The Damned Trilogy

by Alan Dean Foster

  As evidence of the respect in which his captors held him, he was compelled to travel with his wrists securely bound behind his back. It was uncomfortable and he said so, but in this one regard, at least, his captors seemed prepared to act in an uncivilized manner.

  He used the travel time to study his escort. They were the first Humans he’d seen in the flesh whom he was not engaged in trying to kill. One was quite large, taller and more massive than himself. Its right ear was plugged with a tiny metallic button from which very faint musical sounds emerged. Whether that had anything to do with the way he moved in his seat, occasionally flicking his fingers against each other in the manner of a nervous Hivistahm, Ranji could not be sure. Certainly it was linked to the universal translator he also wore.

  The Human on his right looked no less competent for being smaller and slimmer. His skin was extremely dark, especially in contrast to that of his colleague. Ranji knew that color variance among the species could be extreme, whereas the Ashregan were all the same golden sepia hue. The man spent most of the time staring out the window at the rapidly changing countryside.

  They climbed into slightly more rugged terrain. Fields gave way to orchards and groves of wild trees. A range of snow-capped mountains materialized in the distance. So far he had seen more Yulans on the ship than on this world.

  No vehicles overtook them, nor did they pass any. Only a few shot past, traveling in the other direction. Perhaps they were traversing some kind of restricted route, Ranji mused.

  Since everyone had been equipped with translators, he found himself wondering at the presence of the Wais. Not that their contribution to the Weave was restricted to translating. They could do other things almost as well. But he would have expected a Yula or O’o’yan driver. Possibly the ornate ornithorp was also a scientist, assigned to observe the specimen as it was conveyed to its eventual destination. He amused himself with the knowledge that the Wais probably found traveling in the company of two armed Humans far more unsettling than he did.

  The very image of isolated elegance, it never once turned to look back at its fellow passengers. Ranji considered lurching forward should it do so, bulging his eyes and baring his teeth. Very likely it would keel over in a dead faint.

  As for trying to imbue the Humans with knowledge of the Purpose, he knew instinctively that would be a waste of time. Uncivilized and barbaric as they were, it wouldn’t be surprising for them to react with violence to an attempt at simple conversation. So he sat quietly, held his peace, and studied the world outside.

  They began to slow, and he leaned forward slightly for a better look. Some kind of attenuated freight transport was traveling north-to-south perpendicular to their path, forcing their pilot to come to a complete halt while they waited for the longer, slower machine to pass. The dark-hued Human shifted irritably in his seat, a disgusted expression on his face. His larger companion continued to twitch to the strains of unheard music. Beneath them, the vehicle’s repulsion unit idled softly.

  Ranji erupted from his seat, spinning to his right, the fingers of his left hand striking the door-release mechanism in the combination he’d memorized when he’d first been shoved into the vehicle. As he landed hard on the darker Human’s lap he brought both legs up and over to grip him tightly around the neck. Twisting, he used powerful calf and thigh muscles to thrust his captor’s upper body explosively forward. The man’s skull slammed into the transparent barrier that separated the front and rear compartments. Blood splattered as Ranji released the dazed guard and tumbled out backward through the open door.

  “Get him!” the injured man moaned as Ranji felt the bigger Human’s fingers fumbling at his ankles.

  Instead of dashing for the nearest trees, Ranji spun and kicked the startled smaller man directly beneath his chin. Weapon half-drawn, he collapsed in the doorway, effectively blocking his larger companion from pursuing. The big Human blurted a stentorian oath and turned to the door on his side of the vehicle, ripping the music device from his ear and fumbling for his gun. Clearly the prisoner was either going to sprint into the nearby orchard or else stand and try to fight with his feet as he’d just demonstrated he was quite capable of doing.

  Instead, as soon as the big man emerged and started to come around the rear of the vehicle toward him, Ranji jumped back in. Kicking the dark Human out, Ranji deftly manipulated the door controls with the toe of his boot, shutting and locking first one door and then the other. He was now alone in the secured rear compartment with the deceived guard gesticulating angrily through the window.

  Furious, the Human rushed to the front of the vehicle and yelled at the Wais to open one of the front doors. Unfortunately for him, the sudden outburst of raw violence had shocked the ornithorp into a quasicataleptic state. It sat staring straight ahead, feathers quivering, utterly unresponsive. The more the Human ranted and raved, the deeper its paralysis became. Just as Ranji had hoped.

  He could not count on the condition persisting, however. Hands still bound behind him, he began hunting for a way of accessing the driver’s compartment. His obvious intent only added to the Wais’s terror.

  His search revealed a small compartment built into the back of the front section. It contained small, finely machined instruments of alien design and unknown purpose. There were also a number of thin transparent cards on whose surface fine etching was visible.

  The excluded Human continued to pound on the window while bellowing untranslatable imprecations.

  Ranji turned and carefully removed the cards from the shallow compartment. His back to the barrier, he tried one after another in the slot obviously designed to receive them, hoping one would lower the transparency that separated him from the driver’s section. A soft beep accompanied each insertion, but the barrier did not fall.

  The slick plastic band that tightly encircled his wrists, however, metamorphosed into a handful of foam beads.

  Relieved and surprised to have regained the use of his hands, he ignored the rampaging Human as he tried the rest of the cards. The last in the pile turned out to be the one he was searching for.

  The barrier vanished into the floor. In no particular hurry, Ranji pocketed the card as he climbed into the empty seat next to the Wais. It continued to stare straight ahead, resolutely ignoring him. The big Human was now frantic.

  From the moment he’d been placed inside, Ranji had taken careful note of how the Wais operated the vehicle. After re-raising the barrier, he removed the control disk from the ornithorp’s paralyzed fingers, pulling it across on its flexible stalk until it was in front of his seat. The disk was cleverly designed to accommodate a variety of manipulative digits.

  The lengthy freight vehicle which had instigated their delay had long since vanished southward. Experimentally resting his palm atop the unit, Ranji moved one finger slightly, as he’d seen the Wais do. The floater drifted forward, the agitated Human having to run to keep up as he pounded on the glass. Once he aimed his weapon through the transparency, but Ranji didn’t flinch. He was relying on his importance as a specimen to preserve him from hostile fire.

  Sure enough, the Human backed off. But he didn’t give up. Instead he grabbed the dangling rear door and pulled himself in. Once safely back inside the vehicle he straightened on the seat and carefully aimed his weapon at the card slot Ranji had utilized to gain entrance to the driver’s compartment.

  Ranji’s fingers convulsed on the disk. As the rear door slammed shut, a front one opened. After pounding the disk against the front part of the compartment until several buttons and switches had been dislodged, he calmly jumped from the rapidly accelerating vehicle, landing hard on the ground outside and rolling to his feet.

  The look on the Human’s face as the vehicle sped away with him locked securely in the back was worth the pain in Ranji’s shoulder.

  The man was going to have to shoot his way into the front seat (assuming his attempt shorted out the barrier’s controls instead of freezing them) and try to turn the vehicle around
or, more likely, call for assistance on its communications system. It was now traveling too fast for him to consider duplicating Ranji’s leap. Hopefully the control disk had been damaged too badly to function. In that event the vehicle would not slow down for quite a while. By then Ranji planned to be deep in the nearby woods.

  He trotted back to where the Human he’d kicked lay on his back, groaning softly. Ranji bent and struck the man just hard enough on the side of his neck. The moaning stopped, but not his breathing. Killing him would be against the tenets of the Purpose and would in any event do him no good.

  The man’s pockets were full of personal effects which Ranji ignored. There was a military chronometer, which he took, along with another set of the ubiquitous etched cards. A small sealed square contained solid pieces of dark, sweet food. There was also an incongruously ordinary spool of fine plastic thread. Sadly, when he’d been kicked the man had dropped his weapon on the floor of the floater’s rear compartment.

  Straightening, he surveyed his surroundings. He couldn’t count on pursuit delaying too long, especially if the surviving guard managed to break into the driver’s compartment and gain control without crashing the vehicle. Ranji headed for the thick stand of trees off to his right, using long strides to try and leave as little in the way of a track as possible.

  The orchard quickly gave way to dense, uncultivated woods. The terrain grew rougher as flat land was replaced by steep hills cut by gullies and rivulets. Some were dry, others cuddled running streams which nourished thick entwined vegetation. There was plenty of good cover. He smiled as he ran, pretending he was back in the Maze.

  Wild fruit was a natural food source which he planned to sample at the first opportunity. Like the majority of intelligent species, the Yula were warm-blooded. Hopefully he would be able to eat some of the same food which nourished them.

  His intentions went no further than the next morning. He could not flee this planet, could not escape to Cossuut or any other friendly world. From now on his contribution to the war effort would consist of denying himself to his captors. Beyond that, given time and thought, he might also be able to do a little more, if only by disrupting the local peace and tranquillity. He wondered how long the secret of his escape could be kept from the local populace.

  Teoth received the news from Eighth-of-Records, who because of his job had access to information routinely denied the rest of the crew. Together with Sixth-of-Technics they had a conference of their own, during which all of his worst fears were confirmed.

  “The creature escaped from the vehicle in which it was being transported to the study site,” the Hivistahm was saying. “As of the latest information I was able to acquire, despite mounting efforts to recapture it, it still running free was in the countryside.”

  “I am not surprised.” Teoth scuffed at the deck with his fore-center leg. “I almost expected something like this to happen.”

  Sixth-of-Technics blinked at his friend. “Truly you do not upset at the news seem.”

  Three eyes turned to the slightly smaller of the two Hivistahm. “Why should one be disappointed when one’s hopes are about to be fulfilled?”

  The nighttime temperature on this part of Omaphil was moderate. Despite nerves and lack of facilities, Ranji was able to manage several hours’ sleep.

  Upon awakening, he scoured the nearby trees for a selection of fruit. Tentatively peeling and eating as efficiently as he could, he filled his belly and then settled down to wait. The queasiness that resulted was due as much to tension as to anything he’d eaten. Only when he was confident that the food he had consumed was going to stay down did he allow himself to drink from the nearby brook.

  Morning had brought a number of animals to the water’s edge to quench their thirst. Most were clad in green and blue fur that seemed too thick for so mild a climate. They ignored him, accepting him as one of their own as he washed fruit pulp and seeds from his face and hands. Thus refreshed, he took his bearings by the sun and set off deeper into the forest, his eventual goal being the high western mountains he’d seen from the vehicle.

  They would be frantically searching the length of the road, he knew, but since he’d waited until the floater was out of sight before starting off, they wouldn’t know which way he’d gone. Nor were his captors likely to have ready access to tracking specialists on a peaceful, civilized world like Omaphil. It would take time to bring in trained individuals and specialized equipment to hunt him down.

  He couldn’t count on any of that, though. He had to assume they were already on his trail. The thought did not discourage him. On the contrary, the more resources they had to divert to tracking him down, the greater was his contribution to the advance of civilization.

  As the day wore on he found himself gaining in strength and determination as he moved along, keeping to the trees that protected him from aerial discovery as well as helping to mask his heat signature. The longer it took for them to locate him, the deeper into the mountains he could go and the more difficult it would be for them to eventually dig him out. If he could find a cave system, he might be able to stay hidden for years.

  By the third day he had begun to gain some real altitude. Continued progress now involved climbing as well as simple hiking. Silently he thanked the Yula settlers who had kept to population centers and left this portion of Omaphil, at least, in its wild, undeveloped state.

  Descending a steep but shallow gorge brought him to the base of a roaring cataract. Where the foaming waters were sharply bent westward by an unyielding wall of granite he found a mass of storm-tossed driftwood that provided him with a fine-grained, water-polished club.

  A subsequent search through a pile of splintered rock produced several sharp triangular chips. His patient efforts to secure one to the end of the club with fibers drawn from a local plant eventually resulted in a serviceable if primitive weapon. He swung it in short, experimental arcs, exulting in the swoosh it made as it swept air aside. Now the means for defending himself extended beyond mere bare hands.

  Hoping to find material from which to fashion a sling, he pocketed some of the hard round pebbles from the bottom of the stream as he followed it for a while before striking off again into the brush.

  On the fifth day he killed a grazing herbivore. It was nearly his size, and skinning it with the crude tools at hand was a messy and time-consuming process. He persevered, however, and when he was through he had acquired an outer garment which not only would shed rain but disguise his smell. If he dropped to all fours and imitated the animal’s gait, it might be enough to fool a casual observer into believing they were seeing anything but a renegade Ashregan.

  He had now acquired weapons and camouflage that, although simple, were a great advance over nothing at all. With luck, his pursuers would not imagine him capable of such inventiveness.

  He was beginning to think he could roam the wild, heavily vegetated mountains forever when he was nearly surprised by the Tracker.

  Though there had to be many of them on his trail, this one was alone. No doubt they had spread out to cover as much of the countryside as possible. The procedure struck him as eminently sensible. Anyone finding evidence of his presence could immediately call for assistance.

  Unless he spotted them first.

  The bipedal figure was still some distance away, too far for him to make out the species without a scope. Probably Massood, he thought. Their height, sharp vision, and long stride made them notable Trackers.

  Not that it mattered. From now on he would move at night, when his pursuers were likely to be sleeping, and hide himself during the day. Either he would outpace them or they would pass him by. He began searching for his first hiding place.

  In this manner he successfully passed the first week, then a second. No doubt those local authorities whom the Weave had seen fit to entrust with a minimum of information about his escape were frantic by now, wondering where in their civilized midst the dangerous escaped warrior might choose to materialize. Better yet
, they might think he’d fallen over a cliff or perished of hunger and scale down the pursuit.

  He was feeling very good about his situation as he worked his way through a night-shrouded grove of tall, oddly bent trees and stumbled over the dozing form of the Tracker.

  Because of the camouflage blanket, the low mound had looked like any other clump of earth. Only when he started across did it yield spongily beneath his feet and emit a startled yelp. A blast of heat lit up the night and singed his ear as a weapon went off wildly under him.

  The blunt side of his club was less urbane, but more effective.

  There were no more shots. The struggling figure beneath the blanket went limp. Ranji staggered backward a couple of steps and sat down heavily, gulping air. Everything had happened so fast that he was only now beginning to sequence the events in retrospect. Gingerly he touched the left side of his head. He could still feel the heat of the bolt’s passing. A finger length more to the right and it would have gone through his eye. If not for his extensive training and superb reflexes, he’d be sprawled out on the ground right now instead of sitting up considering his assailant.

  His instinct was to flee. Instead, he forced himself to approach the motionless shape under the blanket. If it was dead, its companions would soon learn of its fate by reason of its noncommunicativeness. Regardless, it might be carrying much he could use.

  After pocketing the surprisingly small gun, he dragged the blanket off the unconscious form and began to fold it neatly. The Tracker’s pack lay near its feet. It was encouragingly full and would ride easily on his back. That done, he knelt and felt along the furless legs—clearly not Massood—until he came to the service belt. Undoing the secure-tight he slipped it around his own waist and was gratified to find that though he had to place it on the last possible setting, it fit.