The Shapechanger Scenario

by Simon Hawke

  "You're kidding," I'd said.

  He had frowned slightly. "Why, what's wrong with it?" he had asked.

  "Nothing, if you want to whittle tent pegs or chop carrots. But as a serious weapon, it leaves something to be desired."

  "Breck's got knives," he had said.

  "Breck's got reflexes that are at least three times as fast as yours, to say nothing of his strength," I'd told him. "Do yourself a favor. Forget the pigsticker and take the gun."

  He had the semiauto in his hand now, but he had also tucked the Bowie down into his boot.

  "O'Toole!" Breck's voice in my mind snapped me out of it. "You hear it?"

  From somewhere up ahead of us came a roaring sound that echoed through the cavern.

  "Water," Higgins thought as he came up behind me. "It's an underground waterfall!"

  As we rounded the bend, the tunnel opened out into a large cavern. The torches we carried could not begin to illuminate it all. I could feel the spray from the waterfall on my face. Its roar was deafening.

  Breck fired his plasma pistol at the roof of the cavern. The charges slammed into several large stalactites, superheating them and causing them to ignite, the mineral deposits in them burning with a white-hot flame and lighting up the cavern all around us.

  The waterfall roared down from a fissure in the wall about sixty feet above us. It crashed down into a depression about forty feet below. Billowing clouds of misty spray came rising up from the churning water. The crumbled rocks around the waterfall's base were glistening, but not only from the spray.

  One of the Nomads started screaming, batting at himself wildly. A dozen or more translucent, silvery lumps of protoplasm clung to him, creatures that looked less like slugs than like fist-sized globules of mercury. A large rock outcropping next to which he'd stood was covered with them. It glistened with slime as they moved over it, some of them the size of grapefruits, others larger, more oblong, up to several feet in length. The Nomad scrambled back blindly from the rock outcropping, screaming and tearing the creatures off his body, and before anyone could stop him, he slipped over the edge and fell to his death onto the rocks below. As I stared down in horrified fascination, the rocks began to squirm and writhe. They rose up over the body of the fallen Nomad and covered it completely as they started to assimilate it.

  The other Nomads were jabbing with their spears at the silvery globules on the ground around them, hammering at the creatures with their axes and thrusting down at them with their torches. The torches were having more effect. Some of the smaller globules began to bubble and run, like plastic melting. The other ambimorphs escaped by turning into insects and rapidly scuttling away or shapechanging into various small animals and reptiles native to Purgatory-lizards, sandstriders, and other creatures I'd never even seen before. A number of them turned into leather flyers similar to birds. A bunch of them flew at my face and I cried out as I backed away, shielding my eyes. I felt stinging pain in my hands and on my arms and when I looked at them, they were bleeding in a dozen places where the flesh had been torn away.

  "O'Toole! Help me! I've dropped my gun!"

  Higgins was backed up against a wall, an expression of stark terror on his face as several of the creatures crawled toward him, shapechanging into voracious multilegged sandstriders as they came. He reached out to me desperately.

  "Throw me your gun, quick!" he shouted.

  Without thinking, I almost did it when a voice inside my mind cried, "No!" and a Bowie knife came whistling through the air past my ear and thudded into his chest, embedding itself almost completely to the hilt. He cried out and clutched at the huge blade, then sank down to his knees and fell forward onto his face. I turned, stunned, to see the real Higgins standing a short distance behind me, waving me on.

  "Think, O'Toole, don't talk!" he thought at me through the mindlink. "Remember, ambimorphs can't send!"

  He fired several stunners, clicked on an empty magazine, jacked it out, and slapped in a red one.

  "Higgins! That's a frag-"

  "I know, damn it, the stunners aren't even slowing the damn things down!"

  Breck came plunging past me, carrying one of the plasteel polymer sacks in his right hand. Something inside it was squirming.

  "Let's go!" his voice came through the mindlink, "I've bagged a couple of them! Everyone get out! Get out now!" He passed me, firing as he ran.

  I fired a plasma charge at a cloud of cluttering insects that came down at us from the ceiling of the cavern. It incinerated most of them and steamed into the waterfall. Breck was firing down at the rocks, where the creatures were breeding. The larger ones were dividing rapidly, stretching like glistening translucent taffy and breaking apart like globules of quicksilver. They bubbled as the plasma charges whumped into the rocks, frying them and igniting the mineral deposits.

  The entire cavern was in flames. Plasma commingled with the spray mist filled the underground chamber with fire and steam. There were loud popping sounds as rock cracked and shattered from the intense heat. Spray hitting the burning plasma filled the cavern with a hissing as if the place were filled with thousands of gigantic snakes.

  I felt something winding itself around my leg. The nightmare plucked from my subconscious coiled itself around me, its jaws gaping wide. I incinerated its head with a plasma blast, wincing as the wash of heat blistered my skin. My hides were smoking. I heard the sound of Higgins firing the frag rounds, the echoing blasts as they went off, and then the ominous rumble from the rock walls.

  A Nomad was suddenly in front of me, holding a spear. I leveled my pistol at him. "Who are you?" I thought at him, and he made the mistake of replying out loud, in English.

  "Don't shoot, I'm Garr!"

  "Wrong answer," I said, and fired point-blank at his chest.

  The creature screamed briefly as the plasma whumped into its torso, burning a huge hole straight through it. The body burst into flames and fell backward, a charred hulk of crackling, steaming flesh. And then I heard shrill screaming as Tyla and several of the male Nomads became engulfed by an army of tiny shapechangers in the form of sandstriders.

  The voracious crablike creatures swarmed over them, turning their bodies black with their wriggling hairy forms. The Nomads screamed in terror and agony. Tyla panicked, sending waves of searing pain and hysterical fear through the mindlink. Higgins screamed out her name and lunged toward her. Two Nomad males grabbed him and started to pull him away as he struggled, screaming her name, and then I felt her shrieking terror in my mind, her unspeakable agony as the sandstriders ate her alive. I leveled my plasma pistol at her and fired a blast on wide dispersion.

  For an incandescent second, I "felt" a wash of unbelievably intense, searing heat all over my body and then she was gone and Higgins was screaming as the Nomads carried him away. I kept firing ceaselessly, feeling the pistol growing hot in my hand as creatures of every size, shape, and description scuttled, crawled, flew, and slithered toward me as the cavern burned and clouds of steam obscured my vision and choked my lungs. Then there was a rumbling that was even louder than the roaring of the waterfall and the hissing of the steam and I turned and ran, the last one out, my legs pumping as I followed the bobbing torches ahead of me down the tunnel. The entire damn mountain was coming down, the rock groaning like some gigantic beast in its dying throes, and then it roared its last as tons of stone cascaded down behind me.

  It was happening again, just like the last time, when the wall of rock came down and crushed our skimmer, burying Stone. I ran blindly, ignoring the pain as I sideswiped a rock outcropping and scraped my side raw. I ran, my lungs bursting, stark terror driving me as the tunnel shook and I felt tremors in the ground beneath my feet. Behind me, there was a sound like thunder, like a bomb going off, and the ceiling of the tunnel started to cave in on me.

  I felt the rocks raining down, the shards of stone lacerating me ... and then Tali was there, inside my mind, urging me on, giving me a fresh burst of energy and speed and I saw dayligh
t up ahead. As I burst out of the tunnel, I felt powerful hands grab me underneath my arms and lift me as two Nomads, Garr and Zaal, picked me up and ran with me down the slope. Then we were falling, tumbling head over heels as the ground shook and the mountain collapsed in upon itself.

  I gulped in air as I lifted my head and saw Breck on his hands and knees, still holding onto the plasteel polymer sack. The creatures in the sack were squirming, trying to break free, but the material held. Breck slammed the sack savagely against the ground several times and they stopped squirming. Tali and Toli had both made it out. Toli had collapsed upon the ground. She looked unconscious. There was no sign of Lina. Of the males, only six were left and all of them were wounded, two of them badly. Breck was breathing hard and his face was ashen. I'd never seen him look that way before.

  "I felt it," he said, swallowing hard, his chest rising and falling as he breathed deeply. "Her fear, her terror, I actually felt it! So that's what it's like! I had no idea! I never knew anything could be so incredibly ..." His voice trailed off as he failed to find words to describe an emotion he had never before experienced and then he saw Higgins sitting on the ground, staring at him with a stricken expression. "My God, I'm sorry, Higgins," Breck said. "I'm truly sorry."

  I tried to lift myself up off the ground, but I had nothing left. Nothing whatsoever. Tendrils of smoke curled up from my blackened hides. My face, arms, hands, and legs were scored with scrapes and lacerations. I felt blood running down from a large gash in my forehead. My right side was badly bruised from a collision with a rock outcropping and it felt as if I might have fractured several ribs. The plasma pistol, still gripped tightly in my right hand, was so hot that the grips had melted and burned into my flesh.

  I felt Tali gently easing her way into my mind, shielding me, enveloping me, shutting me off from the agonies of my battered body. I felt as if I were drifting, cut loose from myself and floating in a warm and soothing darkness. I heard Breck saying something to me, but I could not make out the words. They seemed to echo in my mind. I could no longer see, I could no longer feel. The last thing I heard was the far-off sound of Higgins softly sobbing.

  TWELVE

  The plasteel polymer tape around my chest felt tight, which was the general idea. I wasn't supposed to move much, not with three fractured ribs. My right hand was tightly wrapped, as well, where the plasma pistol grips had melted and burned into my palm. My arms and legs were bandaged, my face felt swollen, and I ached all over.

  "How do you feel?" said the doctor.

  "Like a mountain fell on me," I said.

  "I've given you something for the pain," the doctor said, "but it won't knock all of it out and I wouldn't want it to. I want you to hurt a little, so you'll take it easy for a while."

  I was strapped down onto a gurney inside some sort of small room. I was still feeling slightly disoriented. I seemed to feel a sensation of motion. I looked around. "Where am I?"

  "In the cargo compartment of a desert sled," said the doctor. "Perhaps not the fastest way to travel, but it's the best thing I could come up with on such short notice. My name's Shulman. Dr. Jay Shulman. Your friend Breck is up front, driving. Your Nomad girl is sleeping up front in the passenger seats, along with Higgins. He's a bit banged up, but nowhere near as bad as you are. The Nomad girl's not hurt; however, she was totally worn out. She looked on the verge of collapse, but she wouldn't leave your side. I had to plead with her to take a rest."

  "How did you find us?" I said. "Who-"

  "I received a priority-red tachyon transmission from a man named Coles," said Shulman. "I've never received a priority-red transmission in my life and I didn't even know anyone who had, so you bet I sat up and took notice. I took even more notice when your Mr. Coles offered me the equivalent of a year's salary and an appointment to the staff of a corporate medical facility on Earth if I dropped everything I was doing and immediately took a medevac across the desert to some Nomad village in the high country."

  "Coles did that?"

  "Indeed, he did. You've got friends in high places, O'Toole. And it's a good thing, too. You're going to need them."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You've got the people out here in a pretty ugly mood. There's a warrant out for Breck's arrest on a charge of murder. He's been accused of killing a man named Strang and a young woman named Jane Carmody, who worked for Cody Jarrett. You and Higgins have been charged as accessories, along with that Nomad wife of his. What's more, Jarrett's disappeared and everyone knows he went out into the desert, after you. People think you did him in, as well."

  "What do you think?"

  "I think I sure would like to get off this goddamned rock and back to a well-paying appointment as a medical director back on Earth," he said. "That thought pretty much occupies my mind right now. Beyond that, I don't think anything."

  "You've told Breck all this?"

  Shulman nodded. "He didn't seem terribly concerned. He said he expected it. He assures me that your Mr. Coles will take care of the problem. Or should I say our Mr. Coles?" He smiled. "I'd just about given up on ever getting out of here. I'll tell you something, O'Toole, for what your friend Coles is offering, I'd help you get off planet even if you did do it."

  "So then you don't believe we did it?"

  "If you did, do me a favor and don't tell me. My conscience will rest a little easier if I continue to believe you're innocent."

  "Well, in that case, Doctor, your conscience can rest easy. I can swear to you on a stack of Bibles and my mother's grave that we didn't kill any people on Purgatory."

  "That's good enough for me," he said. He got up and went over to a rack of storage bins built into the bulkhead. "However, in case it's not good enough for the security boys . . ." He lifted the lid and reached inside. He pulled out an assault rifle.

  "I've got four more of these in here," he said. "Never a good idea to go out into the bush unarmed, you know. Lots of dangerous creatures out here." He put the rifle back inside the bin, then reached in again and took out a couple of objects that looked like very large bright-red eggs. "And I figured I'd bring along a few of these as well," he added.

  My eyes widened. "Where the hell did you get those?" They were plasma incendiary grenades. "Those are supposed to be military issue only!"

  Shulman shrugged. "Supply-side economics," he said.

  "What?"

  "I created a demand, and there arose an outlet of supply."

  "What the hell kind of doctor are you?" I asked him.

  Shulman raised his eyebrows. "A surgeon, of course."

  Higgins came into the back. "How's he doing?" he said.

  "Ask him yourself," said Shulman. "He'll be okay if he takes it easy for a while. I'll keep him strapped in till we get to the spaceport. With any luck, we'll be off planet before anyone even knows you're back."

  Higgins looked down at me. "You okay?" he said.

  I nodded. "I'll live. Listen, Grover, about Tyla . . ."

  He shook his head and held up a hand to stop me. "It's all right," he said, his face expressionless. "You did what you had to do. I understand. If our roles were reversed, I'd have done the same. She was dead, anyway. You just saved her a lot of pain." He closed his eyes briefly, squeezing them shut, and clenched his teeth. A moment later, he had himself in hand again. He looked at me and nodded. "It's all right," he said again. "I guess there's nothing to hold me here now. I'm going back with you."

  "How's Tali?"

  "Exhausted," he said. He looked pretty bad, himself. "She kept you under until Doc Shulman was able to get out to us. That, plus the mindlink, has taken it all out of her."

  "I owe her a great deal," I said. "She saved my life. And I'm making it up to her by taking her away from her home world, away from her people and everything she knows."

  "Don't lay that on yourself," said Higgins. "You're not taking her anywhere. She's going because it will help her people. And also because she wants to. You couldn't do anything with her against her wil
l. She's glimpsed bits and pieces of human society through telepathic communion with you and she wants to learn more about it, to experience it for herself. Don't worry about Tali. She knows exactly what she's doing."

  "I don't know, maybe you're right. But I can't help feeling as if I'm taking a young girl away from her home and family, like I'm robbing the cradle or something."

  "True, she is young," Higgins said. "For a Nomad."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means she's not quite as young as you might think. Their lifespan is considerably longer than ours," said Higgins. "If anyone's doing any cradle robbing around here, it's her."

  "How old is she?" I said.

  "Difficult to tell," said Higgins. "Nomads aren't too concerned with things like counting birthdays. She's probably got at least twenty or thirty years on you, maybe more. By Nomad standards, O'Toole, you're just a child."

  "We're approaching the terminal," Breck's voice came over the speaker. "And it looks as if we've been expected. They've got the shuttle hangars blocked off."

  Shulman started breaking out the arms and slapping in the magazines, checking them very professionally.

  "Are you sure this guy's a doctor?" I asked Higgins.

  "I served with eighteen different M.A.S.H. units in thirteen corporate mercenary wars," said Shulman, tossing Higgins an assault rifle. "I've seen about every kind of wound and injury there is. If you're busted up so bad that I can't patch you up, believe me, no one can."

  "Doc Shulman's about the best we've got out here," said Higgins. "His bedside manner leaves something to be desired, though."

  His wasn't the sort of background that would appeal to most medical institutions, I thought, but it would impress a man like Coles, who dealt in the harsher realities of life. The sled settled to the ground with a diminishing whine of engines. Shulman came over to my gurney and released the catches on the straps.

  "Sit up slowly now," he said, helping me up with one hand and holding an assault rifle in the other. "Feeling any pain?"