Fear That Man Part 6

'I've been thinking,' the poet said. 'But it would have been better if He had been a Goliath. There is nothing particularly heroic about smashing a helpless slug to pulp.'

Sam finished his drink, set the gla.s.s down. 'I'm going for a walk,' he said, standing. 'I'll be back in a while.' Before anyone could speak, he turned for the door, struggling through the crowd, and stepped outside. Night was giving way to day; a touch of golden dawn tinted the horizon already.

'You all right?' Gnossos asked, stepping out beside him.

'I'm not sick, if that's what you mean. Not exactly.'

'Yeah. Yeah, I know what you mean.'

'The purpose of life: to overcome your creator.'

'But what can a walk do? Me? I'm getting drunk.'

'Yeah,' Sam said slowly. 'But you know that won't work. Maybe I'll get drunk too, later. But now I'll walk.'

'Want me to come along?'

'No.'

Sam stepped off the curb and into the cobblestoned street. The ways here were twisted, for the aesthetic quality was supposed to be reminiscent of an old Earth city-though much cleaner and far more efficient. He found streets that tangled in on themselves, twisted through tree-dotted parks and between quaint old buildings. With him were memories of the chamber beyond Breadloaf's office wall, pictures of cold emptiness. He could still feel the cool breeze rippling through his hair from the gaping, empty tank.

He walked past the park where the lake stretched away in the distance. There was a gentle slapping of its waves against the pilings of the free-form walkway that bridged its shallower portions. There was the sound of fish jumping now and again. Somewhere a dog barked. And in his mind, there were questions.

Who was he?

What had been his past?

And where-oh, where!-was he bound?

TWO: SOULDRIFT.

And men shall be torn between the old way and the new*

(Compiled from several entries in the diary of Andrew Coro)

I.

Long ago, shortly after my mother's blood was sluiced from the streets of Changeover and her body burned upon a pyre outside of town, I suffered what the psychologists call a trauma. That seems like a very inadequate word to me.

To understand this 'trauma,' one should know some of the events that preceded it. The townsfolk came in the middle of the night and took her, decapitated her, stuffed a cross cut from stale bread into her dead mouth, and charred her on fire fed by the boughs of a dogwood tree. I was five years old at the time.

Those were the days when men still killed, before Hope sprang up as the capital of our galaxy and pushed forth a society where no man killed another man, where sanity ruled. That was a thousand years ago, a century after Galactic War I, before Eternity Combine gave us immortality. And worst of all, that was Earth. The rest of the galaxy was staggering to its feet, aware that something had gone amiss in the great chauvinistic dreams that had dominated for so many hundreds of years. Hope was an idea born in the brighter minds, a last possibility for the survival of what Man should be, a dream of kinglessness, of Utopia unmarred, a last chance but the best chance ever for mankind. Yet Earthmen were still hunting witches.

To hide me from those who would destroy me because my mother was a mutant who could lift pencils (only pencils and sc.r.a.ps of paper!) with her mind, my grandparents locked me in a closet of their house. Smells: mothb.a.l.l.s, old rubber rainshoes, yellowed magazine paper. Sights: dark ghosts of wools and cottons hanging about, imagined spiders scuttering viciously through the darkness.

And I wept. There was little else to do.

On the third day, the witch-hunters were certain that I had perished in the fire of the house, for they could not find me and trusted my grandparents because-as a cover against the day he knew was coming-my grandfather had belonged to the witch-hunting group. So it was that on the third day I was brought forth from the closet and into the parlor where my grandmother kissed me and dried my eyes on her gray, coa.r.s.e ap.r.o.n. On that same day, Grandfather came to me where I sat with my grandmother, his huge and calloused hands folded over each other, concealing something. 'I've a surprise for you, Andy.'

I smiled.

He took one hand from the other, revealing a lump of coal with eyes a shade darker than the rest of it. 'Caesar!' I cried. Caesar was my myna bird, rescued in some unknown, unknowable, miraculous fashion from the holocaust of the exorcism.

I ran to Grandfather, and as I ran, the bird screeched in imitation: 'Andyboy, Andyboy.' I stopped, my feet suddenly rocks too heavy to lift another inch, and I stared at it. It fluttered a wing. 'Andyboy, Andyboy, An-'

And I started to scream. It was an involuntary scream, torn from my lungs, bursting through my lips, roaring madly into the room. The myna's words were mockings of my mother's words. The inflection, though certainly not the tone, was perfect. Memories of my mother flooded me: warm kitchens to burned corpse to storytelling sessions to a headless, bloodless body. Bad and good memories mixed, mingled, blew each other to larger than life reality in my memory. I turned and ran from the parlor. Wings beat against me. Caesar was a stuck recording.

Grandfather was running too, but he did not seem to be Grandfather any longer. Instead, he had become one of the witch-hunters shooting out the windows of our house, screaming for my mother's death.

Running through the half open cellar door, I stumbled down the steps, almost crashing down to a broken neck on the concrete, flailing at the hideous wings and the sharp orange beak that tried to be her lips. I locked myself in the coal room while Caesar battered himself to tatters against the thick door. When Grandfather finally broke it down, I was on my knees with my head against the floor, unable to scream in anything but a hoa.r.s.e whisper. My knuckles were raw from pounding them into the concrete, my blood a polka-dot pattern on the smooth grayness.

I was taken to bed, nursed, recovered, and sent off-planet to an aunt's house in another solar system where men were coming of age faster. I grew up, took Eternity Combine's treatments in one of the first test groups, and outlived Caesar, Grandfather, witch-hunters, and all.

Years later at one of Congressman Horner's parties, a psychologist told me it had all been a trauma concerning death and my new perception of it. I told him trauma was a terribly inadequate word and went off to dance with a particularly lovely young woman.

Now, even years after that, I was experiencing fear much the same as the fear that day so long ago when I was five and my mother was three days dead. It was the fear of death, stinking, oppressive, and omnipresent. I am always afraid at the beginning of a hunt. It made no difference, this day, that I had gone on two hundred and fifteen others; it was this one that was immediate and frightening. If I was killed in these jungles, Eternity Combine could never reach me in time to restore me to life. If I died here, I stayed dead. Forever is a long, long time.

Why the risk? It does seem strange that, in a galaxy so diversified, so full of things to do and ways to earn a living, anyone would chose something as dangerous as Beast hunting. But there are always reasons. Man, a part of nature, is never totally illogical. He can generally come up with reasons for his actions. Sometimes, of course, the reasons may give rise to questions* Anyway, Crazy had a good reason for coming on this hunt: this Beast had killed his only brother, who had been on the last team that had gone after it. Crazy wanted revenge. No Hamlet, but every bit as determined. Lotus came because she can't leave us if she knows we're endangering ourselves. She would go insane waiting for us, so she comes along. Me? Money, in part. There was an enormous bounty on this Beast, and I was determined it would be one-third mine. Besides, I was born on Earth and the faults of the place partially warped me. I like to kill. Not anything but Beasts, you understand. I could never bring myself to murder another human being. But Beasts* Well, Beasts are different*

I loaded the last of the cameras into the floater, looked around for the others. 'Lotus! Crazy! Let's get a move on!'

'All right, all right,' Crazy said, stomping down the steps to the outside entrance of the guest house. We were staying on Congressman Horner's Earth ranch under the supervision of his aide, Sam Penuel, an altogether strange man, until the completion of the job. Horse, being as he weighed three hundred pounds plus fifty and was blessed with hooves, did not use the highly polished, slippery indoor steps of glittering plastigla.s.s. Oh, his full name was Crazy Horse. No it wasn't, either. Jackson Lincoln Puicca was his given name-after the famous general, the famous president and humanitarian, and the famous scientist. But we called him Crazy Horse-mostly because he was crazy-and because he sure did look like a horse.

Crazy was a natural mutant, not a product of the Artificial Wombs. One day there had been a nuclear war spreading through the civilized galaxy. Several generations later, there was Crazy-muscular, bright, s.h.a.ggy-headed, and horse-behinded. Not a Beast, mind you; a valuable man on a bounty hunt.

'Where's Lotus?' I asked.

'Out picking berries somewhere. You know her.'

'You know what what about her?' Lotus asked as she drifted over a nearby corral fence, her blue-fog wings fluttering gently as she glided on the breezes. 'What would you say of me behind my back, Crazy?' about her?' Lotus asked as she drifted over a nearby corral fence, her blue-fog wings fluttering gently as she glided on the breezes. 'What would you say of me behind my back, Crazy?'

Crazy Horse stomped his hooves, folded his hands in supplication. 'What could could I say behind your back, pretty one, when you are possessed of such marvelous ears?' I say behind your back, pretty one, when you are possessed of such marvelous ears?'

Lotus settled on the ground next to me. She fingered the delicate, elongated sh.e.l.ls that were her elfin ears, looked at Crazy. 'Yours are bigger. I don't think I should make nasty remarks about another person's ears if mine were distended bladders like yours.'

Crazy snorted, shook his huge head so that his wild mane of hair flopped, fluffed, and covered his baggy ears.

Satisfied, Lotus said, 'I'm on time, I trust.'

'Trouble is,' I said, putting an arm around her tiny waist (twenty inches) and looking down on her small form (four feet eleven), 'is that you know d.a.m.ned well we'd wait for you all day and not be angry.'

'That's cause I'm the prettiest girl around,' she snapped, her green-blue eyes adance.

'Not much compet.i.tion on an all-male ranch,' Crazy muttered.

'And you, Crazy, are the handsomest horse I've seen here.' She smiled, and she said it so that he didn't know whether to be mad or to laugh. So he laughed.

That was Lotus. She was cute as Christmas multiplied by Halloween and Easter-and she knew it, which wasn't always so bad because she could pull her own weight easily enough. Aside from being one of the best botanists specializing in post-A-war plants, she was our aerial reconnaissance expert since she could fly ahead, land where a floater would never fit, and let us know what was dangerous or interesting that stood in our way. You say, But why a botanist on a bounty hunt? Well, true, we usually stalked killer animals that disturbed the small towns on the rural (since the war) planets. But now and again there were plants which were every bit as deadly as the Beasts. There were those walking plants on Fanner II that latched onto the nearest warm-blooded thing (often human), lashed roots around it, grew through it all night long, absorbed it, and walked away with the sunrise-a few inches taller, sporting a few new leaf buds, and satisfied until darkness came again. Which was every nine hours on Fanner II. Thus, Lotus.

'Let's get going,' I said. 'I want these cameras set before dark.'

'After you, b.u.t.terfly,' Crazy said, bowing as low as he could, considering his less-than-human posterior, and sweeping his arm in a courtly gesture of chivalry.

Lotus breezed into the floater like a puff of smoke. Crazy followed, and I went last, d.o.g.g.i.ng the door behind. We had three seats across the front of that tub-Lotus between us. I was pilot.

A floater is a round ball with an inner and outer hull, each independent of the other. This way, if you ever meet an eighteen foot bat, like on Capistrano, you can have an outer hull beaten all to h.e.l.l and never feel it inside or let it deflect the floater, shunting you off your course. The inner hull carries the drive engines.

I pulled back on the stick, lifted us, set out for the forest-jungle that had spread outward from the Harrisburg Crater. The screens gave us a view of the woods: ugly, festering, and at the edges gray-green ferns with thick leaves interlaced with spidery fluff that held heavy brown spoor b.a.l.l.s. Later, these gave way to giant trees that choked the ferns and did away with them but were still just as gray and lifeless.

'You haven't said much about this Beast that killed Garner,' Crazy said. Garner was his brother. His twin, in fact, though Garner was perfectly normal.

'I'm trying not to think about it.'

'Tell us,' Lotus said, pulling the thin membrane of her wings about her like a cloak. 'Tell us all that Mr. Penuel told you.'

'Mainly, we're the fifth team to be sent after this Beast.'

'The others?' Crazy asked.

'Garner wasn't its only victim. There were twenty-two in the other four teams all totaled. Twenty were never seen again.'

'The other two?' Lotus asked.

'Rescue parties brought them out-in pieces.'

Below, the world was gray-green*

Five miles into the forest where the huge, gnarled trees were dominant, I set the floater down in a small, rare clearing. Lotus went ahead to check for other clearings and crossings where it might be wisest to place the cameras and their triggers. If anything pa.s.ses the electric eyes set ten feet before the cameras, it starts the film spinning. Chances were, we would get plenty of strange things on the film, but our killer would be easy to spot in the crowd. We had three descriptions from townspeople-all three making him around eight feet tall, man-like, and ugly. There were a lot of things that fit the first and last parts, but few of these Beasts were man-like. None of the descriptions gave any indication, however, why twenty-two experienced bounty hunters had not killed it.

Crazy was setting up the electric eyes and stringing the trip wire back to me, concealing it with a fine layer of dust. I was rigging the cameras in the rocks and bushes. Both of us had our backs to the same part of the forest.

That was a mistake*

II.

Crazy would have heard it first except he still had his hair down over his ears, hindering his usually keen hearing. When I heard it-the snapping and low, fierce keening-it was almost on top of us. Whirling, I brought my gun up*

And up and up and up* d.a.m.n, was it big! Big and quiet, which is a combination we hit upon more often than you might think. It stared down through the trees at us, thirty feet high, its bulbous body burdened by an underslung belly which was slashed, in turn, by a wet, wicked mouth that opened and closed over us like an enormous vise. No long, slow throat-to-stomach affairs. Just open up and-slurp! Spiders make me sick. They are a common mutation, and they are always hideous and revolting. This one made me sicker than usual. There were ugly, cancerous scabs all over it, pus-coated hairs hanging heavily from each ripe disease pocket. Spiders make me sick. They are a common mutation, and they are always hideous and revolting. This one made me sicker than usual. There were ugly, cancerous scabs all over it, pus-coated hairs hanging heavily from each ripe disease pocket.

'Don't shoot yet!' I told Crazy. But he didn't have to be told. More than once, he had seen these things react reflexively to a shot, leap in and chomp up whatever was holding the gun. A big spider is not as large as it looks, because it is mostly spindly legs which can squeeze together fast into a little ball, drop the spider fifteen feet in height, and let it scuttle in under the trees after you. Spiders are handled with gentle, loving care until you're ready to kill them. Any other way, they'll kill you first.

'The rocks,' I said quietly, watching the multi-prismed eye watch me. Very slowly, and with grace, we edged our way along the rocks where I had been setting that particular camera. Tiptoes and marshmallow footfalls*

The spider watched, swiveling its strangely tiny head to follow us, a row of fine hairs atwiddle below its eyes. Except for those hairs, it seemed petrified, immobile. In a split second-even before the splitting could be finished-it could be moving faster than a man could ever run.

The rocks we were negotiating were actually the ruins of centuries, tossed here by the A-blast that had leveled Harrisburg, a provincial capital at that time. It was a vast tumble of caves, valleys, mountains of bricks and stone and powdered mortar.

Moving a tentative step, the spider settled ma.s.sive legs through the brush with a minimum of noise, keened a bit louder, an out-of-tune harmonica.

Ulysses, you were a punk hero!

We reached a place where the rock broke open, forming a small valley, closing again four hundred feet away and ending at the mouth of a dark tunnel that led further into the ruins-a tunnel too small for a Beast like this, but not too small for Crazy and me. 'Now,' I whispered. 'Run!'

We turned, loped into the valley, cutting ourselves off from the view of the spider. Crazy reached the tunnel first. His legs are often an a.s.set when speed is needed-but, G.o.d, you should see him try to dance!

I was halfway down the valley when the spider mounted the one valley wall and looked down on us. The colossal red eyes glittered accusingly. Supper had run away. Bad, bad. Then the belly appeared, mandibles open and clacking. Clackinty-clack-clack! Clackinty-clack-clack!

Fsstphss! Crazy opened fire with his vibra pistol, caught on of the legs. The spider drew its member up, twiddled it madly. Crazy fired again, caught another leg and blew it completely off. The huge limb bounced over the rocks, wedged between two of them, and continued squirming, not yet aware that it was loose, a thing away from its owner and soon to rot. Crazy opened fire with his vibra pistol, caught on of the legs. The spider drew its member up, twiddled it madly. Crazy fired again, caught another leg and blew it completely off. The huge limb bounced over the rocks, wedged between two of them, and continued squirming, not yet aware that it was loose, a thing away from its owner and soon to rot.

I ran.

The spider started down into the valley.

I pressed my aching lungs and screaming muscles to even faster operation.

Crazy fired again, caught the Beast in the side, tore it open. But spiders don't bleed, and a fist-sized hole wasn't stopping this baby.

Besides, we had overlooked, in our haste, a very important thing: tunnels make nice homes-for things. Crazy was raising his pistol for a shot at the giant head when a pinkish grub-like creature came wriggling out of the tunnel in defense of its abode, casting off three inch, hard thorns, one of which struck Crazy's arm, sent him tumbling, his gun lost in the stones.

The spider screeched insanely, head hobbling, stomach clacking.

The grub, suddenly a more immediate danger, hissed, arched its ribbed back, and flung itself forward in spasmodic lurches that were immediately followed by the jerking release of the spines that in some places, were hurled with enough force to penetrate rocks. I ran to Crazy, tried dragging him to the walls where the Beasts could attack only from the front. But dragging three hundred and fifty pounds of unconscious horse-man is harder to do than it sounds-and it sounds pretty d.a.m.n hard!

I crouched behind Crazy Horse, back to the spider, pulled the spine from his arm. There was a lot of blood pumping out of that arm. Entirely too much blood. Nothing there to stop it with, either. I turned to the grub, looked for a vulnerable spot. Most of its belly was calloused, but the first two segments always seemed to be aloft in the manner of a 'running' snake. I aimed my vibra-pistol at these first two soft segments, pulled the trigger and held it down. The worm went kicking into the air, turning over and over, tossing off spines that shot over our heads. It crashed back to the ground when I stopped firing, was very still.

But the spider*

It was at the opposite end of the valley now, having used the grub's diversions as a chance to make an easy entry. Behind it, anch.o.r.ed to the rubble, was a thin web structure. It was getting ready to snare us.