Authors: Charles W. Sasser
“We will have to work out the details so that we each get what we want.”
“I’m listening.”
“You must dispose of the rifle …”
“Fu-uck! Double Fu-uck!”
“That is nonnegotiable.”
Like I really expected him to negotiate in good faith. I felt him mulling it over. I felt his deceit brewing.
“Go on,” he encouraged presently.
“You keep your Punch,” I said. “I will keep mine. That puts us on an equal footing. We select a point and we walk out to meet each other. From that point we can talk.”
“You’re bringing the box with you, is that right?”
I hesitated to make him think I was wrestling with my decision. “I will bring the box.”
Box. That was the only word his greed heard.
“No tricks?” he said. Those who were knavish and treacherous always anticipated those qualities in everyone else, while honest people expected other people to be likewise honest. I would have to be on my guard.
“You want the box,” I resumed. “I am hurt. I cannot leave this cursed planet without you. That seems to preclude tricks — as long as each is aware of the other’s needs.”
My ears flicked. I knew I could not trust Blade. His sole objective was to obtain the box by whatever means, by hook or by crook, as Pia would have put it, and then dispose of me. But then, on this occasion, he couldn’t trust me either. It was going to be a tryst built upon mutual deceit; and Blade, I kept warning myself, had much more practice at it than I.
All we needed to do was select a rendezvous site.
“Where are you, elf?” he asked. As though he didn’t know already.
I played along, pretending that I hadn’t figured out that he was tracing me with Captain Amalfi’s monitor bug, not tracking me.
“Do you see the rocky hill to the southwest of the burned plain?” I said. “Near where the dragonfly is circling?”
“Is that where you are? All right. Where do we meet?”
We negotiated. I suggested he come to the ridgeline. He declined it as being too enclosed, which I knew he would. He offered the burn by the muddy stream. I rejected it as too open. Finally, I proposed the copse of trees where my trap awaited. For a moment I thought he was going to reject it outright because the idea came from me.
“It is open enough on either side that we can see each other before we get within Punch range,” I said, panting a little in pain for effect, “but it gives me cover in case you decide not to lay down your rifle first.”
“Don’t you trust me, elf?” he gibed.
“You are an honorable, decent man who has not recently murdered all his comrades. Of course, I trust you.”
He laughed over the radio with the unnerving voice of the Presence.
“One other thing,” I added. “Turn off your chameleons. I want to be able to see you.”
“Done,” he agreed. “We meet under the dragonfly. Make sure you’re carrying the case or all deals are off.”
H
e wasn’t carrying the rifle. With his cammies turned off, I could see that as he worked his way off the burn and started to climb toward me through the lush grasslands below the trees. I also knew the rifle couldn’t be far away. He was exclusive with the thing. He probably conjoined with it.
Rain slashed at his figure. Storms were moving back in. The crash-flash of lightning infused the meeting with all the drama of a state summit. Not so far away now, the six lizards were making their way toward us in the treeline on our side of the burn. The damnable dragonfly flew lower and lower, its membrane wings misting the falling rain and causing the precariously-clinging spider’s web to tremble. I waved my arms at it, but that only seemed to whet its curiosity. I watched it uneasily.
I let Blade see me walking down from the ridge carrying the lindal. It was all for show, a deception for which, being basically an honest Zentadon, I felt some guilt. It was necessary to lure Blade directly underneath the web tree while I reached a point where I could trigger the web with my vine arrangement. I walked dragging one foot and hunched around my middle, like I was seriously injured and in great pain. I rested every few steps, encouraging Blade to keep coming toward me.
He stopped short of the trap, a cagey soldier who survived by being perpetually crafty. He scanned every foot of the terrain ahead. His head lifted. I saw him watching the idiot dragonfly now flying so low in circles that it shook water loose from treetops and rustled the uppermost leaves. I thought my heart was going to stop beating from the tension when the dragonfly inevitably turned Blade’s gaze to the spider’s web. Luckily, rain replaced any big drops that I might have jarred loose from the strands when I was rigging my trap.
Still, a close scrutiny of the type Blade proved capable of might reveal a certain discordance that would tip him off. Thinking quickly, I pretended to stumble and fall, hurling the lindal out in front of me. Blade’s eyes snapped immediately to the black case. He started forward again. Cautiously, but he was still coming. That was what mattered.
I gained my feet and picked up the Hell Box, struggling to impress Blade with the extent of my exaggerated wounds. We were still well out of Punch range when Blade stopped again. He looked all around, including up at the dragonfly. His eyes scanned past the spider’s web with hardly a notice this time.
He was short of the trap zone by about ten meters. I had an equal distance to go in order to reach the release that tripped the web. It wouldn’t take much to set the sniper off, cause him to go for his gun and rush toward me laying down a wall of fire. For all I knew, that was what he contemplated all along.
“Okay, elf!” he called out.
“We must stop meeting this way,” I retorted in an abnormally thin tone.
“What did you say?” he shouted.
I indicated that I could hardly speak and used that as an excuse to proceed even closer. I moved to within leaping distance of my trap trigger. I doubled over in apparent effort to catch my breath from the pain. Humans gave awards called Oscars to actors for roles less dramatic than the one I was playing. While bent over, I examined the trigger hidden in the grass to make sure that nothing had happened to it and that it would still work. I felt vulnerable even thought I was still out of Punch range.
Closer. I had to get Blade closer.
I dropped to my knees and huddled there, breathing hoarsely, clutching my ribs and using the lindal as a security shield. Blade wouldn’t want to take a chance of damaging it in the course of ridding the planet of me. He wouldn’t know that it was indestructible.
“Here is my offer …” I began.
“What? What? Fu-uck.”
He took a few more steps to better hear me. Come on! Come on!
“Give me your weapons,” I called out in the same thin voice. “Then we can talk.”
“Turn over my weapons, you say? Is that it? You must be crazy.”
Rain slapped at the trees. Thunder rolled. The dragonfly’s wings whirred low over my head. The flyer continued toward Blade. He ducked and waved the creature off. It climbed steeply and circled above the spider’s web. It was a gray, wet and noisy world.
“You are the mad one,” I said, speaking so Blade could see I was talking but in such a low voice that he couldn’t hear me. “You are an evil madman and a suitable vessel for the Presence. Three more steps and I will have your scheming, murdering butt so entangled in spider web that you will go to trial and be executed wrapped up like a cocoon …”
He took one of the three steps. I kept muttering. He took two more steps, calling out, “What? What?”
Now!
I lunged for the trigger. In agonizing slow motion I watched the top line of the web begin to crumple. At the same time, the dragonfly soared back around and darted between the two anchor trees above Blade’s head and directly below the collapsing net. In stunned disbelief, I saw the winged creature fold into the net. The force of its momentum collapsed the web around its body. Dragonfly encased in a mass of silver silk tumbled out of the sky and crashed into trees further downhill.
Blade roared with anger, suddenly seeing how the web was intended for him. He dashed for cover, firing his Punch over his shoulder. The short round expended itself harmlessly before it reached me.
I fled in the opposite direction, astounded by the way fate and pure dumb luck had saved Blade and defeated me again. The chase was back on. In my wake, the Presence contributed its ghastly peals of humorless laughter. I had no trouble hearing Blade’s angry and indignant braying.
“You double-crossing traitorous sonofabitch! There’ll be no mercy when I catch you, so don’t expect it. Damn you, elf! Damn you to Hell!”
I
remained frustrated over my failure when the longer of the two Aldenia nights fell and I was forced to seek harbor. For the balance of the day I had made a wide circle to bring me near the fatal sight of the DRT massacre, thinking I might be able to scrounge something useful there on my way through, even though Blade was sure to have booby trapped it. It lay in the high country to the west, the same high country to which Blade had stuck after the fiasco with the dragonfly and the spider’s web.
I wriggled into a semi-dry fissure in a rock face and decided to put off any further decisions until after I rested.
Kadar San, help … Help me …
The plea came so strong and clear that I bolted upright, banging my head on the overhead rock. I recognized the texture of the thought-voice inside my head. But it simply couldn’t be.
Are you here?
I asked the Good Presence.
No answer.
I concentrated.
Pia …?
Kadar San
…!
It
was
her! She had read me. She was alive!
I felt the Good Presence.
You no longer need the evil one in order to escape. You need her
.
Why did you not tell me about her?
We are prohibited
.
I know. You can only influence
.
Yes
.
Can I communicate with her telepathically?
Can you?
Then the GP, the Good Presence, was gone. In its place I felt slimy tentacles and the odor of rot as the Presence sought me out. I slammed a mental door against it and found, to my surprise, that it worked. My mind was clear again.
Kadar San …? Kadar San …?
Gun Maid was the living ranking member of the team. The GP was right. The pod would open for her. It wouldn’t open for Blade, after all. Did he know that yet?
She couldn’t always understand thought words, not yet. Images seemed to work better. I sent her a picture of the river and the pod.
Go!
I sensed her excitement, but she also seemed confused, slightly disoriented, weak, and injured.
I transferred some of myself to her and received a chilling image of her huddled alone in the rain with the dead around her. She remained in the rocks with the others. In shock. Helpless as a frightened, lost child.
I sent her:
Danger!
With an impression of Blade pointing a rifle at her.
I need help, Kadar San
.
I cannot come yet
, I sent back.
Blade would finish the job if he traced me to her and learned she was still alive. There was no way she could join me on the run in her obviously debilitated condition.
Get away! Hide!
I thought-shouted.
Go to the pod. I will try to meet you there
.
Kadar San …?
I projected another picture of the river where the pod was and of her running toward it.
Do you understand?
Kadar Sa …?
Then she was gone and I couldn’t pick her up again. Which meant she must have lapsed into unconsciousness. Or worse.
C
ome dawn I knotted another day into my cord. Two Galaxia days remaining before those of us who survived became castaways on the Dark Planet. I was fairly rested, and hungry. Both good signs. I tested for Blade and eventually found him out there, non-localized, but out there. Even when he freshly awakened, his aura was dark and menacing. I wondered what Hells his dreams must concoct.
I sent out energy waves to find the lizards. They were out there also. They were hungry. I wondered about their intelligence. In another thousand millennia, give or take a few hundred, they must likely become sentient beings of some culture and intelligence. They were going to be ugly people with a mean streak.
Discovering Pia still alive changed once more the rules of this deadly game of strategy in which Blade and I were engaged. It was a game where rules, it seemed, changed minute by minute. Yesterday, I needed Blade alive and captured in order to escape the planet; today, I needed him dead.
As for Blade, he probably failed to realize how the rules had changed; no longer did he have the option of taking off in the pod. Not as long as Pia lived. To the end of keeping him in the dark, I set out in a driving thunderstorm toward the east northeast, drawing him away from Gun Maid and any weapons or equipment that I might have salvaged from the massacre site. I shunned the lower savannahs and kept to the high ground where my own surveillance was better. I hunted along the way, fishing out a couple of newts for breakfast. I would have liked something different, but the newts were nutritious and no longer posed a threat to my taa system. I crouched under a rock ledge out of the rain and tried to contact Pia again while I ate. Earlier, she had been off the air, so to speak. Another old, old Earth expression.
Pia …?
Kadar San
… A feeling of relief and joy on her part.
I thought of how her nipples had hardened. I must be feeling better.
Kadar San! That’s nasty!
She had a Talent. She was getting good at telepathy. My ears twitched with embarrassment.
Pia, where are you now?
She didn’t understand. I sent her an image of the massacre site with a question interposed. Still confusion. She sent back a big question mark of her own. I replied with a repeat of the black river, the pod, and her running toward it.