Providence - Max Barry Page 0,107

over. You don’t have to disintegrate the rock. Just warm it up enough to soften.”

Anders positioned the barrel of the lightning gun against the rock a few feet away. “Here?”

“How much energy will that put out?” He couldn’t remember the specs. He had skipped all the small-arms sessions, because he thought he’d never use one.

“Shitloads,” Anders said.

“Farther,” Gilly said.

Anders shifted. “I’ll give it the smallest kick I can.”

“Uh . . . all right.” He turned away.

“Don’t look away! I’ve got my back to a tunnel. I don’t want to get jumped.”

“I don’t want to get shot in the face.”

“You’ll be fine,” Anders said, and pulled the trigger.

There was a flash. The wall cracked. He strained and something tore. He felt himself falling. He tried to balance but his legs were useless.

Anders pulled him to his feet. “Now move.” Gilly stumbled to the hole on wet-noodle legs and followed Anders through. There were a few feet of rock and then open space. It was dark and he brightened the small light on his helmet, which did nothing in the gloom. The pool that Anders had described lay a short distance away. When he moved toward it, he felt something soft underfoot. There was a centipedelike creature, black and sticky, with long pincers and a segmented body. A larva. He stared. It was larger than he’d imagined. He squatted beside it while Anders moved around the chamber, sweeping with his light.

“Is this an older one?” Gilly said. “A juvenile?”

Anders returned and began to set up the converter. He scooped up larvae and placed them inside. “No. They come out of the eggs like that.”

“Sacs. This size?”

“Yep.” The converter’s lights glowed on, revealing more of the chamber. There were giant slabs of rock or resin just as Anders had described. Again, the spaces were disconcertingly large. “Problem?”

“If there’s a queen producing millions of these, she must be huge.”

“It’s a big hive.”

“Yeah.” He began to explore the math on how much mass would be involved. It seemed like the answer was a lot. He poked at the burned larvae.

“There’s the pool,” Anders said. “Check it out while I feed these little shitholes to the converter.”

He rose. The pool was filled with briny brown fluid, its edges laced with stringy froth. In theory, beneath it was a liquid-filled tunnel that served as an express elevator to a breeder. If it were large enough, they could traverse it in their suits. Which, he figured, it had to be, since the larvae were big.

Beside the pool lay two slumped forms. As he drew closer, he saw they were fully grown salamanders.

“Eyes open,” Anders said. Gilly saw him bent over, fixing the lightning gun to the converter. “We have no gun while it does this.”

“Didn’t you say adults don’t come in here?” Gilly said.

“Right.”

“Then what am I looking at?”

Anders’s light swung onto the creatures. “Nurses. The babies eat them. It’s disgusting.”

Gilly moved closer. He let his light play over them. The bodies were disfigured by the effects of the lightning gun; he could barely tell which way they were facing. He’d never heard anyone propose that salamanders might have nurses. “The larvae eat them?”

“Or drink. I don’t know. The nurses have bulges on their backs. See them? Like blisters. The little ones suck on those.”

He squinted. He didn’t see any blisters. Most had popped and shriveled under fire, and hung in loose flaps. Some, toward the front of the creature, seemed older. Remnants of past feedings, maybe. These had dried to thick white ridges, like scars.

“Oh, no,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Martin is a nurse.”

He looked at the hole. He couldn’t tell how long Martin had been there. When the light struck her face, she launched herself and landed heavily on the floor. Anders yelped. He ripped the lightning gun free from the converter. Gilly saw two glowlights along its barrel blink on. Anders rose to his feet and Martin