by Mike Resnick
Lane pulled out Ondine's note and handed it to the Dorne, who glanced at it briefly and let it drop to the ground, where a hot breeze blew it away.
“What is your interest in the straigor?"
“What is a straigor?" asked Lane. “Is that your term for the Dreamwish Beast?”
“No,” said Vostuvian. “Dreamwish Beast is your term for the straigor. However, as a courtesy to you, I shall use your name for it. You still have not answered my question.”
“I'm a hunter,” said Lane. “I want to learn more about this creature.”
“You are too late,” said Vostuvian. “The last Dreamwish Beast was killed by my race many eons ago.”
“Not so,” said Lane. “I saw one not six Standard months ago.”
“Impossible,” said Vostuvian. “Describe it.”
Lane did so in minute detail. When he finished he watched Vostuvian for some change in expression, however slight. There was none.
“It was a Dreamwish Beast,” said the Dorne. He sat down on the dirt, and Lane did likewise. “The question now presents itself: Which of the two—you, by action, or the Dreamwish Beast, by inaction—do I find it less repugnant to help?” He closed his eyes and sat motionless, not even breathing, for the better part of three minutes. Finally he turned to Lane.
“What do you wish to know?”
“How can I kill a Dreamwish Beast without dying myself?”
“The same problem once confronted my race,” said Vostuvian. “Originally we were completely unable to slay the Dreamwish Beasts by any means whatever. Then, as we studied them more thoroughly, we devised a weapon that killed them, but we were unable to survive it ourselves. Finally, we perfected the weapon to the point where it destroyed them so swiftly that they were unable to transmit their pain back to us.”
“How did this weapon work?” asked Lane.
“When perfected,” said the Dorne, “it was the first—and possibly the only—practical application of the entropy principle.”
“Would you clarify that?”
“The Dreamwish Beast is a life form composed of energy. Our weapon diluted that energy, draining it away by dissipating it. Ultimately, by the siphoning off of their energy, the creatures were degraded to the lowest energy level of the universe.”
“Just like that?” said Lane with a smile.
“Just like that,” said Vostuvian, still expressionless.
“I don't suppose you have any of those entropy weapons lying around?”
Vostuvian pointed toward the pathetic little row of huts. “What do you think?”
“Do any Dornes still know the principles that went into the weapon?” asked Lane.
“Yes,” said Vostuvian.
“You?”
“Yes,” said Vostuvian.
“Why haven't you built one?”
“To what purpose?” said Vostuvian. “In another century my race will be extinct whether I build one or not.”
Lane scratched his head and tried to understand the mentality of a race that had the key to the weapon that had just been described to him, a weapon that might conceivably drive all the many alien invaders off the face of Belore forever, and instead of building it chose to live out its collective life in filth and squalor. Suddenly Vostuvian seemed a little more alien to him.
“If I supply the materials, could you build such a weapon for me?”
“Yes,” said Vostuvian.
“What will you need?” asked Lane.
Vostuvian rattled off a list of the necessary components.
“Too expensive,” said Lane. “And it would take too long to round up all the parts. Maybe I'd better stick to the vibrator.”
“What is a vibrator?” asked Vostuvian.
Lane explained the principles of the weapon to him. “Even in space it has an effective range of almost twenty thousand miles, possibly a little more, and it hits with the impact of an enormous sledgehammer.”
“You cannot kill the Dreamwish Beast with your vibrator,” said Vostuvian tonelessly.
“I've killed little pieces of it already,” said Lane.
“You have not,” said Vostuvian.
“Yes I have,” said Lane. “I felt it.”
“What makes you think that you and the Dreamwish Beast have the same sensory perceptions?” said the Dorne.
“What are you talking about?” said Lane, suddenly apprehensive.
“What feels hot to you may feel cold, or wet, or like nothing at all, to a creature as different in nature as the Dreamwish Beast. Your hunger may be its drowsiness, your agony its mild exuberance.”
“An interesting hypothesis, nothing more,” said Lane. “I know what I felt.”
“It is not a hypothesis,” said Vostuvian. “It is fact. You do not know even yet what you felt.” He paused for a moment, then continued. “The Dreamwish Beasts are no more dense than the dust cloud that gives them sustenance. They rarely approach any planetary bodies. They can do us no physical harm. Why do you think my race decided to wage a war of extermination against them?”
“I have no idea,” said Lane.
“Because, killer of animals, physical harm is the least of the things a sentient being can suffer, we react far more to mental and emotional stimuli. The Dornes’ initial weapons were not unlike your vibrator, and the creatures’ reactions were similar, if not identical, to the reaction of the beast you encountered. We, too, thought we were experiencing the preliminary death throes of the creatures.”
Vostuvian closed his eyes again, remaining rigid and motionless except for the twitching of one of his toes. Then, as if nothing had happened, he relaxed, opened his eyes, and continued speaking.
“We became addicted to what we considered to be a premonition of death. It shocked our systems, but nonetheless produced a craving for more such encounters. Our entire culture began to evolve and change into something that worshiped death and disdained life, for nothing in our racial experience had affected us so deeply as the inkling of death the beasts emitted. Then, many millennia later, we invented the first crude weapons based on the entropy principle. These really did kill the creatures, and ourselves as well. There was no similarity between what we had felt before and what we felt now. It was men that we realized our original weapons hadn't harmed the creatures at all.”
“What had they done?” said Lane, an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“Pleased them,” said Vostuvian. “Pleased them beyond all measure; and, subsequently, pleased us beyond all measure as well. In retrospect, we should have realized that. There is no joy or pleasure in death, which is the termination of everything; but we had never experienced another race's emotions, and we had misread ecstasy for anguish, sensuality for morbidity. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”
“Yes,” said Lane. And in that instant, he knew the answer to Ondine Gillian's question about why he had found the Dreamwish Beast three times. It had found him.
He stared at the ground for a long time, trying to collect his thoughts and analyze his emotions. To admit that he had gotten some perverse kind of thrill from death had been difficult enough, even though he made his living from killing things. But this was something else again, something he wasn't ready to come to grips with.
And suddenly he was overwhelmed with anger and outrage. As his fury flowed over him, washing away his other emotions before he could sort them out, he felt a sudden kinship with Vostuvian. Now he knew why the Dreamwish Beasts had become the Dornes’ blood enemy, and he knew that the one remaining creature had just become his mortal enemy as well.
“It will take about two years,” he said aloud.
“You will send me the material for the entropy weapon,” said Vostuvian. It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes. What will you charge me to construct it?”
“Nothing. The death of the Dreamwish Beast will be payment enough. I will come with you.”
“Not a chance,” said Lane.
“How will you
find it?” said Vostuvian.
“I won't have to,” said Lane, suppressing a shudder. “It will find me.”
“Not if you have the weapon,” said the Dorne. “It knows.”
Lane stared long and hard at Vostuvian. “Why should I believe you?” he said at last.
“If you can think of a single reason why I should lie to you, then you should not believe me,” said Vostuvian.
“You may want to kill it yourself,” said Lane.
“If so, why would I have told you about the entropy weapon?” countered the Dorne.
“As an inducement to get me to take you along,” said Lane.
“You are not thinking clearly,” said Vostuvian.
“Maybe not,” said Lane. “But you're not coming along, and that's final.”
“You will not be able to kill the Dreamwish Beast without me.”
“I'll find it, all right,” said Lane grimly.
“I didn't say that you would not find it,” said Vostuvian. “I said that you would not be able to kill it.”
“Just have that weapon ready when I need it,” said Lane. He got to his feet, dusted himself off, and began walking away.
“Two years, three years, a dozen,” Vostuvian whispered after Lane's retreating figure. “Sooner or later you will need me, and I shall be here, waiting.”
His words seemed to hang suspended in time and space as Lane walked to the Deathmaker.
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CHAPTER 12
The Deathmaker raced silently through the void, two years out of port.
Three times in the past twenty Standard months it had set down: once to purchase most of the components for the entropy weapon, once to ship those components to Belore, and once to close out a number of bank accounts while fueling up. Now the ship was headed back to Northpoint, where the remainder of Lane's money was tied up.
It had been a long trip. Twice Lane thought he had come across the Dreamwish Beast, but both times he was mistaken. Even the Mufti was bored, so much so that Lane had already given it a pair of hundred-day Deepsleeps. He wished that there were a less tedious way of getting his hands on his remaining funds, but the economic capitals of the Democracy didn't have much financial truck with the frontier worlds, especially those that refused to deal in credits, and mere was nothing to do but pick up the money in person. So he spent hours each day going through his rigorous anti-boredom routines and rituals, and tried to ignore the nightmares that had long since spilled over into his waking hours.
Elsewhere, important things were happening. The Democracy was starting to crumble around the edges. The credit had to be backed with uranium, then platinum, and finally on faith alone; and it was becoming obvious that there was not an abundance of faith to be found. A strike of the Federated Miners had brought the human-controlled section of the galaxy almost to a standstill for more than a month before the beleaguered government yielded to their demands. A cure had finally been discovered for eplasia, a blood disease that had cropped up three centuries back and become quite widespread. Two hundred seventy-eight more life forms, including Sillyworms, had become extinct, and one hundred sixteen new ones had been discovered on the frontier.
Of all this Lane was ignorant, nor would he have cared about it had he known. Lane had no more interest in governments than they had in him. None of his money was tied up in credits. Diseases became important to him only after he contracted them. The miners didn't affect him directly. As for the extinct animals—well, as long as new species kept replacing the old ones, he wouldn't be hurting for work.
In fact, he wasn't hurting for work right now. The Vainmill Syndicate had twice gone to the vast expense of contacting him in space and requesting certain species for their museums. He had replied affirmatively to both requests, but as yet hadn't gone to work on either of them.
His sole concern now, as it had been for more than two years, was the destruction of the Dreamwish Beast. First he had to get the weapon assembled—he had already dubbed it the diluter—and then he had to use it on his intended victim. Then he would pick up the pieces of his career, scrap the weapon for what money he could get back out of it, and once again submerge his emotions as he went about his task of sophisticated bloodletting.
Lane glanced at his control panel for perhaps the millionth time. Twenty-seven more days to Northpoint. It was time to put in to port, to go on a binge, sleep on a real bed instead of a hammock, eat a real meal and wash it down with a liter or two of Tchaka's best beer. A little rest, a little fresh air, maybe a day or two with a woman, and he'd be ready to prepare for the final phase of the hunt.
And then he saw it.
He didn't know where it came from, or what it was doing this far from the dust cloud, if it was tracking him or taunting him. But it was there, seventy thousand miles off his starboard bow, almost sixty degrees of arc below the ship.
He cursed under his breath and decided to keep the Deathmaker on its course. The creature closed to within fifty thousand miles.
He checked his sensing devices to make sure that his main control panel hadn't picked up a ship. It was indeed the creature. He debated for a moment, then increased the Deathmaker's speed to maximum. The creature kept pace with him.
They remained thus for six hours. Then slowly, inexorably, the creature began narrowing the gap between them, and Lane began evasive maneuvering. It didn't work.
When the creature got within twenty thousand miles, he began to feel the tension spread throughout him, and was unable to tell whether it was his own emotion or the creature's. But whichever of them it originated with, it was getting stronger by the second, and was tinged with a little thrill of anticipation.
He shook his head vigorously and began singing at the top of his lungs, trying to drown out the sensation, and failing.
Now the creature was within fifteen thousand miles, now twelve, and he knew that he would never reach Northpoint without coming to grips with it. His entire body was sweating and trembling, and he forgot first the words and then the melody to his song.
Though he knew it would do no good, he trained the laser cannon on the creature and fired it. Then, with the same sense of futility, he fired the molecular imploder.
“Go away!” he screamed at the main viewscreen, where the creature had just become visible. “I'm not ready for you yet!”
But the creature did not go away. It closed to six thousand miles, throbbing and pulsating. Lane slowed the Deathmaker to a crawl, hoping that the creature would overshoot it so much that he might buy a little maneuvering time, but the creature did no such thing. It stopped almost as swiftly as the ship, and now was less than five hundred miles away.
Lane's feelings were no different than on his prior meetings with it, but now that he could interpret them he felt horribly unclean. He fired the laser cannon again, and again there was no reaction.
And then, with a hoarse sound that was halfway between a scream and a sob, he pressed the vibrator's firing mechanism.
The emotional jolt was as powerful as before, but this time it took him only a minute or two to regain his faculties. He checked his panel and saw that the creature was retreating rapidly, as it had done before.
He collapsed back into his chair, only then realizing that he had been standing for several minutes, and began shaking like a leaf. This time, he knew, the shaking was his own.
The creature was racing away, and would be beyond the range of his instrument panel in another two or three minutes. His mind and his emotions were his own again, and it would only take a few seconds to put the Deathmaker back on its course for Northpoint. The creature would keep until he was properly armed. The important thing now was to get to Northpoint and get his hands on the money he needed to complete the construction of the diluter.
But as he reached toward his navigational control panel, he knew that he wasn't going to Northpoint at all.
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br /> CHAPTER 13
Lane sat, silent and unmoving, in his office. His eyes were opened, but seemed to be focused on some very distant point that only he could discern. The Mufti clung to the ceiling, chattering quietly to itself. In the hangar that adjoined the office three mechanics were working on the Deathmaker.
There was a knock at the door. Lane didn't move, and the knock became more insistent. Finally the door opened to reveal Tchaka in all his metallic, multicolored glory.
“Nicobar!” he cried in a loud, booming voice.
Lane glanced at him but said nothing.
“It's been more than five years,” said Tchaka. “When did you get in?”
“Last night,” said Lane.
“And you didn't come to Tchaka's?”
“I wasn't thirsty.”
“Then come over now,” said Tchaka. “The first drink is always on the house.”
“I don't drink anymore,” said Lane.
“You must have lost your mind in space.” Tchaka laughed. “It's high time you got your feet on the ground again.”
He walked closer and peered at Lane through the semi-darkness. The hunter's hair, once a rich, thick, wavy brown, was now thin and white; his eyes were sunken and black-rimmed, his body thin and undernourished, his fingers long and clawlike, his cheeks bony and protruding.
“What the hell has happened to you, Nicobar?” said Tchaka. “If you walked into the bar I wouldn't recognize you.”
“Five years is a long time,” said Lane. “People change.”
“Not like this,” said Tchaka. “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why did you liquidate all your assets?” said Tchaka. “Nothing like that happens in Hellhaven without Tchaka knowing about it. As soon as I heard it I knew you had to be back in town, and when I couldn't find you at my place I came over here. Why do you need all that money, Nicobar?”
“None of your business,” said Lane.
“I can't agree with you, Nicobar.” Tchaka smiled. “Anything that costs me a good customer is my business, and if you spend all this money somewhere else you can't spend it at Tchaka's.”
