Even though it was still daylight, a couple of suitcase-sized scorps picked over trash.

“There. Those are scorpidons, small ones. The biggest ones weigh more than me, but they don’t come out until dark.”

Havens watched with no sign of revulsion. “And the little crablike ones scurrying beneath their feet? Offspring?”

I laughed. “Those are rockskippers, a separate species. Also known as Silverrock lobster. You’ll be seeing a lot of them—at breakfast, lunch, and supper.”

Samson had pulled out a televiewer and was peering at the scorps. “We’ll have to tag individual scorpidons so we can follow their movements remotely. I understand the shell is hard? We should be able to glue a transponder to the carapace, just behind the eyestalks. That should be out of reach of their claws.”

“They’re skittish,” I said. “The trick will be getting close enough to tag them. I suppose we could trap them . . .”

“Absolutely not,” Samson said. “We need to avoid disrupting their daily routine. A drone can make the placement. We’ll concentrate on feeding sites and tag them while they’re occupied.”

A farmhopper pulled up behind us. With a brief glance our way, the driver walked over to a rockskipper trap painted in green and white. He emptied the rockskippers inside into a bucket, then rebaited the trap and replaced it. He emptied three more traps, all marked with his colors, tossing back a few rockskippers that were too small to bother cleaning. After taking the bucket to his hopper, he paused long enough to dump a barrel of refuse onto the piles of muck. Even before he’d driven away, the rockskippers and scorps were scrambling over the new trash, picking it apart with their claws.

Havens’s lips were taut with disapproval. “This is a scorpidon feeding site.”

“Well, it’s the dump,” I said. “The rockskippers and scorps just take advantage of our leavings. And the locals take advantage in turn—their traps provide a little extra income and keep the rockskipper population under control.”

“The edict specifies that humans should avoid areas where scorpidons feed.”

I squirmed a little. “But it’s our dump. We didn’t invite them.”

“There’s no leeway in the edict,” she said, chin high. “The people of Silverrock must comply.” She turned to Samson. “Place a call to the mayor.”

As soon as she arrived at the ranch, Havens called a meeting, presiding at the head of the dining table. Samson sat at her right hand, taking notes on his mocom. Across from him, Emma and Lucien sat together like allies. Lydia and I joined as afterthoughts at the foot of the table.

Havens blessed the gathering with a chilly smile. “The mission of the first-contact assessment is to determine whether scorpidons are a sapient species as defined by the Stellar Coalition.” Her short gray hair lay close to her skull, her dark eyes burning out over sunken cheeks like a skeleton come to life. Her intensity worried me. Witch trial inquisitors had probably had the same look—the look of a true believer determined to root out heresy.

“This is an important milestone,” she said. “The Stellar Coalition currently regards humans as the least developed among interstellar-traveling species. They consider us violent and undisciplined, with little value to add to the Coalition’s collective wisdom. Silverrock provides us with a rare opportunity to prove that humans can interact fairly with less-developed species. It would not be exaggerating to say that how we deal with scorpidons may determine humanity’s future in the stellar community.”

I squirmed, exchanging glances with my coconspirators.

Emma’s brows rose. “Then you’re assuming scorps are sapient?”

“On the contrary, it seems unlikely that the Coalition would have overlooked a sapient species. However, strict adherence to proper procedure is vital.” She pinned us each in turn with a searching stare. “You must realize that the Coalition has made an exception for Silverrock. Ordinarily, a planet would be placed off-limits until a full first-contact assessment is complete. However, since humans already have a legally established colony here, the Coalition will allow the colonists to remain during the assessment—but only so long as they comply with the edict. In short, we must give scorpidons the benefit of the doubt. Until a final determination is made, the colonists must provide scorpidons the respect and protection a sapient species is due.”

“Even if that means closing our dump,” I muttered. The conversation between Havens and the mayor had lasted the entire drive to the ranch. Havens had been cold and implacable while the mayor had progressed from anger to excuses and finally to resentful surrender.

Lucien, arms crossed and shoulders hunched, asked, “What’s your first step?”

“Observation,” Samson replied. “We need to understand the basic physical and social circumstances of scorpidon life. We’ll also conduct problem-solving tests to estimate intelligence.”

Lydia lifted her chin. “They’re smarter than people think.”

Havens nodded. “That may be true. But for the purpose of Coalition standards, ‘sapience’ requires more than basic intelligence. It requires culture—the preservation and passing of learned knowledge from one generation to the next. Only then can a species advance beyond the accomplishments of an individual life.”

“And if you decide scorps fit the definition, what happens?” I asked.

“If the evidence warrants, we will attempt to establish communication.” Her thin smile didn’t reach her eyes. “The Stellar Coalition will review our findings and determine whether humans should be allowed to continue to inhabit the planet.”

Lydia’s lip trembled. “Everything I’ve got is here. I don’t want some non-homs tellin’ me I got to go.”

“It’s far too early to speculate about consequences,” Havens murmured. “Let us start from the beginning. Emma, what do we know of the evolution of scorpidons on Silverrock?”

Emma tented her hands. “The limestone that dominates this area indicates that there were once extensive oceans on the planet, but most of the surface water dried up millennia ago, leaving only two extremely saline seas. That change killed off most of the plant and animal life. Silverrock’s surviving vegetation consists of seasonal grasses and long-rooted shrubs that draw water up from underground. The planetwide survey done prior to colonization turned up only three native animals larger than a fly: sandbugs, rockskippers, and scorpidons. All three are arthropods—shelled creatures rather like Earth’s beetles, crabs, and scorpions. For water, they depend on the vegetation they eat and the moisture in the caverns, lifted by air currents from the underlying aquifer.”

I nodded at that. “The tunnels are always more humid than the air outside, humid enough that algae grows in the crevices, and the little sandbugs eat the algae. They love our latrines too, and rockskippers and scorps eat our garbage.”

Havens frowned. “It’s apparent that human occupation has changed the behavior of the local wildlife. It’s not surprising that the incidents of human-scorpidon conflict have increased with the expansion of the human population. What do we know about the scorpidon life cycle?”

Emma repeated her theories of a hive of males and drones dominated by a single breeding queen, but the anthropologists’ questions soon made clear how much we didn’t know about scorps. Social interaction, breeding, care of offspring, even what they did in the Pueblo when we weren’t around—we had speculation but no answers.

Samson looked up from his note-taking. “What about defensive behavior?”

“Defensive or offensive?” I asked. “I made a full report on the attacks I witnessed.”

Havens glanced at Lucien. “That report did not include your input, Lucien. What provoked the attack on you by the scorpidon Booker refers to as Pinch?”

Lucien had been fidgeting, twining his fingers, making me wonder if he was “hearing” miners working in the foothills. “Nothing,” he said. “In fact, I don’t think it was an attack. Pinch stung me, but he didn’t use his claws to try to hurt me.”

“He damn sure snapped at me when I tried to pry him off you,” I said. “My pants and jacket had so many tears, I had to refabricate them.”

“Lucien suffered some trauma in that attack,” Emma added. “He may not remember the details.”

“Then perhaps he lacks the objectivity needed for this assessment,” Havens snapped.

“I can do my job.” Lucien shot Emma an angry look. “I’m the only one here who really believes scorps are sapient.”

“Indeed? On what evidence?”

“You mentioned communicating with the scorps. I think that’s possible—I believe scorps can read.” He glanced toward the parlor, where the replica south wall loomed. “That is, I have a theory that the inscriptions in the Pueblo were meant for them.”

Havens’s eyebrows rose. “Are you suggesting that scorpidons built the ruins in the caverns and left the inscribed stones for future generations?”

He flushed. “Of course not. I’m sure you’ve read Professor Ambrose’s reports. There’s no evidence of construction before or after the building of the Pueblo some fifty thousand earthyears ago. There wasn’t even any rebuilding or expansion of the village like you’d see in dwellings occupied for any length of time. The Builders were undoubtedly aliens who came, dug out the minerals they wanted, and left. What I’m suggesting is that the inscriptions were created by the Builders for the scorps.”

“An interesting theory. Perhaps you can consider ways to test it.” She sat back with a dissatisfied frown. “It’s clear we have a great deal of work to do. We’ll begin with simple observation of the scorpidons in their environment.”

“In the caverns?” I asked. “That’s where they live.”

“We’ll start at the dump tonight,” Samson said. “While they eat, I’ll begin tagging individuals. Once we learn more about their patterns of movement, we’ll install cameras in places where they congregate so we can observe without intruding.”

“I’ll continue to deal with the human side,” Havens said. “It’s essential the colony authorities understand the importance of this assessment.”

Lydia folded her thin arms. “They understand, all right. Folks stand to lose their jobs, their homes, and everything else they worked for over the last thirty years.”

Havens nodded gravely. “That is a possibility, but there are more important issues at stake.” She leaned forward, her eyes boring into Lucien, Emma, and me. “A failure to act responsibly toward a native sapient species would seriously impair the effort to promote humans to full membership in the Stellar Coalition. Unfortunately, most members of the Coalition regard humans with great suspicion. They believe we are too impulsive, too violent, and too shortsighted to be trusted. Our future is in jeopardy. This assessment may be the best opportunity of our generation to prove that we can be responsible members of the stellar community.”

“Even if we all die trying,” Lydia murmured.

Once it was full dark, Samson gathered his equipment for a foray to the dump. Havens balked at the idea of wearing armor, but I insisted. “Scorpidons are crustaceans,” I said. “If you don’t have a hard shell, you probably look like prey to them.”

Even all suited up with armor and helmets, neither one of them would have intimidated a grade-schooler. I wanted to carry my sidearm, but Havens vetoed it and refused to even carry a stun rod. “We’re going to observe, not engage,” she said. I tucked an extra rod into my pack just in case.

Lucien asked to go along, but Havens vetoed that too, saying there was no need for a linguist on a simple observation-and-tagging run and she preferred him to develop an experiment to test whether scorps could read. By the way she was eyeing him, I figured she was having second or third thoughts about whether he should be part of the assessment at all.

At the entrance to the dump, a chain lay curled on the dirt like a dead snake. The Closed—No Trespassing sign lay on the ground, riddled with bullet holes. Havens glowered but said nothing. Maybe she was learning what sort of person sought out life on the frontier.

I parked next to some heaps of fresh garbage and helped Havens and Samson clamber atop the hopper for a good view. I hitched my jacket closer against the chill.

Rockskippers ranging in size from salad plate to turkey platter combed through the garbage for morsels to eat. In the helmets’ thermal cameras, they gave off a dull glow. As long as we didn’t move around much, they ignored us and went about their business. A few had fumbled into traps.

Some scrambling and clicking caught my attention, and I silently pointed my blacklight toward the western fringe, making a few coyote-sized scorps glow blue. These scorps were more than a meter across their humped backs. They burrowed into the trash, sending the rockskippers running out of their way and plying their powerful claws to rip apart cans and boxes to get at the contents. As they forged a trail, a bunch of rockskippers followed behind, gleaning scraps from their leavings.

“Note the interaction,” Havens whispered. “The smaller species relies on scorpidons to make food accessible, the way vultures rely on hyenas to open up a carcass.”

As we watched, one rockskipper got too close to a busy scorp. The scorp darted out its claw and snapped off one of the rockskipper’s eight legs and ate it. “Not exactly allies,” I said. The rockskipper, minus a limb, scampered away.

Samson got busy with his drones. Almost silent as they flew, guided by Samson through their cameras, the little mechanisms swooped in like mosquitoes to glue a miniature transponder to the backs of feeding scorps. Havens monitored the growing swarm of red blips on her mocom.

There was a flurry in the grass along the eastern side as a new group of scorps arrived. The scorps already at the dump clumped together, facing up to the newcomers.

“Territorial?” whispered Samson.

Atop a nearby heap, two scorps from opposing parties approached one another, each holding high its big display claw. They tapped antennae, sizing one another up, each standing as tall as its half score of legs could raise it. Eventually they met, underside to underside.

“Mating?” I asked.

“Or battle,” Havens said.

It could have been a friendly hug, for all I could tell. The two grappled a bit, then the original garbage-pickers retreated, leaving the newcomers in possession.

Samson shivered in the breeze. “The second group appears to be dominant.” He began guiding his drones to the newcomer scorps.

Over the next two hours, nothing more exciting happened. When Samson had tagged all the scorps we could see, Havens sighed. “Perhaps this is sufficient for an initial observation.”

More than sufficient for me. I was cold and tired and would have preferred to be at the ranch enjoying Emma’s company.

Thinking of her seemed to trigger her voice, coming through my helmetmic. “Booker? We need you back here—we’ve got trouble.”

Through the mic came the sound of a firearm.

CHAPTER 14

Trouble

I SHOVED Havens and Samson into the cab and rammed the hopper into action. “Emma? Who’s shooting?”

Emma’s chuckle came through my helmet. “Lydia. She dug up an old scattergun from somewhere. Lydia, don’t shoot their jumpers out! We want them to leave.”

In the background, Lydia yelled, “Get your sorry asses offa my property!”

“It’s probably just a bunch of hotheads from town,” Emma said, “but they’re right outside the fence. I called the sheriff’s office.”

“We’re closer.” I was glad I’d taken the precaution of locking the gate. “Stay inside. We’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Maybe you’d better hurry. I smell fuel.”

I overrode the hopper controls and pushed the safety limits to the max, bouncing over the rutted road regardless of Samson’s gasps and Havens’s tight-lipped glare.

As we approached the compound, a distant orange glow lit our way. Damn fools. The fence was metal and polymer, unlikely to catch fire, but the Silverrock scrub was tinder-dry. If the townies’ bonfire got out of hand, there was no telling how far sparks might spread.

Still half a kilometer away, I switched on the bar of floodlights to warn them to get out. Two farmhoppers soon passed us, speeding toward town with jeers and shouts. On one, the back window had been shot out.

The fire was just outside the ranch compound’s perimeter fence, where someone had piled up dry brush and soaked it in generator fuel. Emma and Lydia, pajamas peeking out between jackets and boots, were doing what they could with puny extinguishers while Lucien shoveled dirt onto the flames.

I left the hopper where the floodlights would illuminate the area and sent Lydia to the barn for more shovels and rakes and Emma to the house for blankets.

On the fence was painted Scorp-lovers go home.

For a half hour, we shoveled dirt and beat out flames.

“Where’d you get that scattergun?” I asked Lydia.

She grinned. “It was my daddy’s. He made it himself. It’s just loaded with pea gravel—he used to use it to discourage claim jumpers.”

“Better keep it out of sight—the sheriff won’t take kindly to an unlicensed firearm.”

We were all blistered and filthy, but the fire was under control by the time Sheriff Ugarte roared up.

He wasn’t even out of the rover before Lydia turned on him. “What are you doing, letting that riffraff come here and set fire to my fence!”

Havens backed her up. “Sheriff Ugarte? I am the Stellar Coalition’s representative on this planet. You had no time to meet with me when I arrived. Perhaps now you will understand the sensitive nature of my work here. The Coalition will hear of this lawlessness.”

Ugarte fiddled sheepishly with his hat. “Well, now, ma’am, you can’t blame the townspeople for resenting the disruption . . .”

Havens drew herself up. “I don’t blame the townspeople. I blame the town leaders for setting an example of defiance of the Coalition’s lawful orders.”

I handed Ugarte a shovel. “Excuse me, Dr. Havens, but I could use the sheriff’s help making sure all the embers are out.”

As the others went in to wash up, I used the heat sensors in my helmet to locate any lingering hot spots.

Ugarte trailed me into the brush. “Thanks for the rescue. What’s with the armor?”

“We were observing scorp behavior.”

He snorted. “You’re kidding.”

“You must have passed the hoppers with those rowdies from town. Did you recognize anyone?”

“What’s the point?” He paused long enough to spit. “Every one of them will have a dozen buddies lined up to swear they didn’t leave Rosie’s saloon all night.”

I leaned on my shovel. “Sheriff, Dr. Havens isn’t wrong. This assessment is serious.”

“They’re scorps! One step lower than a spider, in my book.”

“Well, they may be low, but they’re bright enough to invade the waterworks and send the archeology team running. Let Havens do her job and figure out what they are. If you’re right and they’re nothing but vermin, everything goes back to normal. The townfolk may not like it, but the sooner you and the mayor and everyone else cooperate, the sooner the assessment will be over.”

In an undertone, Ugarte damned the assessment and the scorps. Choosing to take that as acquiescence, I dropped my voice, as if someone might be listening. “And Mick, for the love of rain, keep the miners away from the foothills for a while, will you? Dr. Havens may look like your granny, but she’s got a direct line to the Stellar Coalition and has the final word on violations of the edict. She’s already ordered the mayor to close the dump. She won’t hesitate to deport any miners caught near the caverns. And if she thinks the colony is defying the edict, she could probably convince the Coalition to sanction the whole planet.”

He grunted, but he didn’t tell me to go to hell, which I considered a win.

When there were no more hot spots to bury, Ugarte stopped at the house to assure Havens that he would personally track down the miscreants and make it known that any further disrespect to her or the assessment team would be dealt with harshly.

“Or to the scorpidons,” Havens insisted. “We are here to study them. That will work best if they are not under threat from vindictive settlers.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Ugarte said his good nights and took off in his rover.

Dead tired and more than ready for bed, I was about to lock the gate for the night when Lydia trotted up to me, brow furrowed. “Where’s Lucien?”

Lucien was nowhere in the house, and one of the hoppers was gone.

Lydia wrung her hands. “I thought he was with you and the sheriff. It’s past midnight! Where would he go?”

“Lucien’s an adult,” I said. “If he wants to have a night in town, that’s his choice.”

Lydia stamped her foot. “If he’s gone to fight them rowdies, he’ll get hurt. You gotta stop him, Booker.”

Havens’s face was pinched with weariness and exasperation. “Lucien may be an adult, but it’s evident he is under stress. Perhaps, Booker, it would be best if you ensured that he does not create any additional problems for the assessment by carrying on a quarrel in town.”

Samson walked out of the house, carrying a helmet. “He hasn’t gone to town. He took a set of armor. I checked the tracking node, and he’s headed north, toward the foothills. I tried to raise him on the helmetmic just now, but he doesn’t answer.”

Havens glared at Emma. “Why would Lucien go alone into scorpidon habitat? That is strictly against the edict.”

Emma bit her lip. “I don’t know. He’s suffered migraines . . .”

I hadn’t even had a chance to remove my own armor. “I’ll go after him. It’s not safe out there alone.” Samson said he’d join me.

“I’ll monitor you from here,” Havens agreed. “Please minimize any interactions with the scorpidons.”

As we headed for the hopper, Lydia—half my weight—made herself a barrier in my path. “I’m coming with you,” she said. “In case he needs talking to.”

Her crossed arms and the determined set of her jaw convinced me: my years with Rita had taught me that giving in would be quicker than arguing. “All right, but stay in the hopper.”

It was still long before dawn and bitterly cold as we bounced up the track to the foothills. The stars, clearly visible in the cloudless sky, shed enough light that the grasses and stony outcrops cast shadows.

My helmet screen displayed a blip three kilometers ahead, apparently at rest. Lucien must have stopped—or lost his helmet. Samson continued to try to reach him through the mic, without response.

Havens called from base. “You are approaching several scorpidons that were tagged.”

“Understood.”

A lump of rock jumped into our path—a scorp, snapping its claw and waving antennae. I slowly steered around it but soon nearly ran into another.

“Kill the lights,” Samson suggested, “and switch your helmet to thermal display.”

The display made the nightscape look like a cloudy day, filled with diffused light. From base, Emma confirmed that she and Havens saw and heard the scene through our helmetcams.

Lydia was rigid beside me. “Scorps all over,” she whispered. “What are they doing here?”

I stopped the hopper. “They’re just looking for food.” They clumped about the landscape like living boulders, foraging among the sparse foliage. Only five of them bore our tags, but I counted at least thirty softly glowing shapes.

Letting the hopper creep forward with the lights off, we climbed to the top of a rise. Lucien’s blip had remained in one place so long, I feared to see a body covered by feeding scorps.

Lydia pointed. “There’s the hopper!”

It seemed to have run into a ditch. I pulled up beside it and looked around. No Lucien, and his blip was still some twenty meters ahead.

Between us and the blip’s position, a cluster of rocks resolved into a gathering of scorps. We were close enough to catch their fetid smell.

“Lucien!” Lydia pointed.

Off to the side, away from the scorp crowd, Lucien sat on the ground, his legs tucked under him. Some big scorps squatted beside him. They weren’t attacking him, but they touched him all over with their antennae. He didn’t seem hurt, and his armor looked intact.

A huge claw made snipping motions toward his armor’s elbow joints. Lucien flinched, but he didn’t call out or move away.

“Do something!” Lydia whispered.

“Not yet,” Samson said. “Lucien seems to be all right for the moment, but if we disturb the gathering, they might attack.”

“It’ll be dawn soon,” I said. “They’ll go back underground.” Or so I hoped.

Samson gathered his drones. “This is too good an opportunity to miss. Don’t worry, I’ll stay away from the group around Lucien.” He clambered to the back of the hopper and began deploying drones, with me standing guard.

In the middle of the gathering, two scorps grappled together. One was very large and the other just plain huge. Giant claws clacked as each reared up, trying to overpower the other, stinging tail extended.

“Looks like another dominance contest,” Samson murmured. He guided a drone to one of the combatants.

“Excellent,” Havens commented from base. “This is adding to our data on social structure.”

Around the pair, the scorps were ranked roughly by size, with the larger ones closest to the combatants. The crowd members frantically waved their antennae, touching their fellows, some even risking being caught in the fight. If it was a fight.

The larger combatant clearly had the advantage. Not only was it much bigger, but it had two big fighting claws.

“Two claws,” I whispered, shivering. “That’s Pinch.”

“Much bigger than the ones at the dump,” Samson noted. “He gets tag 037. His adversary is number 042.”

Pinch reached several legs over his rival, clasping his carapace, then probed with his tail on his rival’s underside until he found a space between plates. He pushed his stinger in, and they remained frozen in that position for a full minute.

“Are they . . . mating?” breathed Lydia.

“No,” I said. “That’s just the stinger. That’s what Pinch did to Lucien. Punched his stinger straight into his chest.” My stomach roiled as I remembered the obscene penetration.

From the safety of base, Haven commented, “Interesting. That supports Lucien’s contention that the so-called attack on him may have been normal scorpidon behavior.”

Pinch released his hold on his rival and sauntered away, the defeated scorp following in his wake.

Around us, other scorps reared up, in pairs or small groups, initiating the dance. To our left, two scorps snapped viciously as each tried to overpower the other. One of the fighters succeeded in snapping off a leg joint of his rival.

I peered closer at the winner and pointed my blacklight. Under the UV light, a long furrow on its shell glowed brightly. “See that one? That’s Scrape, the one that injured Professor Ambrose. My bullet made that scar.”

“Number 121,” Samson said.

Slowly the scorp group began to break up and spread out, busily foraging. Lucien’s guards remained with him.

Every so often, one of the foragers approached Lucien’s group, tentatively reached out its antennae, and then passed something to one of the larger scorps.

“Food sharing,” Samson whispered.

As the stars began to fade and the sky lightened, the foragers moved higher into the foothills. The group around Lucien broke up and lumbered slowly toward the cliffs, the smaller scorps clambering behind them. Lucien stayed, slumped on the ground.

When the way was clear, I edged the hopper closer to Lucien.

“Stay here.” I got out, carrying my sidearm.

With an eye to my surroundings, I approached Lucien. There was no sign of blood, but when I squatted next to him, he didn’t stir. I checked his pulse—steady.

“Lucien.” I shook his shoulder.

He slowly roused and opened unfocused eyes. “I had to come,” he said. “Pinch called me.”

CHAPTER 15

Telepathy

AS THE PREDAWN sky brightened, we returned to base, Samson driving the hopper Lucien had taken. In the seat behind me, Lydia cradled Lucien and cooed to him.

Havens firmly deferred any discussion until we got some sleep. I was glad—I was too tired to figure out where Lucien’s confession left us.

Tired, but sleep didn’t come easy. The lingering smell of cinders brought back nightmares of Canton and my legs twisted and burning after the explosion.

By the time I got up, the sun was high and the others had finished breakfast. I shoveled in rockskipper omelet and toast while Havens headed the table like a judge presiding over the trial for a particularly nasty crime. The defendants seemed to be Lucien, Emma, me, and even Lydia.

“Lucien,” she intoned. “Explain your actions of last night. The edict forbids human interactions with scorpidons, and yet you deliberately sought them out, without permission or even informing me of your intention.”

Lucien sat forward, tense but eager to tell his story. “Pinch called me. He wanted me there. I have some sort of telepathic connection with Pinch—that’s how I know scorps can read the glyphs. The connection’s getting stronger . . . or perhaps I’m learning to interpret him better. Last night, I knew exactly where he was, and that he wanted me to be there with him.”

At Lucien’s side, Lydia sniffed and wiped her eyes.

Samson’s eyes gleamed with interest—or perhaps laughter, I couldn’t tell. “What does Pinch tell you?”

Lucien blinked, his hands twitching. “It’s not like words. They feel things, things we don’t. Our world—sun, lights, colors—none of that is part of their lives. For them, hearing, feeling, and tasting are all mixed up together. But loud noises bother them. Disrupt their senses. When there’s a blast too near the tunnels, I hear . . . feel . . . vibrations like thunder, unbelievably awful, going on and on. Pinch wants it to stop.” He bit his lip. “I think he wants me to stop it.”

Havens’s glare fixed on Emma. “Your reports mentioned nothing of this.”

Emma sighed. “It wasn’t until a few days ago that Lucien told us he thought he’d developed a telepathic link to the scorps. By then, you were already in transit. Ever since he was injured, he’s been having migraines—I thought his feelings of contact with another being were a passing side effect of his injury. In fact, I still think so.”

Havens switched her glare to me.

I spread my hands, hoping to look innocent. “I don’t know anything about telepathy, but Lucien’s headaches do coincide with blasting near the caverns. I’ve confirmed that by checking the seismic monitor. And last night, he drove the hopper straight to where the scorps were gathering. Not just any scorps, but to Pinch himself. That’s evidence, isn’t it?”

“Of sorts,” Havens said guardedly.

“You’re familiar with the Stellar Coalition,” I pressed. “There are non-hom races that are telepathic, aren’t there?”

“It’s very rare.” Havens shook her head. “Telepathy is too overwhelming to individual thought to be sustained as a species evolves to higher functions. Most telepathic species are of the lowest order—animals like ants that lack the capacity for individual decisions. Among the few advanced species that retain telepathic ability, it is only between individuals who are perfectly aligned: a clone or sibling that has a nearly identical genetic makeup. They essentially operate as a single unit.”

“So it’s possible,” I said. “If scorps are clones or near clones to one another, they could be a telepathic species.”

“Even if they are,” Emma said, “there’s simply no mechanism for thought transmission between members of different species, especially ones as dissimilar as scorps and humans. Their neural patterns are just too alien from ours.” She turned to Lucien. “I’m sorry. I know you believe what you say. But if you suddenly developed telepathic abilities, don’t you think you would be hearing human thoughts?”

“It’s because he got stung.” Chin up, Lydia pouted her defiance. “He was fine before that.” From my seat at the end, I glimpsed Lucien’s hand clasp hers under the table.

“No doubt the venom made him ill,” Emma conceded, “but the purpose of venom is to incapacitate prey, not to enhance the prey’s abilities.” Her fingers tapped emphasis. “Venom might disrupt the nervous system, but it would never improve it.”

“We saw Pinch sting another scorpidon last night,” Samson said thoughtfully. “It had almost a ritual aspect—the culmination of a struggle for dominance. After, the stung individual appeared to be subdued, submissive.”

Emma nodded. “Exactly. The venom doesn’t kill, but it might temporarily weaken or disorient an adversary. Perhaps scorps have adapted their behavior to incorporate it into their dominance contests. It could still be affecting Lucien, giving him mild hallucinations.”

Lucien’s shoulders slumped. “Maybe Emma’s right. Maybe I’m delusional. But if I really can communicate with a scorp, isn’t that exactly what we should be investigating?”

I turned to Havens. “You said we should consider evidence. Just because we’ve never seen telepathy between different species doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”

Havens folded her hands, eyes narrowed to slits. “Very well,” she said at last. “We will consider the possibility, looking for evidence. But our most urgent task is to commence observation of the scorpidons in their natural environment. We’ve made significant progress in tagging individual scorpidons, and already we’ve made some preliminary observations of social structure.”

With a grin, Samson pulled up a locator map sprinkled with lines and blips. “As you can see, the scorpidons we tagged yesterday separated into two groups.”

A speeded-up recap showed blips appearing at the dump as we’d deployed the tags onto the foraging scorps and activated them. Then red thin lines traced the retreat of the first-tagged scorps as they’d scattered into the brush when the new wave of scorps had moved in and been tagged. As hours replayed in seconds, blue lines tracing the late-shift scorps passed into the foothills where Lucien had gone walkabout. Around sunrise, most of Lucien’s group had disappeared at points deep in the foothills.

Samson pointed to the places where the blue signals stopped. “The larger group of scorps remained more or less together until their signals go out of range in the hills east of here. But see the red lines? The scorps we tagged at first went west, back to the area around Sweetwater City. I’m guessing they’re holed up, singly or in groups of two or three, in scattered burrows near town.”

“Given the rivalry we observed,” Havens said, “we believe the scorpidons are divided into two hives competing for resources. We’ve labeled them Valley for the group that rests near town and Highlander for the group that rests in the hills.”

Samson pointed to a blue line. “Highlander 037 is the one you call Pinch. Highlander 121 is the one you call Scrape. We didn’t see a queen.” He looked disappointed.

I peered at the map. “There’s still a few Highlander tags in com range.” As I watched, a Highlander blip inched to the edge of the group and winked out. “They must be inside the caverns. We installed mocom repeaters in the access tunnel and the Pueblo to maintain communications between the archeology team and base. But once the scorps go deeper into the tunnels, you won’t be able to track them.”

Havens nodded. “The presence of repeaters in the Highlander nesting area is helpful, but we need to augment our surveillance capability. Booker, we’ll need your assistance to place cameras within the cavern.”

Lucien perked up. “I’ll do it. I want to put a camera facing the south wall so we can watch the scorps interact with the glyphs.”

Havens stiffened. “You, Lucien, will not leave this compound without my permission. And until we have more evidence about your claims of telepathic contact, you will not go anyplace you might interact with scorpidons.”

Lucien sat back, looking defeated.

“How many cameras?” I asked.

“One to cover the south wall,” Samson said, nodding to Lucien, “and at least four more. From the archeologists’ maps, it looks like a big space.”

I rubbed my chin, thinking of the logistics. “That’ll take a couple of hours at least, plus time to go up and down the access tunnel.”

“Go at night,” Lucien said. “While they’re out foraging.”

I nodded. “Lucien’s right. Some noise is inevitable, and we won’t want to stir them up.”

“We?” Samson asked.

I looked around the table. “This is a two-person job: one to install, one to stand guard. Samson, do you have any tactical training?”

He shrank. “Not me.”

“I’ll go with you,” Emma said. “I’ve visited the caverns before, and I’m mechanically competent enough to install a camera. Samson can monitor us from base.”

“Very well,” Havens said. “Prepare a plan. Minimal disruption to the scorpidons. No lethal weapons.”

The cameras Havens had brought were sensitive to heat, sound, and movement in order to re-create for us vision-dependent humans the activities of creatures who lived in total darkness. For more help, I added UV lamps that would make the scorps glow.

Using the archeology team’s maps, Samson, Lucien, and I selected places to install six cameras: one that would have a nice view of the south wall, four at other vantage points around the Pueblo, and one with a view of the exit to the access tunnel. Just in case anyone in the Coalition might become too curious, I made sure none of the cameras pointed directly at the midden we’d been looting for tech scraps.

I took some time planning a route that would get us in and out of the cavern quickly. For practice, Emma and I installed two cameras at the dump and one at the ranch gate to keep an eye on any unwelcome visitors.

“I wish it wasn’t you who was coming with me,” I told her as she dismounted from the ladder. “No matter what we do, the bolt driver is bound to make a lot of noise. If Lucien is right about sound causing the scorps to act aggressive, this could get dangerous.”

She punched my arm. “Better me than a desk jockey like Samson. When you asked if he had tactical training, he looked like he’d faint dead away. Don’t you get tired of playing the strong hero, trying to protect everyone?”

“Yes. If I could do the job alone, I would.” I couldn’t help worrying that I’d find Emma pinned to the rock wall with a scorpidon stinger in her chest.

She cocked her head. “You worked as a team in the militia. Just think of me as one of your squad.”

“Sure . . . if you’ll obey orders.”

She crossed her heart with a smile. “I promise.”

The smile worried me, so my first order was for us to do some more practice installations inside the dark barn in full armor, using only the shoulderlamps and wristlamps for light. I braced a collapsible ladder against the wall, and she clambered up; used a bolt driver to fix the camera to the wall—bam, bam; adjusted the feed; and scurried down again. I made her do dry runs up and down the ladder until she could do an installation in less than a minute.

“That’s enough,” I said. “Rest now so you’ll be fresh for tonight.”

Puffing, she leaned against me. “Were you this tough on your squadron?”

“Tougher. Overprepared is better than underprepared. But I still wish you were out of it.” Ambrose’s death weighed heavily on my mind.

“We need this,” she said softly. “Hide the pea, remember? We need to keep Havens and Samson focused on the scorps so Lucien can make progress on the glyphs. She’s not buying his claims of telepathy any more than I do. I think she’s on the verge of sending him home.”

“That might be the best thing for him.”

“But the worst thing for humanity. Understanding the Builder tech is the only game that matters here. I’ve told Lucien to shut up and cooperate. That goes for you too.”

I took a deep breath. “For the future of humanity?”

She grinned. “That’s right, big guy. The human race may not know it, but they’re counting on us, you and me.”

Shortly before sundown, the gate camera picked up the dust plume from a vehicle driving toward the compound.

“Everyone stay in the house,” I ordered. Pistol on my hip, I went to the gate.

Ugarte’s police rover roared up. “Hey, Booker. ¿Qué tal?”

“Sheriff? You should warn me when you’re coming. I’d hate to ventilate you by mistake.” I opened the gate.

“Yeah, well. As it happens, I brought you a gift. Thought I’d keep it off the air.”

By the time I shut the gate, Ugarte had pulled up to the barn. “This one wandered into town last night.” He pulled a tarp off a lump strapped to the back of his rover. A midsize scorp, chunks torn from its shell, leaking and smelling like two-day-old garbage. “Sorry it’s in such bad shape. The boys from Rosie’s tavern used it for target practice before I could save it for you.”

By that time, the rest of the group had come out, although Lydia took one look and retreated to the kitchen.

“Isn’t shooting a scorp against the edict?” Lucien asked.

“Huh. They claimed self-defense. That’s allowed under the edict, ain’t it, Dr. Havens?”

“Indeed,” she said dryly. “Unfortunate, but perhaps an opportunity for a closer examination. Emma?”

“Put it in the barn,” she said. “I’d better do this now, before the tissues decay any more.”

Ugarte hitched up his belt. “Yeah, well, I’m trying to cooperate, like you said. But please keep quiet about it. I got enough trouble in town without anybody thinking I’m helping you out.”

As Ugarte and I moved the smelly mess to the barn, I asked him, “What’s the mood in Sweetwater City?”

“About what you’d expect. Most of the population thinks you’re traitors to the human race. The others can’t wait to report somebody for violating the edict. Everyone with a grudge has been calling us with some tale about a neighbor or business rival mistreating the poor, helpless scorps.”

“Towns like this hold a lot of grudges,” I said.

“You got that right. But some folks are getting worried for real. We got more reports than ever about scorp sightings in town.”

“The queen?”

“No.” The sheriff eyed Havens nervously. “I guess maybe we scared her away.”

Havens’s tone was cold as ice as she pointed to the dead scorp. “If the queen is seen again, I trust she will not be treated in this fashion.”

“I’ll do what I can, ma’am.”

As Ugarte drove away, I murmured to Lucien, “I hope that scorp isn’t a friend of yours.” He shook his head.

That made me wonder. If scorps talked to each other telepathically, wouldn’t all of them know when one was killed? Would they take revenge?

We gathered in the cold barn to watch Emma poke around the carcass.

“Well, the boys from Rosie’s certainly had a good time,” she said. “There must be twenty bullet wounds. No telling which one was fatal.”

Samson snapped pictures. “It’s not one we’ve tagged. Its big claw is missing.”

“Someone probably took it for a trophy.” Emma counted limbs. “Three small claws for feeding, seven antennae, eight out of ten legs still intact. See here, where the shell over one of the legs is splitting? It’s molting, one segment at a time, as its extremities grow. And look at this smaller leg—it’s a replacement. You can see where the upper joint matches the others, and the lower two segments are regenerating.”

“That’s interesting,” Samson said. “We saw scorps bite off the leg of another in their squabbles. If the limbs regenerate, losing a leg is a minor injury, easily healed.”

Emma poked and prodded the carcass. “Primitive eye; senses little more than shapes of light and dark. Makes sense for creatures that live underground. Carapace . . . I’ll examine this under the microscope.” Using a pair of tin snips, she clipped off a hunk of shell.

“Reproductive organs?” Havens asked.

“Yes, there’s a sperm sac here, and these paddlelike appendages are for transferring sperm to the female. Digestive tract, extensive. Eats everything, I’d guess. Venom sac at the base of the tail—I’ll want to analyze that. Nervous system, diffuse.”

Supper was roiling in my gut. “Doc Slade said they were brainless.”

Emma peered closely into the beast’s innards. “It would be more accurate to say their brain is distributed in several places throughout the body. Very efficient—it allows almost instantaneous reaction by the various limbs independently. The circulatory system similarly has multiple small pumps rather than one powerful heart. Even the respiratory system is spread out—sweet gods!” She jumped back.

One of the legs jerked back and forth in walking motions.

With the tin snips, she clipped something at the base of the leg, stopping the movement.

She looked up, face pale. “Stray neurons firing, even after death. No wonder the boys from Rosie’s kept shooting. Let’s make sure all those nerve bundles are cut.”

“They have natural armor,” I said, “plus redundancy in their vital systems. And they’re capable of regenerating a limb. That’ll make them hard to kill.”

“Very.” Emma looked up. “I’ve got enough samples. Dr. Havens, what do you want to do with the remains?”

“Leaving it in the brush is probably the best thing,” I said. “Let the scorps take care of their dead in their own way. For them, that probably means a picnic.”

Samson grinned. “Perfect! An opportunity for observation and a test. I have a plan.”

CHAPTER 16

Funeral Feast

WE RETREATED from the barn to the fresh air.

“It’s simple,” Samson said. “We leave the carcass somewhere we haven’t observed scorp activity and let Lucien communicate the location to Pinch. Then we stand back and observe. If Pinch comes, it’s evidence of telepathic communication.”

I didn’t like it. “In the middle of the night, in prime scorp territory, you want to mount a stakeout over the dead scorp? It’s an unnecessary risk. Let me attach a camera to one of the rovers and you can watch it remotely from base.”

Lucien shook his head. “That won’t work. I have no way to explain to Pinch where the carcass is except to say, I’m here. For the experiment to have a chance of succeeding, I have to be there.”

“And I can tag any new scorps that show up,” Samson said. “It’s a chance too good to pass up.”

“Then we’ll delay deploying the cameras,” I said. “I’ll go with you to the stakeout to stand guard. For all you know, that carcass could be some scorp VIP. His death could spark a vendetta.” I had a vision of Lucien and Samson sitting in the hopper while scorps clambered over it, searching for a way in, and Pinch sending Lucien mental messages to open the door. It made my skin crawl.

Havens sniffed. “The deceased individual was killed in town and was therefore probably a member of the Valley hive. Since scorpidons have been observed scavenging even members of their own hive, the Highlander scorpidons are unlikely to be fastidious with regard to a rival.”

“Besides,” Samson said, “if we succeed in attracting the Highlanders away from the caverns, it will be your safest opportunity to deploy the cameras in the Pueblo.”

I hated to admit it, but he made sense. “All right. But at the first sign of aggression, return to base. And Lucien”—I sent him a hard stare—“if you let anything happen to Samson, I will personally make sure you never conjugate another verb.”

Two hours after sundown, Lucien and Samson left the compound in one of the hoppers. They carried the stinking scorp cadaver stowed in the back. Samson was to pick an anonymous bit of scrubland with no sign of scorp activity to leave the carcass and take up a position where he and Lucien could observe.

In a second hopper, Emma and I headed into the foothills. We had six cameras to install. Each housed a self-contained power source and was primed to transmit the data back to base, where the team would map scorp activity onto the archeologists’ plan of the cavern.

“I know you want to believe Lucien,” Emma said as our hopper picked its way up the slopes. “But don’t expect this exercise to prove anything. If scorps do show up, it might just be because they’re good at sniffing out carrion.”

I nodded. “And if they don’t—well, among scorps, Pinch is a big cheese. From his point of view, we’re the vermin invading his planet, making noise and screwing around on his turf. Even if he can hear Lucien’s thoughts, he might not want to be ordered around by the likes of us. Still, I’ll feel better once we get the cameras installed. With Havens watching scorps, you and Lucien will be freer to work on decrypting the tech scraps.”

Samson’s voice came over the helmetmic. “We’re in position. I found a nice little clearing for the carcass, and we’re observing from a hillock thirty meters away.”

“Very well,” Havens replied from base, where she was monitoring proceedings. “Lucien, to the extent you are able, please let your scorpidon contact know that a scavenging opportunity is available at your location. Emma and Booker, proceed to the access tunnel. Avoid contact with the scorpidons if possible.”

“Just what I plan to do,” I said.

We shouldered our packs of equipment and switched on our mics and helmetcams to allow Havens to follow our progress.

While I unlocked the gate and turned on the tunnel lights, Emma intoned, “For the record, members of the first-contact assessment team are entering the caverns inhabited by scorpidons for the sole purpose of placing cameras. We will attempt to avoid interaction with the native wildlife.”

It was slow going down the tunnel, hampered by our heavy packs of gear.

“A tight squeeze,” Havens commented as we walked. “Was it created by the archeologists?”

I paused to let my helmetcam pan over the rough walls. “The tunnel and the ruins were found by prospectors. I had to widen the tunnel in places to bring equipment down to the archeology site.”

“Is it used by scorpidons?” she asked.

“Not much. Professor Ambrose thought it was created by the Builders, who seem to have been a skinny bunch. Scorps can navigate it if they cling to the walls, I guess, but they seem to have other ways to get in and out.”

At the overlook, I switched on the cavern spotlights. If Havens was impressed by the size and construction of the ruins, she hid it behind a mild, “Very nice.”

I was looking for scorps. The Pueblo seemed deserted, but scraping and rustling came from every direction. My neck hairs rose. Even though the scorps should all have been out foraging for the night, waving antennae seemed to lurk behind every rock.

I pointed up. Emma nodded. The overlook was the first place to install a camera.

I extended the collapsible ladder from my pack. Emma climbed up with one of the cameras and the installation kit while I held the ladder steady. She examined the rock face, selecting a site.

Boom. Sparks flashed as she fired the bolt driver into the rockface. Boom.

In the barn, driving a bolt into a composite wall had sounded like the crack of a rifle. Within the stone-walled cavern, driving a bolt into solid rock thundered like a cannon.

All the rustling and clicking went silent. Echoes hung in the air for long seconds, reverberating in the rock even longer.

Samson groaned. “A little warning next time? Or better yet, mute your mics unless you need to talk to us, will you?”

“Sorry. We’re turning mics off now.”

Emma hadn’t waited for the echoes to die—she affixed the camera and switched it on. Except for us two humans, the underground city was silent.

“Camera One is receiving,” Havens confirmed. “Angle it down a little. There, that’s fine.”

When Emma descended, I moved the ladder to a site just inside the access tunnel. This time, the camera was positioned to watch the path—scorps probably had a dozen ways in and out of the caverns, but I wanted to be able to watch the only human-sized exit.

“Camera Two is receiving,” Havens confirmed. “Samson, several tagged Highlanders are converging on your position. They include Highlander 037.”

Lucien’s voice broke in. “That’s Pinch. He’s coming.”

Emma and I were moving. I led her to the farthest camera site: Gamma tower, overlooking the south wall inscriptions. While I braced the ladder, she climbed halfway to the top of the tower. The bolt driver made much less noise this time, as it penetrated a tower wall rather than rock face.

She installed the camera, aiming it at the inscriptions.

“Camera Three is receiving,” Havens said. “Point it up a little and to the right. Good.”

Samson’s quick breaths were audible over the mics. “Gods below,” he whispered. “They’re here. They’re all over, ripping into the carcass like hyenas on a dead wildebeest. Scorps are definitely cannibals. And Pinch is in front.”

After a pause, Havens said, “Indeed. Confirming, Highlander 037 is among the group at the carcass.”

Bloody guts, it worked.

“I’d call that a success,” Samson said. “There are a few scorps without tags. I’m deploying drones now.”

Emma and I moved to a spot near the mouth of a nearby tunnel half-filled with rubble. The archeology team had frequently spotted scorps there, and Samson had thought it might be a good observation point.

Boom. With an arcing flash of sparks, Emma shot a bolt into the rock at the tunnel entrance and positioned the camera to look into the tunnel. Boom.

“Camera Four is receiving.”

Then she was back down and we were moving.

There was some garbled noise from the mic, then Lucien’s voice, sounding shaky. “Booker? Did you just install a camera? Pinch heard those bangs, two of them. Even though he’s still at the carcass, he stopped eating and twitched his antennae. Even I felt a twinge.”

I switched my mic on. “How? He’s nowhere near the Pueblo.”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s getting messages from some scorps still in the caverns.”

“We only have two more cameras left to install,” I said. “Just let us know if he’s on his way back.”

We reached our position beside the cavern wall to place the fifth camera, this one pointing east into a group of buildings.

Rustling and clicking came from an opening in the wall right beside my head.

I banged my stun rod on the tunnel wall. Skeletal legs scurried away.

I scanned the area but saw nothing moving. Emma nodded. Once more I extended the ladder, and she climbed.

As I braced the ladder, I found myself staring straight at a very large scorp clinging to the wall. “Freeze.”

Emma stilled.

Antennae a meter long delicately touched my armor, the ladder, and Emma’s leg. Click, click. A big, wicked claw snapped the air close to her elbow.

I stuck my stun rod between Emma and the claw, pushing the antennae away. “Shove off, big guy.”

Emma tapped her rod against the wall above her head. The scorp spun toward the sound, confused.

Emma drove in the bolts. The double booms and sparks did the trick—the scorp dropped to the floor and disappeared down the tunnel.

Havens’s voice came through. “Camera Five is receiving.”

Lucien whispered into the mic. “Booker, Pinch is still here, but some of the others have left. I’m getting an impression of agitation. I think you better hurry.”

One more camera to go. We turned toward the towers and hiked through the curving streets, climbing as we approached the center of the ruins. We’d selected a site atop Epsilon tower where the camera would see the curves of the streets and the sides of the tall edifices.

The scaffolding was still in place from when Amy and Gupta had fled that last day of the dig. When I gave it a shake, it wobbled a bit but seemed solid enough for a little person like Emma. I nodded. Without a word, she clambered up like a monkey.

Standing at the scaffold’s base, I couldn’t see far, but skittering and clacking sounded from nearby.

Lucien called, “Booker? Pinch is on the move. You’d better get out.”

I switched on the mic long enough to answer. “This is the last one. We’ll be out soon.”

A crack of bolts, another moment to adjust the camera, and Emma was down.

“Camera Six is receiving,” came Havens’s voice. “Scorpidons are observing you.”

“They’re all over,” Emma whispered. “We need to get out of here.”

“Right. We’re heading out.”

The curving of the streets meant there was no direct route back to the access tunnel in the northwest end of the chamber. I led the way southwest, to a street that would curve back toward the north.

Emma gasped. “Not this way.” As she spoke, four scorps dropped from the high walls in front of us, waving their claws.

“Perhaps they’re only curious,” Havens said.

A scorp stepped forward and rose up, brandishing its claw.

“I don’t think so.” I held out a stun rod like a sword. The scorp surged forward.

“Antenna,” Emma whispered.

Zap. I fired at its antenna. It jumped back.

“Here, this way!” Emma turned west and pelted down the street.

“Wait!” I called. But she’d already stopped, facing more scorps blocking a narrow passage.

“Here, there’s an opening!” She turned into a passage to the right.

I grabbed her arm. “Stop! They’re herding us into a dead end. Follow my orders, remember? Now stay close.”

Small scorps lined the walls. Antennae waved as we walked, as if the scorps were tasting the air.

As we marched back to the center of the ruins, a few scorps stood in the pathway. Emma and I clumped together, stamping our feet and tapping our rods on the stone floor, and the scorps retreated.

I found the lane I was looking for and turned south, leading Emma to another dead end. I set the ladder up against a wall. “Climb.”

The top of the wall was the beginning of another street that sloped upward, curving north. More scorps waved antennae at us, but they retreated into crevices as we approached. Finally, we reached the wider streets at the ruins’ edge and made our way to the path to the overlook.

“Camera Two shows activity around the access tunnel,” Havens said.

Emma was breathing hard. At the overlook, I stopped her. “Catch your breath before we enter the tunnel.” A couple of scorps that had followed us up the path inched closer. “Give me your lure.”

Emma unslung from her shoulder a tightly wrapped sack. With my folding knife, I ripped open the side and looped the drawstrings over a stone outcrop at the side of the path, then pushed the sack over the edge so that it dangled beside the cavern wall below us. Scraps of vegetable peelings, rockskipper shells, and leftover gumbo dribbled out.

It worked. As soon as the scorps caught the scent of garbage, they turned and clambered over one another to try to reach the sack.

“Go!”

Emma entered the tunnel first, keeping her wristlamp focused ahead. With rustling and clicking, rockskippers and sandbugs withdrew into their holes.

We climbed the steep trail, twisting higher. Emma had begun to pant, reminding me of Ambrose’s labored breathing as I’d helped him limp out that last day. If I’d known he had a weak heart, I’d have put him on my back and carried him. But then, if I’d known he had a weak heart, I would have sent him packing back to Prime as soon as he set foot on Silverrock.

Clack, clack.

Two leopard-sized scorps stood in our way, antennae waving. Their big claws snapped.

A glance over my shoulder confirmed my fear. “Behind as well,” I whispered.

From my pack, I unslung a second sack of food scraps, ripped it, and threw it awkwardly behind me.

With a flurry of clicking and scrambling, the scorps went for the food.

“Down!” I pulled Emma under me.

The scorps ahead of us wouldn’t allow themselves to be left out of the feast. They clambered right over us, sticking their pointed legs onto my neck and back and between my legs. Without armor I would have been skewered.

“Go!” We jumped up and began to run up the path. We rounded a bend, and then another, and had just twisted around a third when Emma gasped and fell backward, nearly knocking me over.

A wolf-sized scorp stood over her, his claw gripping her foot. I recognized the bullet furrow on his back: Scrape.

I snapped my stun rod toward his antenna. His claw worried at Emma’s foot like a hyena at a carcass.

Boom.

The flash of light and sudden noise hit me like a fist. Emma had shot a bolt into the tunnel floor. In the cramped tunnel, the sound tore through my eardrums. Reverberations shook the ground. The scorp shuddered but still held on.

Boom. I felt, rather than heard, the second bolt. Scrape dropped his prize and scuttled away. Ears ringing, I heaved Emma up and we ran the rest of the way up the tunnel, into the blessedly fresh air of a starry night.

CHAPTER 17

Evidence

HALFWAY DOWN the dirt track to the ranch, I stopped the hopper. Making sure the mics were off, I said, “This is more private than the house. Lucien passed the test. It wasn’t just any scorps that came to the carcass because they smelled food—it was Pinch. Even you can’t explain that away. Lucien really does talk to scorps.”

Emma bit her lip. “It seems impossible, but . . . poor Lucien.”

“At least he’s not crazy.”

She sighed. “Not yet, maybe. But can you imagine the torture, being force-fed thoughts from aliens? Not nice aliens but dirt-crawling, garbage-eating scorps. They’re so different from us—their whole sensory array is geared toward touch and vibration. Not the soft touch of skin on skin either. For them, the world is hard . . . and dark.”

Put like that, it sounded horrible. “We need to get him off the planet.”

She nodded slowly. “We will, but not yet. As long as he’s willing to go on and capable of rational thought, we can use him. If he can glean enough knowledge from the scorps to translate the glyphs, that will open a whole new insight into the Builders. We need to persuade Havens that the key to the first-contact assessment is for Lucien to read the glyphs—even if that means him tapping into the thoughts of an ugly cannibal scorp to do it.”

“Hide the pea—got it. All without her or Samson twigging to the real prize.” I was so beat, I couldn’t stop my yawn.

She rubbed my shoulder. “Let’s go, big guy. It’s been a long day and a longer night. We’ll both think much more clearly after some sleep.”

The camera feeds were mesmerizing. I’d thought of the Pueblo as the deserted remains of a bygone society. Instead, the cameras revealed the ruins to be a scorp city as active and vibrant as any human slum. The scorps didn’t just traverse the Pueblo; they inhabited every cranny. The blank, rounded windows became scorp-sized doorways. The moundlike buildings became islands, each ruled by a dominant scorp, bounded by no-man’s-land pathways. Shadowed nooks that the archeologists had ignored resolved into exit tunnels in regular use by scorps of all sizes.

The action was so engrossing that I shoved the dining table to the side and turned the room into an observation center with multiple monitors and some comfortable chairs. Samson didn’t even bother with the table, just balanced brunch on his lap. Even Lydia enjoyed the show, sitting beside Lucien on the battered couch.

Far from resting underground after a night of foraging, scorps came and went on mysterious errands all through the daylight hours, touching antennae with everyone they met. Little rockskippers were underfoot too, picking at tiny bits of algae and scampering out of the way of any approaching scorp, like sandpipers following the ebb and flow of waves on the shore. Their caution was justified: scorps seemed to like rockskipper meat just as much as Silverrock’s colonists, snatching a leg off any rockskipper within reach and devouring it on the spot while the hapless rockskipper limped away.

Samson’s tags made a difference in how I thought of the scorpidons. With every scorp on the monitor labeled with its number, they were no longer anonymous claws in a crowd but individuals, each with its own role in the hive. Pinch occupied a high-profile spot near the south wall, flanked by a couple of regular associates, Highlander 033 and Highlander 035. He got frequent visitors, often bearing food offerings.

“He looks like a politician collecting bribes,” I said. “He must be the boss—clearly bigger than his flunkies, and way more intimidating with that extra claw.”

“Which one’s the queen?” Lydia asked.

Havens answered, “We haven’t seen any scorp big enough to be a queen, but we must assume she is nesting somewhere near.”

“Could the Highlander queen be the same one I saw in town?” I asked.

Lucien answered immediately. “No. Pinch’s queen is in the caverns. I can’t tell you how I know, but I know.”

Samson shrugged. “Lucien’s impression may not be scientific, but it’s consistent with our deductions. Remember at the dump, how the Valley scorps ran when the Highlanders arrived from the hills? That’s the sort of behavior you’d see when rival groups approach disputed territory. The queen you saw in Sweetwater City is likely the Valley queen. If, as you say, the caverns are humid, there must be water within them, and the Highlander queen would most likely stay close to her water source.”

Watching from a nearby vantage point was Highlander 121 with his own group of followers. I pointed. “I know that one—that’s Scrape. The long scar and the missing leg segment are from my shots.”

Emma patted my hand. “Don’t worry, you don’t seem to have done him any permanent harm.”

“Worry? I don’t feel guilty. That bastard killed Professor Ambrose.”

“It probably wasn’t intentional,” Samson said. “Scorps inflict leg injuries on one another all the time, but since the legs regenerate, it does no serious harm. It was just a tragic accident that in the professor’s case, the injury triggered his heart problem.”

“Tell that to Ambrose.” I couldn’t forget the dedicated archeologist whose ashes I’d had to send home in a box.

“You’re all to be congratulated,” Havens said. “Samson’s been able to tag nearly all the larger scorpidons we’ve observed in the caverns. The cameras are revealing essential information about their lives. A good start on understanding their social structure.”

“More important,” Emma said, “when Lucien called Pinch, Pinch came. That’s pretty strong evidence of Lucien’s telepathy. Lucien, I apologize. I should have been more open-minded.”

Lucien’s eyes lit up. “You believe me, then?”

Havens’s smile turned brittle. “Emma, you yourself told us that venom could not have endowed Lucien with telepathic capacity.”

Emma sat very straight. “As a scientist, I have to accept that my prior analysis was incomplete. When observed phenomena appear to conflict with the laws of nature, science has to seek out the reason.”

“Then I assume you have formed a theory?”

Emma nodded slowly. “Venom wasn’t the only substance delivered to Lucien through that sting. It’s possible that Pinch infected Lucien with a microbe—a viral pathogen that fostered the growth of neurons specifically in the communication centers of Lucien’s brain.”

Lucien rubbed his forehead. “So I’m not insane, I’m just infected?”

Lydia snuggled closer to him. “I knew you weren’t crazy. They shoulda listened to you.”

Samson snorted. “A telepathy-causing virus? That’s incredibly unlikely. How could something like that have evolved?”

“It couldn’t,” Emma snapped. “But it could have been engineered. Something the Builders developed to facilitate communication with other species.”

Of course, I thought. Thanks to Professor Ambrose, we knew something Havens and Samson didn’t: our scraps of organically grown tech had already proved the Builders were masterful genetic manipulators.

Havens was silent a long minute, tapping a gnarled forefinger on the chair arm. “That is . . . possible,” she said at last. “While the Coalition has said it knows little of the ancient race we call the Builders, the use of genetic engineering to introduce useful traits into plants and animals is quite widespread among advanced species. Since the Builders were certainly capable of interstellar travel, it is highly possible, even probable, that they were also proficient in genetic engineering.”

“A telepathy virus would be a handy thing to have,” I said. “A way to train animals to do your bidding.”

“It also would explain some of the otherwise inexplicable features of Lucien’s telepathy,” Emma said. “For example, why he’s the only human on Silverrock who’s contracted the virus. If I were creating a telepathy virus, I’d build in certain safeguards to be sure the individual heard only my thoughts to avoid enmeshing the individual in a chaos of conflicting communications. That means the virus shouldn’t be transmitted easily—not by casual contact, like breathing or eating—because that would spread the telepathy too widely. I’d engineer it to be passed on only to an individual who was specifically targeted.”

“Like a big dose of virus being injected directly into the bloodstream,” Lucien said, rubbing his chest.

Emma nodded. “I’d also use a virus that mutates regularly in order to limit the telepathic contact to the individuals sharing only that specific variant of the virus.”

“So I can hear Pinch because he gave me his virus,” Lucien said. “But I don’t hear the others, or at least not as clearly, because their version of the virus might not be an exact match.”

“Right.” Emma smiled. “And you don’t hear other humans at all, because we haven’t been infected.”

Havens sighed. “An elegant theory, Emma. But is it testable? We must have more than theory and subjective impressions.”

Emma stared into the monitors, chewing her lip. “I suppose it’s not advisable to infect one of us with Lucien’s blood.”

“And spread the virus?” Lucien shuddered. “Absolutely not. But”—he looked up hopefully—“if it’s a virus, it must be curable?”

Emma took his hand in hers. “I’m sorry, Lucien. Even if we could isolate and cure the virus, it’s already made changes to your brain. Those changes are probably permanent.”

Lydia blinked, her mouth trembling. “He should go away. Leave Silverrock so the scorps’ll leave him alone.”

“If Emma’s theory is correct, that might not help,” Havens said. “There are telepathic species among the Coalition who are not limited by distance. Indeed, one of them uses telepathic pairs to communicate instantly between star systems.”

Lucien shrank into his chair. “So I can’t escape? Even if I go home, I’ll be like this, hearing Pinch’s thoughts . . . until I die?”

“Don’t give up,” Emma said. “Now that we have a theory as to how the telepathy works, we’ll work on finding a medication to block the neural receptors.”

“Kill Pinch.” Everyone turned to me in shock, but the answer was obvious. “Kill Pinch and all the scorps that have the same virus. That would end it.”

Havens’s lips twitched in what she might have thought was a smile. “I believe it was you, Booker, who first suggested that scorpidons might be sapient and worthy of protection.”

I folded my arms. “I’d hate to kill any living creature, but spreading a plague is an act of war. At the very least, it’s a crime. Even under the edict, Lucien has a right to defend himself.”

Lucien’s head drooped. “I’ll keep that in mind as a last resort. For now, I think we should use my . . . affliction to learn everything we can.”

“Bravely said.” Havens gazed at the group as if weighing the courage of the rest of us. “If Emma’s theory is correct, it casts a new light on Pinch’s attack on Lucien. He was treating you as another scorpidon. Asserting his dominance.”

Lucien licked his lips. “I think there was more to it than that. The communication I get from Pinch isn’t as precise as language, more like impressions, but I think he’s intelligent enough to understand cause and effect. Suppose Pinch knows exactly what he’s doing. He overpowers a rival scorp and stings him. From then on, he can communicate with that scorp directly, maybe even give that scorp orders. It’s more than dominance; it’s control.”

That worried me. “You think Pinch wants to give you orders?”

“I think when Pinch stung me, it was his attempt to open communications with humans.”

Lydia frowned. “Why’d it have to be you? Maybe he shoulda stung Professor Ambrose—he was the one in charge.”

“But I was the one examining the glyphs.” Lucien nodded toward the monitors. “You can see for yourself how they crawl over the south wall again and again, like reading a favorite story over and over. They’re reading the glyphs.”

Samson peered at Lucien, eyes narrowed. “That’s not logical. If the Builders infected scorps with a virus so they could communicate with them, why would they bother writing in glyphs?”

Lucien shrugged. “For the same reason we use written words: information storage. The Builders wanted to reinforce something to the scorps, to have it there to remind them even when the telepathic link was not available.”

“But that wall is fifty thousand earthyears old,” Samson said. “Cultures rise, change, and disappear in a few hundred years. How likely is it that current scorps can still understand the glyphs?”

Emma tented her fingers. “Actually, it’s plausible. You can’t judge by human experience—telepathy changes everything. Each human starts from zero, putting our own interpretation on everything we learn. But if scorps learn telepathically, information could be passed between generations without distortion. There’s no need to slowly build up a knowledge base, no room for dilution or misunderstanding.”

“Then they should be geniuses,” I said. “We spend a third of our lives learning what we need to know just to function as adults. Imagine if a child could learn all her mother’s knowledge in just one dose of a virus. No need for schooling or for learning by experience: she’d learn it all in just one day. And that child could pass it on to her own children together with everything new she learns during her life, generation after generation. If each scorp can spend their whole lives building on the knowledge of their ancestors, there’s no limit to what they could learn.”

Emma smiled. “Fortunately for us, there is a limit—neural capacity. Piling more information into its brain can make the animal smarter, but at some point, its ability to process that information is overwhelmed. Looking at the total neural network in the scorp I dissected, I’d estimate its capacity is less than that of a chimp. If scorps can read glyphs, it would be like a chimp learning a list of commands—sit, fetch, eat, quiet. A chimp might learn a hundred words and even be able to create sentences of a sort, but it will never be able to design a rocket.”

Havens shook her head. “This is all fascinating speculation, but we need proof—proof of scorpidon telepathy, of Lucien’s telepathic connection, and of scorpidon reading ability.”

“If I can decipher the glyphs,” Lucien said, “then humans—any human, not just me—could talk to the scorps. That will be your proof.”

Havens gazed out the window as if wishing she’d never set foot on Silverrock. “Very well. Proceed with your translation effort. In the meantime, the rest of us will study scorpidon sentience with more conventional means.”

CHAPTER 18

Intelligence Tests

WE SPENT MOST of our days in the dining room, glued to the feeds from the cavern.

On a couple of evenings, Samson and I went out to the dump so Samson could tag Valley scorps. He tagged a good number of the early scroungers in the first hour, but then the Highlanders showed up, and after a bit of posturing on both sides, the Valleys scarpered.

During the days that followed the closing of the dump, Ugarte’s deputies drove by from time to time, enforcing the edict by ticketing anyone caught leaving garbage or setting rockskipper traps. It worked well enough that the garbage soon looked sparse and picked over. Scorp activity lessened, although whenever Highlanders and Valleys met, there was a flurry of dominance fights.

I asked Lucien how the Valleys were related to Pinch and his friends.

Lucien shrugged. “They’re not in his telepathy chain—he barely registers them as scorps. If he comes across one, he’ll try to sting it to bring it under his control.”

Samson was eager to locate and tag a scorp queen, but we had no luck with that. Lucien said the Highlander queen lived deep in the foothills, but she never appeared on the cavern cameras. According to the sheriff, no one in town had reported seeing the Valley queen since the night of the waterworks invasion. Samson and I did a little poking around during the day, following Valley scorps to their hideouts to try to find their queen. The problem was that the Valleys didn’t seem to have a home base—day and night they foraged, scavenging near the waterworks, the hydroponics farms, the transit depot, and even in the alley behind town hall. The few times we tracked one to a lair, it was nothing more than a hole in the ground barely big enough for one or two scorps.

A supply run into town brought home to me the depth of the edict’s effects. The prosperous bustle on Venture Avenue had been reduced to a few slouching souls peering into half-empty store windows. A pall of reeking smoke hung over streets from backyard trash incinerators as townies got rid of trash that normally would have gone to the dump to feed the rockskippers and scorps. The price for rockskipper meat had already doubled, as the best trapping site was now off-limits.

At my report, Havens’s gaze didn’t move from the monitors. “I’m well aware of the animosity. It is irrelevant to our task.”

“It’s not just that everyone in Sweetwater City thinks we’re antihuman. The edict is causing more confrontations between scorps and settlers, not less. Now that the dump’s closed, Valley scorps are coming right into town, looking for garbage to eat. The sheriff told me he’s had more calls about scorp sightings in town in the last week than he had all last year. Last night, one went all the way up onto somebody’s back porch and ate the dog’s dinner. Then it killed the dog and ate him too.”

“A temporary problem,” Havens murmured. “The scorpidons have developed an unhealthy dependence on humans. I’ve explained to the mayor that the town must incinerate their waste promptly. Once the scorpidons learn that food is not readily available from human settlements, they’ll revert to their natural food sources.”

“People have tried that with rats since agriculture was invented,” I said. “It never made rats go away.”

“And scorps are a hell of a lot smarter than rats,” Samson said. He’d begun his problem-solving tests at the place where we’d dumped the carcass. There he’d erected a contraption that required the scorps to use a stick to lift latches to get at the bait—smelly offal—and he’d set up a camera to record the response. Just to be sure Lucien couldn’t give the scorps any telepathic hints, Samson routed the images only to his mocom.

That night, Pinch had arrived with a small Highlander entourage shortly after sunset. They solved the puzzle in less than a minute, devoured the bait, then hung around for over an hour before moving on.

“Pinch wants more,” Lucien said.

The next night, Samson left three tests of increasing difficulty. Pinch solved all three within hours, distributing the bounty to a few followers. As before, he waited.

“You’re playing with him,” Lucien said. “He doesn’t like it. He just wants the food.”

Samson had nodded. “Most of the scorps can solve a simple one-step problem, rather like a human five-year-old. Pinch seems to be a little ahead of that: he’s at about the level of an eight-year-old human. Lots of trial and error, easily frustrated, but given enough time, he can solve a three-step problem. Tonight I’m setting out something a little more sophisticated.”

That night, it wasn’t just Pinch’s team who showed up. Scrape was right on his heels, leading a mob.

What followed wasn’t pretty. Snapping claws targeted legs and antennae as scorps fought for the bait.

“Are there two sides?” I asked Lucien. “Or is it every scorp for himself?”

Lucien watched with a pallid stare, a hand over his mouth as if he felt sick. “I’m not sure. Pinch is frustrated with Scrape, like he’s a pesky little brother who won’t let you finish your homework.”

The testing apparatus wasn’t solved; it was demolished. The scorps fought over every last scrap of bait before wandering away, many with a leg less than when the evening began.

“Just like humans,” I said.

At our breakfast briefing the next morning, Samson summed up the current findings. “So far, the Highlander scorps have shown reasoning ability but very little evidence of culture. Pinch is the one most innovative with the test apparatus. He’ll use sticks or rocks if we provide them, but we’ve seen no evidence that he or any of the other scorps will create a tool.” He seemed disappointed. “Worse, while many of the scorps have solved the simplest puzzles, none of the other scorps seems to have learned to copy Pinch’s techniques to solve the multistep problems. While our speculations about telepathy make the species interesting, Pinch doesn’t seem to be passing his learning on to other individuals. That doesn’t bode well for finding culture.”

“Maybe the others are just lazy,” I said. “Willing to let somebody else do the work. Or maybe, since he’s the dominant one, they don’t dare interfere with him.”

“Maybe. But all other attributes of culture are also lacking. In all our observations at the dump or in the caverns, we’ve seen no sign that they construct anything—no ceremonial objects, and no sign of rituals connected with death.”

Lucien cleared his throat. “That stinging thing might be a ritual.”

“Or the equivalent of canine mutual tail sniffing,” Havens said. “Of more interest is that the Valleys, when presented with the same sort of tests, were unable to solve more than the simplest.”

Lydia wrinkled her nose. “What does that mean?”

“It might simply mean the Valleys are hungrier,” Emma said. “They may be too preoccupied with finding food to expend the energy to solve the tests.”

I nodded. “They’re hanging around town, trying to scrounge food, but without a good den to hide in, they’re always on the move, even in daylight. They could be getting desperate.”

“Or,” Havens said, “it could be a more accurate measurement of scorpidon intelligence. Pinch seems to be a highly motivated individual, but without evidence of cultural transmission of knowledge, I must conclude that scorpidons are not sapient.” She sat back with a small smirk of satisfaction.

“You can’t reach that conclusion so quickly,” Lucien said. “They can read, I’m sure of it.”

Havens raised her chin. “So you claim. Yet even with your purported psychic help from Pinch, have you been able to understand the writings?”

Lucien licked his lips. “I have clues.”

“Clues, but nothing meaningful. It hardly seems a fruitful area of research.”

I was getting tired of this. Havens reminded me of an officer I’d known—straight out of military academy, believing he knew it all, only to be utterly lost the first time he faced a life-or-death decision and too afraid of losing face to ask for help from the battle-tested soldiers under his command.

“All due respect,” I said, “but you’re going at this translation problem the wrong way. Lucien’s looking at the glyphs and trying to figure out what they mean, like breaking a code. Try going from the other direction—figure out what the Builders were telling the scorps and then you can see how the glyphs fit.”

Havens peered at me like I’d grown an extra head.

“Look,” I said. “The Builders were advanced enough to have some kind of stardrive. To them, the scorps must have seemed just as primitive as a dog or a donkey seems to us. What sort of thing would humans use animals for?”

“Drag a cart,” Lydia said promptly. “Fetch and carry.”

“Right. And what would the Builders have wanted scorps to fetch and carry?”

“Food?” Samson offered. “Help with a harvest?”

I shook my head. “Scorps would eat food, not carry it. The only thing the Builders wanted from Silverrock was the minerals. We can take a reasonable guess what the Builders wanted to tell the scorps: bring us the minerals we want, and we’ll—”

“Give you food.” Lucien brightened. “That must be what the orange glyph is—the glyph that always appears at the end of a connected chain.”

“Right—as a reward.” I was proud of my logic. “Our miners spend all their time trying to separate mineral-rich bits of ore from worthless rock matrix. The Builders might have trained scorps to do the same—pick through mounds of mineral-bearing gravel for the richest nuggets.”

Lucien grinned. Lydia beamed.

Havens rapped her knuckles on the table like a judge calling for order. “This is absurd. You’re spinning wild theories.”

“Inductive reasoning,” Emma murmured. “Perfectly appropriate when trying to formulate a hypothesis.”

“It’s a reasonable suggestion,” Lucien said. “One that might help direct our research.”

Samson shook his head. “I like your approach, but it seems too coincidental. How likely is it that when the Builders came to Silverrock, they just happened to find a species compatible with their telepathy virus who also happened to be well adapted to performing a task they needed? I mean, if they needed a helper species for the mining, wouldn’t they have just brought their service animals with them?”

“Maybe they did,” I said. “Do we know for sure that the scorps didn’t come with the Builders?”

Emma answered: “I’m afraid so. The fossil record is extremely sparse—few animals survived the loss of surface water. But rockskippers and sandbugs are clearly close genetic relatives of the scorps. Their presence must mean they all evolved here.”

Havens nodded as if she’d proved a point. “Lucien, you may, of course, continue to pursue your academic research into the inscriptions, but they are not relevant to the assessment of scorpidon sapience. For purposes of my mission, we must rely on traditional anthropological methods.” She stood, wiping her hands on her shirt as if she were brushing away our nonscientific suggestions.

“Fine,” Lucien snapped. “Then I’ll need to go back to the Pueblo.”

“No,” Lydia whispered.

Havens halted midswipe. “Why?”

“Whatever you may think, I do have a connection with Pinch. If I go to the south wall with him, I think I’ll get a better idea about the meaning of the glyphs.”

“Impossible,” Havens said. “Too disruptive, and too dangerous.”

Lucien rubbed his chest. “Emma and Booker went in safely. The scorps left them alone until they started making noise. If I keep quiet and act subservient, I don’t think I’ll have any problem.”

“Pinch may not want to hurt you,” I said, “but he’s not the only scorp around. It’s the other one, Scrape, that’s more aggressive.”

One side of Lucien’s mouth twitched up. “That’s why you’ll have to come with me.”

“No.” Havens took a step toward the door, apparently determined to have the last word. “We installed the cameras precisely to avoid extraneous contact with scorpidons. I will not permit unnecessary intrusion into their nesting area.”

“I disagree,” Samson said.

Havens stopped in her tracks. Emma, Lucien, and I all turned to him in surprise.

“The proposed intrusion is minor,” he said, “especially compared to the history of daily visits from the archeologists. It seems imprudent to ignore a potential source of information simply because it’s unconventional. After all, when dealing with another species, it could be presumptuous to imagine that human conventions apply.”

I held my breath. Being imprudent, making assumptions, applying human conventions—those were all items high on the standard list of things to avoid when dealing with non-homs. That list had been drilled into every human who lived outside Earth’s solar system. A dissenting report from Samson that accused Havens of those sins would not go over well with the Coalition.

Havens looked like she was sucking a lemon. “Very well. Lucien may go, with Booker to provide security.”

When she’d left the room, Lucien made a grave little bow to Samson. “Thank you.”

Samson shook his head. “Don’t thank me; it’s probably a fool’s errand. Based on the evidence we have, scorps don’t come close to meeting the definition of sapience. If you really think you can add something useful, do it fast. The Coalition sent Dr. Havens here in the expectation that she’d quickly shut down any suggestion of sapient life on Silverrock. The last thing she wants is complications.”

Emma raised an eyebrow. “And you’re different?”

He grinned. “Hell, yeah. I’d love to make a name for myself by opening up relations with a previously underrated sapient species. So if there’s any chance Lucien is talking to Pinch, I’m all for it.”

CHAPTER 19

Reading Lesson

AT THE ENTRANCE to the access tunnel, I paused. Mic on mute, I asked Lucien, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

He nodded with no trace of the hesitation he’d shown when he’d last entered the cavern with me and Emma. “I’m sure. Every day, I’m understanding more of what’s going on in Pinch’s mind. He wants me to understand him.”

Great. Now he was thinking like a scorp.

We were both in full armor. At Lucien’s suggestion, I’d fabricated a collapsible staff for each of us, two meters long and thick enough to grasp easily.

“I don’t expect trouble,” Lucien had explained, “but the way they greet one another is with their antennae. We can use the staff the same way, so it feels familiar to them.”

Familiarity was all well and good, but I’d added a stun tip to each staff just in case familiar did not mean the same as friendly.

“For the record,” Havens intoned from base, “I have authorized this expedition to permit a team member to investigate a theory involving scorpidon interaction with the cavern inscriptions. This expedition is to proceed with minimal disruption to scorpidon behavior.”

When I reached for the tunnel lights, Lucien stopped me. “Minimal disruption—our shoulder and wristlamps will be enough. Remember, we’re the visitors here—this is Pinch’s home. He’ll be more likely to communicate if he’s comfortable.”

As we navigated the tunnel and entered the dark cavern itself, I was distinctly uncomfortable. When we’d been digging in the Pueblo, the spotlights had kept the scorps away. The night Emma and I had come to install the cameras, most of the scorps had been away foraging. But this was daytime, and without the dig’s spotlights, everyone was home. Everyone. Big scorps sitting in high places like kids playing king of the mountain. Medium scorps defending the perimeters. Little scorps scurrying up and down walls, chasing rockskippers out of the way. They glowed in our helmets’ thermal cameras, scampering into crevices as we followed the Pueblo’s winding pathways.

“Play your helmetcam over the walls,” Samson called from base. “I want to get a population estimate.”

At the inscribed south wall, Pinch was waiting for us. He bristled with antennae, his big double claws held at the ready like a boxer waiting for the bell.

His retinue, Highlander 033 and Highlander 035, opened a space for us to approach.

“Bow,” Lucien said.

Bloody guts. “I’ve got to bow to a scorp?”

“Subservient behavior. Point your staff down and make yourself small.”

He angled his staff down to tap the floor in front of Pinch and bowed, one leg in front like a ballerina.

Clenching my teeth, I copied his gestures, feeling like a fool. Apparently, I’d become Lucien’s entourage.

One of Pinch’s antennae whapped us gently on the back. A politician greeting a voter couldn’t have done it better.

Lucien straightened. “Good. We’re in.” Cautiously, he touched the tip of his staff to the inscription. Pinch twitched two of his antennae forward to triangulate on the same glyph. “This one means a food reward,” Lucien muttered. “I thought so. Are you recording this, Samson?”

“Got it.”

Lucien moved the staff to an adjacent symbol. The antennae followed. “I think this means home, the Pueblo.”

Slowly, man and scorp together felt the wall, tracing the intricate carving. “Water,” Lucien said. “Tunnel. Dirt . . . ? Something unwanted that should be carried away. It’s hard; I can’t understand . . . This one’s something to be brought, perhaps the minerals like Booker suggested.”

Around us, scorps went about their scorpy business, clicking, twitching, touching antennae as they clambered through the neighborhood. Atop the building mounds, the local moguls greeted smaller constituents and accepted tributes of food morsels.

Lucien’s voice notched to a higher pitch. “This is a diminutive. This one . . . something tall? Oh! I think this might be the glyph for the Builders. He feels something like reverence when he touches it. He seems to want me to linger on it. It has a modifier meaning good. Yes—touch, touch, touch. Perhaps there’s still a mythology of sorts about them. All right, moving on; he’s pushing me to another one. The concepts are too different—there’s so much I’m missing . . .”

“Watch your back,” Samson called. “There are some scorps coming in from the east. It’s Highlander 121 and two of his followers.”

“Scrape!” I pushed Lucien so his back was to the wall and placed myself in front of him, staff at ready.

But Lucien had a stronger defender than me. Pinch himself stepped between us and Scrape, penning us in behind his legs. His stinging tail arched above our heads.

I examined his backside, looking for weak points. I’d killed a scorp the last day of the dig, but that was a small one, easily destroyed with a pistol shot. Killing a scorp the size of Pinch would be much harder. The shell looked as thick as my wrist, as solid as a brick wall. Would a shot into the carapace’s central seam penetrate the shell? Would it do enough damage to disable? To kill? With the scorp’s redundant vital systems, I couldn’t be sure.

But for the moment, Pinch seemed to be an ally.

“Booker, our cameras can’t see you among the scorps,” Emma called. “Are you safe?”

“Safe? Hardly.”

“Pinch is protecting us,” Lucien answered. “We’ll be fine.”

“Try not to provoke them,” Havens instructed. I wished she’d shut the hell up if she didn’t have something useful to say.

Pinch and Scrape faced one another, sizing each other up.

While his entourage guarded his flanks, Scrape raised his body. Pinch stretched his legs to match him. The scorps in the audience crowded close enough to touch antennae, waving them like semaphores.

“Classic dominance display,” Samson said. “Each trying to use size to intimidate. Pinch is a little bigger.”

Standing on arthropod tiptoes, Scrape raised his giant display claw. The crowd’s antennae twitched excitedly.

In answer, Pinch raised both his claws, snapping one after the other in turn. The crowd shuffled, clearly impressed.

Then, like the flicking of a switch, the gathering stilled. The combatants dropped into a crouch, bodies tense. The entire scorp mob cowered with them.

Boom.

Lucien slapped his palms to the side of his head. “Stop. Make it stop.”

The sound roiled through the cavern, echoing from a hundred walls.

Havens’s voice sounded in my helmet. “What was that? What’s happened?”

“Blasting. The miners must be close.”

Scorp antennae trembled like a winter gust blowing through a leafless forest. Scrape turned and scampered away, a dozen other scorps in his train.

Pinch spun to face us. One of his small feeding claws darted out to snatch up Lucien’s dropped staff. He tapped it against the wall, again and again.

Lucien recovered enough to take hold of the staff. “Noise. Bad, bad. Yes, I understand. The noise has to stop. Booker, we’ve overstayed our welcome. The queen says we have to go.”

The debrief session took place in the parlor, with Lucien staring at the south wall replica while Lydia plied him with tea. On the monitors, the scorps were thinning out as the approaching sunset heralded another night of foraging.

Lucien rubbed his head. “The blast was very close, unbelievably awful. If scorps had voices, they would have been screaming. The noise doesn’t just cause the scorps pain; it blocks out their main senses. For those few seconds, they can’t hear or see or feel. It’s terrifying, like their world has come to an end. The queen was very angry.”

Havens’s fingers twitched. She looked like a spooked cat, ready to spit. “Are you now claiming to be in touch with the Highlander queen?”

Lucien swallowed. “After the blast—that’s the first time I’ve clearly heard the voice of another scorp, someone more important than Pinch. She sent Scrape somewhere else—I think to chase the miners out. Then she said Booker and I had to leave.”

“We haven’t seen the Highlander queen,” Samson said.

“I think she stays deep in the tunnels.”

“Do you hear the queen directly?” Emma asked. “Or through Pinch?”

“Through Pinch, I think. But the queen’s voice is strong, and it seems to echo through the scorps. It’s like being in a crowd, and someone shouts fire and everyone passes it on.”

Emma tapped her fingers thoughtfully. “She must sit at the top of the telepathy chain. Over the years, she must have infected Pinch and all the larger scorps with her version of the virus, and they’ve passed it on in turn to the scorps they’ve infected.”

Lucien traced his fingers over the replica wall. “The communication system is like the glyphs. Each one is connected to others, and she’s at the end of every chain.”

Lydia shuddered. “Like a spider sittin’ in the middle of a web.”

“More like a general,” I said. “The queen gathers intelligence coming up from the ranks, then she passes her instructions down through the chain of command. Lucien, did she issue a general order to chase away the miners? Or did she differentiate between Pinch and Scrape?”

“She spoke to Scrape and his party first, then told Pinch to make us leave. It’s not like she called them by name, but I knew who she meant.” Lucien looked up. “Does that mean something?”

“A separation of functions,” I said. “Common in tribal warfare. Scrape has always been the more aggressive . . . or, I should say, the one who takes lead on defending Highlander turf from intruders. He could be the military arm, the war leader. Pinch, on the other hand, is the communicator, the negotiator. He’s like a diplomat, one with the long-term goal of preventing conflict with us.”

Emma’s brow creased. “What are you thinking, Booker?”

“From the way they faced up today, I’d say Pinch and Scrape are rivals. Pinch is a little bigger and he’s got that extra claw, so in a one-on-one duel, he’d have an advantage over Scrape. But if Lucien is right, this isn’t just a dominance issue between the two males: the queen is the one making decisions for the Highlanders. So every time some lowlife miner sets off a blast near the scorp den, Scrape’s military faction is likely to gain influence with her. Pinch seems to want to communicate with us, but we’ve been slow to understand. Worse, our response has been to cut back on their food supply.”

I turned back to Havens. “You said humans should be treating the scorps as if they were sapient, and if they are, we might want to talk to them. If that’s the goal, we should be doing everything we can to make Pinch look good to the queen. We need to show her that negotiation will get them what they want. You should reopen the dump.”

Havens’s jaw clenched. “I cannot reverse a central provision of the edict based solely on the claim of a single human to have psychic knowledge of scorpidon intentions. Show me proof that Lucien’s interpretations are based on more than intuition.”

“A reading test,” Lucien said. “With the vocabulary Pinch has given me, I think I can construct simple sentences from the glyphs.” He turned to me, eyes alight. “Just like we fabricated the wall—we could fabricate building blocks, each containing a single glyph. Put them in a frame to string together a question and provide glyph blocks for the scorps to construct an answer—an answer that anyone could read for themselves. That would be proof, wouldn’t it, Dr. Havens?”

“Yes,” Samson answered.

After a glance at Samson, Havens nodded regally. “If we must entertain this speculation, then it seems a reasonable test. Proceed.”

Over the next days, the team spread out between the dining room–turned–observation room and the parlor–turned–glyph center. I fabricated glyph blocks, each as big as my spread hand, hexagonal in shape so they’d fit together in a frame. In theory, anyone with a vocab list, a basic knowledge of scorp grammar, and a heap of blocks would be able to put together a scorp sentence. And if the scorps wanted to talk to us, they’d have the raw material to do it.

“You’ve got mostly nouns,” I said, stacking glyph blocks into a honeycomb frame. “Food, water, home.” A glyph of concentric circles was the one Pinch had jabbed so insistently before escorting us out. “This one’s noise, isn’t it?”

Lucien quirked a smile. “In his mind, it’s almost a profanity. You have to understand, I don’t hear these as words. But individual glyphs invoke a concept, and I’m putting the concepts into English as best I can. Some are pretty clear in my mind, like this one: I’ve translated it as bad, but the concept is one of discomfort, a painful vibration. Good isn’t exactly the opposite; it’s more like a feeling of satisfaction after eating something tasty. Some concepts I can’t translate at all.”

I recognized a long, skinny glyph as the one Pinch had touched so reverently. “This one’s the Builders?”

“Maybe it’s a physical representation,” Samson said. “According to Professor Ambrose’s description, they were tall and thin. If we’re right about the Builders being the source of the inscriptions, this glyph could be a self-portrait.”

Havens examined one of the blocks. “Have you any verbs?”

Lucien ran his fingers over the replica wall. “This one is bring or carry. This twisty spike is an adjective: many or more. The wedge-shaped spike is a diminutive. This hook is a negative.”

Samson shuffled blocks. “I suppose the connectors might take the place of verbs, or they might indicate combination words.”

“How are we going to know?” I asked. “Butterfly is a combination word, but it has nothing to do with butter or flies.”

“There will be ambiguity, at least at first,” Lucien said. “We may make mistakes, just like anyone learning a new language.”

“That’s no comfort,” I mumbled. “Usually the chief diplomat in a war zone isn’t trying to make peace while learning the language.”

We were interrupted by a call from the sheriff’s office.

“Ugarte said to give you a heads-up,” Deputy Chang said. “All hell is breaking loose here. One of your scorps hurt a kid in town, and everyone with a gun or a box of explosives is heading for the caverns to wipe ’em out. And some of them might stop at your place on the way.”

CHAPTER 20

Confrontation

“IT’S WRONG,” Lucien said. “All wrong. It’s the Valley scorps who are foraging in town and scaring the locals. The Highlanders are innocent.”

Dr. Havens turned to me urgently. “Booker, we must go to the cavern entrance and ensure the settlers do not intrude into scorpidon habitat. Lucien—if you can do so, please urge the scorpidon leaders to avoid a confrontation.”

Lucien shook his head. “I’ll try, but the cavern is more than the Highlanders’ home. It’s something like sacred to them because of the connection to the Builders. They’ll defend it.”

I was already going for armor for myself and a set for Havens. “Emma, Samson, lock the gate behind us. Lydia, you might need that scattergun.”

Lydia grinned. “If anybody tries anything on my property, they’re gonna get peppered.”

We drove into the night, Lucien and Havens still donning armor as the hopper bounced up the track to the caverns. Lucien was gravely intent. “Pinch is there. So is Scrape.”

As we approached the tunnel entrance, the prospects for reconciliation didn’t look good. At least twenty vehicles were already drawn up before the gate. Headlights lit the scene.

Sheriff Ugarte, who had never lacked guts, was arguing with a couple of townies carrying rifles. One had a sledgehammer, ready to smash down the gate.

“This must be stopped,” Havens said. “Booker, help me up.”

I handed her to the top of the hopper, then turned the hopper’s spotlights toward the crowd, dazzling their eyes. Switching my helmetmic to amplify, I called, “Quiet! Dr. Havens has something to say.” I took a step down so Havens, atop the hopper, towered over me. In armor, she looked almost formidable, more tiger cub than kitten.

“I represent the Stellar Coalition on Silverrock,” she said. Her amplified voice reinforced the illusion of strength. “Your entire colony treads upon thin ice. In this single emotional outburst, you are justifying every suspicion the Coalition has about human lawlessness. Your attempt at vigilante justice reinforces every antihuman prejudice. The Coalition has the power to declare this planet off-limits to humans for violating their lawful orders. Do not give them an excuse to do so.”

“We can’t stand by when scorps hurt our kids!” someone called. “They’re vermin, and we need to burn ’em out!” The crowd shouted approval.

Ugarte yelled, “You’re going to get the whole planet deported!”

A few miners stepped forward, and the deputies raised weapons.

“You have legitimate concerns,” Havens said, “but by descending into mob action, you are risking your homes and your livelihoods. The edict is temporary. It will last only as long as necessary to determine the status of scorpidons. But your refusal to obey it could result in irrevocable damage to your colony. Go home now. I will meet with your leaders tomorrow to discuss ways to prevent confrontations between you and scorpidons. But I promise you, the edict will be enforced. Any colonist who is found to have wantonly harmed scorpidons in violation of the edict will be deported.”

I had to admire her courage. To give her a little help, I turned the spotlights onto the fields beyond the crowd and called, “Look around you.”

Scores of scorps surrounded the vehicles. Standing on a bit of high ground was Pinch, brandishing his massive claws, backed up by his entourage. On the next hillock was Scrape with his.

“Sweetwater City belongs to you,” I shouted, “but the foothills are their territory. In the caverns, they don’t need a map and they don’t need light. Anyone who goes in there may not make it out again.” The crowd started to murmur apprehensively.

“They hurt Raul’s son!” someone shouted.

“The boy’s getting medical care,” Ugarte called. “You’d do better to help Raul’s family instead of causing trouble up here. Get back in your vehicles and go home. Anyone still here in five minutes will be arrested and deported!”

As grumbling townies slunk back to their vehicles, Ugarte turned to someone lingering nearby. “Tú también, Berto. Por favor.” His brother, a smaller, younger version of the sheriff, glowered resentfully but turned and left with the others.

In minutes, the hoppers were grinding down the track, the scorps parting to let them pass. Scrape stood his ground, clacking his big claw.

As the deputies herded the towns’ stragglers, the scorps began foraging. Pinch and Scrape hung back, antennae waving. I wondered if they were talking to one another.

Sheriff Ugarte sidled up to me. “Thanks for the help. Your scorps don’t have any friends left in town. That includes me.”

I wondered how the creatures had become my scorps. “These aren’t even the right scorps—the ones hanging around the town are a whole different bunch.”

He grunted. “A scorp is a scorp. We could use a lot less of them.”

“How’s Raul’s kid?” I asked.

“His foot’s tore up pretty bad. His own fault—he’d cornered one of the scorps and was chucking rocks at it.”

“Meet with me tomorrow,” Havens said. “We will discuss ways to keep the human and scorpidon population separated.”

Deputy Chang nudged me. “What’s your man doing?”

I followed his nod to where Lucien stood beside Pinch and his cronies.

“We’re learning more about them,” I said. “Lucien thinks we can find a way to communicate.”

“Communicate with a scorp?” Ugarte spit to the ground. “Grand. Tell ’em to leave our kids alone.” With another spit, he sauntered to his rover.

Once Havens was safely back in the hopper, I went to round up Lucien. “Pinch was pretty restrained, considering,” I said. “Do you think your influence did any good?”

Lucien shook his head. “He was restrained only because the people were outside the tunnels. If they’d gone inside, there would have been a bloodbath.”

The next day, Havens met with the mayor and her cronies in Sweetwater City, armed with information about what areas to fence off to discourage scorpidons from nesting near town. She advised them to put more lights on Venture Avenue, and to issue warnings to the children not to tease the scorps the way Raul’s son had. Havens told us later that the mayor became a little more cooperative once Havens offered to have the Coalition pay for the extra lights.

Lucien, Samson, and I were busy readying the glyph blocks for our attempt to communicate with scorps. After some discussion, we’d ended up fabricating three each of all thirty-two different glyphs that appeared in the cavern inscriptions, whether or not Lucien knew what they meant, plus multiple copies of all the little spikes, hooks, and twists that served as connectors.

“Don’t expect too much,” Samson had said. “Training animals is a long process. The initial task is just to introduce the idea of using the glyph platform. Even if they associate the glyphs in the cavern with specific meanings, they may not understand that glyphs someplace else have the same meaning. It may take time before they understand that our glyphs are a message from us, and more time before they use any glyphs to respond in a meaningful way.”

Havens frowned. “I am indulging this reading test in deference to the theoretical possibility raised by Lucien. However, there is a limit to how much time we can devote to a futile exercise. All our observations so far have yielded no evidence that scorpidons possess anything approaching learned culture. No ritual, no construction, no tool making. All as expected—the Coalition would have uncovered any such indicia of sapience long before they approved the planet for settlement.”

With a glance at Emma, Lucien said, “To be fair, we have to give the scorps a chance. After all, the Coalition didn’t know about the ruins either.”

“They shall have their chance,” Havens said. “But we’ve seen how much this investigation has interfered with the lives on Silverrock. Out of fairness to the colonists and the mining interests, I cannot justify keeping the edict in place much longer.”

As sundown approached, Lucien and I went to the test site, the place Samson had staged his problem-solving puzzles. The setup was simple: the honeycomb frame, as sturdy as I could make it, and the jumbled heap of glyph blocks nearby.

I nodded to Lucien. “We’re ready. Tell Pinch we have a message for him.”

Lucien fitted a single block into the center of the frame: food.

We retreated to the hopper to wait. On the hill nearby, a camera transmitted the action to the team back at base.

As the light faded and the air cooled, clicks and rustles heralded the arrival of scorps. Antennae waved above the foliage.

A dozen scorps stepped out of the tall grass. The little scouts reached the platforms and stacks of blocks and clambered over them.

Behind them came Pinch. He approached the platform, touching it with his antennae, tracing the grooves of the single glyph.

“Now,” Lucien whispered.

I uncovered a large barrel of vegetable scraps and shoved. When it hit the ground, it tipped over nicely, spreading the garbage.

There was a mad scramble of scorps large and small. The garbage heap hosted minor squabbles as each creature rooted and tugged for morsels. Only Pinch stood apart, lingering at the message platform.

“Time to go,” I said.

By the time we got back to base, the rest of the team were crowded in front of the monitors.

Samson looked up as we came in. “Food sharing. Pinch stayed near the platform and let the smaller scorps bring him bits. The bait was devoured pretty quickly. Most of the scorps have moved on to forage now, but Pinch is still there.”

Havens murmured, “Lucien, if you don’t mind?”

Lucien shook himself and nodded. “Right. I’ll be on the porch.” As with the problem-solving tests, he’d agreed not to watch the monitors, to reduce the possibility that he might guide Pinch’s reaction. With a sniff, Lydia followed him out.

I sat next to Emma, watching Pinch mess around with the loose glyph blocks. He picked up blocks with his minor claws, three and four at a time, feeling them with his antennae. Then he dropped them and went back to the platform to feel the food glyph.

For long minutes, he just sat still except for his twitching antennae. I went to the kitchen for coffee, pausing long enough to glance at Lucien and Lydia cuddling on the porch steps.

Back in the observation room, Havens, Samson, and Emma were glued to the monitors. Pinch had returned to the jumble of blocks, poking and prodding. He picked up a selection and carried them to the platform. Moving quickly, he inserted them around the food glyph. Then he turned and disappeared back into the brush.

“Can you identify the glyphs?” Havens asked.

Samson zoomed in on the neat grouping of blocks.

Checking the vocabulary list, Emma pointed. “He added the glyph for the Builders above our food glyph, together with a diminutive. Above that, noise with the negative hook. Below, he added bring and the modifier for more.”

“There’s your answer,” Samson said. “Complete sentences, with the subject in the middle just like the inscriptions. Little Builders: Bring more food. Stop the noise.”

He looked up with a grin. “Symbolic language, passed down through many generations. Intelligence plus culture. The scorps are sapient.”

CHAPTER 21

Sapience

I RUBBED my hands over my face, scarcely able to believe it. “It can’t be chance. There were more than a hundred glyph blocks there, and I made sure they were all mixed up.”

Havens sat rigidly in front of the monitors, wringing her hands over and over—I’d had to call Lucien in myself. She looked shrunken, like she’d aged ten years from one hour to the next.

Emma frowned at the monitor, biting her lip. “Lucien? Perhaps you subconsciously . . . ?”

He shook his head. “Without being there to see the glyphs, there’s no way I could have guided him to choose those particular ones.”

Lydia folded her arms, chin high. “Lucien told you. He’s been tellin’ you from the beginning, and you wouldn’t listen.”

“It’s all right.” He draped his arm over her shoulder. “I always knew it sounded insane.”

Emma pulled her chair next to Havens. “Dr. Havens? Are you all right?”

Havens stared straight ahead, her eyes glassy. “I didn’t realize . . . The Coalition was so sure this planet had no sapient life.” She let Emma take her wrist to check her pulse.

“That’s the problem with believing in non-homs,” I said. “You didn’t think the Coalition could have made a mistake like that.” I almost added They’re only human. “You came here assuming scorps couldn’t be sapient, that this was a false alarm. You were wrong. I was wrong. The whole Stellar Coalition was wrong. Lucien’s been communicating with Pinch all along.”

“Bad news for the colony,” Samson said.

Lydia looked up in alarm. “The bucketheads can’t really make us leave, can they?”

The despair in her face filled me with guilt. My fault. I was the one who’d first raised the possibility of scorp intelligence. Lydia and every other colonist would lose their homes, be forced to make a new start on some other world. Worse, I didn’t think Silverrock’s farmers and miners would go quietly. There could be riots, armed rebellion. Like Canton all over again.

Havens took a deep breath. “The Coalition will make a decision whether to evacuate. I’ll have to make my report.” She looked like she’d rather face a firing squad.

“There’s no hurry,” Emma said, looking concerned. “We have to think it through. We still know so little about them. Humans and scorps have lived together for thirty earthyears—another day or two while we consider our next steps won’t make any difference.”

I held my breath. An immediate evacuation wouldn’t just plunge the colony into chaos; it would spell the end of progress on deciphering Builder technology.

Havens slumped back into her chair. “Perhaps you’re right.”

Samson was still staring at the scorp message. “Little Builders. Do the scorps think we’re the Builders, come back to visit?”

Lucien jittered, twining his fingers. “That glyph might simply mean alien or stranger. The scorps revere the Builders as the ones who constructed the Pueblo and left the inscriptions. To the scorps, they’re almost like gods.”

Lydia muttered, “I don’t want to go to that church.”

I took a good look at the long, thin glyph that might be the closest thing we had to a portrait of the Builders.

“From the scorp point of view,” Emma said, “we might seem similar to the Builders. We’re aliens. We arrived in ships. We construct buildings, just as the Builders did. We’re interested in the minerals, just like the Builders. We walk upright—not as tall as the original Builders, perhaps, but still taller than the scorps.”

“No wonder Pinch wanted to talk to us,” I said. “They must have been pissed off when we didn’t get in touch with them telepathically.”

Emma cocked her head. “Little Builders. In scorps, size correlates with age, so the diminutive marker might mean both small and young. Lucien, do you think Pinch could have meant young Builders?”

Havens looked up. “Why do you ask?”

“An intelligent crustacean must have difficulty understanding what we are. All the native species have an exoskeleton, but we have no shell and very few legs. To the scorps, we must seem quite primitive. Immature, like larvae.”

I whistled. “We’re not little Builders. We’re baby Builders.”

Lucien nodded slowly. “If Pinch thinks we’re immature, that could explain why he’s been so patient, so willing to teach me. He must be waiting for us to grow into something bigger, stronger. Smarter, more like their gods.”

“Being a god might not be so good,” I said. “Gods aren’t always worshipped. Sometimes they’re feared. Pleaded with. Hated and cursed when things go wrong.” I’d certainly done my share of cursing the gods after I lost my legs. “What do you think they’ll do when they figure out we’re not going to get any more godlike?”

“They’ll adapt,” Samson said. “Or they’ll kill us. Just like humans.”

That night, sleep didn’t come easy. I must have tossed and turned too much, because Emma grunted and punched me in the arm. “You’re as restless as a frog on a hot plate. What’s wrong? Are you worried about the poor settlers?”

“Of course I am. They’re about to be kicked off the planet.”

She snuggled closer. “Good old Booker, always so responsible.”

“Somebody needs to be. You don’t think the colonists will give up their homes easily, do you?”

“Easily, no—until somebody offers them a profit.” She propped herself onto her elbows. “If scorps are sapient, that means the mighty Stellar Coalition has made a huge error. Think of the embarrassment! Humans would have a good case to demand compensation for them sending us to an out-of-bounds world. I’ll bet that if Venture Mining makes enough of a stink, the non-homs would give us another planet, a better planet, to make up for the inconvenience. And don’t underestimate Venture Mining’s capacity for delay. They’ll use every tactic at their command to harvest a few more gigatons of rare earths before they go.”

Since when did powerful rulers worry about being embarrassed? I thought she was wrong, dead wrong, but I didn’t want to start a fight. “I hope so. At least the delay will give Lucien a chance to do his job. With Pinch’s help, he should have no trouble translating all the inscriptions. That’s what you need, isn’t it? More insight into the Builders’ thought processes.”

Emma’s eyes glittered in the dim light. “You’re thinking too small. I gave Lucien the samples Ambrose left behind. The Builders trained scorps to sort through rock and fetch minerals, right? Soon we’ll have our own army of scorps bringing us all the tech samples we can use.”

“That would be treating scorps like work animals. Like slaves.”

She scrunched her nose at me. “Oh, Booker—always so righteous. I’m talking about a mutually beneficial, purely voluntary exchange of goods for services. Tech for table scraps, win-win, everybody goes away happy. All we need is a little more time. That’ll be my job, convincing Havens to drag things out so Lucien has room to maneuver. Your job is to watch Lucien’s back. Whether Havens likes it or not, he’s going to be spending a lot more time with Pinch.”

The rest of the night, my dreams were filled with Canton’s broken bodies and crawling scorps spelling out words I couldn’t read. Long past dawn, I dragged myself out of bed to find that everyone else had already breakfasted and tensions were high.

Lucien fidgeted near the door. “Dr. Havens, I have to go. Pinch wants me to join him in the tunnels.” Lydia sat nearby, her breakfast left half-eaten.

“No, Lucien.” Havens turned her focus back to Emma. “I see no reason to delay sending my report to the Coalition. My task was to ascertain whether scorps are sapient, and I have done so. Your approval is not required.”

Emma’s voice was honeyed. “My approval, no. But as a member of the team, I have a responsibility to provide context to help the Coalition make a fully informed decision. That’s prudent, surely?”

“Dr. Havens,” Lucien said, “this call comes through Pinch, but it’s the queen’s voice. I have to go.”

Havens barely glanced at him. “Absolutely not, Lucien. You will not engage with the scorpidons without instructions from the Coalition. Emma, you are welcome to convey to the Coalition your findings from the dissection. But what happens to the colony here is not my concern—or yours. Our mission is complete.”

“My research extends far beyond a dissection. As the team’s exobiologist, I look at the entire planetary ecology. If your report is simply a bare conclusion that scorps are sapient, the Coalition will likely order the immediate evacuation of the planet. That would do more than disrupt tens of thousands of human lives. In my professional opinion, it could destroy thousands of scorp lives as well.”

“Nonsense,” Havens said. “Removing humans will simply restore the planet to its natural state, allowing the scorpidons to live their lives in peace.”

Emma waved a hand toward the monitors displaying the scorp day shift at work. “That might have been true if the Coalition had done its job from the beginning, recognized that scorps were sapient and banned colonization. We’re way past that now. For thirty earthyears, ever since the colonists arrived, scorps and humans have intertwined their lives. We provide scorps access to our garbage, and in return, scorps dispose of it. A trade of services, a lot like the way humans developed a relationship with cats.”

“Cats aren’t sapient,” Samson said. The camera at the message platform still displayed the glyphs placed by Pinch. Baby Builders: no noise, bring more food.

Emma kept her focus on Havens. “We’re the ones who made scorps dependent on us. For all practical purposes, we trained the scorps to expect food at the dump. Then we took it away, forcing the Valley hive to look for food in town. If humans suddenly withdraw from Silverrock, it could cause scorp starvation on a large scale.”

Samson cocked his head. “We need significantly more information to understand the possible effects of a human evacuation. Pinch asked for food, and the Valley hive is already in distress. At the very least, there would have to be some remediation of the damage done by capping the spring and building the town over scorp territory.”

Havens’s fingers twisted and twined. “That is not our decision. Our mission ends when we pass the information to the Coalition.”

“Just following orders?” I asked. “Damn the consequences? We have relevant field intelligence: if we fail to put that intelligence into our report, you can’t pretend we’re not responsible for the outcome.”

Lucien spoke softly. “The Builders used scorps as servants—slaves—and then abandoned them. That event hasn’t faded with time. After fifty thousand earthyears, the scorps remember it, and yet they still revere the Builders as gods. What will it do to them if we abandon them too?”

Havens fidgeted her fingers, her lips taut.

Lydia looked up at Lucien. “What do you think we should do?”

His gaze strayed to the dark foothills. “The scorps deserve a voice. We should ask them what they want.”

Samson smiled.

Havens’s eyes widened. “No! You are absolutely not authorized to negotiate with the scorps.”

One side of Lucien’s mouth lifted. “I don’t think you understand. I wouldn’t negotiate with scorps. I’d negotiate with you.”

Though I feared the answer, I had to ask. “What do you mean?”

Lucien laughed, a chuckle without humor. “Don’t you see? Pinch’s sting wasn’t an attack, he was opening a channel to communicate. He was making first contact with us. By making me part of his telepathy chain, Pinch made me the scorp ambassador to humanity.”

CHAPTER 22

Audience with the Queen

WHEN SAMSON backed up Lucien’s request to attend the Highlander queen’s audience, Dr. Havens didn’t approve so much as surrender. “This must be an information-gathering expedition only,” she told Lucien. “Except as instructed by me, you are not to make any sort of proposal or commitment on the part of humans.”

Lucien nodded as if he cared what she said.

When we got to the access tunnel entrance, I asked Lucien, “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

He quirked a smile. “How can I ignore a royal summons? The queen is calling—every scorp in her chain of telepathy will be there.”

“That doesn’t include me.”

Lucien and I were suited up in armor. My backpack had the usual nutrition bars, water, and first-aid kit. I also carried a camera and a sackful of small repeaters—if we were going to penetrate the tunnels beyond the Pueblo, we’d need them to relay signals back to base.

“We’ll be all right,” Lucien said. “If we meet one of the bigger scorps, just act subservient. They’ll let us by.”

Bowing and scraping to scorps stuck in my craw. Even as a grunt in the militia, I’d stood upright to salute the brass. Still, the caverns were the queen’s castle, so I supposed it was only polite to adhere to the scorps’ customs.

I keyed the mic to base. “Samson? Are you reading us?”

“Got you. Good luck.”

Lucien was already charging down the path. Feeling a little foolish, I spoke for the record: “This is Booker. Lucien and I are entering the caverns. We’ll be penetrating farther into the tunnels than before in response to a telepathically received request from the queen.” I turned on my wristlamps and shoulderlamps and stepped into the tunnel.

As we descended the myriad shallow steps, we were hit with the tang of scorp guano. Our steps echoed against the clicking and scrabbling of the rockskippers and sandbugs. The twists and turns should have seemed familiar, but instead they were as alien as the first time I’d entered the tunnel.

At the overlook, our lamps’ meager beams scarcely seemed to penetrate the dark. I saw so few scorps that I looked at my own hand to make sure the thermal camera was working.

“Where is everyone?” I asked. There should have been scorps scouring algae from the Pueblo’s floors and walls, greeting each other with clacks of their claws, and scurrying along the streets. Instead, only the little rockskippers and a few small scorps manned the Pueblo’s ramparts.

“Gone to the queen.” Lucien led the way through the meandering pathways.

At the inscribed south wall, Lucien paused long enough to brush his hand over one of the glyphs—the one for the Builders. I settled for a military salute. It couldn’t hurt to show respect for the neighbors’ gods.

At the entrance to a tunnel on the south side, Lucien didn’t hesitate. Bending low, he ducked into a hole partially blocked by rubble.

With a deep breath, I followed—my first steps beyond the cavern mapped by the archeologists.

I had to hunch down and keep my head bent, trying to watch my footing while avoiding banging my helmet on the ceiling. “The tunnel is low but wide,” I transmitted to base. “I’d guess it was made for scorps and not the Builders.” The tunnel had an ancient feel to it, worn smooth by the passage of countless scorps. It curved and twisted gently downward. “There’s a slight draft—the air’s heavy with the damp.” Our footsteps and my own harsh breathing echoed in the passage.

“Booker—we’ve lost the feed from Lucien. Better . . . repeaters . . .”

As the channel from base changed to static, I stuck a repeater into a crevice and activated it. “Samson?”

“That’s better. Even if we get nothing else out of this expedition, we’ll be able to extend our map a little.”

“As long as no industrious scorp tidies them into some hole.” I prayed to the underground gods that Lucien wouldn’t have to ask some helpful scorp to guide us out. Maybe I should have memorized the glyphs for Which way to the exit?

Lucien kept a steady pace, choosing branchings without hesitation as the tunnel angled down. Every two hundred paces I planted a repeater.

A big scorp coming from a side entrance lumbered into our path. We stood aside. It felt us with its antennae and went on by. After a few more turns, I heard another approach from behind. I hugged the wall. The scorp brushed by us with barely a twitch.

At a point with a cool updraft, I paused. “There must be a natural chimney here.”

“Are you encountering any resistance?” Emma asked from base.

“Not so far. They don’t seem to see us as a threat.”

At the two-kilometer point, I heard a rhythmic, distant pounding. As we approached, it became louder and resolved into beats.

“Lucien?” I called. “What’s that noise?”

“We’re getting close.”

The sound was much louder now, like the rhythmic clapping of hundreds of hands.

I didn’t think it was hands.

Ahead of us, two large scorps stood guard. They reared up and brandished their claws. Beyond them the pounding noise boomed—the clacking of hundreds of huge claws in a chamber large enough to echo and enhance the sound.

“Show subservience,” Lucien said. He bowed low.

I copied his bow. “Excuse us, gents.”

“This way.” Lucien led me left, into a small path twisting upward.

The path was narrow and steep. A dozen or so legs would have been a big help. And maybe even two or three claws to carry my pack.

The path ended at a ledge where a few small fry clicked their claws in time to the beat, their antennae quivering with excitement like kids peeking through the fence at a circus. Lucien shoved them aside to give us room.

Our ledge looked out on a cavern room, maybe as big as the ranch compound. My helmet’s thermal display was filled with ghostly, glowing forms of hundreds of scorps. The largest ones congregated in the middle of the room, crowding the smaller ones to the periphery. All clacked their large claws in a slow, steady beat.

“I think we’re here,” I said.

“There’s the Highlander queen,” Samson breathed. “Holy hellhounds, look at her! She must be ancient.”

In the center of the room was a scorp as big as a hopper, even bigger than the Valley queen we’d chased out of the waterworks. The plates of her carapace were grossly thick and gnarled. In a sea of snapping claws, only she was motionless, her large display claw held before her like a scepter. Small scorps scurried over her like ants, bringing morsels of food to her mouth and cleaning her legs and shell.

Lucien pointed to three massive scorps standing nearest the queen, doing nothing but twitching their antennae around. “Those are sentries. They guard the queen.”

“Booker,” Samson said. “The camera.”

“I’m on it.” I positioned the new camera on the wall above the ledge, where it would have a good view of the chamber. I triggered the bolt driver to coincide with the noise. Clack, clack, bam. Antennae twitched, but the sound was nearly drowned out by the general cacophony.

“Receiving camera signal,” Samson confirmed. “Thanks, that’s a much better picture.”

I stowed the bolt driver in my pack. The team at the ranch would have its own balcony seat in the royal chamber.

“Where’s Pinch?” I asked.

Lucien pointed. “Front row, on the right.” Among the largest scorps in the rank nearest the queen, he snapped his double claws in time to the rhythm.

“And Scrape.” Just to Pinch’s right, Scrape stretched as high as he could and clacked his single fighting claw.

I panned the room so the helmetcam could catch everything. Stalactites hanging from the ceiling showed that the winter rains must have seeped through the limestone. On the floor, a cleared path led from the monstrous queen toward the wall on my left. I peered down to see where the path led, but below me was a patch of inky blackness bordered by myriad scorp bodies.

“Is that a hole?” Samson asked. “A tunnel entrance, maybe?”

I aimed my wristlamp down—and a light flashed back. Immediately, I doused my light. “Hell, I think someone else is here.”

Emma chuckled. “It’s water, reflecting your lamp.”

Water. Of course. Its cooler temperature made it look black in the helmet’s thermal display. Cautiously, I shined my light down again. The water was scummy with algae—uninviting for a dip, but on Silverrock, any fresh water was a precious commodity.

“Good to know my hypothesis was correct,” Emma said. “It’s logical for the queen to nest near the water supply.”

“Something’s happening,” Lucien said.

As the clacking quickened, the queen began to raise herself. Her body looked too heavy for the skinny legs to lift, but as we watched, she managed to raise her massive front to show her underside. There, her carapace plates bulged at the seams, and between the plates were glistening globules.

“Eggs,” Emma said. “They look ready to spill from her brood pouches.”

Havens cleared her throat. “Lucien, please extend to the scorpidon leadership our appreciation for this opportunity to observe the Highlander queen. On behalf of the Stellar Coalition and the human colonial administration, we formally express our, um, best wishes for a long and productive reign.”

I suppressed a chuckle. No scorp would know or care what she was saying, but she’d no doubt make sure her supervisors at the Coalition saw the recording.

Clack, clack. The rhythmic pounding rose to a crescendo. Among the crowd near the queen, the biggest scorps began to surge forward, rising up and extending their antennae toward her. The three quiet sentinels stolidly held their ground.

The queen elevated her body even more, and the clacking stopped. The globes bulging from her underside shimmered and pulsed.

One of the small attendant scorps rushed forward. A little creature the size of my hand dropped out of the queen’s brood pouch, legs waving, and was deftly intercepted by the attendant. The attendant scurried to the pool of water, brushing aside all curious antennae. As more eggs hatched, other attendants darted to the queen and swiftly took the hatchlings to the pool.

“Marvelous,” Emma said. “This answers so many questions about their life cycle. Scorps are ovoviviparous—the eggs are fertilized internally and gestate in the brood pouches until ready to hatch. Once they hatch, the young must develop in water.”

The hatchlings came by the dozens, by the score, as the attendants ran back and forth between the pool and the queen. She stood with her huge body raised on her many spindly legs, swaying slightly as wave after wave of her brood poured out of her.

When the flood of hatchlings slowed to a trickle, the attendants crawled over the queen to be sure none were missed. Then the queen slowly lowered her body and settled on the ground. The crowd around her seemed to sigh in relief and began a quiet whispering of clicks and rustles.

“Incredible,” Samson said. “We’ve been invited to witness something never before seen by a human: the birth of scorp young. It’s an honor.”

“The Coalition will be pleased,” Havens said. “Lucien, please convey the felicitations of the Stellar Coalition on the hatching of a new scorpidon generation.”

I was ready to go home and celebrate, but the crowd didn’t break up yet.

Clack. Clack. At first, random clacks sounded. Then others joined in, and a slow rhythm began again.

“What’s happening now?” Samson asked.

Lucien chuckled. “Now comes the important part.”

The queen’s underside seemed flat and empty. Clack. Clack. The sound pounded in my head, and the smell of hundreds of scorps caught in my throat.

The three sentries nearest the queen remained where they were, antennae extended. But as the synchronized pounding of claws reverberated through the cavern, the crowd’s first rank—the biggest scorps—rose high, clacking their claws and extending their stingers.

A scorp near Pinch darted forward. He raised himself as high as his legs could stretch and waved his large claw. The sentries felt his display with their antennae, and even the queen reached her antennae forward once, but nothing more happened. He dropped back.

Two more scorps extended their claws as high as they could and presented themselves to be touched by the three sentries and the queen. After receiving a touch, they fell back. It looked like a crowd of penitents asking for a bishop’s blessing.

Then Pinch rose up. Even I could see that Pinch was bigger and stronger than the prior aspirants, his unusual two large claws drawing attention.

Immediately, Scrape jumped to the front, nearly as large and more aggressive. My helmetcam caught Scrape standing on the legs of a nearby scorp to appear taller.

The sentries carefully felt both rivals. The queen’s antennae lingered over each, then the three guards shifted aside to let one of the contenders approach the queen.

Pinch was the chosen one. Scrape dropped back.

As Pinch drew near, the massive queen rose again until she was nearly vertical. The rhythmic pounding grew deafening.

“Look,” Emma said. “She’s not just bigger; she has an extra pair of legs.”

Pinch grasped the edge of her carapace and extended his sperm transfer legs, inserting them between the plates of her underside into her brood pouch.

Emma hummed in appreciation. “Mmm, mmm, mmm. Already she’s storing sperm for the next clutch of eggs. Very efficient.”

“A birth and a wedding,” Havens said. “We are privileged. Lucien, once again, please convey our congratulations to the queen and Pinch, her chosen consort.”

As Pinch stood with her, his underside exposed, the queen swiftly brought up her tail. Pinch shivered as the queen’s stinger penetrated his belly.

I cringed. “What’s she doing?”

“She’s renewing the telepathy virus,” Emma said. “She must be tying Pinch closer to her thoughts and feelings.”

Beside me, Lucien sighed.

Suddenly Scrape leaped forward over the guards and inserted his small sperm legs into the queen’s underside as well. The rhythm became an inchoate roar as more scorps surged forward, all trying to reach the queen. The sentries were overwhelmed. Soon the queen was nearly invisible, covered by rampant scorps.

Eventually, scorps began to fall away from the scrum, spent or injured. The sound died down and scorps drifted away, first the small ones, then the larger adults. The queen’s coupling ended. She lowered herself cumbrously. Pinch dropped to the floor, resting. Scrape was nowhere to be seen.

As we joined the departing throng, I nudged Lucien. “Pinch must be pleased. He won the queen.”

“Maybe,” Lucien said. “But that doesn’t mean their rivalry has ended.”

It took some time to navigate our way back. It was uphill all the way, and by the time we reached the Pueblo, the flesh-and-blood parts of my legs were about to give out. At the overlook, I had Lucien stop for a bit so I could rest.

Lucien called base. “We’re still in the Pueblo. We’ll be home in an hour, so save us some supper.”

“Glad you’re all right,” Samson whispered into the mic. “You better get back as soon as you can. Dr. Havens already filed her report with the Coalition, and all hell’s breaking loose.”

CHAPTER 23

Fireworks

WHEN LUCIEN and I got back to base, Havens and Emma were nowhere in sight. Alone in the observation room, Samson was rerunning the recorded images from our excursion.

He quietly filled us in. “After you two left the queen’s chamber, Emma told Dr. Havens she’d need time to process the new information before she could finish her write-up for the assessment. That’s when Dr. Havens admitted she’d already sent her conclusion that scorps are sapient to the Coalition—without Emma’s input.”

Lydia brought us plates of rockskipper lasagna. “That Emma, she gave Dr. Havens a piece of her mind but good. Said she was grievously violated and she was a blot.”

“Egregiously violated scientific standards,” Samson translated, “and her report was a blot on the annals of exoanthropological analysis.”

Lydia nodded cheerfully. “That Emma, she knows an awful lot of big words, and some of ’em not very nice.”

Samson’s lips twitched. “Emma didn’t waste any time. She immediately sent her own analysis to the Coalition, saying that scorps were likely to starve without us. Worse, she accused Dr. Havens of rushing the process, excluding relevant information from her report.”

That made me wince. Whether human or non-hom, there was nothing a bureaucrat would hate more than someone taking shortcuts on process.

Lucien rubbed his face, looking bone-tired. “This is absurd. We were only gone half a day. Couldn’t Havens have waited until we got back?”

Samson dropped his voice further. “I think Dr. Havens was hoping she’d be sent home right away, job done. She wanted a nice, clean determination of not sapient to prove to the Coalition that she’s a team player.”

“And instead she’s had to convey a huge embarrassment to the Coalition, probably trigger a planetary evacuation, and every human on Silverrock is going to hate her.” I rubbed my jaw. “Did anybody warn the town that she’d reached a conclusion?”

Samson nodded. “That was part of the fireworks. Emma sent a copy of both reports directly to the mayor and to Venture Mining. Venture’s already posted an official objection. They must have had it all lined up, a gargantuan filing, filled with numbers, dates, and details. It will take the Coalition lawyers a week just to read the thing. In the meantime, everything’s on hold until the Coalition makes a decision. Now the two of them have stomped off to their respective rooms.”

Lucien pushed his plate aside. “Wonderful. Now everybody on Silverrock, the university, and the Coalition is going to know I hear scorp thoughts. Everyone’s going to think I’m either a lunatic or lying or a scorp tool. I’m too tired to deal with this. I’m going to take a shower and get some sleep.”

When I took our plates to the kitchen, Lydia turned to me, her face drawn with worry. “Booker, what’s gonna happen now?”

“I don’t know. It’s pretty clear the scorps are more than mindless beasts. What the Coalition will do about it is hard to predict.”

She bit her lip. “What about Lucien? Is he gonna be all right?”

Why would she think I’d know the answers? But then I thought of my sister and all the romantic drama she’d gone through at Lydia’s age.

“He shouldn’t stay here,” I said, as kindly as I could. “Hearing thoughts from a scorp isn’t good for him. He needs to go back to Prime and get cured.”

Lydia nodded like she’d known it all along.

On my way to the shower, I knocked on the door to Emma’s lab. “You all right?”

She was at her computer, bristling like a porcupine. “You heard that Havens sent her sapience report? The coward. She couldn’t face me for a rational discussion, so she went behind my back. She saw Silverrock as her chance to make a big splash with the Coalition. First-contact assessment, follow all the rules, show the non-homs that humans could be part of the team. But nothing’s gone like she expected. Now she has to rely for information on Lucien, someone she suspects is either lying or psychotic, and it’s making her feel like a fool.”

“She’s an anthropologist,” I said. “She knows how to read body language. She knew you were dragging your feet.”

Emma turned to me, determination tightening her jaw. “I’m not dragging my feet—not anymore, anyway. This is about more than keeping access to the Pueblo. Your audience with the queen raised some important questions.” She turned back to the computer, intent. “Go away now. I have work to do.”

The food and a shower made me feel human again. The sun was down and I dearly wanted to sleep, but instead I dressed for a trip to town.

On my way out, I told Samson I was going to Sweetwater City. “Keep the gate locked and tell everyone to stay inside until I get back.”

“Maybe you should stay here,” he said. “By now, everyone in town will know about the sapience report. There may be trouble.”

“That’s why I’m going. Havens is talking to the Coalition, Lucien’s talking to the scorps—somebody’s got to keep open the channel of communication to the ordinary folks in town.”

Sheriff Ugarte said he was willing to talk to me—as long as it was over an ale with me buying.

When I entered the Oak Leaf Tavern, I got a few dirty looks and turned backs but nobody threw a punch. In fact, the crowd was remarkably jovial for a colony living under an eviction threat.

Ugarte came in with Doc Slade in tow and hard-stared a couple of farmers into giving us their table.

“Thanks for being seen with me.” I passed the pitcher of ale.

“Is it true?” Slade asked. “Does that young man I treated really have some sort of telepathy with those creatures?”

“I was skeptical too, but that seems to be the case. Some kind of engineered virus brought it on.” I gave them a quick rundown of the experiment with the glyphs. “It’s rough, but the words are put together in a way that makes sense. We had an idea of their intelligence from the problem-solving tests, but we were all taken by surprise.” Well, all but Lucien.

“He should tell ’em to stay the hell out of our town,” Ugarte growled.

“You know, Sheriff, that’s pretty much the same thing the scorps said.” I topped up his mug. “But the scorps here in town are from a different hive. They aren’t the ones we can talk to. At least, not yet.”

Slade wiped foam from his lips. “Sapience. That damn report gives the Coalition the right to kick everyone off the planet.”

Ugarte grinned. “I’m not worried. What with counterclaims and appeals, Venture Mining will keep the whole thing tied up in court for years. Hell, all our grandchildren will be grown by the time they figure it out!”

“The status quo is not a good situation,” Slade grumbled. “There’s still no immigration or construction allowed.” He raised bushy eyebrows at me. “I’m too old to start someplace new. How do you see this all working out?”

“Best case, we show the non-homs in the Coalition that we can deal responsibly with a developing species. We make a truce with the scorps, stay out of their territory. Move the dump farther from town, feed them our garbage, and put up a fence to remind them to stay on their side of it. Maybe provide some water for them,” I said, thinking of the wandering Valley queen. “Someplace outside of town, to keep them happy far from the settlements. But peaceful relations depend on curbing the miners. They have to stay away from the caverns. They can’t keep blasting in the foothills—that’s what disturbs the scorps the most.”

Slade glanced over at the rowdy group of miners at the bar. “Easy to say, hard to do. I’ve seen even more leg wounds recently, clearly inflicted by scorps. I expect there’s more illegal mining in the hills than ever.”

The sheriff shrugged. “Prices for high-quality ore have gone up sky-high, and everybody and his brother are out there trying to cash in now, just in case they need to pull up stakes.”

A cheer went up at the bar—a video feed showed the mayor announcing that the Coalition had given Silverrock permission to reopen its dump, citing the danger of hunger in the scorp community. “While the other portions of the edict remain in place for the moment,” she said, “this is a hopeful sign. For once, the Stellar Coalition has shown commonsense flexibility in letting humans manage our relations with other species in a way that benefits everyone.”

The sheriff downed the rest of his ale and stood to leave. “I better go. Looks like I’m going to be busy tonight.”

Slade sighed and put his jacket on as well. “Me too. I’ll catch some sleep while I can. Silverrock celebrations are all the same—by dawn I’ll have a dozen patients needing stitches.”

I checked with base, but Havens hadn’t left me any instructions. Lucien had already informed Pinch that the dump would again become a scorp smorgasbord, but Havens didn’t seem to care that the Coalition had adopted Emma’s position on scorp hunger. Samson was probably right—all Havens wanted was to leave Silverrock.

On the way out of town, I stopped my hopper on a high point overlooking the dump and pulled out my night-vision glasses. Already farmhoppers full of trash were unloading and townspeople were setting their lines of rockskipper traps. The mayor appeared long enough to pose for news cameras as she took down the Dump Closed sign.

A shout went up. As the grasses fringing the dump stirred, people got back in their vehicles.

The rockskippers roiled up out of the fields, rushing for the fresh refuse. Then the scorps came, a score or more, led by Pinch. His minions surrounded him as if he were a politician taking credit for a new factory in town. As the rockskippers scurried out of their path, the scorps tore open the bigger hunks of garbage, the little rockskippers bickering over morsels left in their wake.

It didn’t take long for the fresh trash to be well picked over. As the scorps spread back into the grassland to forage, I bought a bucketful of fresh rockskippers to take back to base.

It was late when I got back to the ranch, and the place was quiet. Even the observation room was deserted, although the cameras at the dump still caught sporadic scorp activity rechecking the trash heaps.

Emma’s light was on, but she told me she was busy. So I slept alone, tired out from crawling through scorp tunnels, soothed by a bellyful of ale, and pleased that the Coalition had apparently followed Emma’s lead in signaling that humans and scorps might find a future together.

In the morning, Lydia used the fresh rockskippers to stir up some omelets for breakfast. The group was tucking in when Emma appeared, eyes shadowed from a sleepless night.

She sat at the table but made no move to take any of the food.

“Dr. Havens,” Emma said. “We haven’t always gotten along, and I’m sorry for my part in that.”

Havens raised her brows. I was skeptical too—apologies weren’t in Emma’s nature. This had to be part of some new agenda.

Emma fiddled with a fork. “You came into this assessment assuming the Coalition couldn’t have overlooked sapience in an indigenous species. I now realize that you were right.”

Lucien slapped his hand down. “What are you saying? They are sapient. We proved it!”

“Scorps are sapient,” Emma agreed, “but they’re not an indigenous species. They’re just as alien to Silverrock as humans are.”

I pointed with my fork. “Wait. You said scorps must have evolved here because they’re related to sandbugs and rockskippers. Are you saying now that they’re not related?”

“Of course they’re related,” Samson said. “The pre-colonization survey did a full genetic analysis of all three species.”

Emma was pale, almost to gray. “The genomes for sandbugs, rockskippers, and scorpidons are very different from one another, but there are common genetic sequences among them. Our mistake was in assuming that meant they’d evolved from a common ancestor.”

“You have an alternate hypothesis?” Havens was smug—enjoying Emma’s discomfort.

“They’re the same species.” Emma nodded toward the platter of omelet. “The rockskippers that everyone here eats? Those are baby scorps.”

CHAPTER 24

Scorpidons

I PUSHED MY plate aside, no longer hungry. Baby scorps? And I’d been eating them—we’d all been eating them—the whole time we’d lived on Silverrock.

Lydia rushed from the room, hand over her mouth. Feeling queasy myself, I cleared away all the uneaten food.

Samson frowned. “How can that be? If rockskippers and scorps have different genomes . . .”

“It only dawned on me yesterday,” Emma said, “when I saw the queen. All the scorps I’ve seen have ten legs. She has twelve. That wasn’t something I’d been able to see in the images of the Valley queen at the waterworks.”

“That’s not unprecedented,” Havens said. “Some of Earth’s arthropods also go through stages of development that cause a very different appearance, like a caterpillar to a butterfly.”

“True, but it made me wonder about the scorp’s earlier stages. When I looked at the genomes again, the pattern became clear. Rockskippers have a larger genome than sandbugs, but on close review, it’s actually the same genome with some sequences repeated. Somehow, in the metamorphosis from sandbug to rockskipper, there’s a reshuffling and partial replication of the sandbug genome, resulting in a genetically more complex creature: more legs, more antenna, more redundancy in the circulatory and nervous system. It’s the same for the transition from rockskippers to scorpidons—scorps are rockskippers that have metamorphosed into a more complex creature by replicating some portions of the rockskipper genome.”

“They can’t be the same species,” Samson said. “Scorps frequently attack rockskippers. They’ll tear the leg off a rockskipper and eat it.” Even as he spoke, the cavern monitors showed rockskippers scurrying out of the way of any approaching scorp.

Emma shrugged. “Many animals will feed on their own young if they encounter them. And as we’ve seen, the loss of a leg does no serious harm.”

Lucien slumped in his chair. “But Pinch doesn’t feel anything about rockskippers. No kinship, no protectiveness.”

Lydia returned to his side, face pale but washed. “They don’t care,” she whispered. “We been killing their babies for years and they don’t care.”

Emma smiled at her. “Even on Earth, love for offspring isn’t shared by all species. Human babies are born helpless—if we didn’t love our children enough to feed them and protect them, our species would have died out eons ago. But a species like scorps, who have hundreds or thousands of offspring that don’t require nurturing, has no need of affection.”

Samson nodded thoughtfully. “I suppose that as long as enough rockskippers survive to make the metamorphosis into scorps, there’s no need to be concerned about harvesting some to feed the adults.”

“Or to feed humans?” I asked.

“The Coalition will not agree,” Havens said. “Once they learn of the connection, they will ban human predation on all forms of the species.”

Lydia’s lip trembled. “Without rockskippers, folks will go hungry.”

Emma tented her fingers. “Dr. Havens, this information raises a more fundamental question—whether there is a legal basis for the Coalition’s edict. The Stellar Coalition’s rules are meant to protect a world’s indigenous species. But with no evidence of fossil precursors and no related living species on the planet, I have to conclude that scorps are not native to Silverrock. In fact, they are an invasive species—most likely introduced by the Builders.”

Samson grinned. “I told you, didn’t I? If the Builders needed animal helpers, they would have brought them. They must have done just that: brought genetically engineered animals ideal for picking through rubble to identify the minerals they wanted—maybe by vibration or taste. They primed the scorps with the telepathy virus so they could teach them what was needed and left the inscriptions to memorialize their instructions. An elegant solution to a labor-intensive process.”

“And after they’d taken most of the minerals out,” I said, “the Builders moved on, leaving a few scorps behind to continue. Maybe accidentally, or maybe the Builders planned to come back, but something happened to prevent their return.” I turned to Havens. “What does that mean, legally? Humans have the Coalition’s permission to be here, but the Coalition never approved scorps colonizing Silverrock. Do the Coalition rules even apply?”

“I . . . I don’t know.” Havens wrung her hands. “Two sapient species, neither of them indigenous, vying for planetary resources . . .”

“I’ve prepared a supplemental report,” Emma said. “I’ll send it to the Coalition with a copy to the mayor and to Venture Mining. If the Coalition is considering Venture’s appeal, all the parties need to know this information. Arguably, humans have just as much right to be on Silverrock as the scorps.”

Havens shook her head, hunched in her chair.

Samson turned to Lucien. “If humans and scorps are going to coexist on Silverrock, it’s even more urgent that we improve our communications capability. This may become an interspecies negotiation.”

Lucien nodded. “I’ll go back to the south wall today. I’ll try to get more vocabulary and understand the syntax better, but I doubt I’ll be able to explain all this to Pinch in a way he’ll understand.”

“Just tell him we’re here to stay,” I said. “He’ll understand that.”

I followed Emma to her lab and shut the door behind me. “Is everything you said true?”

She flopped onto her bunk. “It’s true. Gods below, I was up all night, double-checking the genetic analysis. Sandbugs, rockskippers, scorps, and the queen, all one species, the only animal on the planet bigger than a fly. They couldn’t possibly have evolved here. The Builders must have been masters at genetic tinkering to craft a species that fits their needs so precisely.”

“But that’s not all, is it?” I sent her a hard stare. “What are you holding back?”

Emma chewed her lip. “Remember how I showed you the redundant organs in the scorp I dissected? Each stage—sandbug, rockskipper, scorp—develops into a form that’s larger than the prior one, with additional body parts.”

“More legs. Sandbugs have six, rockskippers have eight, scorps have ten, and now we know the queen has twelve.”

“And a similar increase in antennae. And inside, for each new antenna-and-leg junction, another nerve bundle is added to process sensory input. Essentially, each stage has more brain, like adding two extra computers to an array. Those additional neurons give each later stage an increase in memory. An increase in learning capacity.”

I shrugged. “Makes sense. Each stage is a little smarter than the stage before.”

“That was the other thing I was doing all night—calculating neural capacity. I believe the mental capacity of a sandbug is about equal to a cockroach. A rockskipper has intelligence about equal to a rat.”

I thought back to Samson’s intelligence tests. “Samson said the average scorp had the problem-solving ability of a five-year-old. Pinch was a little better than that.”

Emma twined her fingers. “Now, take that mental capability to the next level: the queen. She’s what a scorp like Pinch turns into at the next stage of metamorphosis. With two more nerve bundles, and each nerve bundle increased in complexity, her mental capacity would be roughly equivalent to a human adult. And with her mind linked telepathically to other scorps, you get the animal equivalent of a computer network.”

“Bloody guts. You think the queen’s human-smart?”

Emma drew up on her screen the image of Pinch’s message. Baby Builders: no noise, bring more food. “When we presented Pinch with the glyph blocks, only a few minutes passed before he placed his return message on the platform. I found that almost impossible to believe.”

“You thought Lucien was helping him.”

Emma flashed a rueful smile. “With a scorp’s neural capacity, Pinch could never have been so quick to figure out what we were trying to do and put together a complex sentence in response. But the queen could. Through her telepathic link with Pinch, she understood right away the purpose of a complicated, never-before-seen structure. She didn’t just understand what we were trying to do; she directed Pinch how to put together her return message. That puts her intelligence at least within human range.”

I felt a little sick. It was bad enough that we’d been eating scorp young ever since humans arrived on Silverrock, but I’d mentally classed that with eating pigs or octopus—animals that were smart, but still animals and legitimate prey. Now I felt like a cannibal.

“Gods, can you imagine?” I asked. “To be the sole advanced intellect among a hive of scorps? It’s like you or me being doomed to live among baboons.” The thought made me squirm. “And she’s locked into that gross, shell-encrusted body.” Guarded by sentries, tended by helpers, hidden in darkness deep underground with nothing to do but scheme and produce brood after brood of eggs.

“She has more than intelligence,” Emma said. “She has knowledge. All the knowledge of her whole lineage, passed down telepathically along with the virus. She could house the whole history of the scorps from the time of the Builders.”

“Great. A frustrated genius with an army at her command. I don’t like the direction this is going.”

Emma sighed. “Fortunately for us, the queen has limits. You saw her—she’s so large, she’s a virtual prisoner in that chamber. She has to rely on the scorps to carry out her intentions. Her underlings have only the thinking ability of children, so she can’t delegate to a mere scorp anything but fairly simple instructions.”

“The rank-and-file scorps may not be very bright, but they give the queen a built-in intelligence web. She can get input from any scorp in her network.” I rubbed my jaw, thinking through the implications. “It’s amazing she hasn’t sent the scorps to kill every human on the planet.”

Emma stared into the distance, tapping her finger against her lip. “I believe we can thank the Builders for that. She tolerates us because she thinks we’re baby Builders.”

“That won’t last long,” I said. “And what about the Valley hive? The Highlanders live in the Pueblo, constantly rereading the inscriptions, keeping alive their reverence for the Builders. But the Valleys are outsiders—they might not associate humans with the Builders. Hell, they may have forgotten all about the Builders. As far as they’re concerned, humans are nothing but enemies who kicked them out of their home at the old spring.”

Emma smiled. “A religious minority? Expelled from their territory by invaders and living as homeless refugees? That sounds terribly human.”

My phantom legs twitched. I didn’t want to believe scorps could have the same sort of religious prejudices we had. The same religious quarrels that had started so many wars on Earth, not to mention destroying the colony on Canton—and incidentally my own legs.

“The Valley hive could be the more immediate danger to the colony,” I said. “The Valley queen must be human-smart as well; she’s much more mobile, and her hive is a lot closer to the town. And without a link to humans like Pinch created with Lucien, we don’t have a channel to communicate with them.”

“Based on shell thickness, I think Queen Valley’s a lot younger than Queen Highlander—maybe she only recently morphed into a queen.” Emma cocked her head. “The Valleys were able to solve only the simplest of Samson’s tests. What does that tell you?”

“Queen Valley’s not as sophisticated as Queen Highlander,” I said. “Or she may have less control over her hive. At the dump, the Valleys are clearly unable to hold their own when challenged by the Highlanders. The Valley hive must be struggling.”

Emma nodded. “Your tactical knowledge is reassuring. I agree: the Valleys won’t be a danger for long. Without a permanent base or water to lay eggs, I doubt the Valley hive will survive.”

She yawned and stretched. “Gods, I’m tired. Whatever we’re going to do with the scorps, we should do it quickly. It’s nice for Samson to talk about an interspecies negotiation, but I don’t want to be on Silverrock any longer than necessary. The Highlander queen knows we’re here. She’s smart enough to know what humans want, and she’s calling the shots. If the conflict with the miners continues, sooner or later she’ll resist with every scorp at her disposal.”

And that would give humans an excuse to do what humans have done since the beginning of time: wipe out an entire species that stands in the way of human desires.

CHAPTER 25

Negotiation

DURING LUCIEN’S visit to the cavern for a second reading lesson, I stage-managed a little diversion while Lucien showed Pinch a collection of Builder tech scraps. Pinch’s cadre pored over the bits, delicately feeling the alien circuitry.

Maybe it would be fun for them, foraging for something different. Lucien had brought along a sack of table scraps to show Pinch it would be worth his while. Pinch and his buddies dug into the dead rockskippers and leftover omelet like eating their own offspring was a tasty treat. I had to turn away to keep my breakfast from coming up and adding to the feast.

A mutually beneficial, purely voluntary exchange of goods for services, Emma had called it. Tech for table scraps, win-win, everybody goes away happy.

I’d be happy if I could just go away. A desk job on Prime was sounding a lot more appealing.

Instead, I stood guard while Lucien underwent another reading tutorial from Pinch, scorp antennae and human fingers side by side, touching one glyph after another.

“This means dark,” Lucien murmured. “Dark is good. Not-dark, that’s bad. Clean, good. Not-clean, bad. Forage, or find. Dig. The whole vocabulary seems to be work-related. I guess the Builders didn’t encourage scorp literary endeavors.”

I wondered how much of what Lucien was learning was coming from Pinch and how much from Queen Highlander herself.

And how much was the queen learning from Lucien? The thought gave me shudders. I consoled myself that she couldn’t learn much if everything had to be filtered through Pinch’s limited intellect.

But maybe she wanted to learn more. Lucien had been called to witness the breeding—had that been the queen’s doing? Queen Highlander had chosen Pinch as her mate—had the link to Lucien added to Pinch’s attractions? The queen had stung Pinch during the mating, renewing their link by sharing her current version of the telepathy virus—was that her way of reinforcing her hold on Pinch or of forging a closer telepathic tie to Lucien? Whether she thought humans were baby Builders or just noisy threats, it would be sound strategy to learn as much about us as she could.

Lucien paused over a glyph near the top of the wall. “This is a useful one. I think it means dismember, as in bite a leg off. He’s neutral toward it—it’s not bad or good—but there’s a negative hook and a connector to the Builders. This might be a prohibition on hurting Builders. Maybe that’s why he’s so tolerant of us. He thinks we’re part of the Builders’ commandments.”

As the day dragged on, Pinch became restless, stamping his pointy legs and whipping his antennae impatiently. Lucien was so deep in Pinch’s lesson that I had to drag him away.

As soon as we got back to base, Havens called us all into a meeting.

At the head of the table, she knitted her fingers. “The Stellar Coalition is extremely grateful for our research into scorpidon sapience and origins.” Judging by the new lines on her face, the gratitude had been mixed with a hefty dose of finger-pointing.

Her lips twitched with a nervous smile. “Since we now know there are two nonnative sapient species on Silverrock, each with some justifiable claim to the planet’s resources, the Coalition has asked our small team to take on a new assignment. We are to use our newfound ability to communicate with the scorpidons to mediate between the two parties, to encourage humans and scorpidons to reach a negotiated solution to their differences.”

Lucien nodded. “I think that’s possible. That is, if humans are willing to be reasonable.”

“A mediator’s supposed to be neutral,” I said. “Maybe the Coalition should send a non-hom.”

Havens shook her head. “Quarantine rules make that impractical. We should seize this opportunity to prove that humans are mature enough to resolve problems peacefully and fairly.”

I refrained from pointing out the history of human conflicts.

Lydia’s nose crinkled. “Not too many folks here want to talk to a scorp.”

“But if they know scorps can talk,” Samson said, “maybe the colonists will be a bit more considerate. After all, humans and scorps have lived together for thirty earthyears.”

“Thirty years of devouring scorp young,” I said.

“Er, yes.” Havens took a breath. “On that point, the Coalition has issued a new edict. Effective immediately, Silverrock colonists are prohibited from harvesting scorpidon offspring in any stage of development. Rockskippers are now off the table.”

Silverrock’s townspeople had greeted the news that rockskippers were baby scorps with laughter. They greeted the Coalition’s new edict banning the harvesting of rockskippers with defiance.

“The whole reason we wanted the dump reopened was so we could trap rockskippers,” Ugarte complained. “Now scorps are eating but we ain’t. All the new edict’s done is created a whole new black market in rockskipper meat. They tell me I gotta arrest anybody caught trapping rockskippers or serving ’em for dinner. I told them my jail’s not big enough for the whole damn town.”

At the ranch, our meals had gone rockskipper-free. I bought a few laying hens for eggs to supplement our tofu and beans.

Dr. Havens looked older and frailer than when she’d first landed on Silverrock a few short weeks before, but she rallied a little now that she had a new task to do for the Coalition. On my advice, she didn’t venture into town, but spent hours in vid discussions with the mayor and her council about beginning negotiations.

“We’re at a disadvantage,” I said. “Lucien is our best translator, but he’s so deep under Pinch’s influence we have to treat him like he’s working for the other side.”

“We’ve been thinking about that,” Samson said. “The vocabulary of glyphs is limited and scorp syntax is pretty simple. We’ve created a translation program that may not catch nuances, but it should be adequate for us to construct some simple messages.”

“How do the scorpidons account for time?” Havens asked Lucien. “Perhaps, for our first negotiation, sunset would be convenient and easily ascertainable by both parties.”

“Sunrise would be better,” Lucien said. “They’ll have finished foraging and might be more inclined to be reasonable. And if there should be trouble, once the sun comes up, they’re likely to go back to the caverns.”

“We could bring some food scraps,” I suggested. “Sort of like refreshments.”

Havens shook her head. “Squabbling over food enticements would only create a distraction. The mediation process must be voluntary. If they come, they should come for discussion, not for food.”

Just before dawn on the day set for the negotiation, Samson and I went to the reading test site. The scorps’ first message to us was still posted in the honeycomb platform. Samson removed the glyphs while I set up a second glyph platform next to the first, as well as a blank board where the translation could be written for the human audience.

On the blank board, I wrote in careful letters the message the committee of settlers had agreed on: Scorps don’t hurt humans. Let humans take ore from caverns. It had taken some time for Havens to convince the committee that a list of demands had to be short and simple enough to translate into glyphs.

From the stacks of glyphs, Samson carefully selected ones to convey the settlers’ message in the syntax used in the inscriptions: A Builders glyph in the middle with an attached diminutive sign, connected to dismember (negative) above and to remove minerals below.

When Samson was satisfied that the message was as clear as he could make it, I covered the whole with tarps and settled back to wait.

Dr. Havens had frowned on my going armored to the negotiation, but I’d convinced her that wearing armor was simply respectful when dealing with hard-shelled scorps. As for my service pistol and stun rod, I wore them without asking her opinion.

As the predawn sky was brightening and the morning breeze was rising, the human audience began to arrive. First came our team’s hoppers, closely followed by the sheriff and his deputies in their rovers. They were all armed. The way they clumped together, murmuring in the half-dark, reminded me of way too many mission briefings.

Dr. Havens gave Ugarte a short but stern lecture about avoiding violent acts against the scorpidons. Lucien stood apart, looking toward the foothills.

I took up a post atop a hopper, on alert and scanning the grasses for movement.

When Havens was done with Ugarte, he climbed up beside me. “This is a farce. Do you really think the scorps are going to talk to us?”

“There’s a lot to the scorps. You shouldn’t underestimate them.”

“I don’t underestimate them. I just don’t want my brother to marry one. What’s next? Invite them to tea? Bring ’em to church on Sunday?”

“Yeah, well, I don’t want to socialize with them either. But they’re here and we’re here, so talking might help smooth things out.”

Ugarte stared at me like I was a half-wit. “Talking only works if you both want to get along. I don’t see that happening here.”

He had a point. My last weeks with Rita had been filled with shouting and door-slamming. Compromise is hard if neither party will budge.

By then, the settlers had begun to roll up. The human representatives, all tough frontier survivors and many armed with stun pistols, stood about in the gusty cold, passing bottles around for warmth. The group was mostly farmers—maybe the miners felt less inclined to make peace.

Mayor Pappas arrived, sharing a hopper with Odom, the Venture Mining representative. They remained inside the cab, content to watch from a distance.

I’d begun to hear rustling around us and glimpsed antennae through my helmetcam. As the sun began to show orange over the horizon, the rustling intensified, not just from the direction of the foothills but all around.

Scorps crept out of the grass and surrounded the group. The settlers edged closer together. The deputies fingered their rifles, and settlers’ hands shifted toward holsters.

Pinch stepped out with his entourage.

“Is that the one that invaded the waterworks?” Ugarte asked.

“No, this is Pinch, from an entirely different group.” I shied away from naming him as the Highlander royal consort. “He’s the one most interested in talking to us.”

The attending scorps scrambled among the legs of the settlers and deputies and over to the message boards, feeling everything. More sedately, Pinch stepped forward, his minions taking up a guarding position between Pinch and the settlers.

Lucien walked over and stood near Pinch, causing a wave of murmurs and nervous shuffling on the human side.

“That’s the lunatic that talks to scorps?” Ugarte whispered to me.

“Lucien. He’ll help translate.”

Ugarte sniffed. “You better make sure you know whose side he’s on.”

Dr. Havens stood on the hillock and called a nervous, “Welcome, everyone! We are here to begin a negotiation to advance the peaceful sharing of Silverrock.”

Someone called, “Burn ’em out!” and got a muffled rumble of agreement.

Havens ignored it. “Our purpose today is to communicate, not to fight.”

At her nod, I removed the tarps.

“What are you trying to pull?” yelled one of the settlers. “There ain’t enough signs up there to be the whole message!” Loud grumbling came from the others.

“The scorp written language is very efficient,” Samson said. “They can pack a lot of meaning into a few symbols.”

As the sun rose higher, Pinch solemnly examined the board with the settlers’ message, starting in the middle and going over the glyphs several times. I tensed, fearing a violent reaction to the demands.

The settlers were shuffling restlessly by the time Pinch went to the piles of glyphs. Using his minor claws, he picked them up three and four at a time and examined them with his antennae.

One of the settlers called to Havens, “What are we supposed to do, ma’am?”

“Wait, if you wish. Perhaps the scorpidon representative will convey a message in return, but we cannot be sure he will do so immediately. If you choose not to wait, that’s fine. We will transmit any response by video.”

I was watching the scorps. Most of the smaller scorps had long since disappeared into the grass, although there was always a contingent of attendants near Pinch.

The sun was higher and the shadows starker when Pinch clambered over to the message platform and began to rearrange glyphs. It took him two trips to the stack of glyphs to select the ones he wanted, but he placed them without hesitation. Then he turned and walked into the grass leading to the foothills, his entourage following.

It was exactly the same as the scorps’ first message. Baby Builders: no noise, bring more food.

After consulting with Samson on the translation, Havens wrote her looping script on the scorps’ board: Settlers must stop mining in caverns. Settlers bring more food.

“Thank you for coming,” Dr. Havens called to the remaining humans. “This has been a good first step: a dialogue has begun, even if the parties are currently far apart. The next step is to study the communications, increase your understanding of the needs of the other party, and begin to develop a basis for moving forward.”

“Hell of a first step,” Ugarte grumbled. From the look of the remaining settlers, they agreed. The mayor and her companion drove away.

“Is that it?” called a farmer. “We gonna let them scorps threaten our livelihood?” A ragged cheer came from the others. “Are we gonna stand by while the Coalition takes the food out of our mouths? I say we fight back!”

I climbed down from my perch. “Lucien? Samson? Let’s go.”

Emma urged Havens into the hopper, Lucien and Samson following.

“It’s that archeologist! He started it all!” That started a chorus of yeahs and colorful curses. “He could be egging them on! Selling us out!”

Samson grabbed Lucien’s arm and shoved him into the back seat.

“Emma, move out,” I called. “I’ll follow.”

She hesitantly started forward, but settlers stood in the way to block the hopper.

“Ugarte!” I called. But he was suddenly busy speaking to someone, his back to us.

A clod of dirt flew and hit the hopper. More spattered the windows and windshield. Emma blasted on the horn and surged the hopper forward, bumping into a farmer.

The settlers moved to surround the hopper, banging on the sides and hooting. A clod came toward my head and someone shoved me, but I was wearing armor and scarcely noticed.

I’d just taken hold of my collapsed stun rod, intending to use it as a club, when Ugarte’s rover roared forward, megaphone blaring. “All you townspeople, go home now! Anyone still here in three minutes will be arrested.”

Deputies pushed stragglers toward their vehicles.

Face red, Ugarte pulled me to the hopper. He pointed to Lucien. “You—you talk to scorps? Well, if you want a real negotiation, now’s the time. There’s some miners up in the hills, trapped by the scorps. You have to help get them out.”

“You must arrest the miners,” Havens said. “They are trespassing on scorpidon territory, in clear violation of the edict.”

“I can’t arrest them if they’re dead.” Ugarte looked sick. “Please, ma’am, you have to help! Two of them are my brothers.”

CHAPTER 26

Rescue

ACCORDING TO the sheriff, fourteen miners had crept into the tunnels just before dawn, counting on the scorps being too busy with the negotiation to put up any resistance. Following a vein that led deep into the mountain, they’d set off a series of charges—and soon found themselves cut off by angry scorps.

“Most of the miners are backed into the tunnel’s dead end,” Ugarte said. “Three have injuries. A couple of others got separated.” His jaw worked. “My brother Berto . . . he’s somewhere in the tunnels with Jimbo, and they ain’t answering their mocoms.”

“Scrape is leading the defense,” Lucien said quietly. “The queen heard the blasts. She’s angry.”

I should have known. When both Scrape and the miners’ contingent had been no-shows at the negotiation session, I should have known something was up.

“This is an opportunity,” Havens said, “to give a practical demonstration of the value of negotiation. Lucien, Booker, please go and talk to the parties.”

I tried not to roll my eyes. “With all due respect and all, Lucien’s contact is Pinch, not Scrape. The miners are trespassing, and the scorps are fully justified in defending their home.”

“¡Es mi hermano!” Ugarte pleaded. “These miners got families, kids. I’m begging you, help them.” I’d never heard the tough sheriff sound so desperate.

Samson grabbed my arm in a clawlike grip. “We can’t let Scrape win this battle. It would enhance his standing with the queen and undermine Pinch’s efforts to communicate with humans.”

Rule Three: Sometimes doing nothing is the worst choice of all.

“Fine,” I said. “Lucien and I will go with the sheriff to the mine. Samson, take Dr. Havens and Emma back to base and monitor our helmetcam transmissions from there.”

Hidden deep in a canyon, the miners’ tunnel entrance was choked with grim-faced men and women. Ugarte gave us the locator coordinates of the tunnel branch where the miners were holed up.

“I’ll come with you,” Ugarte offered. “And I got volunteers who can back us up.”

I shook my head. “This is a rescue, not an invasion. Inside a tunnel is no place to wage a battle—more men would just clog things up.” In truth, I was a little worried the sheriff would shoot the first scorp he saw and not stop.

He nodded once. “Just get ’em out.”

“No promises, Sheriff. We’ll do what we can, that’s all.”

Lucien and I walked toward the tunnel, fully armored and armed with stun rods and my service pistol. My pack carried water and medical supplies. Booker to the rescue. I wish I could say the crowd looked grateful, but they glared like it was all our fault. An ugly murmur went around as we walked to the tunnel, and we were followed by clods of dirt and subdued accusations of “scorp lovers.”

I felt safer once we were within the shelter of the tunnel. For the record, I recited, “This is Booker. I’m accompanying Lucien Harbin into one of the tunnels illegally widened by miners. This rescue mission has been specifically requested by Sheriff Ugarte and approved by Dr. Havens. The purpose is to attempt to resolve a conflict between the scorps and the miners. We understand that miners have been injured and require help. We’ll attempt to resolve this matter peacefully.”

“We’re receiving your transmission,” Samson confirmed. “We’ve tapped into the miners’ repeaters, so we’ll be able to track your location.”

Havens broke in. “Lucien, tell Pinch to pass a message to the Highlander queen. Tell her the miners are wrong to be here. We’ll remove them and they won’t return.”

“I’ll try,” Lucien said, “but I’m not sure the queen will think it’s in her interest to call Scrape off.”

In the background, Emma said, “Booker, be careful.”

The first part of the tunnel was strung with lights running off a foul-smelling generator, fueled by some oil-based distillate. The tunnel wasn’t worn smooth like the Pueblo’s access tunnel. Instead, the walls were jagged and raw, the passage barely wide enough for a barrow to squeeze through. Waist-high gouges along the wall showed where a seam of ore had been chiseled out. In one place the seam was nearly as tall as me; in others it narrowed down to a handbreadth.

The passage descended as it followed the seam. The floor was strewn with gravel and fist-sized chunks of rock. No rustling or clicking here—no young scorps lived and fed in these arid tunnels.

We quickly came to where the scorps had cut the power cables. Lucien didn’t hesitate. He plunged into the darkness, his shoulderlamps glancing over the rough walls and leaving me to walk in his shadow. I struggled to keep up, relying on my lamps and helmetcam, breathing stale air acrid with raw rock dust.

The miners had penetrated deep into the mountain. We traveled for more than a quarter hour before Lucien slowed.

I heard clacking and smelled scorpidon spoor.

The first scorp challengers were small enough that we easily pushed them aside. Lucien shoved away any creature smaller than himself and I followed as closely as I could, swinging my stun rod to discourage any claws from getting too close.

We were deep among them when a larger scorp reared up in front of us, his claw threatening.

“That’s Highlander 089,” Samson said. “One of Scrape’s minions. I read twelve scorps ahead of you, including Scrape.”

Lucien stopped and let the scorp posture for a moment, then stepped forward, thrusting a stun rod ahead of him. The challenger snapped at it, and Lucien fired the stunner at his antenna. The challenger dropped and scuttled backward. Lucien strode forward again.

I got onto the communication band the miners had been using. “This is a rescue attempt. Please confirm your location and condition.”

Confused responses came back: “We’re here; we’ve set up a barricade. One dead. Eleven alive, but two of us are badly injured. Berto and Jimbo didn’t make it to the barricade, and we haven’t been able to reach them. We’re almost out of ammunition . . . lamps are nearly out of power . . . we need water, the air is bad . . . Get us out!”

Lucien and I clambered over abandoned laser drills. To one side, my lamps picked out a huddle of scorps feeding on blasted scorp remains, the carapace serving as a platter for the feast. The larger scorps used their claws to crack the legs to reach the morsels of meat within. Nearby lay a miner’s boot, steeped in blood, scorps squabbling over its grisly contents.

Suddenly Scrape was in front of us. Facing Lucien, he clacked his huge claw. Behind him, the tunnel ended in a barricade of barrows, rifles peeking through the cracks. Wolfhound-sized scorps clung to the walls, attempting to pick apart the barrier while the miners thrust back at them with shovels and pick handles.

Lucien strode back and forth in front of Scrape, banging the butt of his staff against the floor in imitation of the clacking of a claw. Clack, clack, clack. Bang, bang, bang. While Lucien had Scrape distracted, I sidled along the wall, shoving aside a few lesser scorps to get to the barricade.

Passing the medical kit and water to the waiting hands, I whispered, “Be prepared to run for it.”

The smaller scorps scattered to the walls, clicking excitedly. Scrape lunged forward, sweeping his big claw toward Lucien’s legs while thrusting his stinging tail at Lucien’s chest.

“Watch out!” I called. “Scrape’s going for a sting. He isn’t just trying to disable you; he wants to add you to his entourage.”

Lucien must have been expecting the maneuver, because he ducked out of the way and fired a stun shot at Scrape’s antennae.

I dropped low and made myself small, trying to stay out of the way of the many scorp legs. Even with my shoulderlamps and helmetcam, it was hard in the confined space to distinguish man from scorp.

“Watch for flankers,” Samson advised. It was useless. In the close quarters, there was little room to maneuver.

Lucien fired stun shots. Again and again, Scrape’s stinger slashed and was deflected by Lucien’s armor.

A shot rang out. One of the miners had fired indiscriminately into the fight, hitting a small scorp.

“Don’t shoot, you idiots!” I had my pistol and a better view, but I didn’t dare fire for fear of hitting Lucien.

The injured scorp fell from the wall, part of its carapace blown away. Immediately, small scorps fell upon it and began to disassemble its legs.

Scrape tried to rear up, the way he would to grapple with a rival scorp. The narrowness of the tunnel worked to Lucien’s advantage—Scrape couldn’t rise to his full height but twisted sideways, thrusting his stinger at Lucien.

Lucien’s stun shots filled the tunnel like lightning strikes. Static charges made my hair stand on end. The smaller scorps, disoriented by the electrical charge in the air, dashed about in a frenzy. Scrape, unable to locate Lucien, snapped his claw randomly. I was still near the barricade, dodging legs and antennae and wishing I was in with the miners.

There was a misfire. Lucien’s stun rod was exhausted.

“Lucien!” I shoved my stun rod along the floor. It rolled to a stop—two meters short.

Lucien thrust his spent rod into Scrape’s exposed mouth parts and dove under his huge claw while Scrape worried the rod out of his way.

On the floor under Scrape’s breastplate, Lucien grasped my stun rod, shoved it upward into Scrape’s already injured mouth, and fired off a stun shot.

Lucien was too close—the stun charge slammed him onto the rock floor. He lay unmoving.

Scrape reared up, stamping angrily. He cast away the spent rod and closed his huge claw over Lucien’s arm.

Bang. In the narrow tunnel, the shot was deafening. Bang.

The bullets hit the joint above Scrape’s great claw, blowing away the shell over the joint. Instead of snapping shut, the claw went limp and drooped uselessly. The giant claw hung for a moment, then fell with a clatter.

My pistol was warm in my hand. It was me. I’d amputated a sapient creature’s most important limb.

I felt like vomiting.

For a moment, Scrape swayed, his antennae quivering. Then he turned and disappeared into the tunnel.

Lucien sat up dazedly. As scorps moved toward him, I ran to cover him, fearing they would dismantle him joint by joint as they would one of their own wounded.

Instead, the scorps caressed him with their antennae, fawning like a pack of dogs greeting an old friend. Already some were examining the giant claw, looking for a way to get at the meat inside.

The miners hastily pulled apart the barricade. “Stay together,” I told them. “Take your wounded and get out as fast as you can.”

They loaded dead and dying into barrows. I caught one damn fool trying to pack a few fistfuls of rock into the barrow underneath the body of his friend.

“You don’t understand,” he whispered. “This is the richest pocket of ore I’ve seen in months. Misha’s family will need a little something. That’s fair, ain’t it?”

I shoved the limping man to Lucien and grabbed the barrow myself, herding the sorry crew up the dark, steep path. Rustling and clicking followed us, but no one barred our way.

When we finally got to the mine entrance, I was exhausted. The anxious friends and relatives eagerly helped the survivors, offering them water, first aid, and sympathy. The badly wounded were moved to vehicles and whisked away toward the town. Neighbors held and comforted the bereaved.

No one stopped to thank us or even to ask how we were.

“Where are the others?” Ugarte demanded. “The other two, where are they? Where’s Berto?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m sorry, we had our hands full once we found this group.”

Ugarte covered his face with his hands and started to curse.

“I’m sorry,” I said again. “We brought out all we could.”

He turned to Lucien with a snarl. “You! This is because of you! All these problems began after you started to talk to these vermin! We would have burned the whole lot of them out by now! Instead we gotta talk to ’em and treat ’em like equals! Well, they’re not equals!” Ugarte’s face was distorted by rage and hate. “They’re scum! They’re murdering scum and oughta be put down like rats! And you with them!”

Lucien stood for a moment, swaying. Someone threw a dirt clod. I grabbed Lucien’s arm and pushed him into the hopper as more clods came flying. Angry people surrounded us, rocking the hopper and pounding on the windows. A stone hit the fender, and another hit a side window. I shifted into reverse, and the wheels threw up dust. That cleared enough of a path for me to start moving, and once I was moving, no one risked getting in the way.

CHAPTER 27

Pain and Death

I TOLD EMMA I wanted to sleep alone that night—I knew it would be a bad one. Every time I closed my eyes, I relived the fight in the tunnels and saw again my shot tearing off Scrape’s claw.

Eventually, my nightmare changed from Silverrock’s tunnels to the alleys of Canton colony as my squad searched for bodies after the rebellion, turning over debris to find a hand, a foot, or a face. Instead of Scrape’s claw, it was my legs being blown off, but then my limbs regenerated, only to be destroyed again and again. When morning came, I was still exhausted.

First thing, I got a vid call from Sheriff Ugarte. He looked gray, his eyes haggard.

“Mick, I’m really sorry about Berto,” I said. “We did everything we could.”

“Yeah, well, thanks.” His voice was flat. “I guess I shouldn’t have tore off on you like that. At least some of ’em made it out. My other brother made it. He’s leaving tomorrow, taking Berto’s wife and kids somewhere safe.”

“There will be more deaths if the miners keep going into the tunnels.”

“Yeah.” Ugarte drooped, all spirit gone. “I called to give you a little heads-up. There’s talk in town about the negotiation thing being a setup. Folks are saying your man Lucien musta trained that scorp to pick out those letter blocks. Tell him to stay outa sight for a while.”

“Thanks. I’ll let him know.”

Ugarte glanced around and dropped his voice. “Maybe you already heard about last night?”

What now? “I just woke up. What happened?”

“Some of the boys from Rosie’s tavern got a little liquored up. They tossed a load of fresh, smelly trash at the dump and laid their traps for the rockskippers. But when the scorps came out, they started shooting and tossing blasting cartridges. They killed a couple and sent the rest running. They thought it was all great fun.”

I felt sick. “You’ll have to arrest them, Mick. Deport them. The Coalition won’t stand for it.”

He shook his head. “No one made a complaint, so officially it never happened.”

“You’re the sheriff. It’s your job . . .”

“Not anymore,” Ugarte said. “I quit this morning.”

“You quit?” My gut sank.

“There’s nothing to keep me here any longer. Just packin’ up my stuff now. I just called to let you know, and no hard feelings. You got any problems, you’ll have to take it up with Acting Sheriff Chang.”

After some regretful good wishes, I ended the call feeling bereft. I didn’t have that many friends in town anymore. Losing Ugarte hit hard.

“This could mean more problems for us,” I told Dr. Havens over breakfast. “Deputy Chang—I mean Acting Sheriff Chang—is just a townie with a badge. He’s got no sympathy for scorps or for the Stellar Coalition.”

She rubbed age-spotted hands over her weary face. “When will the election be held for a replacement sheriff?”

“There won’t be an election. All of Sweetwater City is the property of Venture Mining. The company appoints the sheriff.”

She nodded wearily. “I shall take the matter up with the Coalition. In view of the local animosity toward scorpidons, perhaps it would be wise to appoint an outsider. I shall also have to report this violation of the edict and the murder of scorpidon individuals.”

“I checked the feeds from our transponders,” Samson said. “The victims were Highlanders, loosely allied with Pinch.”

“Have we images of the criminals?” Havens asked.

“Afraid not. Somebody shot out the cameras last night before they laid the ambush. Booker . . .”

“I know. Install more cameras at the dump. I’ll do it this morning while the boys from Rosie’s are sleeping it off.” I looked around at the group. “In light of the hostility toward scorps, there’s something else we need to think about. If Venture Mining or anyone else should decide to defy the Coalition, our own research would make it easy to wipe out the Highlander queen and most of the hive.”

Havens’s eyes widened. “They wouldn’t dare!”

“Worse things have been done for less reason.”

Samson frowned. “I see what you mean—our maps and locators could point the way for a group of vigilantes to force a way into the queen’s chamber. I’ll keep an eye on the encryption to make sure no one’s trying to hack into our research.”

“I’ll warn Pinch to post sentries,” Lucien said. “And I have to go back to the Pueblo—Pinch wants me there.”

Lydia looked up worriedly. “Maybe you oughta stay away a while. They might be kinda mad at us.”

“She has a point,” I said. “Yesterday I disabled Scrape, and last night the townies killed two Highlanders. The queen must be furious.”

Lucien’s face was pinched in puzzlement. “Not really. Fighting between scorps is pretty routine. As for the ones at the dump, Pinch doesn’t seem to have noticed anyone’s gone.”

“But if they’re part of Pinch’s telepathy chain, he must have felt something. According to Ugarte, those hotheads blew the scorps apart. I shot Scrape’s claw off!”

Lucien shrank into his chair. “I didn’t feel anything last night. Or when you shot Scrape.”

“They could be impervious to pain,” Emma murmured, toying with her toast. “The antennae are acutely sensitive to vibration, but otherwise they have few nerve endings devoted to sensory stimuli. Quite logical in a shelled creature. It’s only we soft-bodied animals who have to worry about saving our skin from cuts and burns.”

“And without pain,” Havens said, “a telepathic species might experience death quite differently. A death may simply be one less voice in the crowd, barely noticeable unless that voice happens to be a dominant individual.”

Lydia blanched. “They don’t hurt like we do? They don’t care about dying? Then how can you teach ’em not to hurt us?”

Havens gazed bleakly at the monitor showing the queen deep within her chamber. “An excellent question.”

At the dump, I disguised the new cameras in cast-off appliances to give them a better chance of survival. A dozen or so rockskipper traps had been staked out by scofflaws. I released the baby scorps inside before destroying the traps.

Among the garbage, I found the broken carapaces of the night’s two scorp casualties, picked clean of flesh. Pulling the transponders to return to Samson, I had a stupid urge to say a few words over the remains. They were fine, upstanding young scorps, cut down too soon . . .

Later, Lucien and I visited the Pueblo, where Pinch and his companions met us at the south wall. The little box Lucien had left to gather shards of Builder technology had a handful of snippets inside—Pinch’s cadre had been busy. With due ceremony, Lucien forwarded the scorps’ payment in the form of a bag of food scraps. The scorps gobbled eggshells and leftover beans while I, keeping my helmetcam averted, slipped the tech shards into my pocket.

After that I kept watch, kicking my heels while Lucien and Pinch conferred. Scrape was nowhere to be seen and Pinch’s entourage kept their distance. In their world, our joint defeat of Scrape had lent Lucien a high status. The scorps probably thought of me as simply one of Lucien’s underlings. Maybe they were right.

A couple of hours into the reading lesson, I was bored and itching to get out. Pinch seemed fractious too, stamping his feet and tapping his antennae insistently.

“Lucien? What’s happening?”

“He’s . . . irritated.”

My neck hairs rose. “About the scorps at the dump?”

“No, not that.” Lucien rubbed his arms as if cold. “He’s frustrated. He wants to know more, to understand.”

“Well, you can continue tomorrow. It’s time to go.”

Pinch didn’t look happy—if scorps ever looked happy. He followed us halfway up the access tunnel until I stomped my metal feet scorp-style to tell him to keep his distance.

In the hopper, Lucien removed his helmet and signaled me to switch off the mics. “The situation is much more complicated than we thought. Pinch is changing, getting more demanding—and more articulate. It’s more than just us getting more comfortable talking together. I swear, he’s actually getting smarter. I think he’s begun the process of morphing into a queen.”

I sucked in my breath. “A queen?” If Emma was right, he’d become bigger, stronger, and have a mental capacity equal to our own.

“I think that’s what it’s been about all along, why he’s so keen to make an alliance with humans. He still thinks we’re the Builders, the ones who taught them to read and left them instructions. He thinks we’ve come to restore their world to the way it used to be. He wants us on his side when he becomes queen.”

“Bloody guts. Isn’t it enough that we have to navigate all the different human interests? Are we getting tangled in scorp politics now?”

Lucien scrubbed a hand over his face. “I think we always were . . . we just didn’t know it.”

CHAPTER 28

Molt

AT SUPPER, the team pushed around Lydia’s latest tofu creation while discussing Lucien’s update.

“Springtime,” Emma said. “After the winter rains, food and water are more plentiful. Those conditions would not only trigger the queen to release her eggs and mate but also would spur scorps to grow, creating a need to molt their exoskeletons. Smaller scorps probably molt every year. For them, it won’t be a big deal—a few days hiding while they shed their old shell and let the new one harden. Bigger scorps like Pinch and Scrape probably go years between molts, and it may be a more traumatic process.”

“Pinch has cracks in his shell,” Lucien said. “He’s irritable, impatient. Probably uncomfortable. He even seems—anxious, I guess.”

Emma nodded. “He’s like an adolescent reaching puberty, growing out of his clothes and dealing with new, aggressive impulses. If you’re right about Pinch transforming into a queen, his internal organs are changing too.”

“What did he want from you today?” Samson asked.

Lucien shrank a bit. “Defensive strategy. He wants to know how to keep the miners from invading the tunnels. I suggested blocking entrances and posting sentries so they’d have some warning. I’m not sure how much he understood.”

“Don’t tell him too much,” I said. “We may not want the next queen to know how humans defend themselves from attack.”

In the wee hours that night, a crash woke me, something big hitting the compound fence. I pulled Emma to the floor with me as I rolled out of bed.

She struggled groggily. “What? What are you doing?” Glaring lights flashed by the window.

“Take cover.” I inchwormed to the table and raised myself far enough to grab my service pistol.

Eyes wide, Emma hissed, “You’re not at war!”

An amplified voice blared. “Lucien Harbin, this is Acting Sheriff Chang. We have a warrant for your arrest. Come out with hands up!”

Emma opened a window. “Gods below,” she shouted. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Give us a minute to get dressed, and we’ll talk like civilized people.”

“We have the house surrounded!” Chang called.

Emma sniffed. “Then there’s no reason to make us come out half-naked.”

She handed my legs down to me and, muttering curses, pulled on some clothes.

By the time I was upright and dressed, the rest of the house was awake. Lydia clutched Lucien with one hand and her ancient scattergun with the other. “I won’t let them take him!”

I wrestled the gun from her. “None of that. Let me and Dr. Havens handle this.”

Havens accompanied me outside. “What’s the meaning of this intrusion?” She looked older than ever with her overcoat thrown over her flannel nightgown, her bare, bony ankles showing over her shoes.

“Ma’am, we have a warrant to arrest Lucien Harbin.”

She drew herself up. “On what charge?”

“Accessory to murder.”

“Murder?” I asked. “Who? When?”

“Not four hours ago. Two men were killed, and Harbin’s involved.”

“He ain’t done nothin’!” Lydia was on the porch, her slight frame shielding Lucien behind her. “He’s been here with me all night!”

“Your information is clearly in error,” Havens said. “Lucien is part of an official Stellar Coalition investigation. Any attempt by local authorities to interfere with Coalition work is a violation of the edict and will be dealt with harshly.”

“Killed how?” I asked. Lucien looked ill.

Chang paused long enough to spit. “By scorps.”

“In the middle of the night? Don’t tell me—after ambushing a few scorps the other nights, the boys thought they’d have a little more fun? What were they doing, laying another trap down at the dump?” Chang’s stubborn silence told me I was right. “I guess this time the scorps decided to set a little ambush themselves.”

“We know your man’s been training them. Weaponizing them.”

Havens bridled. “Ridiculous. If you had arrested the perpetrators yesterday, these deaths could have been avoided.”

Chang shrugged. “The boys were just blowing off steam. The courts ain’t said that scorps are people, so as far as the law’s concerned, a few scorps more or less don’t make no difference. But training scorps to kill humans—that’s murder.”

“But the Stellar Coalition edict specifies . . .”

Chang’s expression hardened. “I work for Venture Mining. Until the court settles everything out, I do what the company says.” He leaned closer. “Booker, if I don’t bring him in, you’ll have a mob here tonight asking for blood, and they won’t care whose. It’s better if your man’s in jail where we can protect him, at least until things calm down.”

Lucien stepped forward. “It’s all right, Dr. Havens. I’ll go with them.”

Emma held a weeping Lydia as they cuffed Lucien and put him in the back of a rover. Without his armor, he looked frail and vulnerable.

As Chang got into his vehicle, Havens called, “You’ll be hearing from the Coalition about this.”

I added, “And you’ll get a bill for repairs to our gate.”

The disguised cameras at the dump had captured scorps sneaking up behind the men lying in ambush. The scorps were definitely Highlanders, two of Pinch’s followers.

“They can’t blame Lucien,” I told Havens. “He was here all night.”

Havens sighed wearily. “According to the lawyer, the charges allege that Lucien trained the scorpidons in techniques to kill humans.”

“Maybe Lucien should train them,” Samson said. “Scorps are sapient creatures. They have a right to defend themselves.”

Havens slumped. “The lawyer advises Lucien to remain in custody for now, particularly as the town is so volatile. The Coalition will file its legal objections in due course.”

My jaw tightened. “In due course? And meanwhile Lucien sits in jail?”

Emma nudged me. “Don’t take it so hard. Given how demanding Pinch has been, it might do Lucien some good to get away for a few days.”

“Indeed,” Havens said. “I almost envy Lucien.” She trudged back to her room as if she were the one about to be put on trial.

“The Coalition’s not happy,” Samson whispered. “She’s supposed to be using negotiation to calm the situation down. Instead, they’re getting reports of worse incidents every day.”

I harumphed at that. “They shouldn’t blame Havens. In a situation like this, what you need is a neutral peacekeeping force to keep the parties apart while negotiations are going on. All we’ve got is a wannabe sheriff who thinks throwing Lucien in jail will keep the heat off him. And as for Lucien taking a nice holiday in jail”—I sent Emma a scowl—“Pinch’s telepathy isn’t likely to give him a break. If anything, Pinch will be even more frustrated if he calls Lucien and Lucien doesn’t come.”

In a thoroughly bad mood, I took out my frustrations by pounding the gate back into shape where Chang’s rovers had forced their way through.

When I was done, I went to the kitchen for a badly needed cup of coffee. Emma was there, quietly talking to Lydia.

Lydia slumped in her chair, a hand over her stomach.

I looked from Lydia to Emma. “What’s wrong?”

Lydia took a deep breath. “I gotta go to the doctor, Booker.”

“Are you sick?”

“Not sick. Not now, anyway. Please, just take me to the hospital.”

“Of course,” I said. “Get your coat, and I’ll bring the hopper around.”

“Do you want me to come?” Emma asked.

At the door, Lydia stiffened. “No. I know what I gotta do.”

When Lydia was out of earshot, I turned to Emma for an explanation.

Emma looked grim. “I suppose Lydia doesn’t like me much right now, but I couldn’t let her go on with the pregnancy without explaining the risks.”

Pregnant? I felt stupid for not having realized, and somehow responsible. “What risks?”

“The telepathy virus. If she goes on with the pregnancy, there’s a chance her baby could be born telepathically linked to the scorps.”

That evening, the hospital’s waiting room was as gloomy as ever. Once Lydia had been delivered into the nurses’ cool hands, I crammed myself into a hard chair and tried to tuck my legs out of everyone’s way. People waited, disappeared into treatment rooms, moaned, and cursed. Somewhere out of sight, a woman wept.

On the way to town, I’d asked Lydia if Lucien knew she was expecting.

She’d shaken her head. “I wasn’t going to ask him for anything. I know he can’t stay here. I just wanted the baby to keep something of him for myself, after he’s gone back to Prime.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Don’t tell him,” she’d said. “Don’t ever tell him.”

I’d promised, but the promise didn’t sit well. Rita and I had talked about having kids, but the timing had never been right. I’d been glad about that when we broke up, but since then I’d often wondered how different my life would have been if we’d had a baby to draw us together.

From somewhere outside the hospital came shouts and police sirens. The waiting room’s vid cut from an educational program about Coalition non-homs to an excited newscaster. “Breaking news! At the hydroponics pumpstation west of Sweetwater City, scorps have gathered by the dozen, frightening away the technicians and destroying property . . .”

CHAPTER 29

The Pumpstation

THIS TIME, the Valley scorps hadn’t attacked the main waterworks but had invaded a secondary pumpstation that served the hydroponic farms. Water gushed out of a broken water main, spilling into a gulch that drained off rain from the infrequent winter storms. The lower end of the gulch had been blocked with rocks, mud, and trash from people’s backyards: the scorps had created a dam to form a widening pond.

A score of good-sized scorps were patrolling the dam and the pond. They were matched by a score of deputies and onlookers, the scene lit by spotlights from police rovers.

I donned my armor and helmet from the hopper and switched to transmit. “Samson? Are you seeing this?” Small scorps scampered back and forth, packing mud into any weak places in the dam.

“We saw the newscast. According to our monitors, all the scorp tags at your location are ones associated with the Valley hive. Is the Valley queen there? Damn, I wish I was there to tag her.”

“I don’t see her, but I’ll keep an eye out.” We hadn’t seen much problem-solving ability from the Valley scorps, but the queen was clearly smart enough to direct her troops to make a dam. I figured she was desperate to find water to release her eggs.

Samson said, “Listen, Dr. Havens is talking to the mayor, but you’re there on the spot. Do what you can to keep the townies from violence.” He didn’t have any suggestions as to how.

A meaty hand circled my arm. “Booker? What the hell are you doing? Get those scorps away from the water main.” Chang bared his teeth at me like a dog about to bite.

“Me?”

“You folks can talk to ’em, can’t you? So, talk to ’em!”

I sputtered at that. “I can’t, Deputy Chang. This is a different group of scorps. And you locked up the one person who knows scorps best.”

“That’s Acting Sheriff Chang. And if you ain’t here to help, then you’re in the way. Dante—cuff him.” He walked away shouting to shut off the water supply, ordering rifles to be issued.

A stony-faced Deputy Dante secured my left wrist to one of the police rovers. “Sorry, Booker,” he muttered.

“Don’t let anybody start shooting, or there’ll be hell to pay,” I told him. “I don’t care what Chang says, scorps are sapient. That means they’re protected by law like any other non-hom. The Coalition’s already upset about the scorp killings—it has its eyes on Silverrock.” I didn’t mention that at the moment, the eyes were courtesy of my helmetcam. “Dr. Havens is talking to the mayor right now.”

The deputy glanced toward Chang. “I just follow orders.”

“Well, if you know what’s good for you and this colony, follow them slow.”

Dante nodded, then circulated among the other deputies. Gradually, they began to move away from the pond.

“You all right?” Samson asked from base.

“Fine, as long as I don’t need to go anywhere. You might let Havens know, in case I need bailing out too. And Emma, Lydia will need—”

Emma broke in. “Booker, there’s only one reason the Valleys would need water. Pan your helmetcam over the pond. The queen must be there somewhere.”

With my free hand, I flipped my helmet lamp to UV light. In the dusk, the scorps glowed blue, their eyes glittering like stars.

In the center of the pond was an extra glimmer of a massive body. “There,” I said. “She’s nearly submerged. Can you see her? That’s the Valley queen.”

Emma sucked in her breath. “But it’s just a shallow pool. If it dries up, none of the offspring will survive.”

“There’s no hope,” I said. “The hydro keeper has already turned the water off at the source. All they have to do is—”

Before I even finished the sentence, someone tossed a blasting cartridge into the makeshift dam. With a bang and a flash of light, debris flew into the air. Scorps ran in panic from the noise.

A loudspeaker sounded. “This is the mayor. No shooting!” She stood by the sheriff’s rover, a scowling Chang by her side. “Everybody just stand down. By order of the Coalition, no one is to interfere with the scorps. We don’t have to let them use our water, but we can’t kill them either.” As if denying them water would be any less lethal in the long run than a hail of bullets.

As the sludgy pool drained away, the Valley queen, attended by a few stalwarts, pulled herself out of the mud and disappeared into the brush. Was I imagining dejection in the droop of her antennae? Fatalism in the loyalty of her retinue?

A deputy pushed me into the rover. “Chang wants me to charge you.”

“With what?”

He shrugged. “Being a wiseass. Let’s go.”

As I was driven away in the back of the rover, I glimpsed a few hand-sized scorp babies struggling in the muddy water.

At the sheriff’s station, I was booked for impeding an officer. They took away my helmet, armor, and mocom. I was relieved nobody thought to take away my legs.

The cells housed an assortment of grumbling troublemakers. Lucien was alone in his cell, lying on his bunk.

“I guess you won’t mind,” the guard muttered, shoving me into his cell. “We didn’t dare put anybody else in with him—those men the scorps killed last night had a lot of friends.”

The door clanged shut behind me like the closing of a coffin lid.

Lucien brightened and sat up. “Booker! Thank you for coming. Are they letting me out soon?”

“Havens is working on it.” I sat on the other bunk, not correcting his assumption that I was there for a friendly visit. “What did Pinch do last night? Was he responsible for killing those men?”

“Booker, I swear I didn’t know anything about it. But Pinch is smart enough now to have expected a second ambush at the dump, and to have deployed his followers to prevent it. I doubt the scorps meant to kill anyone—for them, losing a leg is just an inconvenience. I don’t think they understand that cutting a leg off a person would cause them to bleed to death.”

“What about this evening?”

He blinked at me. “Today? What happened?”

“The Valleys attacked a pumpstation out by the farms. They dammed up some water so the Valley queen could release her eggs.”

Lucien shook his head. “I don’t know anything about the Valleys. They’re outside the Highlander queen’s telepathy chain. Whatever they’re doing, they’re on their own.”

On their own. I shook off a wave of pity for the Valley queen-in-exile and her court, homeless and now bereft of her offspring. “How are you doing? Is Pinch giving you problems for not coming when he calls?”

Lucien blinked. “He’s gone somewhere deep in the caverns to molt—his metamorphosis has begun. His old shell is peeling away. It makes him vulnerable.”

“So you’re all right? He can’t ask you to do anything if he’s hiding out.”

“It’s the questions.” Lucien rubbed his arms. “He’s like a child, asking why this and how that. He’s never satisfied, one question right after another. I haven’t slept since I got here.”

“What kind of questions?” I hated to think that maybe Chang was right, that Lucien was in some part responsible for the prior night’s deaths.

“Everything. How sound works. Why the air outside is different from the air in the tunnels. Where the food at the dump comes from. What is rain? Why is cold?” Lucien leaned forward, dropping his voice. “He’s getting smarter. Figuring things out. Some things I try not to answer, like why people keep making noise in the tunnels, what brings us into scorp territory, and what makes us go away. But he badgers at me.”

I rubbed my jaw, not liking what I was hearing. “Is it just him? Or is Queen Highlander asking questions through him?”

Lucien wrung his fingers, over and over. “I think it’s him, not the queen. He’s outgrowing his dependence on her.”

What would that mean for the Highlanders, to have two queens? From what I’d seen of scorp life, cooperation wasn’t a high priority. Would the hive split in two?

“Do you think Pinch will leave the caverns and form a new hive somewhere else?” I asked. But there was nowhere else, not with enough accessible water to nurture their young.

Lucien shook his head. “He won’t leave the tunnels. It’s the only world he knows, and it’s the home of the Builders. He believes in them, if that’s the right word. He won’t abandon their city. But the hive can’t have two queens.” Lucien looked up, his eyes bleak. “He’ll have to fight the old queen.”

“To the death?”

“Until there’s only one queen.” Lucien closed his eyes. “You might as well go home. Pinch wants me to answer more questions now, but I’m so tired. Pinch doesn’t understand that I need to sleep.”

“I’ll stay a while.” Courtesy of Acting Sheriff Chang. “You go ahead and answer Pinch, or rest if you can.”

“Thank you,” he whispered. For a moment, his eyes locked on mine. “If Pinch fights the queen, maybe Pinch will be the one to die and I’ll be free. I hope so. I can’t go on like this.”

The jail was not a peaceful place. While Lucien communed with Pinch, the other inmates talked, shouted, and cursed. Whenever they got bored with harassing the cellblock guard or one another, they hooted at Lucien, promising dire revenge on the scorps and on him.

A battle between queens. If Pinch died, Lucien would be free, but we’d also lose our channel to gain insight into the Builders’ tech. If Pinch survived to become queen, he’d become stronger, taking over more of Lucien’s life.

The worst possibility was that Pinch would lose his battle with the Highlander queen but survive, to be driven away to scrounge for food and water like the Valley queen, with Lucien still his mental slave.

Emma had predicted that the Valley hive was close to failure. Queen Valley was truly alone: no Pueblo to remind her of a proud history, none of the Builders’ writings to consult, and no human ally like Lucien to answer the kind of questions that were now consuming Pinch. Her home was overrun by humans, forcing her to rely on human garbage to survive. Did she hate humans for driving her away from her birthplace, her ancestral home?

Queen Valley’s death would be a tragedy: after all, she was the bearer of all her lineage’s memories, passed down with the telepathy virus queen to queen, all through the scorp generations. She must have been desperate, haunting Sweetwater City in a fruitless quest for access to the old spring, her body swollen with eggs, aching for release. A final, hopeless gamble to create a pond she could claim for her hive. What had she felt when she’d realized her offspring were doomed? Emma said scorps had no need to love their offspring, but even for them, the urge to protect their young must be a primal instinct.

The guard’s clanking on the cell door startled me awake. “Up, you two. Time to go.”

“Go where?” I helped Lucien to his feet.

“Who cares? You’re out of here.”

In the busy lobby, Dr. Havens waited, head austerely high, next to a smirking Emma.

Lydia, fists on hips, faced off with the acting sheriff. “ . . . and you, Orville Chang, you should know better than to pick on poor Lucien. Acting sheriff? More like pretending to be sheriff! Why, Mick Ugarte was no mother’s dream, but he had more common sense in his little pinkie than you’ve got stuffed in that cotton wool you got between your ears.”

I corralled her before she got herself arrested too and hustled the group into the hoppers. Lydia took Lucien home, while Havens preferred to join me and Emma.

“Thanks for bailing me out,” I said.

Emma grinned. “No bail. All charges against both you and Lucien have been dismissed.”

Havens cleared her throat. “In light of the abject failure of the local police to enforce the edict, the Coalition will be taking a stronger hand in the governance of Silverrock. Acting Sheriff Chang is soon to be relieved of duty. I believe it was you who suggested a peacekeeping force? The Coalition agrees.”

“Peacekeepers?” I hadn’t intended my offhand comment to Samson to be taken so seriously. Silverrock’s settlers would view Coalition peacekeepers as invaders.

“Just while we await resolution of the various legal challenges regarding the status of scorpidons on Silverrock. In the meantime, the Coalition directs us to continue to promote negotiation as the best hope for peaceful coexistence.”

“Not that the parties have shown any enthusiasm for peaceful relations so far,” Emma murmured.

I turned to face Havens. “That’s because we haven’t been thinking big enough. Listen, we have an opportunity, right now. Lucien says Pinch has gone into molt. Pinch is changing, morphing into a queen. As his mind is maturing, he’s asking questions. At this moment, we have an opportunity to educate a developing queen and to suggest a way out of this mess. There’s a bargain to be made, and this may be our one chance to make it.”

CHAPTER 30

Peace Plan

SAMSON SLAPPED a palm onto the observation room table. “You can’t kill the Highlander queen. The whole point of first-contact protocol is peaceful coexistence.”

“I’m not talking about an assassination.” I’d gathered the assessment team in our usual meeting place at base, but this time I’d taken the head of the table. “One of the queens must be ejected from the hive or die—that’s the scorp way of electing a leader. Why shouldn’t we support the scorp candidate who’s more likely to promote peace? After all, Pinch made Lucien one of his entourage—Lucien has as much right to influence the outcome as any other scorp.”

On the monitors, the Highlander hive scorps went about their lives as Queen Highlander squatted in her cavern chamber, her little attendants scurrying to tend to her needs. How much of Lucien’s thoughts leaked through to Pinch, and from him to the queen? I decided it didn’t matter: in the strategy I was proposing, surprise was neither necessary nor possible.

Havens cleared her throat. “Exactly what kind of ‘support’ are you proposing, Booker?”

“Tactical advice. We’ve all seen the scorp dominance contests: they’re one-on-one duels. The winner stings the loser and adds him to the winner’s telepathy chain. But in the fights, they have to rely on vibration to detect one another, and that requires proximity. Humans have one big advantage over scorps: we can see. By observing the combatants, Lucien can advise Pinch how to avoid an attack or inform him of a vulnerability. We wouldn’t be engaging in violence, just sharing intelligence—the same sort of information gathering that scorps do naturally through their telepathic networks.”

Samson glanced at Lucien. “Suppose Pinch does become queen. Are you sure he’ll promote peace with humans?”

“No,” Lucien said quietly. “Pinch is like a teenager who’s about to graduate from school. He’s gaining new power, new knowledge, but that doesn’t guarantee mature thinking. I can’t really predict what he would do if he were in charge of the hive. He’s learning quickly, but it might take years for him to reach a level of wisdom that would keep him from making impulsive decisions.”

“But he’s steeped in reverence for the Builders,” I said. “That belief is in our favor.”

Havens raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Are you suggesting we should encourage the false belief that humans are the gods of their mythology?”

“I’m suggesting that we become the Builders. Humans are here for the same reason the Builders came: minerals. The only reason humans are in conflict with the scorps is because our mining techniques are incompatible with scorp life. So, we should adopt the Builders’ methods. Ban humans from the hills. Let the scorps do the mining for us, reward them with food for delivering high-grade ore to our specifications.”

Samson scowled. “What makes you think they can, or will, produce minerals to order?”

I laid a thumb-sized hunk of rock on the table. “I think they’ve been doing it all along. Remember when Lucien and I went into the tunnels to rescue the trapped miners? The place the miners were holed up was a little cavern, a pocket filled with rubble that the miners had stumbled on. One of them told me it was the highest-grade ore he’d seen in months. I snagged a sample and had it analyzed to confirm: this one chunk of rock is worth a month of my wages.”

Sitting beside me, Emma picked up the sample, turning it over in her hands as if she could estimate its value by weight alone.

I turned to Lucien. “The south wall inscription—what instructions did the Builders leave for the scorps?”

“Don’t harm the Builders, keep the Pueblo tidy, retrieve specified minerals, and you’ll get a reward of food.”

“The sort of instructions a five-year-old could understand.” I tapped the chunk of stone. “The scorps have kept faith.”

Emma examined the hunk of ore. “Ingenious. The Builders must have taught them to distinguish the most valuable minerals. No wonder Scrape was so intent on driving the miners away from that tunnel—they were stealing from the scorps’ treasure store.”

“If we start to act like the Builders,” I said, “use food rewards to train the scorps in what sort of rock we want, we can restart the scorp production line. Venture Mining will get the ore they want without the trouble of supporting a whole colony of humans.”

Lydia screwed her face into a pout. “That’d put all the miners out of work. And what about everybody else in Sweetwater City? Folks that own the shops and run the farms? Without the miners, there won’t be no business!”

I nodded to Havens. “The Stellar Coalition made a terrible mistake when they granted humans the right to settle on Silverrock. They overlooked a resident sapient species, pretty much guaranteeing a war. Perhaps, to help rectify the harm they’ve caused, and in recognition of our reaching a peaceful resolution, the Coalition would be amenable to opening another planet to humans and helping resettle the people displaced from Silverrock.”

Havens drummed her fingers on the table. “If a peaceful resolution can be reached. But why would Pinch, or the existing queen if she remains in power, agree to turn her people into slaves?”

Emma twitched her feline smile. “Not slaves. Service providers in a purely voluntary, mutually beneficial trade.”

I turned to Lucien. “Our best chance to get this done is through Pinch. He’s our direct channel of communication. Our best play is to help Pinch become the next Highlander queen.”

Lucien shrank in his chair. “You don’t know what you’re asking. You’re worried about scorps being enslaved? What about me? I’ve been Pinch’s slave ever since he stung me.”

Emma touched his hand. “We’ll find a way, Lucien, I promise. We’ll find a way to block the telepathy channel.”

Samson gazed at the monitors where the old queen sat deep in her underground chamber. “If Pinch goes head-to-head with Queen Highlander without our help, what are his chances?”

Emma bit her lip. “Not good. When Pinch emerges after molting, he’ll probably be weak from inaction and wearing a new, thin shell. From the thickness of Queen Highlander’s carapace, she could be many years, perhaps even centuries, old. She’s clearly fended off newcomers many times. If we do nothing, the most likely outcome is that Pinch will die.”

Lydia’s eyes glistened as she gazed at Lucien. “Maybe Pinch should get killed. That’d be good, wouldn’t it? You’d be free then. No more voices in your head.”

“If Pinch dies,” Emma said, “we’ll lose the strongest advocate we have for a negotiated resolution. The conflict between humans and scorpidons could go on and on, with terrible consequences for both sides.”

Havens twined her long fingers. “If we cannot resolve this conflict, the Stellar Coalition will certainly withdraw permission for humans to remain on Silverrock. Worse, they would consider it proof that humans are incapable of being good shepherds of a dependent species. It would set back our efforts to be accepted into the Coalition by a generation.” She turned to Lucien. “I realize that being in telepathic contact with Pinch is a burden, but the future of humanity is at stake. Surely that justifies asking an individual to make an extraordinary sacrifice?”

I snapped, “Dr. Havens, don’t talk about sacrifice when you’re not the one at risk. This has to be Lucien’s choice.”

Emma spoke softly, seductively. “For fifty thousand years, the Highlander hive has kept faith with the Builders. If Pinch stung you in some vague hope that we’d come to Silverrock to fulfill the Builders’ promise, you can make that dream come true. If Pinch becomes queen, we can help him usher in an era of learning, bringing to the scorpidon world a knowledge of the universe, of other species.”

“We can teach them mathematics,” Havens said. “Architecture and literature, so they can build a civilization for themselves. Without our help, scorpidons are nothing more than garbage-eaters. With us, they will finally have a chance to become more than they are, to fulfill their destiny.”

Lucien slammed a fist down. “Quiet, all of you!”

Eyes shut, his fingers massaged his temples. “I don’t know for sure what will happen when Pinch emerges. But I think I should be there. One way or the other, this has to be resolved.”

I let out a breath. “You won’t go alone.”

“It’s a good plan,” Emma told me that night. “We know the scorps can be trained to fetch specific minerals because we’ve already trained them to retrieve Builder tech for us.”

“My plan will get us out of the current crisis, but it will create a situation that’s unstable. It’s exploitive. Eventually, the scorps will rebel. Teaching them math and architecture will just accelerate the process.”

“So?” Emma nestled more comfortably beside me. “By that time, we’ll have retrieved oodles of Builder tech, Venture Mining will have made a tidy profit, Silverrock’s population will be on a new world, and you’ll have prevented a war. The scorps should erect a statue of you. Booker, baby-Builder father of the scorpidon nation.”

“Were you telling the truth?” I asked. “Will you really be able to cure Lucien?”

She drew back to stare at me, eyes wide. “Of course! I’m in touch with a neurologist on Prime about isolating the specific neurons. Once we get the scorps trained and the mining system in place, Lucien will be free to return to Prime and get treatment.”

I took that to mean that so far, no one had made any actual progress on curing Lucien. Maybe I shouldn’t have expected anything more.

“If Pinch is killed,” I said, “Lucien will be cured. That might not derail the peace plan—we can try to work with the current queen. We can use the glyphs to issue instructions like the Builders did.”

“That would take too long.” Emma ran her hand over the scars on my chest. “It’s not like you to get cold feet. You’re a soldier: you know what you have to do. Queen Highlander has to die. That’s your first rule, isn’t it? If you’re going to do something, do it right.”

Suddenly disgusted at her touch, I turned my back on her. “You have no idea what you’re asking. If scorps fight to the death for leadership, then that’s their way. But we’re humans. We’re supposed to be better than that. If you’re asking me to assassinate a queen—a human-smart leader who’s ruled her people for decades, maybe even centuries—then you’ve got the wrong man.”

The next few days passed quietly. With Pinch hiding away, the Highlanders seemed subdued, barely venturing as far as the dump.

The Valleys had disappeared from view after Queen Valley’s aborted attempt to reclaim a bit of wetland. Samson reported that a few of the Valleys had begun to show up in the Highlander territory—losers in dominance duels, stung into submission, and added to the Highlander telepathy chain by one of the hive. Emma said that probably meant the Valley hive was dissolving, not strong enough to survive without a permanent base.

Havens and Samson worked with the peace plan’s non-scorp parties. Havens presented the elements of the plan to the Stellar Coalition carefully, step by step, showing how the pieces would fit together and emphasizing how the Coalition could encourage buy-in from the Silverrock colony by offering an alternative world to settle. Samson dealt with the mayor and the real power on Silverrock, Venture Mining, getting them on board with pressuring the Coalition to provide the Silverrock colony with a new home.

Lucien spent days and nights in mental conversations with Pinch. He barely stirred from his bunk long enough to eat. When I asked how it was going, he told me to go to hell.

Lydia took care of us all with a stiff face and reddened eyes.

On the eighth day after Pinch had retreated into isolation, Lucien appeared at the door to my office. “It’s time. Pinch has completed his molt and is getting ready to emerge.”

I prepared as if we were embarking on a recon mission into unknown territory. Full body armor for both of us. My pack held water, nutrition bars, a med kit, and extra ammo. I’d clipped a stun rod to my belt. Lucien had his own pack of essentials in case we got separated.

When I strapped on my service pistol, Lucien eyed it with more interest than I liked. “It won’t do you any good,” I said. “It’s locked to my palm print.”

One side of his mouth lifted in a half smile. “Are you worried I’ll kill Pinch to be free? Or that I’ll kill myself?”

“You’re not killing anybody.” And I hoped to the depths of my soul that I wouldn’t have to kill anyone either.

When we parked the hopper up in the foothills, the access tunnel entrance gaped open. “No sign of guards,” I told base. “With Scrape out of commission and Pinch in a hole somewhere, the Highlanders’ security has gone slack.”

“All the Highlander scorps are congregating in the queen’s chamber,” Samson replied. “I guess they all want to be there for the spectacle.”

Lucien strode into the tunnel without waiting for me.

“This is Booker,” I said for the record. “At the request of Dr. Havens, I’m accompanying Lucien Harbin into the caverns to observe as Pinch emerges from molt.”

From base, Havens added, “On behalf of the Stellar Coalition and the human colony on Silverrock, we express our gratitude to the scorpidon people for the opportunity to observe this historic occasion.” No scorp would hear her, but then, the Stellar Coalition was her real audience.

The Pueblo was empty of scorps; we saw only little rockskippers busily foraging for bits of algae. We crossed the Pueblo and entered the tunnel that led toward the queen’s chamber.

I hunched to keep from banging my head on the low ceiling. Rockskippers and sandbugs scratched and clicked as we hiked the worn path. No scorp larger than a cat confronted us.

I relayed a call to base. “Are you monitoring the camera in the queen’s chamber?”

“Lots of spectators are crowding in,” Samson responded. “The queen’s sentries are having trouble keeping everyone back.”

Low noises stirred ahead, like small waves lapping on a pebble beach.

Scorps crowded the opening to the queen’s chamber. We found the side passage and climbed the steep path to the ledge. No one objected to our presence except the little scorps we shoved aside.

The chamber was full, with scorps covering the floor and hanging on the walls. Other than the dark void of the algae-filled brood pool below our perch, the only open space was a flat area where the old queen sat, massive and inert. Her three sentinels faced the crowd.

It was quiet for so many scorps in one place. No clacking of claws, just the tapping and scraping of shifting spearlike legs and groping antennae.

“Fascinating,” Dr. Havens’s voice came through my helmet. “We are honored to attend this auspicious occasion.”

The scorp crowd pulsated with waves of tremors. In the eastern quarter of the chamber, antennae perked forward all at once, as if hearing a far-off sound. A ripple of antennae spread outward in waves reaching the farthest corners of the chamber. Again and again, the wave began at a wide tunnel opening in the east, all antennae straining forward to catch the next hint of action.

Then, a sound strong enough for even my ears. From the eastern tunnel came a slow crunching march, like an ore hauler rolling over gravel. The waves of scorp excitement rippled faster. The crunching sound grew louder.

Lucien whispered, “Pinch is coming.”

CHAPTER 31

Battle of the Queens

WITH THE ECHOING rustle of thousands of scorp bodies, the audience shifted its attention from the old queen to the eastern opening.

Like the bodyguard around a potentate, a phalanx of big scorps entered. With heavy carapaces, thick legs, and hefty claws, they shoved aside the crowd, sidling into the cavern dragging something behind them.

Pinch. Newly emerged as a queen.

A slow, unified clacking began.

Pinch’s transponder had been shed with his old carapace, but he was instantly recognizable by the heavy double claws. He looked like a new scorp: bigger, carapace gleaming, antennae long and shiny, eyestalks broad and stiff.

“Magnificent!” Havens cried.

Pinch’s entourage dragged and pushed him into position. His new, sixth pair of legs scrabbled ineffectively.

“He looks like he’s trying to escape,” I whispered.

“His new legs may still be weak,” Emma said.

Pinch’s escort shoved him directly in front of Queen Highlander. The mass of spectators continued the slow, measured clacking of claws. The old queen and the new candidate for the throne lined up facing one another, waving their antennae.

We’d seen dominance battles many times before: the combatants squaring up, posturing to display giant claws, raising their heavy bodies to gain a height advantage.

Pinch lifted two huge claws like a prizefighter.

The old queen waved her single claw in response. Her carapace was scored with scars, its edges curled and frayed where the annual layers—a daunting number of them since her last molt—had begun to chip away. How old was she? How many challengers had she faced since she’d morphed into a queen?

I became a little more optimistic: maybe Pinch wasn’t quite the underdog Emma had feared. Maybe Queen Highlander was too old.

But Pinch didn’t seem ready to engage. He inched closer to the old queen slowly, approaching sideways, hesitantly.

“Is Pinch afraid?” I asked.

Lucien shook his head. “Simply cautious. Pinch has no concept of death. Even the queen’s death will mean nothing except a silence where there was once a strong voice. Soon another voice will rise to take its place.”

Did that make taking a life less wrong?

Queen Highlander extended her legs, raising her heavy body off the floor. Higher and higher, her claw waving like a flag.

Pinch remained in a crouch. The crowd grew louder, more insistent.

Havens broke into the com channel. “Booker? I understand you carry a weapon. You needn’t kill the old queen yourself—if you can target her claw, that should be enough to ensure Pinch’s victory.”

“Quiet, Dr. Havens. We’re not at war, and you’re no general.”

“Don’t worry,” Lucien said. “From my position, I can forward to Pinch information about the old queen’s actions and give advice on tactics. As Booker suggested, that’s the sort of help any of Pinch’s allies would provide.”

I stayed quiet, although I wondered if Lucien was really proposing to help Pinch or to ensure his defeat.

As the face-off continued, Pinch remained hunkered down. Were his new legs too weak to stand? Would he fight to the death or accept defeat? Scuttle away to live in exile like the Valleys?

Queen Highlander moved forward a tiny step, her antennae twitching to check Pinch’s position. Another tiny step. Perhaps she was anxious to end the stalemate—her legs were beginning to tremble with the strain of holding up her massive body.

“Now,” Lucien whispered.

Pinch pounced like a fox on a hen. His lighter body more agile, he leaped high enough to clasp the old queen’s single giant claw in his left. As she struggled to free it, his right claw grasped her spearlike antenna.

Snap. The antenna fell, leaving Queen Highlander with a useless stub.

The rhythmic clacking faltered; a shudder went through the crowd. Did they feel her shock at the amputation of one of her few appendages that could register pain? It must have been like a punctured eardrum: piercing agony and loss of a vital sense at the same time.

But the old queen had survived countless challenges from newly minted rivals. Perhaps as often as every spring, she’d faced a new duel and emerged victorious. She was battle hardened in terms of layers of shell as well as experience—but she might never before have faced a rival with that deadly second claw. Would Pinch’s progeny carry the trait? Would they have a competitive edge in all future generations of scorps, changing the species forever? In a sense, Pinch had already won the genetic battle: even if he died today, his sperm had already fertilized the queen’s developing batch of eggs. And if he won, his genes would be carried in every egg he produced for as many years as he reigned.

As Pinch held the queen’s fighting claw harmlessly out of the way, his right claw darted and roved. Shiny and sharp, it snipped at an antenna here, a leg there. The queen’s minor claws did their own damage, cutting at Pinch’s tender joints.

“He’s injured,” Emma said. “Pinch’s shell is still thin. But he’s smart to keep his antennae tucked out of the way.”

There was only one way he could manage that: Lucien. Scorps were nearly blind—any other scorp would have been flailing with his antennae to check his opponent’s position, making them vulnerable to attack. Only Pinch had the edge of a visual observer, telling him where to strike.

Beside me, Lucien twitched at each of Pinch’s moves, his right hand opening and closing in sync with Pinch’s snapping claw.

Snap. Pinch cut through one of the queen’s legs. Her left side collapsed onto the ground. My own legs twinged in sympathy.

“Pinch is winning!” Havens crowed. Ancient Romans would have cheered, too, as they watched a favorite gladiator draw blood.

Pinch clipped off one of the queen’s annoying minor claws and began to worry at the thick joint of her major claw.

“It’s just a matter of time now,” Samson whispered. “The old queen’s defenses are nearly gone. If Pinch cuts off her claw, she’ll have nothing left.”

The queen seemed to realize her peril. With a mighty effort, she heaved her body upward. Her stinging tail—up to now folded away out of reach, whipped forward like a striking cobra.

Her stinger drove deep into Pinch’s breast.

Lucien gasped.

The scene froze. No clacking from the crowd. No struggles from the duo locked in their deadly embrace.

“Stop her!” Havens cried. “She mustn’t kill Pinch.”

“She won’t,” Emma said. “The sting isn’t a weapon. She’s renewing the telepathic link, one last time.”

Lucien clutched at his chest, breathing hard. I shoved aside a couple of small scorps to help him recline against the wall.

Removing his helmet, I asked, “Lucien, are you all right?”

Face gray, he whispered, “It’s everything. Everything Queen Highlander knows, she’s trying to tell Pinch. Things she’s tried to share before, but his mind was too limited to understand. It’s too much. It’s all there, everything, but it will take him years to process it. Decades.”

Emma would be pleased. Lucien had won what humans needed: access to a knowledge base that extended all the way back to the Builders themselves.

Samson was calling. “Booker? Lucien’s feed went dead. What’s happening?” In the background, Lydia demanded answers.

“Stand by. Lucien’s feeling faint.” I muted my mic. “Can you understand it?”

He shook his head. “It’s too alien, all touch and vibration. Pinch and I will need to figure it out together.” He reached for his helmet. “I’m all right now. I just need to rest a little.”

On the chamber floor, the scorps had begun to stir. The queen’s stinger withdrew. Her tail slumped as she settled back onto the floor. Her large claw banged as Pinch let it drop.

I switched my mic back on. “It looks like the battle’s over.”

“Thank the stars,” Havens said.

Pinch took his place facing the assembled company, carelessly treading on the old queen’s limp appendages.

The small attendant scorps began to scramble over the battleground, tidying up bits of shell and flesh. A few of the larger ones began to dismantle legs from the old queen’s unresisting body.

“The queen is dead,” Samson intoned. “Long live Queen Pinch.”

“The old queen may be dying,” Emma said, “but in most ways she’ll live on. Her memories, even her personality, will survive as long as the telepathy chain continues from queen to queen.”

“This is an auspicious occasion,” Havens began. “The dawn of a new day for human and scorpidon relations. Let us be the first to congratulate Pinch on his accession to the leadership of the Highlander hive. On behalf of humankind and the Stellar Coalition . . .”

Once again, the rhythmic clacking began.

“What is it?” Havens asked. “The battle is over, isn’t it?”

“A new sovereign’s first duty,” Emma said dryly. “Secure the succession. Pinch has to choose a mate.”

Burly scorps lined up before the new queen, each trying to rise higher than the next. Pinch wafted his long, gleaming antennae over them like a blessing. They lingered over the tallest, most rugged scorp—034, one of Pinch’s most loyal followers, now the new royal consort. He took a step forward, ready to reap his reward.

A barrage of scorps fell from above.

CHAPTER 32

Invasion

THE INVADING SCORPS hadn’t fallen from the sky; they’d just dropped from the ceiling, where they’d been clinging in the dark.

“What the hell?” I shouted into the mic.

“It’s the Valley scorps,” Samson cried, “or what’s left of them. Sorry, Booker—they must have used a different entrance; we never saw them coming. And look—is that the Valley queen?”

I swore. They’d snuck in through some passage beyond the reach of our repeaters, some tunnel left unguarded while every Highlander scorp bigger than a poodle had come to watch the queens battle.

Babble erupted from base. On the cavern floor, chaos reigned as Highland scorps took on the Valley invaders, claws grappling, stingers flailing as each side sought to infect opponents with their own version of the telepathy virus. Biological warfare, scorp-style.

But Queen Valley had squared up to Pinch.

Emma cried urgently, “Booker, you have to stop her. The only thing the Valley queen knows about humans is what she’s learned from battling the townspeople—that we are violent enemies, intent on driving them out. If she takes over the Highlander hive, there will never be peace.”

Havens’s voice was shrill. “That would undo everything we have attempted here. Lucien, Booker—you must protect Queen Pinch at all costs. I order you to kill the Valley queen.”

“Samson, tell your boss to shut the hell up. Gag her if you have to.” I turned to Lucien.

He shook his head. “My help won’t be enough. Queen Valley is fresh and strong, while Pinch is exhausted from the battle.” He looked pretty exhausted himself.

Up to me, then. Bitter gall filled my throat. “Right. Stay here and watch my back.”

I shoved the nearest scorp off our ledge and watched him fall into the pool below. A splash, but he clambered out without difficulty. I figured the fall was three meters into waist-deep water. I wouldn’t drown, even if my heavy prosthetics dragged me down—but the water wouldn’t break my fall much either.

I lowered myself over the edge.

My landing wasn’t pretty. I bent my knees and rolled to reduce the shock on my stumps, but it still hurt like hell. I floundered in the algae-clogged pool before getting my feet under me and creeping—aching and dripping—onto the cavern floor.

“Booker, hurry. The fight’s begun.”

All the small scorps had fled or been overcome. Surrounding me were pairs of wolf-sized scorps engaged in head-to-head dominance fights. A few walking wounded staggered around aimlessly.

I threaded my way between duels, dodging claws and stingers, hoping my armor would be enough to keep me from losing any other limbs or becoming a telepathic pawn in the scorp power struggle. My stun rod zapped any scorp that reached my way. No time to distinguish friend from foe, no way to tell who was winning.

“Lucien?”

“Veer right; you’re almost there.”

I passed the last grappling pair. Now the hard part: ahead of me, Queen Valley faced Pinch. The Valley queen’s scarred back showed the battles she’d been through—bullet gouges from dodging trigger-happy townies and a ragged hole where a chunk had been blown away during her invasion of the waterworks.

Pinch’s double claws snapped air. Queen Valley danced away, just out of reach.

I’d avoided killing old Queen Highlander, yet here I was, ordered to kill another scorp queen. And whichever queen died, all her knowledge and wisdom passed down from ancient times would die as well.

Queen Valley didn’t seem to see me as a threat—not yet, anyway. I sidled up behind, jammed my pistol into a hip joint, and pressed the trigger.

The leg went limp, but the Valley queen barely noticed—she had eleven others. Even if I’d managed to put a nerve bundle out of action, the reduction in cognitive ability wouldn’t be significant.

Emma’s voice intruded. “Your best chance to disable her is a shot into the mouth, angled toward the first hip joint on either side. That will take out one of the largest nerve bundles. A second shot to the other side will render her helpless.”

“Put my hand in a scorp’s mouth? No thanks. I’d like to keep my remaining limbs intact.”

I shot into another hip joint. Two of her twelve legs out of commission. I suppressed a pang of guilt over crippling a sapient creature the way I’d been crippled.

Queen Valley faltered, her antennae reaching to see what had attacked her. A couple of zings from the stun rod fended them off, but at least I’d gotten her attention.

“Behind you!” Samson called. I rolled out of the way as a claw snapped where my neck had been.

“That’s good,” Lucien said. “Keep Queen Valley focused on you.”

“No problem.”

I was near enough to Queen Valley’s right side to reach another potential target: the hole where a deputy’s rifle had blasted off a hunk when she and her guards vacated the waterworks. I stuck my pistol into the wound and let go a shot.

Maybe it was tender. Queen Valley spun. Her claw slashed down—and knocked my pistol out of my hand.

I ducked, but not quite fast enough.

The claw gripped my leg and hit metal. Queen Valley tugged and tore, trying to rip my leg off, setting my stump’s nerve endings into spasms. I kicked and swore, but the claw held me fast.

A shadow from above—Queen Valley’s tail was poised over me like a spear.

Down it struck, arcing like a lightning bolt.

The stinger hit my armored chest hard enough to drive the breath out of my body. The stinging tip, made to penetrate scorp shell, drilled through my armor, scratching my skin like a scalpel. I squirmed, but the claw held my leg like a vise.

I tried to pry the tail-tip away from my chest, my mind screaming. Not her! Gods above and below, don’t make me a slave to a human-hating, venomous alien!

Over the mic came gasps and screams from base—and Lucien’s quiet voice. “Now.”

A sharp, shining claw flashed. Snap, and the Valley queen’s stinging tail was severed at the tip.

Queen Valley recoiled, releasing my leg to face the threat from Pinch.

I rolled out of the way, panting, weeping from fear and relief, scrambling to get my hands on my pistol again. My legs ached abominably.

Queen Valley staggered, retreated. She backed away, taking two halting steps toward the eastern tunnel.

Around us, the duels had mostly ended, losers obediently following winners as they fed on the carnage.

Pinch danced around, his two claws snipping like a persnickety barber, clipping at the injured Queen Valley’s antennae here, a leg tip there.

“Stop!” I shouted. “Lucien, stop Pinch!”

I scrambled up, limping to place myself between the two queens. “Her stinger’s gone. She’s not a threat anymore. Tell Pinch to let her go.”

In front of me, Pinch wavered, claws at ready. The Valley queen hobbled toward the exit.

“Your compassion is pointless,” Emma said softly. “Scorps don’t fear death. They don’t even feel pain, not like we do. Our first priority has to be ensuring the security of the Highlander hive.”

“Kill the infidels? No thanks. The need for ‘security’ has always been used to justify genocide. Dr. Havens, what legacy do you think the Stellar Coalition would prefer?”

Havens’s sigh was audible through the mic. “Let her live.”

Queen Valley crept away, a scant handful of surviving Valleys scrambling after her.

I edged over to the cavern wall to rest. A splash, and Lucien waded out of the pool to join me. He handed me my pack.

“Is it over?” Havens’s voice quavered.

“Nearly,” Lucien said.

A burly scorp approached Queen Pinch: Highlander 034, come to claim his bride. Their mating had all the romance of a back-alley mugging: no protracted selection, no clacking ceremony. I took advantage of the lull to trigger the stimulators in my prosthetics. They did nothing to soothe the ache in my battered stumps.

When the new royal consort backed away and began feeding, the little attendants showed up. They clambered all over Pinch, giving him—I supposed I should begin thinking of Pinch as her—food and grooming: the royal treatment. She’d have a full Silverrock year to rest and recover and plan before she had to face her next challenger. It might take even longer for Queen Valley’s limbs and stinger to grow back.

Until then, all Queen Pinch’s needs would be met. A pampered prisoner, doomed to spend the rest of her days beside the brood pool.

Havens began another speech of congratulations and promised a new era of learning from one another.

I shouldered my pack. “Ready to go, Lucien?”

“Give me a minute, will you? Wait for me by the pool.” He went to Pinch and laid a hand on his—her—carapace.

How close were they, Lucien and Pinch? Too close, to my mind. I’d encourage him to go to Prime immediately and see what could be done to break the telepathic tie. Samson had learned enough of the scorp language to juggle the glyphs. As for me, maybe my sister was right—a desk job wouldn’t be so bad.

Samson called from base. “Lucien, what are you doing?”

Lucien looked up from Pinch’s side. “Almost ready. There’s just one more thing I have to do.”

“What are you talking about?” I peered across the chamber.

Samson’s voice was urgent. “Booker, he has something in his hand. It looks like a miner’s blasting cartridge.”

Havens’s voice crackled over the mic, “Lucien, I order you to stop this nonsense!”

I took a step forward.

“Stop!” Lucien held his stun rod next to the charge. “Stay where you are, Booker.”

“Lucien, you can go back to Prime. They’ll find a way . . .”

“No,” he said. “I’m staying here. Like Dr. Havens said, we have a lot to learn from each other.” He opened a can and poured liquid onto the ground at his feet, soaking his own legs. The sharp tang of petroleum distillate hit my nose—generator fuel.

I drew my pistol. “Lucien, I won’t let you kill Pinch.”

He laughed. “Oh, no. I want Pinch to live a long, long time. But today, the new queen is going to learn about pain. She doesn’t know what it’s like to be covered with skin, with millions of pain receptors. Pain is something she can’t feel directly, so I’m going to have to teach her telepathically.”

“That’s lunacy. If the charge ignites, you’ll die!”

“Die? No, I mustn’t die yet. That’s why you’re here, to save me.” He placed the cartridge at his own feet. “There’s only one way she’ll understand how humans feel pain. She’ll have to feel it through me.”

“You know I’m armed,” I called desperately. “I’ll shoot if I have to.”

“Go ahead. I planned on using my stun rod to ignite the charge, but you can do it if you want.” He kicked a worker scorp away from his backpack.

I could shoot him. He was wearing armor, so he’d probably survive. But if my shot made him trigger the stun rod, the explosive would ignite and he’d be engulfed in fire.

Lucien, a man I’d protected and befriended. Could I live with being responsible for his death? Could I live with myself if I did nothing while he attacked Pinch, our only hope for peace?

Perhaps if I hit him squarely in the body . . .

Lucien aimed the stun rod toward the floor. A spark would set off the charge, ignite the fuel.

I raised the pistol, aimed for his chest, and pulled the trigger.

CHAPTER 33

Escape

I’M SURE I HIT him. I saw Lucien fall back, I’m certain of it. But his finger must have jerked the trigger of the stun rod.

A flash of sparks.

I raised my arms to protect my face.

Bam. The explosive went off. In the enclosed chamber, the roar battered my ears. Light, bright enough to penetrate my closed eyelids. Whoosh of flame as the fuel caught fire.

Acrid smoke blurred my vision. The stench of burning flesh filled my lungs, sending me into a spate of coughing and retching.

Then I moved.

Lucien had chosen his revenge with malice. The blast had left my ears ringing; I could only imagine what the noise had done to scorps, sensitive to every vibration. And pain—whatever Lucien was feeling was being telepathically routed directly into Queen Pinch’s mind. And from Pinch, spread to every member of the hive within her chain of telepathy. No way to shut it out, no way to make it stop.

The entrance to the queen’s chamber was clogged with panicked scorps trying to escape.

I hunched low to stay under the smoke. Scorps scrambled over me. They fled the chamber through a dozen entrances and crevices, some into the brood pool.

Hot dust covered Queen Pinch and the area around her with orange halos, horribly bright in my helmet’s thermal cameras. She frantically waved her antennae and minor claws. Some of the dutiful attendants desperately crawled toward her, risking the heat to fulfill their mission of serving her.

The smell of roasted scorp filled the cavern. Still, the queen moved. She lived.

Lucien was down, screaming and thrashing as remnants of flames burned the bits of clothing and flesh that weren’t covered by armor.

My face and one arm were hurting already, caught in the blast of heat as I’d held my arm up to protect my eyes. My throat burned with each gasping breath.

Into the flames and ashes I waded, my metal legs stepping in where limbs of flesh and blood would have shriveled in the heat. My boot soles smoldered, my pants melted onto my prosthetic shins, the sensitive skin on my stumps blistered.

No scorps bothered to challenge me. I stepped over twitching scorp bodies. The smell of charred flesh was sickening.

Lucien’s screams had become hoarse moans. He thrashed uselessly.

With my own hands, I patted out the dying flames on Lucien. His armor had slowed the bullet and resisted the fire, but nothing had protected him from the heat. Patches of his skin were fused to melted bits of armor. Blackened flesh covered his face. The reek of burned hair overpowered the stench of charred scorp. My own fingers were burned by the heat of his armor. Somehow, fueled by adrenaline, I lifted him over my shoulder, got my feet under me, and carried him out of the chamber.

Fleeing scorps preceded us as I carried and dragged him up the twisting path back to the Pueblo. Wherever we went, scorps ran from Booker and Lucien, the bringers of heat and noise and pain.

I panted and coughed in the smoke, pulling Lucien without regard for his injuries or his agonized cries. My seared hands throbbed. At each step, my battered and roasted stumps screamed for mercy. Each breath burned like acid in my scorched throat.

Up, up through the stink of burned scorp and human flesh. Step after step, then another and another. I plodded, I fell and rose, I crawled when I had to. All I could think of was getting out, out of the smoke, out of the darkness, away from the clacking and smell of scorp, away from the pain.

But I kept hold of Lucien. Whatever hell I was in, I was taking him with me.

In the Pueblo, little scorps had abandoned their daily tasks and dashed about in a frenzy. The entire chain of telepathy was learning about pain.

My own pain had begun to merge into fever-dreams of Canton. In the frantic clicking around me I saw shadows of broken bodies—human and scorp—everywhere I looked. Bits of arms, legs, and claws seemed to appear under my trudging feet.

Panting and gasping, I pulled Lucien, now inert, through the Pueblo’s curving streets. My burned skin made each step torture. Across the Pueblo, I dragged Lucien up the sloping trail to the overlook. Behind me the Pueblo loomed in eternal darkness.

I had to stop.

Overcome with coughing, I fell onto the overlook’s rocky floor. I tried to force my stumps to move, to order the prosthetic legs to stand, to walk, but I couldn’t make it back to my feet. I simply could not drag Lucien another step.

The long, lightless length of the access tunnel stretched ahead of me. Beyond it would be daylight and fresh air and safety. I just had to keep going.

I thought I heard Emma calling me, Havens nagging, and Ugarte cursing. I tried to answer but couldn’t manage more than a whisper. I thought I heard the door slamming, like that last night when Rita walked away. I called to her to come back. I tried to go after her. A few more steps and I would find her. I just had to keep going.

“Here he is!” someone shouted from far away. A rush of cold oxygen tortured my burned throat. A cold compress soothed my burned fingers. “Rita,” I croaked.

“Rita?” Ugarte’s ugly face grinned down at me. “Not by a long shot.”

CHAPTER 34

Autumn on Silverrock

ONE EARTHYEAR has passed, and Silverrock’s long, dry summer is coming to an end.

Most of Silverrock’s colonists have left for the far lusher and more promising new planet the Stellar Coalition has allocated to humans.

Sweetwater City survives as a smaller, classier version of itself. The one remaining hotel and the handful of bars and restaurants on Venture Avenue are filled with well-dressed, high-tipping diplomats, ore-buyers, and exoanthropologists. With scorps in charge of the planet’s mineral production, nobody seems to mind that humans are confined to specified business zones.

I’ve recovered now from my injuries. Mostly, anyway—the burns on my right hand were severe enough that I’ve acquired two prosthetic fingers. I can’t complain, especially since Emma bullied the Coalition into springing for state-of-the-art, integrated prosthetics for my legs as well as my fingers. My new limbs look natural, are comfortable enough that I sometimes forget I’m wearing them, and give me enough spring in my step to make me feel like a young man again.

Even so, I decided to take my sister’s advice and accept a desk job. I’m now the chief mineral broker on behalf of the Highlander hive. It’s an easy job: the Builders’ inscriptions instructed the scorps to collect high-grade ore and store it in the tunnels, stockpiling the minerals for the Builders’ eventual return. The scorps have been faithful to their duty for fifty thousand years—and under Queen Pinch’s leadership, they seem quite happy to keep on squirreling ore away. On behalf of the hive, I sell tiny trickles to Venture Mining, never enough to lower the price. Since the scorps’ needs are minimal—restaurant leftovers and agricultural byproducts from the hydroponics farms keep them happy—I’m socking away a fortune in safe investments for the hive’s future, for whenever they advance enough to need money. Given Pinch’s capacity for learning, it might not be that long.

Lydia is thriving too. She’s leased her ranch to the Stellar Coalition at rates that will keep her in luxury for the rest of her life. The ranch is now the Silverrock Diplomatic Center, with a new conference room and scorp observation center, a rebuilt kitchen, and a staff of six to cater to the needs of visiting diplomats. She’s coupled up with her head chef and finally has some meat on her bones.

The Stellar Coalition showered Dr. Charlotte Havens with praise for her deft management of a touchy first-contact situation and for negotiating peace on Silverrock. As a reward, they sent her to oversee an even more troublesome conflict on a planet even more backward. I chuckle every time I think of it.

Samson has been named the humans’ ambassador to the scorpidons. He has his hands full, balancing human requests to expand the cap on human occupation against Queen Pinch’s demands that humans conserve water and stay in their zones. Samson tells me his biggest headache is managing expectations from human and Stellar Coalition visitors who seem to think that negotiating with scorps via glyphs is as easy as talking on a vid.

The Sweetwater City hospital got an upgrade in the form of a new surgical center and a couple of crackerjack doctors from Prime. Last anybody heard of Doc Slade, he’d shipped out in the dead of night to parts unknown in the company of one of the Oak Leaf Tavern’s bartenders.

Even before Pinch came out of molt, the Coalition had persuaded Mick Ugarte to return to his office as sheriff. The bonus they paid him to clean up Chang’s hash-ups hasn’t changed him—he still grumbles every time I win at our weekly poker game.

As a tribute to Professor Ambrose, the university published a nice little book of the maps of the Pueblo, now safe from being destroyed by miners. A colleague of Emma’s has taken over Ambrose’s collection of “ceramics.” Every few weeks I forward a box of more bits the scorps have found: enough scraps of Builder tech to keep Emma and her friendly researchers busy for a long time.

Even the Valley hive is doing better. With Emma’s reluctant connivance, I persuaded Silverrock’s new management that it was in the interest of planetary ecology to maintain a ‘wild’ population of scorps. One of the old hydroponics farms has been turned into a scorp preserve for the Valley queen and her tiny hive, with a nice, deep pool for when she’s ready to breed again. She still looks odd, with a stubby tail just beginning to regrow and uneven replacement legs, but I envy her ability to regenerate the limbs she needs.

As for Emma Dewinter . . . we still see each other from time to time. She lives in Sweetwater City, spending her time deciphering Builder technology under the cover of writing a book about scorp biology and life cycle, relying mostly on Lucien for information.

“How’s he doing?” I asked her the other day. “I scarcely see him anymore.” We were in the ranch compound, taking an evening stroll through a garden of succulents and cacti that Lydia had been nurturing.

“No one does, except for scorps and the liaison team. In some ways, he’s more scorp than human now. He spends all his time in the tunnels with the queen, grilling her about the Builders. I visit him every few days to remind him to bathe and eat.”

“Is he still in pain?”

Emma gave me her feline smile. “Lucien is enjoying a great deal of pain. After all, that was his purpose. Pinch injected Lucien with the telepathy virus to control him. But the channel runs both ways. Queen Pinch is learning much more than she wants to know about how humans feel pain, every time she fails to cooperate. Eventually, she may even understand death. Lucien is the serpent in their paradise, giving them knowledge of good and evil.”

“As I recall the story, Adam and Eve acquired knowledge at the cost of innocence.”

Emma chuckled. “I doubt the scorps were ever innocent. But now they know that cooperation with humans will be rewarded and fighting with humans will get them another dose of pain through Lucien. In any case, Queen Pinch has certainly profited in the exchange. Lucien’s tactical advice saved Pinch’s life and gained Pinch her throne. It’s only fair that she allow him to probe her memories, everything she got from the old queen and all the prior queens through the chain of telepathy. We’re learning a tremendous amount about the Builders and their technology.”

“By now, Pinch must have figured out that we’re not really the Builders. Will she still cooperate?”

“She knows what to expect from Lucien if she doesn’t. He’s quite mad enough to endure any amount of agony to ensure that she’ll tell us everything we want to know.”

Above us, the myriad stars of Silverrock’s moonless night sky might have been romantic, but I no longer had any such inclinations about Emma. She was too ready to twist logic and ethics to reach whatever goal she held. Now we’re just coconspirators—or friends, I suppose, in the way that a man might be friendly with a tame leopard. I’m always wondering what’s really on her mind and whether she’ll turn on me.

“There’s risk in that, you know,” I said. “As much as we hope to learn from Queen Pinch, she’s no doubt learning as much from Lucien. How long do you think it will be before she learns to manipulate him? Until she sends her troops out to sting other humans to gain their knowledge and take them as her pawns? With a few human minions, in another century the scorps could develop a stardrive of their own. They could send out armies to every known world to conquer them with the telepathy virus.”

Emma patted my arm. “Good old Booker. I can always count on you for the tactical angle. Don’t worry, we’ve thought about that. I’m developing an antiviral specific to the telepathy virus. If the danger becomes acute, we can introduce it into Silverrock’s environment. It would disrupt the telepathy virus in the scorp population. Cure them, in fact.”

I halted. “And without being able to pass on knowledge telepathically . . .”

She smiled. “The scorpidons will be large, rather stupid scavengers.”

The thought made my stomach roil. “That’s genocide.”

“Self-preservation.” She took my arm to continue our stroll. “Don’t ever change, Booker. The universe needs straight shooters like you. Just don’t forget that the universe also needs a few people like me.”

The End

Author’s Note

IF YOU ENJOYED Silverrock, please leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads or your favorite site!

Other books by Kathryn Hoff:

The Sparrowhawk space adventure books:

Born a slave, tough-talking, soft-hearted Patch is determined never again to let anyone control her fate. With her gambler brother as captain and a rag-tag crew of smugglers, she sails into action-filled adventures in her old space hauler Sparrowhawk.

Sparrowhawk Legacy In this short prologue, Patch and her brother inherit an old space hauler and a mountain of debt. As they scramble to make ends meet, they face danger from another source: enforcers hunting runaway slaves like Patch.

Bloodstone (Book 1) A shady archaeologist, a mysterious relic, a suspicious officer—and a load of hidden contraband. An obsessed passenger draws Patch and the Sparrowhawk crew into a perilous treasure hunt to find a lost planet.

Ghost Ship (Book 2) An aging smuggler persuades Patch and the Sparrowhawk crew to sail into uncharted space to salvage a valuable wrecked ship. The ship is there waiting for them—but so are the dangers of trackless space, pirate raids, warring worlds, and the menacing presence of the derelict ship’s dead crew.

Fugitive (Book 3) As her brother’s gambling spins out of control and her crew’s personal problems mount up, Patch goes undercover to infiltrate a political reform movement, dodging spies and informers to find its endangered leader and smuggle her to safety.

Sci fi thrillers:

Project Hannibal The world’s first herd of genetically engineered mammoths is doomed when the army decides to terminate the experiment and destroy the evidence. Only a dedicated animal trainer can save them, spiriting the herd to freedom in the Alaskan wilderness—until the escape is derailed into a daring rescue by mammoth.

Monkey Girl Jackie is a snarky, average-in-everything survivor with a chip on her shoulder, a soft spot for animals, and a determination to find the truth. Orphaned in a years-long pandemic, the teen takes on a dirty job: caring for a research lab’s chimpanzee. As mishaps pile up, Jackie becomes dangerously entangled in the lab’s secrets.

The Rayburn Bequest An eccentric scientist leaves Nora eight cages of lab rats and a flash drive of scientific data from a risky experiment. Is the research a boon for humankind or a dangerous mistake? Can it cure her son’s fatal genetic flaw? As a philosophy professor at a beach-town community college, Nora is good at running seminars for senior citizens. Can the teachings of Socrates and Plato help her weigh the ethical implications of world-changing science against the future of her only child?

Acknowledgments

This book required many rewrites. I owe a huge debt for the help and support I’ve received from the on-line community of writers at CritiqueCircle.com. Special thanks to my wonderful critique partners Kevin Morrissey, Douglas Phillips, and Marc Rothstein.

Good editors are vital for a good novel. Special shoutout to Rachel Keith for her copyedit expertise.

Many thanks to JD&J Design LLC for their great cover. They really help to bring the book to life.

Finally, as always, infinite gratitude to my spouse, Ari Patrinos, for his love, tolerance, and science knowledge, and to our daughters Maritsa and Thalia for their love and support.

Table of Contents

The Ruins

Scorpidons

The Ranch

The Bull Scorp

The Glyphs

Shots Fired

Potsherds and Flint Knives

Hide the Pea

Postmortem

Quakes

Edict

Echoes

Trash

Trouble

Telepathy

Funeral Feast

Evidence

Intelligence Tests

Reading Lesson

Confrontation

Sapience

Audience with the Queen

Fireworks

Scorpidons

Negotiation

Rescue

Pain and Death

Molt

The Pumpstation

Peace Plan

Battle of the Queens

Invasion

Escape

Autumn on Silverrock

Author’s Note

Other books by Kathryn Hoff:

Acknowledgments