him. He saw himself reflected in its dark eyes. Then, slowly, it closed its jaws around his arm.
He screamed. “Martin!” He could see the smaller salamander against the wall. It was doing nothing. The pressure on his arm became unbearable. “Martin!”
Eventually, it released him. It turned and departed. Martin remained hunched against the wall.
He wept. His arm was a song of pain.
“Martin,” he said. “Hey. Martin.”
What was in Martin’s eyes, he had no idea. Martin was an alien. Gilly had no way of inferring his thought processes.
“I’m going to kill you,” Gilly said.
* * *
—
Of course he couldn’t kill Martin. He couldn’t even scratch his own nose. But he imagined. He stared at Martin’s bulbous head and found things to hate. Tiny hairs. A bulge like a mole. Things beyond the obvious, i.e., that he was a disgusting xenoform with ugly white scars on his back and tentacles around his mouth and skin that smelled like a dead cat. Because that wasn’t enough. He wanted to hate Martin on a personal level. As an individual. He wanted to feel that even if Martin were human and they were on the same side, he would still despise him.
His arm precluded sleep but he slipped in and out of consciousness. He dreamed or hallucinated that Service and Surplex were coming for him. Not as a fleet or even as a collection of people but as a god, immense and powerful, and the rock split open and a face appeared above, ancient and ageless, its eyes blazing light. Everything the light touched burst into flames, and he realized too late that it had come not with salvation but with wrath. The light washed over him and he screamed and burned and died.
* * *
—
He came to a place of peace. “Martin,” he said. “I know why we’re at war.”
Martin regarded him with his soulless eyes. Gilly would like to know what Martin did when he didn’t have a prisoner of war to interrogate. He seemed to be taking a decent chunk of time off from whatever that was.
“I have human genes. You have salamander genes. That’s it. That’s the whole explanation.”
“Jek,” Martin said.
“Genes fight each other, Martin. That’s all they do. They’re different, so they fight. That’s why we kill you. That’s why you kill us. It doesn’t matter what we think. What we feel. Who’s right. That’s illusion. Gikky. Mak-tak. Different. War.”
Martin said nothing.
“That’s why,” Gilly said. “You asked.”
Martin rose. He shuffled closer and scratched a crude line in the dust. “Mak-tak.” He made a second line. “Gikky.”
“Yes. Two alpha species. Can’t coexist. You got it.”
Martin made a third line. “Han-hek.”
He squinted. “I don’t know what that is.”
“Han-hek.” Then Martin made a fourth line. “Pak-tar.”
“What are those two?”
Martin’s head lowered toward each line in turn. “Mak-tak. Gikky. Han-hek. Pak-tar.”
“Are they . . . other races?”
“Han-hek. Pak-tar.”
“Have you met other aliens? Not Gillys? Not salamanders?”
“Nok Gikky. Nok Mak-tak.”
He checked that his recorder was still running. “That’s . . . what do you call them again? What are their names?”
“Han-hek.” Martin obliterated the line in the orange dust. “Nok.”
He blinked. “Gone?”
“Pak-tar.” Another line vanished. “Nok.”
“What happened to them?”
Martin was silent.
“Did you kill them, Martin?”
“Kik.”
“Salamanders wiped them out? Two other species?”
“Mak-tak kik Han-hek,” Martin said. “Mak-tak kik Pak-tar.”
“You did.” He felt numb.
“Mak-tak kik Gikky,” said the salamander.
13
[Jackson]
THE HUNT
They moved through fissures during the day, when their heat signatures would be obscured by sun-warmed rock. At times Anders again carried Beanfield across his shoulders, which was not merely mind-boggling in 1.4G but actively dangerous, since a fall could injure them both. It was also a waste of resources, with Anders sweating out twice as much water. But Jolene wanted to keep moving toward that volcano.