I could see the pale skin throbbing under her bony jaw. She laughed,
soft alien laughter that made my back hair stir and prickle.
"You humans," she whispered. "Trampling and spoiling. The middle swamps
have suffered you, greedy after oil and plumes and _ti_. But you we can
fight."
She jerked her round, glistening head toward the sound of destruction.
"The death from the deep swamps, no. You deserve to die, you humans.
You went meddling with something too big even for your pride. But
because the _cansins_ killed my mate and our first young...."
She hunched up. I thought she was going to flop on her belly like a
cayman in the mud. Her teeth gleamed, sharp and savage.
"Legend says the _cansins_ were once the wisest race on Venus. They
were worshipped as gods by the little pre-human creatures of the swamp
edges. They were going to be the reasoning lords of a planet.
"But nature made a mistake. Perhaps some mutation that couldn't be
stopped. I don't know. Anyway, the females grew until their one thought
was to find enough food. The males tried to balance this. Most of their
strength was in their minds, anyway. But they couldn't.
"The _cansins_ took to eating their worshippers. At the same time
the number of eggs they laid grew smaller and smaller. Finally the
swamp-edgers drove them out, back into the deep swamps.
"They've been there ever since, going farther and farther on the path
of evolution, dwindling in numbers, always hungry, and hating the
humans who robbed them of their future. Even us they hate, because we
go erect and have speech. The females are not independent. The male
controls the community mind--they must have unity to exist at all.
"If you could control the male...."
I thought of the little creature in the ball of green fire. I shivered,
and the pit of my stomach pinched up. I said, "Yeah? How?"