The Long War

ducked her head, snapped her huge teeth, and swept empty space with her arms and tail. One elf materialized in mid-jump right beside the predator’s head, and took a swipe at her right eye with his blade before stepping away again, without ever touching the ground. The precision was remarkable, and the predator’s eye was saved only by a chance duck of the head.
    Bloodied, enraged, the predator stood at the centre of the band of humanoids, unable to land a killing blow on any of them. She roared again, sweeping her huge tail, snapping her teeth.
    But the humanoids had had enough. They stepped away now, mothers carrying their children, as far as Roberta could see leaving nobody behind.
    ‘You have to hand it to those little guys,’ Jacques said in their ears. ‘They stood up to their Grendel.’
    Yue-Sai shrugged. ‘Eventually the beast will learn not to tangle with humanoids, especially steppers. And anyhow they were never her main target. Look.’
    Now the predator was heading down the beach after the big crest-roos. They had a head start; the roos, alarmed, tons of flesh and bone on the move, were like a retreating tank division. But one mother hung back to shepherd her calf.
    ‘They’ve got too much of a start,’ Jacques said.
    ‘Are you sure?’ Captain Chen murmured. ‘Look at what she is doing with her arm.’
    Roberta could see that the predator was using one agile hand to unwrap the vine from her arm. The vine was maybe six feet long, and was weighted at either end by something like a coconut. And now, even as she ran, her legs pounding the beach and her spine and tail almost horizontal, the predator whirled the vine and released it. It flew across the intervening space and wrapped itself around the big back legs of the lagging mother crest-roo. The vine snapped immediately, but it was enough for the mother to be brought crashing to the ground. Her calf slowed beside her, lowing mournfully, clearly afraid.
    And it had a right to be, for the predator was on the mother immediately. It ran by and ducked its head to rip a huge chunk out of the crest-roo’s rear right leg, then almost casually swiped its head against one magnificent flaring ear, crushing the cartilage so the crest folded like a fallen kite. The mother bellowed in pain.
    But she was able to stand, though blood dripped from the gaping wound. She even nudged her infant to move on, as they shambled up the beach after the rest of the herd, which had already cut into the forest.
    The predator stood and watched them go, by the water’s edge, breathing hard. The crest-roo’s blood stained her mouth. Then she ducked to the water, took a mighty drink, shook her head, and trotted after the mother and calf. It was a pursuit that could have only one outcome.
    ‘That predator used a bolas,’ said Roberta.
    Yue-Sai said, ‘Yes . . . It looked as though it could have been a natural object. A vine-like growth with fruit. But there was nothing “natural” in the way she used it.’ Yue-Sai looked delighted, in her quiet way, to have made this staggering discovery. ‘I told you, Roberta. We’re far away from home now. Have no preconceptions.’
    ‘I’ll second that,’ Captain Chen said. ‘And I should tell you that our signal-processing experts here inform me that there was data content in the patterns that flared across the crests of those roo-like beasts. They were talking , through the visual means of their crests! Sentience! Our onboard scholars must make all this clear when they joint-author their paper: “A mammal–reptile assemblage of tool-making intelligences beyond Earth East two million”. How marvellous! What a great discovery for China!’
    They began to walk back to the pick-up point.
    Chen, evidently enthused, went on, ‘We Chinese, you know, Roberta, have a utopian legend of our own. There is a story that dates back to the fifth century after your Christ, of how a fisherman found his way through a narrow cave to the Land of Peach Blossom, where descendants of soldiers lost from the age of the Qin dynasty lived in a land sheltered by mountains, in peace with each other, in peace with nature. But when the fisherman tried to reach it a second time, he could not find the way. So it is with all utopias, whose legends proliferate around the world. Even in North America, where the natives’ dream of the Happy Hunting Ground was displaced by the European settlers’ fables of the Big Rock Candy Mountain. Do you think if we