by E. C. Tubb
Sitting, Bochner stared at him, wondering what it would be like to have been like him, to have worn the scarlet robe, to have relinquished all the things which most men held dear. Caradoc would never know the thrill of sitting in a hide waiting for the quarry to appear, to aim, to select the target, to fire, to know the heady exultation of one who has dispensed death. The sheer ecstasy of pitting mind against mind in the hunt for one of his own kind-the most exciting and dangerous quarry of all. To kill and to escape, which often was harder than the kill itself. To outguess and outmaneuver. To anticipate and to watch the stunned sickness in a quarry's eyes. To hear the babble for mercy, see the futile twitches as the demoralized creature tried to escape, to plan even while it begged to die, finally, when the hunter had become bored.
No, Caradoc would never know what it was to be bored and for that alone, Bochner could envy him.
The wine was in a bottle of crusted glass, the crystal flecked with inner motes of shimmering gold, the liquid itself a pale amber, holding the tart freshness of a crisp, new day. Bochner poured and lifted the cap which served as a cup.
"To your health, my friend." He drank and refilled the small container. "You object?"
"I wonder."
"Why I drink?"
"Why any man of intelligence should choose to put poison into his body."
"A good point," mused Bochner. "Why do we do it? To find escape, perhaps to discover a world of dreams. Some cannot do without the anodyne of alcohol, but I am not one of them. Listen, my scarlet accomplice, and try to comprehend. The quarry I hunt lurks in unsuspected quarters and must be sought in regions you may not understand. At times, I must sit for long hours in taverns and what should I drink then? No, I drink as a part of my camouflage and must maintain my tolerance for alcohol. As a runner must practice to keep up his acquired ability. A swimmer, his mastery over water." Again he emptied the cup and again refilled it. "Test me now and you would find me as sober as yourself. Give me a mark and a gun and I will hit it as many times as you choose to name. In any case, it helps to pass the time."
"Quick-time will do that better."
"The drug will shorten the days and little else." Bochner slowly finished his wine. "But no compound ever yet discovered or invented can ease the weight of boredom."
An alien concept which Caradoc could understand only on an intellectual level How could anyone ever grow bored in a universe filled with an infinity of questions awaiting answers? Even the cabin in which they sat offered endless scope for mental exercise connected with its structure, stress factors, cubic capacity, resonance, relationships of planes and divergences from the mathematical norm.
Bored?
No cyber could ever be that while two atoms remained to pose a problem of interrelationship proximities. While life remained to set the eternal question of what and why it existed at all.
But lesser beings needed the convenience of quick-time; the drug which slowed the metabolism so that normal days passed in apparent minutes. A means to lessen the tedium of ship life on journeys between the stars.
The steward brought it an hour later when the vessel was aligned on its target star and safely on its way. He nodded to Caradoc and, without a word, lifted the hypogun he carried, aimed it at Bochner's throat and pressed the release. Air blasted the charge through skin, fat and muscle directly into the bloodstream. Bochner should have immediately turned into the rigid semblance of a statue. Instead, he slumped and fell unconscious on the bunk.
"Minimum dose as ordered, sir," said the steward. "Another?"
"No. You have all that is necessary? Good. Stand aside while I work."
Caradoc turned the unconscious man on his back, handling the bulk with surprising strength. From a packet the steward handed him, he took a slender instrument and a small capsule together with a can of anesthetizing spray fitted with a slender nozzle. Thrusting the nozzle into Bochner's right nostril, Caradoc hit the release, numbing and sterilizing the inner membranes. With the instrument, he quested the nasal passage and located the entrance to the sinus cavity. Removing the instrument, he fitted the capsule to its end, thrust the small package into the nostril, pressed and pushed it into the sinus. There it expanded, thin filaments attaching themselves with minute hooks to the inner lining, they and the capsule both coated with numbing and sterile compounds.
As he withdrew the spray after a final treatment Caradoc said to the steward, "Now. Neutralize and administer quick-time."
A metabolic shock, but Bochner was fit and could stand it, and what did it matter if the jar to his system should have later repercussions? He was a tool to be used for the benefit of the Cyclan and nothing more. The instrument planted within his skull was a device which, on receiving a signal, would respond with a burst of coded emissions. No matter where or how he tried to hide, he could be found, and the capsule itself could be exploded by remote control.
No one living had ever betrayed the Cyclan and Bochner would not be the first.
Caradoc watched as the steward set him upright, deftly triggering the hypogun, seeing the slow movements of the hunter's hands and eyes. Movements which jerked to normal as his own metabolism responded to the impact of the drug blasted into his bloodstream. The door blurred and they were alone.
Bochner wished he was more so. He hadn't wanted the company of the cyber but had known better than to protest Irae's decision. Later, if the need arose, he would slip away and certainly, if necessary, the cyber would have to change his appearance. The scarlet robe and naked scalp were signals the quarry couldn't miss.
Thinking of the hunt, he said, "How can you be so sure he is within the Quillian Sector?"
"Dumarest?" Caradoc leaned back to rest his shoulders against the wall. Bochner had noticed nothing wrong and that was proof of his own efficiency. He sat as Bochner remembered, the cabin looked the same. To Bochner, his temporary unconsciousness would have seemed no more than the blink of an eye. "A matter of applied logic."
"A guess?"
"No."
"And yet you can't be certain. I mean, you might know about where he is but not exactly where. If your logic and skill were good enough surely there could be no doubt?"
"Doubt?"
"Uncertainty. You would be certain."
"Nothing is ever that," said Caradoc. "Always there is the unknown factor which must never be ignored. No matter how certain a thing appears to be, it must never be considered an absolute event. The probability may be high but, always, it remains a probability."
Bochner nodded, remembering a time during his early youth. A copse in which a beast was lurking, himself set and armed, the weapon lifted, aimed, the butt hard against his shoulder, the sights leveled on the spot in which the creature was sure to appear. A long, delicious moment of savored anticipation. The nearing climax of the hunt was like the climax of sex itself, though far more satisfying.
And then the shadow, which had crossed the sun. The raft, which had appeared in a cloudless sky and, as it threw a patch of darkness over the front sight, the quarry had appeared to turn, to run, to dodge the bullet which should have brought it low.
Revenge had done little to ease the hurt and after the dead man had toppled from the raft, and the vehicle itself risen to vanish into the distance, the penalty had waited at the end- the blood-price paid in money and sweat and exile from his home world.
A little thing. One he should have taken into consideration. A neglect which had altered the trend of his life.
Watching him, Caradoc said, "Imagine a container of boiling liquid containing tiny motes of solid substance. They are in continuous, restless activity. The Brownian Movement. The tiny particles are in motion because of the irregular bombardment of the molecules of the surrounding medium. Now, imagine one of the particles to be colored for easy identification. We can tell where it is in relation to the whole. We can tell where it has been. We can even predict where next it might be, but never can we be utterly and absolutely certain."
"Dumarest?
The colored particle is Dumarest?"
"The analogy will serve."
"And you know about where he is to be found. In the Quillian Sector." Bochner's face became taut ugly, the skin tightening so that his cheeks looked like scraped bone. "The place where space goes mad. Where the suns fight and fill the universe with crazed patterns of energy so that men kill at a glance and women scream at imagined terrors. Ealius and Cham and Ninik."
"Swenna," said Caradoc adding to the list. "Vult and Pontia-" He paused, then said again, "Pontia."
"Where I was born." Bochner's voice matched the taut ugliness of his face. "I told you I knew the area well."
Chapter Two
Dumarest heard the shout and looked up to see death falling from the sky. The grab of the digger was overhead, the jaws open, tons of oozing clay scooped from the cutting, blotting out the pale orange of the firmament. It should have been neatly deposited in the body of his truck. Instead, it was plummeting down to crush and bury him. No accident. The crane was well to one side, the truck closer to it than himself, but there was no time to think of that.
Even before the warning shout had died he was on the move, lunging to one side, feeling his foot slip on the loose dirt, toppling off balance as the load thundered down.
Luck was with him. A second later, or had he been less fast, he would have been crushed and buried like an insect. As it was, he felt the impact on his left shoulder, the barest touch of the debris which rasped down the sleeve of his coverall, the blow throwing him further in the direction of his fall. He hit a slope, rolling, falling, to land on the waterlogged clay at the foot of the cutting as over him showered the mass of clay, dirt and rubble.
Too much rubble. It pressed on his back, drove his face into the water as it piled on his head, his shoulders, trapping his entire body with a layer of dirt which pressed with an iron hand. A hand which could kill, which would kill within minutes unless he could find some way to breathe.
He strained, body aching, muscles tense, blood thundering in his ears as, slowly, he lifted. A fraction only; loose dirt compacted by his upward pressure, yielding a trifle to form a shallow gap beneath him so that, arms and legs rigid, back arched against the strain, head turned to rest one cheek in the water, his nose lay above the surface and he could breathe.
Breathe and wait for a rescue which need never come.
Life was cheap on Ealius. Only the skilled technicians were of value, the rest were easily replaced. Those in authority could decide that he wasn't worth the trouble and effort to save. Better to let him lie, to be covered in, buried, forgotten. But the cutting had to be kept open, the great channel formed and smoothed, the passage through the mountain maintained.
After what seemed hours, Dumarest felt and heard the grating vibration of mechanical jaws.
They were not being operated with any care for the vulnerability of a human body. The steel teeth dropped, closed, lifted with a load of clay to set it aside and return for more. Only a concern to avoid marring the sides of the channel made the operator take small bites at the mound he had dropped. The fact that any of the scoops could have sheared through a body didn't seem to have occurred to him.
Dumarest had a more personal interest. He felt a touch against one leg, kicked, felt metal beneath his foot and then the rasp of the teeth over his thigh. Luck had saved him; a few more inches and his foot would have been caught, his leg ripped from its socket as the grab lifted with resistless force. Before it could return he heaved, squandering the last of his conserved energy, fighting the crushing weight on back and shoulders as he thrust himself back to where the clay had been lifted from his legs. When next the grab returned, he was ready. As the open jaws dug into the mound he threw himself into the grab, ducking as the serrated edges closed, one hand caught between two of the steel teeth of the low jaw, the upper halting an inch from his wrist as it closed on a stone.
Then up and out to one side, the grab halting, turning, opening as it jerked to shower its load into the open body of the truck waiting below. As Dumarest fell, he heard a yell.
"It's Earl! By damn, it's Earl!"
Carl Devoy, the one who had shouted, his face taut beneath a tangle of rust-colored hair now smeared with ocher clay. He ran to the side of the truck, heaving himself up and staring over the side.
"Earl?" He sucked in his breath as Dumarest moved. "By God, he's still alive! Give a hand here! Give a hand!"
He was small, but with a temper to match the color of his hair, and two men ran to obey. A third arrived with a bucket of water as they lowered Dumarest to the ground and, without preamble, threw the contents over the clay smeared figure.
"Earl?"
"I'm all right." Dumarest straightened, breathing deeply, water running down his head and face to soak his coverall. As he wiped his hands on his sides, he said, "Who was operating the digger?"
"Menser, He's still operating it." Devoy glanced at the man seated in the cab of the machine. A transparent canopy gave weather protection, its clarity now marred with dirt. Behind it, the face and figure of the operator were blurred. "I saw the bucket jerk and yelled but I was too late."
"No," said Dumarest. "If you hadn't shouted I'd be dead now. And then?"
"After the load dropped?" Devoy shrugged. "They figured you had to be dead and would have left you but Strick wanted the cutting to be cleared. Ten minutes later and he'd have left it for the next shift to clear up the mess."
Ten minutes-the difference between life and death. Dumarest looked at the orange sky, at the bulk of the digger etched against it, at the dark face which peered at him from behind the canopy. As a whistle blew the face moved, became a part of the body which climbed down from the cab, a man who stood almost seven-feet tall and with shoulders to match. A black giant with massive hands and thighs like trees. A man who stepped to where Dumarest stood waiting, to halt, to part his lips in a grin before spitting on the ground.
"Mister, you were lucky."
"No," said Dumarest. "You were careless."
"Meaning the accident?"
"If it was one."
"Hell, man, how can you doubt it? A cable locked and I had to snap it clear. That's why I swung the grab over and away from the truck. Sometimes the catch slips and you drop the load."
"On me?"
"I didn't see you." Menser spat again. "I had other things to think about."
Truth or lie, there was no way of telling and certainly nothing could be proved. Dumarest studied the man, seeing the eyes, white rims showing around the irises, the corners tinged with red. The telltale signs of the drug he chewed, as was the purple spittle he had vented on the ground. The pungent, shredded leaf which gave euphoria at the cost of sanity.
Then, as the whistle shrilled again, Devoy said, "Come on, Earl, let's get away from here. The next shift's taking over."
The residential quarters matched the workings; hard, rough, severely functional. Sleeping was done in dormitories, eating in a communal mess, washing in a long, low room flanked by shallow troughs above which showers supplied water ranging from tepid to steaming hot. The place itself was filled with steam; writhing vapor which blurred details in a manmade fog. In it shapes loomed, indistinct, voices muffled as men called to each other.
Stripped, Dumarest stepped under a shower, feeling the drum of water on his head, the rivulets cleaning away the grime and dirt from his hair. Soap came in liquid form from a dispenser and he filled his palm with the sticky goo, rubbing it hard and getting little result.
"Here, Earl, try this." Devoy handed over a bar of soap from where he stood in the adjoining shower. "Something special from a friend in town." His wink left no doubt as to the nature of the friend. "She likes her men to smell nice. Go ahead," he urged. "It's good."
The soap held a crude perfume but it contained oil and lacked the harsh bite of the supplied liquid. Dumarest used it, creating a mass of suds which flowed over the firm muscles of shoulders and back, stomach and thighs. As he turned beneath the shower to
wash them free, Devoy sucked in his breath.
"Hell, Earl, you look as if you'd been clawed by a giant."
Dumarest turned to examine his legs. On the back of each calf, running midway up each thigh, ran a wide, purpling bruise: the result of the raking jaws of the grab. They marred the hard, smooth whiteness of the skin, as did the other marks carried on his chest and forearms, the thin cicatrices of old wounds.
Devoy looked at them, recognizing them for what they were, wondering why he hadn't spotted them before. The long bruises gave the answer to that; unless they had caught his attention he wouldn't have stared. Wouldn't now know that Dumarest bore the scars of a man who has fought with naked blades. That he was a fighter, trained to kill.
He said, "That's Menser's trouble, Earl. I've heard it from others in the gang. He's been pushing, seeing how far he can go, how much he can get away with. That accident could have been fixed."
"I know."
"Does he have anything against you? Did he try to push, and you told him where to get off?"
Dumarest shook his head, then lifted his arms to let the steaming water cascade over his body, the impact helping to ease the ache of muscles recently overstrained. Since coming to the workings he had kept himself to himself, not asking for trouble, not looking for it. The last thing he wanted was to become the center of attention. Now, it seemed, Menser had other ideas.
He came into the washroom, voice booming, attended by a handful of sycophants eager to hook their wagon to a profitable star. On any construction site there were men who recognized opportunity when they saw it and took steps to skim the cream. Parasites, using threats and violence to intimidate others, demanding a share of their pay under the guise of collecting contributions, donations, or as insurance premiums. Such men, if they survived, could become rich and powerful with their own small, private armies to enforce their dictates.
Menser wanted to become one of them.
