Starblood

by Dean Koontz

  Timothy shot toward the ceiling, turning on his side in the same manuever. He directed the silver ball of his mobility system across the room, toward the open door. But though Baker looked stupid and slow, he was faster than any of them; he reached the door a second before Ti, slamming and locking it, grasping the old-fashioned key in his hand.

  Ti hit him full force with the silver mobility cap, smashing him backward against the wall, cracking his head. Baker slid to the floor, unconscious. The key dropped from his hand and made a ringing noise on the stone floor. As Ti picked it up with a servo, the gentleman called from behind in a calm voice, "Stop right there, or you're dead."

  Ti directed the servo to put the key in the lock and continue opening the door.

  "A knife is too heavy for your psionic power to deflect, you know."

  Timothy turned, looked at the garishly decorated throwing knife the Brother held in his right palm. He seemed to know how to use it.

  "Throw me the key," the Brother said. When Ti hesitated, he drew his arm back for the throw.

  Ti plucked the key from the lock and threw it to the Brother. It landed at the man's feet, and he did not stoop to retrieve it. Timothy was angry for even considering such a simple trick would work. It would only make the man more observant of future movements.

  "Return to your bed, please," the gentleman said.

  Ti obliged. There was little else he could do. Addiction to the drug might be worse than death, but if he died now there was no chance of ever escaping; he would be forfeiting the future and any better opportunities that might arise. He shut off his mobility system at the Brother's suggestion and sank onto the mattress; now he was in the thrall of gravity.

  "I believe," the gentleman said, "that you may even be the type to cooperate with police after you become a medium-range addict. But that would be folly. In the event you do manage to destroy the Brethren, you gain nothing. They could supply you with the confiscated stores of the drug, but they would soon run out of those. And only we know where it comes from. You understand? No one else will ever be able to synthesize it—or even come close. We are the only source. When we go, so does that source. And then you would find yourself with a craving you couldn't fill—one that would become quite deadly in time. I think you see the wisdom here, no?"

  Timothy said nothing.

  Against the far wall, Baker stirred, then pushed groggily to his feet. A small amount of blood ran out his nose, but he seemed otherwise unscathed. When he had his feet properly under him, he charged Ti.

  "Baker!" the gentleman shouted.

  The brute stopped and stood glowering at Timothy. Because of the way he had obeyed his master, Ti knew he was a surgically altered man. For the first time, he felt a bit pleased that the Army had indulged in such debased and inhumane research . . .

  The gentleman approached with a hypodermic case he had withdrawn from his inside coat pocket. He sat on the edge of

  Ti's bed while he filled the measured tube from a bottle of amber fluid. He found a vein on Timothy's hip, stabbed the needle in, drained the tube, and put the instruments away again. "That should be taking effect shortly," he said, getting to his feet.

  Timothy felt his psi talent slipping away just as before, though this dose was not so massive as to deny him speaking powers. "I won't let you do this to me," he said. He wanted to scream about the inhumanity of taking away his third hand, for that was equal to dismembering a healthy man. But he thought it might be better to remain silent about the loss of his ESP. If Baker or others like him realized the mutant was totally helpless, there was little chance of his escaping repeated beatings.

  "You have little choice," the gentleman said. "We'll be around twice a day. I'll administer these myself. I'd call it sweet revenge, but it's chiefly to please those in the organization who were close to Klaus, to keep them content."

  "Revenge?" he asked. In his mind there was a ghost river, a grass raft, and drifting autumn leaves . . .

  "What else?" the gentleman asked.

  He was no longer grinning.

  There was a river of wine, wine, wine . . .

  "I don't understand," Timothy said with an effort, trying to hold on to the concrete reality here before the ethereal illusions swept him away into drunken, chaotic madness . . .

  "Of course you do," the gentleman said. "My name is Jon Margle."

  Ti fell down into the surging wine river . . .

  CHAPTER 8

  Ti had no more nightmares under the PBT, for they were no longer giving him the massive doses that Kealy had used in the amusement park. Instead, he coasted through illusions of a heavy, sensual nature, through idyllic paradises from which he hated more and more to be withdrawn when the drug began to lose its influence on his mind. When he was clearheaded and had none of the stuff in him, he realized that his delight in the dreams meant he was losing hold of reality. He was accepting fantasy for experience, and that horrified him. He was quite aware that he yearned for the dreams because they were the only way he could ever know sexuality; they were an entire world he had never envisioned or expected to experience. But this alone, he argued, was no reason to give in to them. His life had been built on battles, and: if he were to lose one to a mere chemical substance when he had won so many against tough human adversaries, it was all a sham.

  Yet he did give in to them. Again and again.

  And when he did not have the drug, he found himself often lying listlessly on his bed, wishing they would hurry with the next dose.

  And then he would know fear . . .

  On the third morning in the house, Margle and Baker broke the routine when they brought his dose. He was not surprised when he realized he was about to get a beating from Baker. Nothing Jon Margle could do would surprise him now. He knew the man for what he was—a coward and a sadist. And that was the deadliest of all combinations. Klaus Margle had a limit to what he would order a man to do. Because he had been a brave man, he would not have a man perform that which he feared himself. But in his cowardice, there was no limit to what Jon Margle would ask of Baker. He could not instill fear in his Brethren subordinates through his own personality, but he could create a proxy fear by making them understand that his own dementia had no limits, that his own sadism could request and enjoy anything.

  "Baker brought up an interesting point," Margle said. "Addiction may eventually burden you, but you are getting off lightly now—even enjoying yourself, not suffering at all for Brother Klaus's murder. Baker said it less fluently, of course, but he made sense."

  Baker laughed unpleasantly.

  "So Baker wonders why we don't make you suffer now instead of letting you enjoy the PBT without a counterbalancing discipline. I tend to think he has a point. Besides, he needs a workout."

  Timothy rose on his grav-plate system, terrified—but he balanced that terror with hate, which he had found it prudent to begin cultivating again.

  "Yes, yes!" Margle said almost gleefully. "Fight like hell! It will be interesting to see what Baker can withstand when he has a grudge driving him."

  The quasi-neanderthal moved in with uncanny swiftness and delivered a jab to Timothy's neck that left the mutant gagging and gasping for air, his throat afire.

  "Open-hand blows, Baker," Margle ordered the henchman. "He may be as freaky inside as outside, and we don't want a corpse this time."

  Baker grunted acknowledgment and angled for another blow. He swung his beefy hands and slapped Ti's head several times until Timothy heard bells in his ears and his eye refused to focus.

  Ti twisted his body and shot forth with his mobility ball ahead of him. He caught Baker on the side, spinning him around. Baker snapped his head against the paneling, looked groggy for a moment. But the giant's quest for revenge was stronger than his body's urge to pass out, and he rose, staggered toward Ti, and swung a heavy fist that barely missed the mutant's face.

  Ti rolled onto his side again, accelerated, and rushed the brute. This time Baker leaped sideways. Ti skimmed
past him, sliding noisily along the wall, his metal mobility cap rattling and clanging like a bell with a broken clapper. When he turned, Baker was on him, punching and stabbing with open hands at ribs and shoulders and face. Margle stood by the door, laughing . . .

  Ti was relieved that, if the beating had to come, they had decided to give it to him before his dose of PBT. Otherwise, without his psionic power, he would have been helpless. He directed his mechanical hands to pummel the man's back, delivering excruciating batterings—though Baker seemed hardly to notice. He wouldn't. His pain centers had been pared to a minimum so that he would experience pain only in its extremes, thereby insuring he would not back out of a fight until it was necessary either to retreat or die. He continued to work on Timothy with an insane, rhythmic movement that made him seem more like an automaton than a human being, raising his flattened hands to slap the mutant's face until blood freely flowed down the misshapen chin.

  Baker giggled, high and chillingly. His face was crimson, veins standing out, throbbing, sweat beading on his brow and running down his stubbled cheeks. He grinned fiercely, like a wolf before trapped prey. He was relentless and invincible, and Timothy was certain that the brute meant to kill him.

  Still Jon Margle watched, intrigued. His eyes contained a touch of the inhuman mania that infected Baker. It was lacquered over with education and a veneer of civilization—but it was there just the same.

  Aware that he had little time left before unconsciousness claimed him, Timothy attacked Baker's face with his steel servos. In moments, the man's bare soft facial flesh had begun to disintegrate beneath the worrying of the robotic prosthos. There was a long gash down his left cheek, a bloody pulp where his right ear had been, a crimson horror where the servos had torn the flap of flesh separating his nostrils. Despite the pain, Baker did not slacken his attack on the mutant. He had flattened his hands automatically at Margle's order, but now they balled into fists as the romp changed into a matter of survival. Timothy hoped for an order from Margle to stop this, but he made no effort to restrain the killer. Margle's nostrils were flared, his eyes wild. He cringed by the door, obviously frightened and entranced at the same time.

  And Timothy knew he could hold on to consciousness only a few moments longer. The pain of those blows in stomach and chest came like blocks of concrete tossed by a catapult.

  Baker was chanting something, a string of obscenities mouthed in faithful order like a religious chant . . .

  Ti now wished they had given him the PBT first, so that he would not have been aware of the pain. That thought jolted him awake again. Damn it, they had almost gotten to him so soon! When he began wishing for the drug, his will was snapped and they had won the battle. Furious with himself, he ordered the servos to grasp Baker's neck, to twist and crush the thickly muscled flesh until the man crumpled from a lack of blood to his brain. They locked hard fingers around his neck and applied heavy, though not maximum, pressure.

  Baker continued to swing, though he slowly became aware that he was slowing down and that there was pain—very bad pain. He dropped his fists, staggered back, grasped at the servos worrying his neck. He pulled, fear and desperation replacing the sadistic frenzy that had occupied his facial features. But hands of flesh were not a match for steel fingers. He dropped to his knees and pitched forward into blackness.

  Ti held the hands on him a moment more, then released them lest he kill the man. Without looking up, he directed the servos at the door where Margle had been waiting, hoping to catch the man off guard.

  "Nice try," Margle said from behind him, near the bed. "But you better settle down now and let me get on with this."

  Ti turned, discouraged, and saw the Brother holding the same ornate throwing knife he had used to cow the mutant days earlier. The moment of hope that had flowered in him now withered and died, rotted down in the depths of him. He turned and went back to the bed, with his servos floating to either side. He weighed the possibility of using the servos to strangle Margle while the Brother injected the PBT, but he saw that the man had used the time of the fight to fill the needle and that he could easily inject it with one hand while maintaining a deadly grip on the knife. He lay down on the bed, turned off the grav-plate system as directed, and accepted the dose of the drug with what dignity he could muster.

  Dignity, after all, was about all he had left. And even that would be gone soon; he might as well make use of it while it was permitted him.

  "Much more reasonable," Margle said, putting the needle away.

  The icewater of the drug stung through his veins.

  "Enjoy yourself now."

  Margle went into the bathroom, returned with a glass of water, pushed Baker onto his face by using the toe of his boot, and poured the cold fluid over the lackey's face. Baker spluttered, opened his eyes, tried to close them again and recapture blackness when he felt the awful pain in his throat.

  "Come on, you great beast," Margle said, an amused expression on his face. "We've got things to do."

  Baker rose without protest, cast a glance at Timothy, then followed Margle to the door. The Brother unlocked the portal, let them out, and closed and barred it behind them.

  Ti was alone again, with only his dream . . .

  For a while. Then the Other was there.

  The drug delusions were still immensely pleasing. Indeed, the sensuality, the richness of color and texture seemed to grow with each dose that was administered to him, to gain depth and believability that sometimes seemed to surpass real experiences in a world of concrete objects. But a new element had intruded in the pattern that had become so familiar in such a short time. During both of the psychedelic experiences of the previous day, Ti's second day locked in the basement room of that house, the Other had appeared in the delusions, standing nearby, a ghost, a shadow, the only flimsiness in this vivid world. The Other looked exactly like Ti imagined himself in the dreams, handsome and with full body. He was like a mirror image of the Dream Timothy, a second Dream Timothy whose only purpose seemed to be to watch. There was nothing sinister about him, nothing to raise alarm. Indeed, his presence served only to calm Timothy, to make the delusions more pleasant.

  Both times, Dream Timothy had attempted to speak with the shadow image of himself. And both times the attempt had ended in failure. The ghost had faded, dissolved, evaporated on the warm breezes of that nether-world. Now, during his third appearance, he was closer than before, more solid than before, staring from the riverbank as Ti drifted down it with the naked maidens that always accompanied him on his raft (which had now become a full-sized cabin cruiser with both propeller screw drive and air-cushion speed equipment). Even as the cruiser progressed down the stream, the second Dream Timothy followed, floating along the earth, not walking.

  Dream Timothy stood on the deck of his ship, flanked by the nubile women of substantial insubstantiality, leaned on the railing, gripping it. He called to the image of himself that drifted by the shore, asked what the Other wanted.

  The image did not answer.

  He called again, repeated his question. As he finished speaking, the shadow man raised farther off the bank and sailed outward across the water like a spirit of the dead, his arms outstretched to the more solid Dream Timothy. The specter should have been frightening, but it was not. Somehow, Dream Timothy yearned for the embrace of the supernatural figure, of this shred of unreality in a world so painfully perfect in detail.

  The specter drew closer.

  Dream Timothy leaned farther over the rail.

  And the ghost struck him, passed into him . . .

  . . . And he was awake, back in the cellar room of the Brethren house, lying on the bed. Before him, the table lamp floated free of any table, a great, heavy metal thing. Slowly, cracks began to appear in the metal. The bulb shattered. The shade was flung into a thousand tiny pieces. And the bronze from which the thing was cast began to shred like paper, to peel away in shavings and pile at the foot of the bed. He watched it until it was almost totally
destroyed . . .

  . . . Then he felt the PBT nether-world encompass him again. He was sailing down a river with the naked maidens. The world was pleasant, warm, and filled with sensuality. There was absolutely no sign of the specter he had come to think of as the Other. It had passed into him—then through him. It had vanished as before. There had been but that one moment of commingling when their bodies had meshed in the same place at the same time. And then he had experienced the delusion of being awake and of shredding a piece of bronze with his psi power. But his psi power was far too limited for such a feat; it could not even have lifted such an object. He stopped thinking of that silliness and returned to the warmth of the girls who awaited him . . .

  . . . But when he woke again, hours later, the last effects of the PBT washed from his system, he saw the ribbons of shaved bronze lying where they had fallen earlier, and he knew that he had not been dreaming this thing after all ...

  CHAPTER 9

  That night, of course, was a sleepless one.

  He circled that small, cozy cellar chamber a thousand times, his mind so occupied that he little cared that the scenery never changed. His thoughts required so much of his attention that, for short moments, he was even oblivious to the ache of Baker's vicious beating, to the throbbing pain of the cuts on his face and the tender gash in his lower lip. He was preoccupied with the other, that spectral vision from his PBT delusions, and what the thing meant to him. He had reached the conclusion that the other was only a second part of his personality, perhaps a part that had never been given dominance in the real world but which the drug was able to unleash through its workings in his brain.

  And for that moment when Dream Timothy and the Other had merged, had become one individual, his psionic abilities had bloomed, flowered into something more than a parlor trick He longed for morning to arrive, for Jon Margle and the hulking Baker to appear with the next injection. He wanted it now! But not for the illusions, not for the dreams and the feeling of high that had led him into apathy these first three days. He desired it now to go searching for the Other again, to find the ghost image of Dream Timothy, to find some way to make that intermingling of flesh last, to make it permanent.