The hardcore had now dropped down to below a thousand. It seemed that most of the lunatic fringe had dissipated, hence the appearance of all those papers. Most serious theorists did not publish until they had something worth publishing. That was accepted protocol to prevent too much rubbish clogging up the informational highways. Nothing new on the net. Returning to her messages she deleted every one from unknown sources. Only then did she spot the message from the haiman Kroval on Earth:
“Every bird sings for a reason, similarly do dogs bark. Perhaps the Anglic similarity is misleading and the morphemes longer than we would suppose … maybe the length of a gabbleduck’s life. Perhaps they are all saying the same thing?”
That made Shardelle pause. She groped for meaning and it seemed to her to be lurking out of reach.
“The meat is forbidden,” the dracoman child had said.
Something there … something.
After time, her frustration became too much and she removed her aug. Once again taking up the controls of the ATV, she noticed that Rodol had reset its course, taking the vehicle away from the big gabbleduck. The reason was obvious: a hooder only five kilometers away from it.
With a quick glance at Jonas, Shardelle manually overrode that and put them back on course. She was damned if she was going to miss seeing it on the way back to the Tagreb. Jonas had made his big discovery. Maybe she could come out of this with at least something.
A minute later, Jonas looked at her and said, “Rodol just informed me that you are taking us closer to a hooder than might be safe.”
Shardelle pointed at the map screen.
He nodded. “Just be ready to run. Hooders move damned fast when they want to.”
Shardelle felt almost angered by his reasonable attitude, and felt too ashamed to analyze too closely the reason for that.
Afternoon, and they were back into still-standing flute grass. Shardelle spotted the gabbleduck when they were still kilometers away from it. It sat, a pyramid of alien flesh, its green multi-eyed gaze fixed on the horizon, bill swinging gently from side to side.
“How close would be safe?” Jonas asked when they were only a kilometer away.
Shardelle looked down at her hand gripping the joystick. Her knuckles were white. “I’m going to approach it. I’m going to walk up to it. You can stay in the ATV if you want.”
Five hundred meters, two hundred meters. Shardelle felt her frustration increase. The gabbleduck had not even turned to look at them. It was as if it could not be bothered to acknowledge their presence. At a hundred meters she just trickled the ATV forward.
“That thing is fucking immense,” said Jonas. He had abandoned his seat to go into the back of the vehicle. She saw that he was clutching an ECS pulse-rifle.
“What do you intend to do with that?”
“I’ll just keep watch. If it goes for you maybe I can drive it off, though seeing it now I realize it might just ignore this popgun.”
Shardelle nodded, and brought the ATV to a halt ten meters away from the monstrous creature. Turning on her shimmer-shield visor, she maneuvered past him and headed for the door. When she finally stepped down onto the rhizome mat and began pushing her way through the flute grasses, she heard The Gabble.
“Umbel shockadisc po frzzzt,” the gabbleduck grumbled to itself.
A few paces took her out of the standing flute grasses to where the creature sat. She recognized the stack of grazer bones beside it. The gabbleduck had returned to a previous location.
“Pthog,” the gabbleduck intoned, “Erb scugalug.”
It just made Shardelle angry. She marched forward and round until she was standing directly in front of the creature. It was indeed massive: folds of flesh hanging down from its body and almost concealing its powerful rear limbs. When it moved through the flute grasses its three sets of two forelimbs slotted neatly together to form two composite forelimbs so it seemed to run on all fours like, as Jonas had observed, a bear. Now those forelimbs were folded on its chest, and, sitting like this, it seemed some immense alien Buddha. Shardelle glared up at it.
“I’ve listened to over a thousand hours of that crap!” she shouted. “What the fuck are you saying?”
“Frogijig unth,” it observed.
All so close to meaning, but no meaning there. Returning her attention to its fleshy torso she saw that it had acquired a whole ecology all its own. The gabbleduck was crawling with prawnlike crustaceans. These were most numerous around wet looking sores, and the occasional lumpish growth leaking milky fluid.
“Shardelle! Shardelle! Get back here quick!”
Those crustaceans…
A sudden excitement filled her. It was the very same species they had seen crawling around the dead hooder: carrion eaters, they never fed on living flesh, but, like vultures, possessed an instinct for death.
“Shardelle!”
This gabbleduck was dying! She would have her corpse!
Then, through her aug: “This is Rodol. You must flee your current location at once. A hooder approaches.”
What?
Shardelle turned and gazed out across the plain the gabbleduck viewed. A black train was heading toward her, weaving back and forth. The hooder bore some resemblance to a giant millipede with its segments and many paddlelike legs. It also moved with the fast oiled smoothness of that insect. Shardelle froze to the spot, not out of fear, but through incredible angry frustration. She could not have this taken away from her, not now. It just was not fair.
“For fuck sake get in here! Maybe it’ll ignore us!”
The ATV was parked right next to her. She had not heard it arrive.
“Brogon ahul bul zzzk,” said the gabbleduck.
She suddenly realized how jealous and stupid she had been, and that both she and Jonas might pay for that. She ran for the door of the ATV and piled inside, hauled herself forward. Jonas was in the driving seat trying to get the thing into reverse. He did not take the power off and with a crunching shudder the vehicle stalled.
“Fuck fuck fuck.”
They both looked through the screen. The hooder was close, its front end rising off the ground like the striking head of a cobra. Inside its cowl was a mass of glittering knifish movement through which two vertical rows of red eyes glared. It was not focused on them. It was focused on the gabbleduck. Surely it would respond to this. Shardelle looked at the exterior intercom Jonas had been calling her through to check it was still on. No need really. She could hear the hard oily clattering of the hooder’s movement.
“Brogon,” the gabbleduck repeated, waving a black claw in the air.
The hooder froze. The gabbleduck turned its bill toward the ATV. It blinked some of its emerald eyes, then returned its attention to the hooder. After a moment it reached out with one claw and made an unmistakably dismissive gesture. The hooder sank down, turned in a gleaming arc and sped away.