Shouting, gesticulating men and women shoved jars of wine at him, thrust warm, fragrant pieces of crispy brown meat under his nose. He was disgusted, then tempted, then further disgusted, this time with himself, with his gut, which was greedily demanding that he take part in the ghastly feast.
They’re your people, Fraden kept telling himself, you’re their god-damned hero! But it took iron nerves to keep from shoving them aside, howling his loathing and disgust, and the snipgun seemed to grow warm and alive in his hands.
But they were his people, they were the citizens of his very own Free Republic of Sangre. They were the only people he had. He couldn’t show what he felt. He couldn’t even look unhappy.
He forced himself to smile genially, shake obscenely greased hands, mutter inane pleasantries while desperately holding back his gorge and fury.
He brushed aside the meat and wine, mumbled, “Just ate in the last two villages… I’m stuffed t’the gills… Nice haul y’got here, keep at it! Take what y’want! Y’got the right idea here…”
God, what a nightmare!
It wasn’t long before they began to drift away from him, back to the business at hand. Soon he was alone, watching the feasting and the drinking, mercifully ignored.
Sangrans lay sprawled on the ground by the dozens, in drunken stupors, wolfing down great chunks of seared human flesh or nibbling torpidly on half-bare bones. Laughter, gut-rumblings… the obscene sound of fat, human fat, dripping and sizzling on the fires. The smell of dirty bodies, spilt blood, sour wine, roasting meat all combined into a sickening ripe stench that reeked of decadence, obscenity, guilt, horror…
Fraden stood and numbly watched. Dreadful, nauseating, loathsome though it all was, there was nothing here that he could blame on Willem. It was all according to plan, all according to his plan. The phrase stuck in his mind, mocked him over and over, again… all according to plan… all according to plan…
Then something happened that emphatically was not according to plan.
A great shout went up from the far end of the clearing. Like small boys to a fire, the Sangrans ran to the far row of huts, laughing, shouting, waving their arms. In moments, they were a tight clot of squirming bodies, laughing, cursing and… and apparently kicking at someone or something, in their midst.
Hesitantly, Fraden went, closer to the stomping, mad-eyed mob. They parted for a moment and Fraden saw…
A thing that had once been a man, was still a man, what was left of him. Like some monstrous white worm, a naked human figure wriggled on its belly along the ground, futilely trying to escape the kicks and blows of the Sangrans. All his limbs were limp and grotesquely askew—broken in scores of places. His mouth was a bleeding red pulp: his teeth had all been yanked out. And as Fraden saw the face of the tormented man, the lean, hard face, the mad feral eyes, the receding brown hair, he knew why—the horribly mutilated creature was a Killer, his limbs smashed, his razor-sharp teeth pulled to make him harmless to the jeering, tormenting, stomping throng.
Like harrying dogs, the Sangrans drove the Killer toward the fires, kicking him, prodding him with rude spears and scythes till his body ran red with blood. Inching along on his belly, writhing like a decapitated snake, the Killer met his agony in the only way he knew how, the way that had been impressed on his genes before his birth: lashing out with his toothless, bleeding gums, snarling the battle chant, made ludicrous, pathetic by the circumstances—“KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL!”
The Sangrans hooted and laughed. Then someone grabbed the helpless Killer, then another and another, and they dragged him to an empty fire, tied him to a spit and hoisted him out over the flames as he screamed and howled, more in hate than in fear.
Fraden averted his eyes as the flames began to lick the body of the Killer, as the “KILL! KILL! KILL!” became a hideous shriek of pain.
Savagely, Fraden lashed out, grabbed the first Sangran that came to hand—an old, emaciated woman, her eyes mad with blood lust, her thin lips wet with drool. He held her firm by the arm, thrust the muzzle of the snipgun into her startled face.
“That Killer!” he roared inchoately. “Who told you…? Who let you…? Where…? How…? WHERE DID YOU GET THAT KILLER FROM?”
“Y’People’s Army!” the woman shrilled in fear. “Was just here—y’Field Marshal gave y’Killer t’us! Y’friend, y’off-worlder!”
Fraden’s grip loosened and she pulled away with a savage jerk.
Fraden felt fury pound through his arteries. Fury, disgust, rage, hate, all awash on an ocean of adrenalin as he stormed toward the lifeboat Goddamn Willem, goddamn him! I’ll—
A terrible shriek, worse than the rest, caused him involuntarily to turn his head back toward the fire.
A lean, redheaded man was holding a torch to the Killer’s face. Hair, eyebrows, lashes, flared into flames.
But that was not what Fraden noticed, what made him ball-his hands into fists so tightly that his nails drew blood from his own flesh. It was the tormenter with the torch that Fraden saw, not his victim.
For the redheaded man, his eyes blaring, his mouth an ugly smear, was Vanderling’s pet herogyn-head, Colonel Lamar Gomez.
“Jeez, Bart, what the hell is all this about?” Willem Vanderling said as Olnay ushered him into Fraden’s hut, “There I was in the middle of nowhere and one of your si—er, agents pops up and says you want to see me pronto. Man, to have found me at ail, you must’ve had dozens of—”
Fraden motioned to Olnay, for the moment totally ignoring Vanderling, who stood in front of the table behind which he sat. “That will be all, Colonel Olnay. See that Marshal Vanderling and I are not disturbed. For any reason. And I mean any reason, get that?”
Olnay nodded, seemed to feel the tension in the room to which Vanderling had so far been oblivious, withdrew uneasily.
“Okay, so now we’re alone,” Vanderling said breezily. “So what’s the scoop?”
“Siddown!” Fraden roared, a sound like a shell impact. He slammed Vanderling into the chair in front of the table with his eyes, stood up as Vanderling sat down.
Now Vanderling’s face went tense, questioning. The barked order, the fury on Fraden’s face, the sudden reversal of positions, and all at once it was an interrogation session instead of a strategy meeting.
Fraden began to pace the small room, his eyes always on Vanderling who followed him with his own as a cobra watches a circling mongoose. Fraden searched for words, for the trenchant, biting thing to say, and came up dry.
Finally, as if in the middle of a long tirade: “Brutality, I can understand! Stupidity, I can understand too! Perversion, sadism, cruelty, cannibalism, murder, torture—I’ve been on Sangre too long to be very surprised at any of ’em. But… but… but Christ, man, how in hell could you manage to tie all of ’em up into one neat bundle? Are you into your own stash of herogyn? Have you forgot what we’re supposed to be here for? WHAT THE FUCK IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?”
“Hey…” Vanderling crooned softly. “What you got up your ass, Bart?”
“Don’t Bart me, Willem! I know all about it, the game’s up, finished, ended, kaput. I’ve been checking around. Torturing Killers for kicks, turning ’em over to the Animals, letting them torture ’em for kicks… Eating Killers, for chrissakes! I won’t even bother to ask what else you and your wolf packs’ve been doing behind my back. I won’t even bother to ask why you’ve gained weight, I won’t ask what you’ve been dining on lately. I know, Willem, I know! All I’ll ask is why, why, goddammit, why Willem, why?”
Vanderling’s expression changed from bland incomprehension to a sneer of almost innocent cynicism. “So that’s what’s stuck in your craw,” he said. “Just because you’re eating bunny-food, that means I have to? What the hell did you expect? You think human flesh tastes so bad? A little on the salty side, maybe, but you get used to that a lot easier than you get used to no meat at all.”
“You imbecile! You cretin!” Fraden roared. “For all I care, you can eat shit! But what abo
ut torture? What about sadism? What about running amok? What about encouraging the villagers to act like… like… like the goddamned Brothers?”
“What’s with you, Bart?” asked Vanderling, with genuine incomprehension. “This was all your idea, remember? Stir ’em up, get ’em to raid, make ’em go ape, tie down the Killers. Well it’s working, isn’t it? The whole mother-jumping planet is going ape. The Killers are tied down, and they’ll stay tied down. Isn’t that what you wanted in the first place? I was just carrying out your own orders.”
“Thank you, Adolf Eichmann!” Fraden barked. “Just carrying out orders, eh? I ordered you to eat the Meatanimals? I ordered you to torture Killers? I ordered you to encourage cannibalism and torture among the Animals? And I suppose I ordered you to put me on, too? ‘They won’t do it themselves.’ ‘Have to keep my hand in or it loses momentum!’ Bullshit! Sophia was right about you, she’s been right all along. Don’t try to shuck me any more, Willem; you did it for kicks. You dig torturing Killers, you dig eating human flesh, and not just because you’re hungry. You dig killing, more than you dig winning, more than you dig ruling this crummy mudball. Did it ever dawn on you that someday we’re gonna have to rule this planet? Did you ever stop to consider that when the war is over, we’ll have to deal with the Animals, we’ll have to clean up the messes we’ve made, we’ll have to restore respect for order because we’ll be the boys on top of the heap? Give the Sangrans a year or so of torturing and cannibalism and god-knows-what, and putting down the terrorism will make the Revolution look like a church social. You’re not only a bloodthirsty sadist, you’re a cretinous, blind, kill-crazy butcher!”
“Well, well, well,” Vanderling said coldly, calmly, smoothly. “The gospel according to Saint Fraden. And of course, your hands are lily-white, aren’t they? Butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, would it? It was someone else, wasn’t it, who peddled Omnidrene to the Brotherhood, who had the Brains killed so the Animals would starve, who gave Moro the idea of torturing the whole planet out of its head and then bleeding the Animals dry? Not Bart Fraden. Bart Fraden’s a regular pussycat, isn’t he?”
Fraden flushed red-hot. What Willem was saying was true, but the way he said it made it a lie. He made it sound like it was all for kicks, like none of it had a purpose, like… like… like…
Vanderling laughed harshly. “Who do you think you’re conning?” he said. He put his right forefinger to his ear, his left to a tooth.
Fraden went cold.
“Yeah,” said Vanderling, “you got a very short memory. ‘Bring forth the human animal.’ THUNK!” He brought his right hand down in a chopping motion. “How’s it feel to kill… what, a kid, a slave, maybe… maybe a baby?” He grinned, nodded his head, as Fraden’s face contorted in anguish at the last word. “So that was it, a baby… Boy! Let’s just remember where it’s at, Bart. Let’s forget the name-calling, eh? Two can play that game. Okay, Big Shot, you’re still the boss; you know more about the revolution racket than I do, and we’ll play things your way. So no more raiding parties and I start concentrating on wiping out the Killers. Cool. But don’t get any funny ideas—just remember that every last one of the herogyn-heads is loyal to me, not you.”
“Don’t threaten me!” Fraden shot back, grateful for a threat that could be dealt with with a counter-threat, grateful for something to grasp at, to deal with, to take his mind off… off…
“You’re invisible, man,” he said. “I’m the hero, remember? You’ve got a couple hundred ’heads, but I’ve got the whole planet. The Sangrans hardly know you from Adam. I need you, whether I like it or not, and there’ll be no double-crosses on my part. But don’t get too big for your britches. One word from me, one word to Olnay and into the rumor mill and you’re a dead man. I can turn the whole planet into fifteen million executioners. What do you do then, go over to Moro? What kind of a reception do you think you’d get there? You’re bound to me, Willem. I’m number one and you’re number two, and don’t you ever forget it. That’s where it’s at.”
Vanderling stared coldly at Fraden, and Fraden could all but hear the wheels turning. “We understand each other,” Vanderling said evenly. “We understand each other real well.”
Fraden studied Vanderling, felt the gaping emptiness, the wall of hate, the void of envy yawning between them. He felt very much alone. He realized now, only now, by the cold wind of its passing, that this man, whatever he was, had been his friend, the only friend he had in scores of light years. And now… now he would have to have eyes in the back of his head always.
Fraden sighed, slumped down into the chair opposite Vanderling. “I think we do, Willem,” he said, suddenly abysmally weary. “We had better get down to business. We’ve got a war to win, remember?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
As he looked out across the bustling guerrilla camp, at three of the now standardized hundred-man companies resupplying themselves with ammunition and with men from the bottomless stream of replacements that was pouring into the People’s Army at a rate as prodigious as the soaring casualty rate, at the agents coming and going at Olnay’s hut, at the new barracks shacks, the row of armory huts, the whole busily humming complex of men, buildings and supplies, Bart Fraden found wry amusement in the knowledge that all this was running on a kind of carefully calculated balance of desperation.
The desperation lay hidden below the surface, dormant but ready to be tapped when the moment ripened. The Killers, though they probably didn’t realize it, though even Moro no doubt did not fully understand the import of his own orders, had in effect given up. Although Fraden was probably the only man on Sangre yet capable of deciphering the handwriting on the wall, the Brotherhood had lost the war. The People’s Army had a good fifteen thousand men, could be pumped up to twenty thousand at short notice. The guerrilla casualty rate was admittedly hideous, but the Sangran countryside was now a massive reservoir of reserves, a reservoir in part created, ironically, by the Killers themselves.
For four months, the Killers had been bled dry by planetwide chaos, looting, banditry, pillaging; by ruinous ambushes of punitive expeditions against the bandits by regular guerrilla forces, by the impossibility of keeping the road network connecting Sade with the estates open; by having to fight two wars at once, one against the People’s Army and another against the population at large. It was hard to tell just how many Killers were left, what with their being tied down in little groups all over the planet, but the count of captured weapons and extrapolation from guerrilla casualty figures made it pretty clear that the Killers had lost something like ten thousand men in the past four months. Since it took nearly twenty years from his conception to produce a battle-ready Killer, the replacement rate was, for all practical purposes, negligible, and the twenty thousand or so Killers that Moro had left would soon become outnumbered by the People’s Army if the attrition rate continued at the present level. The Killers would be worn down to nothing in another year or so.
But Moro had not proved quite that stupid; he had had the wit to pull the Killers off the offensive. Now the Killers assigned to each district were holed up in one estate per district, several hundred men strong and heavily dug in. They had rounded up all remaining Meatanimals, confined them in great corrals surrounding the local fortified estates, where it would be suicidal for the bandits to attempt to seize them. The villagers were in desperate straits—the bandits had no more easy marks to live off, what Bugs that were left were useless, the peasants had no experience in growing their own food.
It was a deadly waiting game. The Killers, sitting tight in their defensive positions, had large but limited reserves of food, and the costs of wiping out such positions would be enormous. The peasantry was on the brink of starvation. Clearly, Moro’s strategy was to wait it out until the desperate Animals turned on the Free Republic. If the peasants tried to grow crops, the Killers could sally forth in force and burn them. It was a game of desperate cats against equally desperate mice…
But desperation wa
s a tool that Bart Fraden knew how to use. It was all a matter of timing…
Now what’s that?
Olnay and two armed men were prodding someone toward him, a strangely slight, short figure in a Killer uniform. As they neared him, Fraden saw that the tightly trussed “Killer” was no more than a boy, fifteen years old at the outside.
“Got us a Killer-cub,” Olnay said, shoving the boy before Fraden. Fraden studied the boy. He had the lean build of an adult Killer and his lank brown hair seemed to already be receding into the characteristic Killer hairline. His teeth were sharp needles. His fierce, burning eyes seemed strangely out of place in bis smooth, beardless face.
“Where did you find him?” Fraden asked.
“Two truckloads of ’em ’bout seventy miles from here,” Olnay said. “Bunch of our men wiped ’em out, but took this one prisoner. Wonder what y’Killer cubs are doing this far from Sade…?”
“Maybe our friend here can tell us,” Fraden said. It was more confirmation than information that he needed, though. This looked like what he had been waiting for. He looked at the boy kindly. “You co-operate, and you’ll be all right, son,” he said. “We don’t kill boys. Now suppose you tell us why you were sent out here?”
The boy stared back phlegmatically, fearlessly, “A Killer does not provide information to the enemy,” he said.
“Well, you had better make an exception if you want to see tomorrow,” Fraden said quietly.
“A Killer does not fear death. To die at the hands of the enemy is to die in combat. To die in combat is to die gloriously.”
Fraden tried a different tack. “That’s all very well for a real Killer,” he sneered. “But you’re just a snotty little kid! Since when does a puny little punk like you rate combat duty?”
The Men in the Jungle Page 19
