Authors: Charles W. Sasser
Before night fell in the higher country, I committed to memory exact details of the fastest route to the black river. Crouching under cover of rain-dripped stone, I traced in my mind a wide ravine down from the ridge that I had been traveling. It ran half full with water, naturally, but the swiftness of its passage and frequent flooding cleared its banks of most foliage. Negotiating it at night would be possible.
The ravine opened onto an open plain lush with purple-black grass swept with rain and dotted with various giant herbivoric insects. Animal life on the planet slept at night, so the big bugs should be no problem. The real problem lay in the band of thick forest that lay between the marshy meadow and the river. It would make tough going in the dark, but as long as I continued north I couldn’t miss the river. A left turn should then bring me to the pod in short order.
An extremely hazardous undertaking in the total locked-in-the-closet darkness of Aldenia, but it appeared at the moment to be my best hope of escape, and perhaps my last hope.
I studied the route one final time before the shorter of the two nights descended. Far to the west, I made out the dark hint of the sea where we had landed barely five Galaxia days ago. The black river snaked through the jungle to empty into it. In a briefing while DRT-213 was still orbiting in the Stealth, Captain Amalfi explained how the pod extraction worked. You didn’t have to be a small craft pilot. Once the senior living member of the team approached, the pod read his DNA signature and automatically extended the debarkation/embarkation tube for boarding. Adjusting a few computer settings released the pod from anchorage. It guided itself back to the sea, became a surface craft, then blasted off for re-docking with the Stealth in orbit.
I was thinking of that and of food when night fell like a curtain and the storms, as usual, slackened somewhat. I went through the pockets of my cammie vest and combat harness, hoping to find something to eat I had overlooked, but discovered only the tiny watch-sized squad radio intended for emergency communications within the team. It was useless now. Wet, miserable and enduring almost as much hunger as pain, I had to settle for the relative shelter of a rock ledge and no food. I shivered from the wet and the cold.
Before going into meditation and self-hypnosis to relax my muscles and thus help their regeneration, I sent out my mind to probe for Blade. My shivering increased. I found the Presence; it and Blade seemed immutable, melded together. In my mind’s eye, I saw a pair of giant baleful eyes staring at me in the night, as though reveling in my misery and anticipating my end.
The Presence, I thought, must have specifically selected Sergeant Blade Kilmer to do its bloody bidding because Blade was the most susceptible to evil. He was a good choice. Toward what ultimate end the Presence aspired I could only speculate, other than the releasing of the lindal’s dark powers once again into the universe.
I tried to find the Good Presence. It must be sleeping — or it had abandoned me. I touched upon another sentient, however. Fleetingly, but it was there, only with insufficient strength to be identified. Then it was gone too and I slept in the rainy night for exactly one hour.
D
ay was still another hour away when I awoke, feeling somewhat rejuvenated. I twisted a second knot into my string, the beginning of my second day on the run. Four days to go before the pod took off on its own. Which shouldn’t matter in another three or four hours anyhow, once I boarded the pod with the case.
I set off in the dark along the route I had earlier plotted and memorized. Blade wouldn’t expect me to start moving until daylight. An hour’s head start, with luck, should be all I needed.
Traveling Aldenia rainforests was exhausting going under the best conditions, almost impossible in the dark. Sheet lightning illuminated the way ahead, briefly, then plunged me back into even greater darkness by the contrast. I slipped and slid down the ravine, once or twice falling into the rushing water and almost being swept away to a horrible drowning death. I attempted to use my psychic powers as a type of sonar to guide me, but it failed miserably and I was soon battered and bleeding from stumbling into rocks and trees.
Daylight brought new hope. Goliath beetles and other herbivore types were already in the meadow when I reached it, but I avoided them by skirting along the forest edges. A total of three hours’ hard trudging brought me to the river, where a sense of urgency propelled me at a great pace downstream toward the pod. I threw caution to the wind as I raced, to the best of my depleted abilities, toward sanctuary.
I probed for Blade on my back trail, unable to find him. That should have persuaded me that I caught him sleeping with my unexpected move, but it troubled me instead. It is much better to know where the fanger lurks so that you can avoid him.
I came to the tiny glade of purple-black grass where the team had first set forth on Aldenia soil, where the first bot was mysteriously destroyed. Could it have been so few days ago? I fell to my stomach and low-crawled to a point where I peered out of the foliage and across the opening. The river ran black and swift. There was nothing to indicate the pod was submerged there. I wondered how near I had to come before the pod’s computers recognized me and sent out the tube. Obviously, I had to go nearer than this.
I listened. I batted falling water from my eyes. I explored with my senses, reluctant to expose myself in the short dash to the river bank. If I was wrong about Blade and he had not been fooled, he was likely already set up with his deadly Gauss and waiting for me to reveal myself.
The way appeared clear.
I took a deep breath and bunched my muscles. I tested my taa reservoir. Perhaps I could get a small boost at least.
Steeling myself to possibly receive a slug through my heart, I jumped up and sprinted across the glade to the edge of the river, already anticipating food and rest and a quick ride the Hell out of this place. I crouched where the water lapped shore, my feet actually in the stream. Rain churned the surface. Debris rode the current, swirling and diving and foaming. I waited for the sunken pod to send up its embarkation/debarkation tube for me. I looked around. Hurry, hurry.
Nothing happened. Maybe I was at the wrong place after all. I stood up and soon found the trunk of a nearby tree where Gorilla had fastened a homing device. This was the right place. Why didn’t the pod recognize me?
I returned to the edge of the river. I jumped around like a fool, giving the machine’s sensors plenty of opportunity to see and recognize me. Still, nothing happened.
Desperation caused me to consider diving into the river and down to the pod. A foolish thought. Even if I knew how to swim, which I didn’t, the current was fierce enough to tear trees off the riverbank, roots and all. Besides, I couldn’t get into the pod even if I reached it.
Another thought struck me, freezing my blood. Maybe the pod had ripped free of its anchors and been swept out to sea, stranding me here with Blade and the Presence forever. Common sense soon replaced panic. The pod’s systems and backups were designed to withstand unbelievable tidal actions.
No, the pod was still there. It was still functioning. It simply refused to recognize me and open.
That left only one conclusion. The Humans mistrusted me to the point that I hadn’t even been entered into the computers. The pod was never going to open for me. But why the lecture from Sergeant Shiva about my being fourth in the chain of command and all that? A pretense, a cruel subterfuge? I felt such helpless anger and frustration that I would surely have gone into lintatai had I sufficient taa to trigger it.
Blade was never concerned about my reaching the pod ahead of him because he must have known all along that he was the ranking live member of the team entered into the pod’s computers. He could leave Aldenia anytime he wanted, which he would do as soon as he seized the Indowy case from me. I, in turn, could never leave if all the Humans were dead.
I backed away. The Presence suddenly loomed strong and near. A hideous peal of laughter burst out of the rain. I turned and ran. The best I could hope for now was that Blade die with me, preferably he first, and that both of us take the secret of the Indowy Hell Box to our unmarked death sites. At least that would delay the genie’s release into the galaxy.
I
ran hard for an hour, as hard as I could, taking a straight suicidal line to lead Blade as far away from the pod as I could. I crouched by a slow, deep pool in a stream and drank from it like an animal. I saw my reflection rain-dimpled in the surface of the water — the scrap of cammie cloth around my golden hair to cut down the glint, the pointed ears in almost constant spasms, my face scratched and battered and gaunt. In short, to quote an old, old Earth expression, I looked like Hell.
The stream ran between clay banks. I drank, seeing things swimming in the water. Exhausted, I pulled myself back to rest in the bushes. I lay for a minute, using the lindal for a pillow.
Kadar San
…?
I shot upright.
It wasn’t the Presence. There was no feeling of slime to the thought. It had to be the Good Presence warning me not to sleep, warning me that Blade was hunting. So far, he had been so successful in blocking my mind probes that I had no idea where he was. Until he actually fired at me, an event I hoped to delay or prevent, I had only a vague sense of his being near or far.
Kadar San … help …
What? Help? How could I help? And who was I supposed to help?
The voice was very weak, no more than a whisper. I attempted to extend the contact, but there was no more.
I rested for another few minutes, then forced myself to get up. I sent out feelers for the voice, but it was gone. I was weak from hunger. I had to eat if I hoped to lead Blade to his destiny.
I scooted myself to the pool and easily snagged one of the newt-looking things swimming in it. They were thickly-built slabs about the size of my hand, finned, slimy, and had external gills. Rather than fish, they were more like reptilian larvae. I had noticed little furry mammals eating them previously, so assumed they were edible.
If I could only eat one of them myself.
It wasn’t disgust at their appearance that prevented it. Rather, the newt squirming in my hand triggered atavistic cravings I hardly realized existed in my makeup. My taa gland, sensing the coming moment of the kill, was going into pre-orgasmic spasms. A side effect of taa usage other than super power and strength during crisis was the “zombie” switch, which activated a form of lintatai that brought on a condition less spectacular than the lintatai that caused self-combustion or explosions, but no less deadly. It was not an unpleasureable experience. In fact, it could be incredibly seductive. The young Zentadon taa addicts induced the orgasmic “zombie” condition by watching violent shows or simulating violent behavior. Playing chicken with their systems. Wrestling with the taa gland was to wrestle for life itself. Many lost and went into a mindless semi-stupor from which they never recovered. Like Cauri Tan at Mishal’s safe house.
The ultimate reason for the taa gland was to aid predator Zentadon ancestors in killing and eating quivering prey. However, circumstances following the Indowy taa camps had made of the Zentadon frustrated predators conditioned away from violence. It was violence itself that could now destroy.
I studied the newt clasped in my hand. I had to eat, had to chance the “zombie” in order to survive. If I failed and “zombie” overcame me, I might well sit here happily by the stream until the sniper came along, finished me off, and took the box. I would neither eat nor drink or perform any other function without specific orders. It was similar to the subservient condition the Indowy Hell Box had induced in its soldier subjects under Indowy control.
My hands shook around the water newt-thing and I drew a deep calming breath. I was half-Human; Humans killed without compunction and serious side effects. I shot the giant snake, hadn’t I? I attempted to do Blade. But those were in self-defense and different than this; I didn’t intend to kill and then eat them.
I concentrated on my Human side. The mind is a mirror of the soul, the soul a mirror of the mind. The mirror has the stillness of a pond …
My mind went blank. Breathing returned to normal. I twisted my hands, killing the little animal. And I ate it. I was becoming more and more Human.
T
he country opened up some, although the sky continued to gush water. Open country allowed me to lead Blade even further away from the pod. The forest turned into numerous meadows where purple-black grass grew taller than my head. Herds of the strange, lumbering beetle-like creatures foraged in the meadows and paid little attention as I skirted the edges, keeping to the trees to remain in cover and concealment. I was more the hunted than they.
At one of these glades I encountered an astonishing and frightful transaction, which underscored how vulnerable to my environment I truly was. As though I needed the underscoring. From my vantage point on a slight wooded incline on the far side of a little park, I spotted a pack of animals the likes of which I had so far only glimpsed from a distance. I immediately hid and watched the lizard-like predators stalk a pod of large gray pill bugs.
I was both intrigued and appalled. With incredible swiftness, slinking low like fanger cats, the lizard-appearing predators broke into three separate groups. One group of three individuals scurried through the edge of the forest to the far side of the clearing and slunk into hiding as a blocking force. A second group of four, the attack element, all but invisible but for their rippling trails in tall grass, silently surrounded the beetles on the near side. Once the two forces were in place, everything went still.
The third group — two lizards larger and more powerful-looking than the others — appeared to be in charge. These two hid in the trees, but in such a manner that they commanded the field of impending carnage. Snake-like tongues tested the air, slithering in and out between sharpened rows of teeth as long as my hand. The tips of long black-green tails twitched with anticipation. Clawed feet dug into the earth as muscles bunched.