The Chronicles of Jonathon Postlethwaite: The Seed of Corruption (15 page)

                            His rate of ascent was quick for one with such an ungainly physique, adrenaline giving him the strength he need. Jonathon followed.

He was not big enough to brace himself the way Rislo had done, but he found easy hand and footholds amongst the coarse stonework. Craning his neck upwards he could see the small circle of bright orange light, which was the fire blazing around the wellhead, hundreds of feet above him.

                            The roar of shifting air in the tunnel made spoken communication between the two impossible, so Jonathon attempted to make a telepathic link with the Tallman above him. The climbing giant was concentrating intensely on his foot and handholds and this made Jonathon's probing difficult. He was also in a state of profound panic and fear,  a barrier that anyone with  less  than  Jonathon's telepathic skills would have found impossible to penetrate. Rislo refused to communicate, but Jonathon could read his thoughts and emotions,  see  the memory pictures that now flowed vividly into his mind.

                            Scenes of carnage filled Rislo's mind, the aftermath of the Turkanschoner's missions. Death was not  clean with this predator, it tore and ripped into the flesh of its prey indiscriminately with no will to end life quickly or indeed any knowledge, since it was not a natural killer.

                            All it desired was to feed and it was conditioned to the hunt and the feast at the end of it. Hence it did not kill as such, it fed on its still living victims until they died of shock or blood loss. Rislo felt that there was no hope, above was a furnace and below the pursuing tearing teeth and claws of the beast. He was desperate, he felt trapped. He had used the one emergency charge from his light orb and would probably have missed if he used it on the Turkanschoner.

                            But he did have his other option,  a  choice  of how he died. He giggled mentally to himself. He would climb as far as he could up the well shaft and  then throw himself down into the abyss. Who knows, he thought, he might even take the Turkanschoner and his Tallmen pursuers with him?

Rislo laughed outloud manically.

                            Jonathon was finding the climb easy, he had been trained well and was accustomed to such feats of exertion, so much so that he found the ascent almost effortless. But his mind raced to find a solution to their present dilemma. Rislo, he knew had accepted defeat, about to give up. The Tallman saw  his  situation  as  hopeless, but Jonathon  thought  differently.  He  would  never give  up  hope. He  considered  his  options.  He  could   do nothing about the fire which raged above them, but he might be able to fight the beast which pursued them, not physically but he had other weapons. His trip into Rislo's memory had revealed its strength, speed and blind ferocity, but it had a brain, a mind, he could engage that.

He knew  from  Rislo's  knowledge  of  the creature, that usually it needed to be commanded to attack by its handler who cast a file of liquid to the ground that stimulated its feeding frenzy. Above all he knew that the minds of the Tallmen pursuing Rislo were vulnerable to his powers, he might just be able to stop them. He would try them first.

                            Jonathon stopped climbing and sent out his mind probing,  searching  for  the  Turkanschoner's handler. He found no one except the beast. It was alone. How  could  it  carry  out  its  conditioned response  without someone to initiate it? he puzzled. He swept into the beast's mind to find it filled with bloody intent, its primitive instincts driving it forward in its initial task of capturing the Tallman deserter.

                            It had just entered the well shaft and knew its prey was above it. It continually checked the scent it followed with the scent on the clothing tied to its neck. Jonathon probed deeper and found the beast to be very intelligent, it was no mere predator at  all,  but  it  was  driven  by the primal desires - fear and hunger, its intellect was paralysed and bound, primal instincts drove it.

                            It feared the pain of punishment if it failed. It hungered because the meals it was fed, at  times other than when it captured its prey were vastly inadequate. It was kept  in a state of virtual starvation that always gave its instincts for self preservation supremacy over the moral codes it did possessed deep within its mind. Codes from another time and place.

                            There was something strange about the Turkanschoner's mind; much was missing or hidden. It had few memories and its primitive instincts were followed uneasily, an underlying tension existed in its psyche. Jonathon realised that its mind had been altered, conditioned. And now, as it neared the capture of its prey, it faced an almighty dilemma. It needed to feed so badly, but knew that to act in a way other than it had been conditioned meant punishment and not eating meant pain of hunger and starvation.

                            Now Jonathon heard its thoughts, it yearned for its master to give it the kill scent. But its master, its Tallman handler, was not here. Jonathon pondered a while. He delved into the creature's thoughts again in an attempt to unravel its confused mind and realised that it genuinely thought that its master was here with it. Jonathon spoke to the beast, his words drifted gently into the beasts head.

“Who is your master? Where is he? "

                            The Turkanschoner stopped its ascent of the well shaft abruptly when the strange voice rang out softly in its head. A wave of fear ran briefly through its mind, and then it answered.

“Him up with it" came a nonsensical reply.

"How can he be up?" Jonathon continued his query and the beast attempted to explain.

“Turk obeys master always or pain comes. Here is scent prey. Here is master who is not prey. Me always have master. Always with me. Master commands, no master, no food - no Turk, so prey here yes - other must be master

- yes?" it seemed to ask for a confirmation of its simple

logical deduction from Jonathon.

                            Jonathon quickly realised that the Turkanschoner thought that he Jonathon, the ‘other’ scent, was its master. Jonathon, it seemed had been adopted in the absence of its handler in order that it might capture its prey and be able  to  feed  within   the   behavioural   confines   of its  programming.

He decided to try and command it.

“Turkanschoner, I am your master, you must go back to the Towers now." he ventured naively.

“Cannot!" came the immediate reply. “Must eat or Turk dies, always eat now, never not eat now." it replied.

                            Did the Turkanschoner always eat its victim, Jonathon thought. Surely there were times when the pursued needed to be taken alive, what then?

Jonathon probed Turk's mind and amongst the gory memory scenes of it feasting, were other times when its prey survived. On these rare occasions the beast was rewarded with a meal that satisfied its hunger. He wondered              whether              the              Turkanschoner's conditioning would hold if it were not fed  now.  He feared it would not. The creature had completed the hunting of the prey and waited to be fed;  how  long would it wait until its instinct for self-preservation broke the bonds of conditioning and took the food it needed in the form of Rislo's flesh? But perhaps, just perhaps, Jonathon realised, there was a slim chance.

                            He opened his eyes and was startled by what he saw. The Turkanschoner was there with him, its damp nostrils flaring close to  his  face,  its  crudely  stitched up eye-lids bulging as its eye balls moved rapidly beneath them. The large, but emaciated beast's arms and legs were braced astride Jonathon as it held onto the side of the well shaft. Jonathon stood, back to the wall on a narrow ledge, staring directly into the Turkanschoner's horrific visage.

                            Its protruding hound-like jaws sported huge oversize incisors that dripped with saliva, a long pink tongue lolled  to  one  side  over  loose  brown  and yellow dappled lips. Here were the perfect carnivorous jaws of the ultimate in killing machines but, as Jonathon studied the beast further, he saw that all was not what it seemed.

                            The razor sharp, serrated cutting side teeth showed file marks where someone had modified the original herbivorous molars into the terrible saw  blades it now possessed. Its gigantic dagger-like incisors were completely artificial, as were its extended jaws. The teeth were crudely crafted from steel and riveted into place on a metal jaw that was screwed into the original one. Rivet and screw heads were clearly visible. This poor creature was no more a natural carnivore than  Jonathon  or  Rislo  were he deduced,  it  had  been  physically adapted and mentally conditioned by the Tallmen into a retributive weapon. The method of conditioning had left its physical marks too. The creatures skull was criss-crossed with vivid white scars which had destroyed the hair follicles in places and forced the rest of the Turkanschoner's hair to grow in great, grey tufts and ragged tails which cascaded down its high fore head and long elegant neck.

                            Its ears had been savagely removed, torn messily from its head and the apertures plugged with wax. Its senses had been reduced to those of touch, taste and smell. Jonathon guessed that the creature, which he now knew had once been more than a beast, had originally had a good sense of smell, and the Tallmen had worked to accentuate this by depriving it of sight and hearing.

                            But Jonathon saw more than any other person could. He had seen both its face and brushed soul with his psychic probing; both were tortured landscapes of pain and suffering. The Turkanschoner moved its right hand down and touched Jonathon's face lightly, a long taloned finger stroked his jaw. In its mind it echoed Jonathon's unique observation, knowing that he would hear it.

“Pain, my life forever pain."

The Turkanschoner's lolling tongue disappeared into its mouth. Sound gurgled in the back of its throat and, to Jonathon's surprise, words escaped in deep, guttural tones.

“Command to kill. Turk hungers. Must eat now!" it pleaded with Jonathon. When Jonathon did not respond, it asked again. This time Jonathon felt its conditioning to follow order coming under severe pressure. “So hungry, must feed soon, hungreeeee!”

Jonathon re-established his telepathic link and spoke to Turkanschoner.

“No killing today Turk, I command you not to kill."

The  beast  visibly  flinched,  baring  his  lips  angrily and  revealing more, but smaller artificial incisors attached  to his artificial jaws between these two principal weapons.

“Then you feed me! You command, you feed, you master - I find Tallman runner - YOU FEED NOW...or I kill, can't help. FEED GOOD NOW!"  the beast screamed indignantly at his new master's injustice.

                            Jonathon's mind raced, he  had  no  food.  Then he remembered Rislo's pack. Had he packed food? He was, after all, prepared for a long expedition. He shouted up to the giant who had hidden in an alcove, created in a section of collapsed well shaft wall just above him. Rislo's silhouetted head peered anxiously down at him and the stationaryTurkanschoner.

Rislo gasped out loud.

“Have you packed any food?" Jonathon called up to him.

                            The Tallman stared blankly at the Turkanschoner whose mouth was dribbling with saliva. One way or another the beast would soon feed.

“Rislo! Food! All it needs to stop it now is to be fed! " The  Turkanschoner  raised  its  head  towards Rislo  and  saliva  seemed  to  boil  back out of  its jaws. Its nostrils  flared.              It              moaned.              Rislo              disappeared briefly              and              reappeared with a bundle of large black sausages which he tentatively lowered down to the Turkanschoner. The beast snatched his prize from Rislo and lowered his face to Jonathon.

“Pain, so much pain, master helps good." it groaned “Me kennel now? " it asked innocently. “Help master again?” The beast's 'master' sighed with relief and closed his eyes. “Yes, go now" Jonathon said mentally to the contented hunting machine. When he opened his eyes, the beast had  gone.  Jonathon  was  massively tired,  drained  of  mental and spiritual energy. The Turkanschoner's abyssal soul had drained him of it. He climbed up to the alcove where Rislo crouched and slid along side him. The giant looked at him wearily.

“I thought I was going to die, I was convinced, I was falling apart. Has it really gone?" he whispered, in case it had not. Jonathon smiled weakly.

“Yes, its gone, you're safe now" he reassured the giant, then closed his eyes and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.