Authors: Charles W. Sasser
So, give my enemy the advantage of food, concealment, experience, health, superior equipment, and firepower. What did that leave in my column?
I was of a higher intelligence level than the Human. So what? Deceit, cunning and a 7mm round from Blade’s Gauss were more than equal to brain mass.
Taa was a two-headed beast, at best. It was good only for a burst every several days, after which it left me weak and vulnerable for some time. Besides that, taa could be a destroyer. Zentadon sometimes went into lintatai and self-destructed during an emotional crisis or while under great stress, no matter that for generations we had been taught control of it. Many younger Zentadon even used it as a “recreational drug,” ignoring its dangers.
Finally, I was a Sen. Although my telepathic powers seemed to be expanding for some strange reason while on Aldenia,
were
in fact growing, I had discovered Blade capable of blocking my mind probes. If I couldn’t read his thoughts and emotions, decipher his intent, then I was hard put to counter his moves.
That was the situation. I was lucky if I lasted tomorrow on the run. I again considered getting up now and trying to put some distance between him and me, but when I attempted it I was so stiff and spent that I could hardly drag myself to where the waterfall formed the door to my cave. I sank back. I probably wouldn’t make a hundred yards if I fled for the rest of the night. I needed rest first.
One final option remained. I examined the lindal, more by touch than sight in the cave’s darkness. Hiding it somewhere was out of the question, as the mysterious Presence had already located it once for Blade. Destroying it seemed even more improbable. First of all, the thing felt, and probably
was
, near indestructible, at least considering what I had to work with. Even if I somehow smashed it, say pushed a mountain on top of it, the Presence could still find the pieces so the damnable thing could be reconstructed.
That left it and I conjoined at the hip, so to speak. The only way to prevent the genie from unleashing its corruption was to take the case with me. That set Blade and me on a collision course from which only one would walk away. If Blade won, his greed over the lindal would turn the galaxy into a virtual Hell.
But at least, I thought wryly, I didn’t have to worry about the Blobs. Apparently, there was only one of them on Aldenia; he would likely remain neutral on Blob mountain, continuing his job as decoy, no matter what, not interfering either for or against me as long as neither of us invaded his territory.
I listened to the constant mutter of the downpour. I listened for Blade’s coming. He shouldn’t be underestimated. Lightning flashed and made a living silver curtain of the waterfall and, beyond it, brought into stark relief the reaching arms of the ghoulish landscape that surrounded me. Thunder crashed and reverberated over the forest.
How was I going to handle this?
The predator runs for his dinner, I thought wryly, while the prey runs for its life. Perhaps that was my advantage.
I decided to head for the pod in the river at first light. I could take off and leave Blade stranded if I reached it first. If not, I would leave him dead — if I
could
kill him.
The thought caused taa seepage, which I controlled with a mental effort.
On the other hand, Blade must certainly expect me to try for the pod and strive for his own checkmate. But as long as I was alive, Blade was stuck on this planet, whether he obtained the case from me or not.
I had one other alternative. I could start running in a direction away from the pod and keep running until time ran out and the pod took off on its own at the end of the ten days. Both of us would be left on the Dark Planet to perish. Better that both of us die than that the lindal leave Aldenia and eventually release its evil.
That I must consider only as a last resort. After all, it was only a stopgap measure. Sooner or later other explorers would land on this planet; as long as the lindal remained on Aldenia, the Presence would be ready to guide the next Blade to it.
I found a length of cord in a pocket of my battle harness. I tied it to my belt and put a single knot in it. Day one. In four more days, the pod would automatically fire up and take off. The DRT-bags of DRT-213 would be considered lost and dead, the same as the two previous DRTs. No one would bother to look for us.
I breathed deeply, even though it hurt. I used mind control to relax every muscle in my body. I needed rest. Daylight required all my faculties if I were to stand any chance in this deadly contest.
Before I drifted off, I wondered briefly about the fanger warning and how it had been delivered like that in time for me to act. It also occurred to me that I no longer sensed the Presence.
T
he Presence came to me in the night and made my short sleep fitful with dreaming. The way I understood it, Zentadon dreams were so much more forceful than those of Humans and so real that Zentadon often ascribed to them the properties of an alternate dimension. The older Zentadon, the spiritual among us, believed that when we died we simply began another life in our dreams. In fact, the present life was only the dream of a previous existence and that in turn the dream of an even more previous life. Humans called it reincarnation, except that in reincarnation Human spirits, souls, survived to occupy new bodies. Both were interesting theories. I had no desire to test either at the present. What if, when you died, there was nothing, not even blackness?
At first, in my dream, I was running in that painful, impossible nightmare way when you are being chased. DRT-213, led by Blade, was chasing me. The members were all dead, except Blade, who appeared to have transformed himself into some kind of Dark Planet humanoid monster.
“Give it to me! Fu-uck! Fu-uck! It’s mine. Give it to me!”
Shooting me again and again. Pain as sharp as slivers of ice doubled my wretched body into that of a permanent cripple.
“Fu-uck! Fu-uck! Fu-uck!”
Next came Pia with her pretty brown face dead and turned ghastly. One blue eye hung out on its stem. Flesh sagged in putrid lumps, revealing greenish bone and sockets underneath.
“I regret it! I regret it!” she screeched in pursuit.
Ferret and Atlas were even more repulsive, having risen from their graves half-rotted.
“Prolie slut! Prolie slut!” Ferret yammered.
“Execute him! Execute him!” Atlas shrilled.
Sergeant Shiva was one big ugly skeleton with the scar hanging from his skull like one of the intestine-leech things we encountered in the stream at the bottom of the Blob basin.
“Fresh meat! Fresh meat! Fresh meat!”
Gorilla became something indescribably hideous with his black hide blistered and cracked and peeling off his big yellow bones.
“It’s out of the bag! It’s out of the bag!”
Captain Amalfi’s bones rattled as he brought up the rear, his head having turned into a giant bell with skin and a face stretched tightly over it. The bell rang madly.
“It tolls for thee! It tolls for thee!”
Kadar San?
said an apocalyptic thought-voice. I jerked in my sleep at the odor and the muculent feel of the Presence.
You are experiencing a preview of your future. When you die today, as you surely must, I will transport you permanently into this new dimension dream life. You will live it fleeing from the risen dead
.
What do you want?
I asked, already knowing, but wanting it to answer.
Give up the lindal
.
It is evil
.
So? What do you have against evil?
Why do you not take it from me, if you are so powerful?
You are trying to trick me
.
Take it. I dare you. You cannot take it
.
Before the day is over, you will beg to give it up
.
We shall see
.
It was like the Presence smiled inside me, although I could not see it and its smile tasted simultaneously oily and bitter. It took a different tack.
I can do things for you
, it said.
Suddenly, the dream changed. I was back on dry Ganesh, out of the infernal Aldenia rain. I lived in a luxurious mansion overlooking a lake reflecting the incredible beauty of the Ganesh star-heavens. I knew I was both rich and powerful, that I could have anything I wanted simply for the asking. Rich food, rich surroundings, a rich life of luxury, forever rejuvenated.
I was in a bedroom then with a wide window overlooking the lake and the stars. Silk from Earth, sheen from Ganesh, and other rare and expensive fabrics canopied the enormous bed raised upon a pedestal of what appeared to be gold. The carpet felt as soft as a cloud under my bare feet and was the color of a blue morning sky. I looked down and I was naked and I was throbbing, embarrassingly erect.
Maid entered the room. My breath caught dry in my throat and I stared. She posed inside the door frame, one hand on her curving upthrust hip, the other arm gracefully raised to permit me an undisturbed view. All she wore were a warm smile and the blue bikini panties she had worn into the time couch. Her nipples were pink against rounded brown breasts, her merry eyes so blue they were almost deliciously painful to look into. Strands of fine black hair escaping from the V of her panties were the same color and texture as the short-cropped thatch of hair on her head.
My groin ached.
“I am not a virgin,” she said. “I can teach you many pleasures that the Human side of you should experience.”
I couldn’t speak. I only stared.
“Ohhh … look at it!” she whispered, looking. “It’s so hard and so ready. Is it breeding season?”
“I-I do not know,” I croaked.
“Let’s try it,” she suggested.
She walked nearer. She seemed to flow. I caught the delicate scent of the little rose tattooed on her butt cheek, which she now revealed by slipping thumbs underneath the band of her panties and easing them down past the patch of hair to her knees. She lifted one leg, long and brown and clean, out of the tiny underwear and flipped the bikini across the room with her toes. She stood before me wearing only the smile.
“Shall we conjoin?” she teased, reaching out and grabbing me as if by a handle.
“Humans call it romance,” I corrected.
She led me that way to the bed. She lay down on it naked and spread her legs for me. I stared, dry-mouthed and breathing heavily. I knelt over her on the bed, both knees between her legs, and looked at the precious split jewel of hair and pink-brown flesh and drew in the exciting aroma.
She reached and guided me toward it, caressing it slightly and still smiling up at me, her eyes half closed in anticipation. I lowered myself toward her silken brown body. I was almost crying from pleasure.
Suddenly, she vanished. So did the mansion and the view from the window. The Presence shrieked with awful, mocking delight.
You can fuck her all the time
, it said.
Fuck like a Human
.
I realized I was being tempted in the wilderness. First threatened, then tempted. Why did the Presence even bother, if it possessed powers as it claimed?
Then I knew. Its powers, whatever they may be, were nonetheless limited.
You fear me
, I said.
I was being chased again by the ghoulish Captain Amalfi and his dead DRT-bags.
You will join them in another day
, the Presence cried.
Whatever you are
, I responded,
you are afraid of me because I can win
.
He
is the more evil man
.
That is why I will win
.
Take the lindal yourself and become rich. I can help you. You can have everything
.
Everything except my soul
.
You will die
.
You fear me!
I laughed. The Presence shrieked in rage. Then it was gone.
T
he Presence was still with me when I awoke. Unseen, but not unfelt. The chill of this invisible entity piercing to the marrow — the stubborn, psychotic, thorny spirit of piercing its beleaguered prey even unto death. Like an invisible, scabby prolie from the Human slums of crime and degeneration.
I also felt something else, yet another presence. It didn’t feel dark and venomous like the first; it did not gag me when my thoughts tasted it. A counterbalance to the Presence, the antithesis of the evil I felt in it? Pia had said it before, and it was also something ubiquitous in Zentadon culture, this philosophy of opposites. For dark, there was light; for right, there was wrong; for good, evil.
Then they were both gone. For every presence, an un-presence.
I was hungry and stiff. The mournful trees through the little waterfall huddled massed in the liquid gray light. I went through the pouches of my battle harness looking for food. I found a protein processor that converted virtually any organism to food. I also found a squad radio, but assumed it useless with the team gone. The processor was just as useless; Blade’s bullet had damaged it beyond repair. I tossed it aside. Soon, I would have to take the time to forage and eat organisms unprocessed, for which I presently lacked inclination.
Watchful and guarded, I left the shelter of the waterfall and crouched in forest undergrowth for a long five minutes, examining my surroundings for a bush that showed double, a reflection of rain against itself, a mirage movement of a part of the forest. Satisfied at last, I took the Indowy case, much as I already despised it, and continued downhill toward a stream I heard rushing through the canyon.
The stream was broad and black. I assumed one stream led to a larger, and the larger to yet a larger until one of them emptied into the sea. This particular one flowed toward the black river where the landing pod was moored. I contemplated building a float of some sort and riding the current, but immediately dismissed the idea. Building a craft, like foraging, took time. Besides, the water, as we had already seen, was as infested as the land with strange and dangerous monsters. Though Zentadon were smaller than Humans, we were significantly more dense of muscle and bone. Few of us ever mastered swimming, even the half-breeds like myself. I would drown should something happen to any boat I hoped to build.