Puzzled, he wandered back to the tank and stared at the castles after she had taken her departure. His faces were still there, as ever. Except—he snatched up his magnifying goggles and slipped them on. Even then it was hard to make out. But it seemed to him that the expression on the face of his images had changed slightly, that his smile was somehow twisted so that it seemed a touch malicious. But it was a very subtle change, if it was a change at all. Kress finally put it down to his suggestibility, and resolved not to invite Jala Wo to any more of his gatherings.
OVER THE NEXT FEW MONTHS, KRESS AND ABOUT A DOZEN OF HIS favorites got together weekly for what he liked to call his “war games.” Now that his initial fascination with the sandkings was past, Kress spent less time around his tank and more on his business affairs and his social life, but he still enjoyed having a few friends over for a war or two. He kept the combatants sharp on a constant edge of hunger. It had severe effects on the orange sandkings, who dwindled visibly until Kress began to wonder if their maw was dead. But the others did well enough.
Sometimes at night, when he could not sleep, Kress would take a bottle of wine into the darkened living room, where the red gloom of his miniature desert was the only light. He would drink and watch for hours, alone. There was usually a fight going on somewhere, and when there was not he could easily start one by dropping in some small morsel of food.
They took to betting on the weekly battles, as Malada Blane had suggested. Kress won a good amount by betting on the whites, who had become the most powerful and numerous colony in the tank, with the grandest castle. One week he slid the corner of the tank top aside, and dropped the food close to the white castle instead of on the central battleground as usual, so that the others had to attack the whites in their stronghold to get any food at all. They tried. The whites were brilliant in defense. Kress won a hundred standards from Jad Rakkis.
Rakkis, in fact, lost heavily on the sandkings almost every week. He pretended to a vast knowledge of them and their ways, claiming that he had studied them after the first party, but he had no luck when it came to placing his bets. Kress suspected that Jad’s claims were empty boasting. He had tried to study the sandkings a bit himself, in a moment of idle curiosity, tying in to the library to find out to what world his pets were native. But there was no listing for them. He wanted to get in touch with Wo and ask her about it, but he had other concerns, and the matter kept slipping his mind.
Finally, after a month in which his losses totaled more than a thousand standards, Jad Rakkis arrived at the war games carrying a small plastic case under his arm. Inside was a spiderlike thing covered with fine golden hair.
“A sand spider,” Rakkis announced. “From Cathaday. I got it this afternoon from t’Etherane the Petseller. Usually they remove the poison sacs, but this one is intact. Are you game, Simon? I want my money back. I’ll bet a thousand standards, sand spider against sandkings.”
Kress studied the spider in its plastic prison. His sandkings had grown—they were twice as large as Wo’s, as she’d predicted—but they were still dwarfed by this thing. It was venomed, and they were not. Still, there were an awful lot of them. Besides, the endless sandking wars had begun to grow tiresome lately. The novelty of the match intrigued him. “Done,” Kress said. “Jad, you are a fool. The sandkings will just keep coming until this ugly creature of yours is dead.”
“You are the fool, Simon,” Rakkis replied, smiling. “The Cathadayn sand spider customarily feeds on burrowers that hide in nooks and crevices and—well, watch—it will go straight into those castles, and eat the maws.”
Kress scowled amid general laughter. He hadn’t counted on that. “Get on with it,” he said irritably. He went to freshen his drink.
The spider was too large to cycle conveniently through the food chamber. Two of the others helped Rakkis slide the tank top slightly to one side, and Malada Blane handed him up his case. He shook the spider out. It landed lightly on a miniature dune in front of the red castle, and stood confused for a moment, mouth working, legs twitching menacingly.
“Come on,” Rakkis urged. They all gathered round the tank. Simon Kress found his magnifiers and slipped them on. If he was going to lose a thousand standards, at least he wanted a good view of the action.
The sandkings had seen the invader. All over the castle, activity had ceased. The small scarlet mobiles were frozen, watching.
The spider began to move toward the dark promise of the gate. On the tower above, Simon Kress’ countenance stared down impassively.
At once there was a flurry of activity. The nearest red mobiles formed themselves into two wedges and streamed over the sand toward the spider. More warriors erupted from inside the castle and assembled in a triple line to guard the approach to the underground chamber where the maw lived. Scouts came scuttling over the dunes, recalled to fight.
Battle was joined.
The attacking sandkings washed over the spider. Mandibles snapped shut on legs and abdomen, and clung. Reds raced up the golden legs to the invader’s back. They bit and tore. One of them found an eye, and ripped it loose with tiny yellow tendrils. Kress smiled and pointed.
But they were small, and they had no venom, and the spider did not stop. Its legs flicked sandkings off to either side. Its dripping jaws found others, and left them broken and stiffening. Already a dozen of the reds lay dying. The sand spider came on and on. It strode straight through the triple line of guardians before the castle. The lines closed around it, covered it, waging desperate battle. A team of sandkings had bitten off one of the spider’s legs, Kress saw. Defenders leaped from atop the towers to land on the twitching, heaving mass.
Lost beneath the sandkings, the spider somehow lurched down into the darkness and vanished.
Jad Rakkis let out a long breath. He looked pale. “Wonderful,” someone else said. Malada Blane chuckled deep in her throat.
“Look,” said Idi Noreddian, tugging Kress by the arm.
They had been so intent on the struggle in the corner that none of them had noticed the activity elsewhere in the tank. But now the castle was still, the sands empty save for dead red mobiles, and now they saw.
Three armies were drawn up before the red castle. They stood quite still, in perfect array, rank after rank of sandkings, orange and white and black. Waiting to see what emerged from the depths.
Simon Kress smiled. “A cordon sanitaire,” he said. “And glance at the other castles, if you will, Jad.”
Rakkis did, and swore. Teams of mobiles were sealing up the gates with sand and stone. If the spider somehow survived this encounter, it would find no easy entrance at the other castles. “I should have brought four spiders,” Jad Rakkis said. “Still, I’ve won. My spider is down there right now, eating your damned maw.”
Kress did not reply. He waited. There was motion in the shadows.
All at once, red mobiles began pouring out of the gate. They took their positions on the castle, and began repairing the damage the spider had wrought. The other armies dissolved and began to retreat to their respective corners.
“Jad,” said Simon Kress, “I think you are a bit confused about who is eating who.”
THE FOLLOWING WEEK RAKKIS BROUGHT FOUR SLIM SILVER SNAKES. The sandkings dispatched them without much trouble.
Next he tried a large black bird. It ate more than thirty white mobiles, and its thrashing and blundering virtually destroyed their castle, but ultimately its wings grew tired, and the sandkings attacked in force wherever it landed.
After that it was a case of insects, armored beetles not too unlike the sandkings themselves. But stupid, stupid. An allied force of oranges and blacks broke their formation, divided them, and butchered them.
Rakkis began giving Kress promissory notes.
It was around that time that Kress met Cath m’Lane again, one evening when he was dining in Asgard at his favorite restaurant. He stopped at her table briefly and told her about the war games, inviting her to join them. She flushed, the
n regained control of herself and grew icy. “Someone has to put a stop to you, Simon. I guess it’s going to be me,” she said. Kress shrugged and enjoyed a lovely meal and thought no more about her threat.
Until a week later, when a small, stout woman arrived at his door and showed him a police wristband. “We’ve had complaints,” she said. “Do you keep a tank full of dangerous insects, Kress?”
“Not insects,” he said, furious. “Come, I’ll show you.”
When she had seen the sandkings, she shook her head. “This will never do. What do you know about these creatures, anyway? Do you know what world they’re from? Have they been cleared by the ecological board? Do you have a license for these things? We have a report that they’re carnivores, possibly dangerous. We also have a report that they are semi-sentient. Where did you get these creatures, anyway?”
“From Wo and Shade,” Kress replied.
“Never heard of them,” the woman said. “Probably smuggled them in, knowing our ecologists would never approve them. No, Kress, this won’t do. I’m going to confiscate this tank and have it destroyed. And you’re going to have to expect a few fines as well.”
Kress offered her a hundred standards to forget all about him and his sandkings.
She tsked. “Now I’ll have to add attempted bribery to the charges against you.”
Not until he raised the figure to two thousand standards was she willing to be persuaded.
“It’s not going to be easy, you know,” she said. “There are forms to be altered, records to be wiped. And getting a forged license from the ecologists will be time-consuming. Not to mention dealing with the complainant. What if she calls again?”
“Leave her to me,” Kress said. “Leave her to me.”
HE THOUGHT ABOUT IT FOR A WHILE. THAT NIGHT HE MADE SOME CALLS.
First he got t’Etherane the Petseller. “I want to buy a dog,” he said. “A puppy.”
The round-faced merchant gawked at him. “A puppy? That is not like you, Simon. Why don’t you come in? I have a lovely choice.”
“I want a very specific kind of puppy,” Kress said. “Take notes. I’ll describe to you what it must look like.”
Afterward he punched for Idi Noreddian. “Idi,” he said, “I want you out here tonight with your holo equipment. I have a notion to record a sandking battle. A present for one of my friends.”
The night after they made the recording, Simon Kress stayed up late. He absorbed a controversial new drama in his sensorium, fixed himself a small snack, smoked a joy-stick or two, and broke out a bottle of wine. Feeling very happy with himself, he wandered into the living room, glass in hand.
The lights were out. The red glow of the terrarium made the shadows flushed and feverish. He walked over to look at his domain, curious as to how the blacks were doing in the repairs on their castle. The puppy had left it in ruins.
The restoration went well. But as Kress inspected the work through his magnifiers, he chanced to glance closely at the face. It startled him.
He drew back, blinked, took a healthy gulp of wine, and looked again.
The face on the wall was still his. But it was all wrong, all twisted. His cheeks were bloated and piggish, his smile was a crooked leer. He looked impossibly malevolent.
Uneasy, he moved around the tank to inspect the other castles. They were each a bit different, but ultimately all the same.
The oranges had left out most of the fine detail, but the result still seemed monstrous, crude—a brutal mouth and mindless eyes.
The reds gave him a Satanic, twitching kind of smile. His mouth did odd, unlovely things at its corners.
The whites, his favorites, had carved a cruel idiot god.
Simon Kress flung his wine across the room in rage. “You dare,” he said under his breath. “Now you won’t eat for a week, you damned…” His voice was shrill. “I’ll teach you.” He had an idea. He strode out of the room, and returned a moment later with an antique iron throwing-sword in his hand. It was a meter long, and the point was still sharp. Kress smiled, climbed up, and moved the tank cover aside just enough to give him working room, opening one corner of the desert. He leaned down, and jabbed the sword at the white castle below him. He waved it back and forth, smashing towers and ramparts and walls. Sand and stone collapsed, burying the scrambling mobiles. A flick of his wrist obliterated the features of the insolent, insulting caricature the sandkings had made of his face. Then he poised the point of the sword above the dark mouth that opened down into the maw’s chamber, and thrust with all his strength. He heard a soft, squishing sound, and met resistance. All of the mobiles trembled and collapsed. Satisfied, Kress pulled back.
He watched for a moment, wondering whether he’d killed the maw. The point of the throwing-sword was wet and slimy. But finally the white sandkings began to move again. Feebly, slowly, but they moved.
He was preparing to slide the cover back in place and move on to a second castle when he felt something crawling on his hand.
He screamed and dropped the sword, and brushed the sandking from his flesh. It fell to the carpet, and he ground it beneath his heel, crushing it thoroughly long after it was dead. It had crunched when he stepped on it. After that, trembling, he hurried to seal the tank up again, and rushed off to shower and inspect himself carefully. He boiled his clothing.
Later, after several fresh glasses of wine, he returned to the living room. He was a bit ashamed of the way the sandking had terrified him. But he was not about to open the tank again. From now on, the cover stayed sealed permanently. Still, he had to punish the others.
Kress decided to lubricate his mental processes with another glass of wine. As he finished it, an inspiration came to him. He went to the tank smiling, and made a few adjustments to the humidity controls.
By the time he fell asleep on the couch, his wine glass still in his hand, the sand castles were melting in the rain.
KRESS WOKE TO ANGRY POUNDING ON HIS DOOR.
He sat up, groggy, his head throbbing. Wine hangovers were always the worst, he thought. He lurched to the entry chamber.
Cath m’Lane was outside. “You monster,” she said, her face swollen and puffy and streaked by tears. “I cried all night, damn you. But no more, Simon, no more.”
“Easy,” he said, holding his head. “I’ve got a hangover.”
She swore and shoved him aside and pushed her way into his house. The shambler came peering round a corner to see what the noise was. She spat at it and stalked into the living room, Kress trailing ineffectually after her. “Hold on,” he said. “Where do you…you can’t…” He stopped, suddenly horrorstruck. She was carrying a heavy sledgehammer in her left hand. “No,” he said.
She went directly to the sandking tank. “You like the little charmers so much, Simon? Then you can live with them.”
“Cath!” he shrieked.
Gripping the hammer with both hands, she swung as hard as she could against the side of the tank. The sound of the impact set his head to screaming, and Kress made a low blubbering sound of despair. But the plastic held.
She swung again. This time there was a crack, and a network of thin lines sprang into being.
Kress threw himself at her as she drew back her hammer for a third swing. They went down flailing, and rolled. She lost her grip on the hammer and tried to throttle him, but Kress wrenched free and bit her on the arm, drawing blood. They both staggered to their feet, panting.
“You should see yourself, Simon,” she said grimly. “Blood dripping from your mouth. You look like one of your pets. How do you like the taste?”
“Get out,” he said. He saw the throwing-sword where it had fallen the night before, and snatched it up. “Get out,” he repeated, waving the sword for emphasis. “Don’t go near that tank again.”
She laughed at him. “You wouldn’t dare,” she said. She bent to pick up her hammer.
Kress shrieked at her, and lunged. Before he quite knew what was happening, the iron blade had gone clear thr
ough her abdomen. Cath m’Lane looked at him wonderingly, and down at the sword. Kress fell back whimpering. “I didn’t mean…I only wanted…”
She was transfixed, bleeding, dead, but somehow she did not fall. “You monster,” she managed to say, though her mouth was full of blood. And she whirled, impossibly, the sword in her, and swung with her last strength at the tank. The tortured wall shattered, and Cath m’Lane was buried beneath an avalanche of plastic and sand and mud.
Kress made small hysterical noises and scrambled up on the couch.
Sandkings were emerging from the muck on his living room floor. They were crawling across Cath’s body. A few of them ventured tentatively out across the carpet. More followed.
He watched as a column took shape, a living, writhing square of sandkings, bearing something, something slimy and featureless, a piece of raw meat big as a man’s head. They began to carry it away from the tank. It pulsed.
That was when Kress broke and ran.
IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON BEFORE HE FOUND THE COURAGE TO RETURN. He had run to his skimmer and flown to the nearest city, some fifty kilometers away, almost sick with fear. But once safely away, he had found a small restaurant, put down several mugs of coffee and two anti-hangover tabs, eaten a full breakfast, and gradually regained his composure.
It had been a dreadful morning, but dwelling on that would solve nothing. He ordered more coffee and considered his situation with icy rationality.
Cath m’Lane was dead at his hand. Could he report it, plead that it had been an accident? Unlikely. He had run her through, after all, and he had already told that policer to leave her to him. He would have to get rid of the evidence, and hope that she had not told anyone where she was going this morning. That was probable. She could only have gotten his gift late last night. She said that she had cried all night, and she had been alone when she arrived. Very well; he had one body and one skimmer to dispose of.