by Mike Resnick
His gaze rose to her face. It, too, was flawless, though the eyes were perhaps set a little too deeply into her head—and then, as he got within a few feet of her, he knew why. Her face, like her body, was synthetic, composed of perfectly textured fibers, molded by a medical sculptor who had captured the true essence of beauty and sensuality in a single subject. Only the eyes—old and hard and aloof—belonged to Ilse Vescott, and even the magician who had given her the body and face of a modern Venus had been unable to totally hide or change them.
Lane forced himself to stop staring, then gestured to the foyer. “How much did that thing cost you?”
“The security system?” she asked, and the warm, red, artificial lips broke into a smile. “A little over two hundred thousand credits. Why?”
“For that much money, someone should have put the word ‘killer’ into its vocabulary banks. I've got a pet that cost me the equivalent of twenty credits who can give you better protection.”
“I admire your audacity, Mr. Lane,” she said, rising and extending her hand to him. It felt firm, vibrant—and cold. “Who is it that you've come to kill?”
“No one,” said Lane. “I kill animals, not people.”
“How quaint,” she said. She touched a jewel on one of her bracelets and a bar rose from the floor, its sides covered with the same white pelts that made up the carpet. “May I offer you a drink before you relate your adventures of derring-do?”
Lane nodded, and she opened a tall thin bottle, pouring its contents into two crystal glasses. Lane took a sip, decided that he liked it, and downed it with a single swallow. Ilse Vescott sipped hers slowly.
“Very good,” said Lane.
“Should I know who you are, Mr. Lane?” she asked at last.
“Probably not,” said Lane. “My dealings, such as they are, have been with Ector Allsworth.”
“Ah! Then you must work for the Vainmill Syndicate.”
“I work for me,” said Lane.
“A subtle distinction,” said Ilse Vescott. “And why have you come to see me?”
“Because I couldn't find Allsworth. I know he's on the planet, and your house seemed the most likely place. Is he here?”
“Yes, but he's such a bore,” she said, wrinkling her artificial nose and pursing her synthetic lips. “Besides, he's just a hireling. I own him, just as I own Vainmill and this house and everything else you see around you.”
“That's a lot for one person to own,” said Lane.
“I'm a very unusual person,” said Ilse Vescott, her ancient eyes staring out at him with detached amusement. “And I like to own things. Don't you?”
“I don't own things,” said Lane. “I kill them.”
“And just what are you interested in killing, Mr. Lane?”
“The Dreamwish Beast.”
“What a fabulous name!” she exclaimed. “It conjures up all kinds of exotic pictures. What is it like?”
“Like nothing else in the universe,” said Lane.
“Is it very beautiful?”
“Very,” said Lane. “It's like ... like a living star. It pulses and throbs with energy, and glows with life. It lives in space; it was born there and it will die there.”
“What does it breathe?” she asked.
“It doesn't.”
“Then how will you know when it's dead?”
“I'll know,” said Lane grimly.
“I always thought professional hunters were supposed to be cold and dispassionate,” said Ilse. “Suddenly you look like this thing is your mortal enemy.”
“Its beauty is only half of it,” said Lane. “It's a powerful, dangerous, maleficent life form.”
“Shades of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde!” Ilse laughed. “Tell me more about it.”
“It's the last of its kind. Once there were more of them, but they were all killed off eons ago. This one survived.”
“If it's the last of its species, maybe you should try to capture it instead,” said Ilse.
“It can't be captured,” said Lane. “It can only be destroyed.”
“What color is it?”
“It changes,” said Lane. “Sometimes it's red, sometimes it's almost yellow. It depends on how fast it's moving, and what it's feeling at the moment.”
“How can anyone possibly tell what a creature like that is feeling?” said Ilse.
“Just an expression,” said Lane, suddenly tense. “Allsworth's been after me for years to kill it. I'm ready to do so now.”
“Surely you didn't come all the way to Deluros just to tell us that,” she said.
“I came to talk price.”
“Ah. And how much do you plan to ask for your services?”
“Half a million credits, or its equivalent in some other form of currency.”
“That's a lot of money, even for something so wondrous as a Dreamwish Beast,” said Ilse.
“Not to you it isn't,” said Lane. “And that's what it will take.”
“It appears I am going to need Ector's advice after all,” said Ilse, removing a cushion from the arm of her Bafflediver-chair and pressing one of a number of buttons that were revealed.
A moment later Allsworth entered the room, still gray of skin and yellow of eye, a little portlier and balder than when Lane had first met him. He stared at Lane for a long minute before identifying him.
“Lane?” he asked tentatively.
Lane nodded and extended his hand.
“You've aged,” said Allsworth. “What are you doing in the Deluros system?”
“Mr. Lane has volunteered to slay the Dreamwish Beast for us,” said Ilse. “What do you think of that, Ector?”
“I thought you told me that it was just a myth,” said Allsworth.
“I was wrong,” said Lane.
“Ector,” said Ilse, “how much will we pay Mr. Lane for delivering a Dreamwish Beast to one of our museums?”
“How much does he want?” asked Allsworth.
“Half a million credits,” said Ilse.
“Sign him to a contract immediately,” said Allsworth. He turned to Lane. “Why so cheap? You know as well as I do how much it's worth.”
“There's a condition,” said Lane.
“Oh?” said Allsworth.
“I want it in advance.”
“I thought so!” said Allsworth. “Do you want to just walk out of here quietly and peacefully, or shall I have you thrown out?”
“What's the matter, Ector?” said Ilse.
“Look at him, Ilse,” said Allsworth, moving to her side. “Look at his eyes, his hands. He hasn't filled a contract in years, for us or for anyone else. How old would you say he is?”
Ilse Vescott looked at the thinning white hair, the gaunt, hollow face, the wrinkled clawlike hands. “In his nineties, at least.”
“How old are you, Lane?” said Allsworth.
“None of your business,” said Lane. “Is it a deal or isn't it?”
“He's on something,” said Allsworth. “Can't you see he's an addict?”
“What a pity,” said Ilse sadly. “And you made it sound so real.”
“It is real,” said Lane. “It's out there, and I've got the only weapon that can kill it.”
“The only thing he's got is some habit that needs feeding,” said Allsworth. “Let me throw him out of here, Ilse.”
“In a minute,” said Ilse distractedly. Then she turned back to Lane. “Tell me more about it, Mr. Lane.”
“There's not much more to tell,” said Lane. “It lives, and it feeds, and it flies, and it can be destroyed—if you'll pay me to do it.”
“What will you put up for collateral?” asked Ilse.
“You're not going to give him any money, are you?” demanded Allsworth.
“Do be quiet, Ector,” said Ilse. “This animal has fired my imagination. If Vainmill isn't interested, I'll commission it myself. What is your collateral, Mr. Lane?”
“Everything I own,” said Lane.
“Everything,” repeated Ils
e. “That's a lot to put up.”
“It used to be more,” said Lane wryly. “Right now it consists of my ship and my weapon.”
“Half a million credits is too much to spend on a fancy, Mr. Lane,” said Ilse. “Even one as delightful as yours. I'll advance you fifty thousand credits. Take it or leave it.”
“I'll take it,” said Lane without hesitation.
“Ector will accompany you to your ship,” said Ilse. “You can turn over the papers to him then.”
“He's robbing you blind, Ilse!” protested Allsworth. “You'll never see him again.”
“Perhaps,” said Ilse, pouring herself another drink.
“Then why are you doing it?”
“Because it amuses me,” she said. “Or, if you'd rather, call it the sympathy of a lovely young woman for an old man who's long past his prime.”
And Lane, staring at the ancient eyes that were surrounded by those perfect synthetic features, couldn't tell which of the two was her real reason.
Nor, now that he was going to get fuel for his ship, did he particularly care.
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CHAPTER 16
The Deathmaker departed the Deluros system while Lane tried to decide what to do next. Fifty thousand credits could keep the ship going at near maximum speed for a decade or a century or all eternity—provided that he didn't have to maneuver. Once in free flight, the Deathmaker's inertia was all that was required to keep it going at a constant speed; but every time he slowed down, or increased his speed, or changed his angle of flight, he used fuel. And, even with the money Ilse Vescott had given him, fuel would continue to be at a premium once he began chasing the creature in earnest.
So, while he had bought himself a little time, he hadn't necessarily bought the means to catch the creature. He needed still more money, and he wasn't quite sure how to go about getting it. His first thought was to find a fueling station on some frontier world and take what he needed at gunpoint, but he immediately discarded the notion; he'd have every police agency in the area looking for the Deathmaker, and he didn't need that kind of problem during the final phase of the hunt.
So he looked at his other options. It had been so many years since he'd delivered on a contract, or even accepted one, that it wasn't too likely he could go back to hunting—nor did he want to. That would eat up too much time, even if he succeeded in obtaining work.
Of course, he could always hunt illegal or prohibited species. Some of them, like the Bellringer of Daedalus VII, or old Earth's last remaining wild animal, the dingo, brought pretty substantial prices from private collectors, and he had absolute confidence in his ability to hunt down any animal ever born, whelped, foaled, or hatched. But, while the pay was better, the objection was the same as to hunting legitimate prey: the time factor, which would be increased by the need for secrecy and for personal delivery of the carcasses. Besides, he'd been out of touch for so long that he no longer knew which species were on the protected list.
He briefly contemplated making a raid on the fortress world of Braxton IV, where the Democracy harvested mionate, the most powerful drug yet known to man, but he wrote it off as being too long a shot. Besides, even if he succeeded where countless others had failed, he needed money, not unprocessed mionate—and he didn't know how or where to convert the latter into the former without bringing the Democracy's policing agencies down on his head.
He even toyed with the notion of returning to Deluros VIII and either robbing or kidnapping Ilse Vescott. He rejected that thought quickly, not on any moral grounds, but simply because the chances of success were so slim.
He pored over his possibilities for hours, and when he had eliminated the impossible and the improbable, he sorted out what remained. He did it coldly, efficiently, estimating risks and profits, matching methods against each other. When he was through he knew exactly what he had to do in order to get sufficient fuel to be sure of catching the creature. For what lay ahead of him, he felt no moral repugnance; he merely considered it an unpleasant necessity to be gotten over with as quickly as possible.
He switched on the Carto-System, tied it in to the navigational computer and the main computer's memory banks, and got a listing of all those worlds that had been opened up in the past decade. He then eliminated all those which were agricultural colonies; they wouldn't have enough money or convertible goods to make the risk worthwhile. He was especially interested in those planets that had been settled by religious and/or pacifistic groups, those whose defenses could reasonably be assumed to be minimal or even nonexistent.
To this list he added some of the frontier mining worlds which he knew to have almost fully automated operations, overseen by at most a handful of men, and ideally by just one or two.
Then he computed his fuel to the last cubic millimeter, laid in a course that would take him away from both Northpoint and the dust cloud but would leave him enough fuel to return to Northpoint at the end of his voyage, estimated how many times he could land, and selected those worlds on which he would set the Deathmaker down.
And, with the emotionless efficiency that had characterized his preparations so many times in the past, Nicobar Lane planned his next-to-last hunt.
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* * *
CHAPTER 17
Tchaka walked through a maze of rooms and levels until he came to his private quarters. He debated having a pair of his girls come in with him, but he decided that he was too sleepy to do them justice. He opened the door, turned on the tights, and froze.
“Nicobar!” he finally exclaimed.
“Shut the door,” said Lane, not moving from the comfortable form-fitting chair in which he reclined.
“It's been years!” said Tchaka. “Did you finally kill your monster?”
“Not quite,” said Lane.
“I hadn't expected to see you until you had destroyed it,” said Tchaka. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”
“You're a fence, Tchaka,” said Lane. Tchaka opened his mouth to object but Lane waved him down. “Don't deny it. I'm not here to arrest you. I've got a batch of stuff to unload.”
Tchaka closed the door behind him.
“I thought you were just about destitute, Nicobar,” he said. “What do you have to sell?”
Lane picked up a large bag he had placed behind his chair, walked over to a bed-table, and emptied out the contents. There were rings of every imaginable variety and value, necklaces, timepieces, even a few platinum teeth.
“Where did you get all of this, Nicobar?” asked Tchaka, examining a large bracelet.
“A rich uncle died,” said Lane.
“Yours?” Tchaka grinned.
“What difference does it make?” said Lane.
“I heard that a bunch of religious freaks—what were they called? Ah! The Roanoke Colony—had been robbed and murdered. The newstapes say it was done with a screecher. And then there were the miners out on Bastion, and...”
“Don't waste your breath,” said Lane coldly. “I never keep up with the newstapes. They don't interest me.”
“Did you kill them, Nicobar?”
“Did you take over this business by killing Horatio Constantine?” said Lane.
“Serves me right for asking a personal question.” Tchaka grinned. “The subject is closed.”
“Good.”
“However, you will allow me to ask you why you're here when the Dreamwish Beast is out there.”
“I need more money,” said Lane.
“I thought you had enough to build your weapon years ago,” said Tchaka.
“It's built. I need more fuel for the Deathmaker.”
“How much more?”
“Half a million credits’ worth.”
“I don't deal in credits,” said Tchaka. “You know that.”
“Its equivalent, then,” said Lane.
Tchaka looked over Lane's haul again. “Three hundred thousand, tops,” he said at last.
“Who are you kidding, Tchaka?” said Lane. “That stuff's worth a good three million, even on the black market.”
Tchaka shook his head. “Whoever wiped out the miners on Bastion also knocked off two members of the Democracy's Bureau of Mineralogy. Their agents have been to visit me twice already. I'm going to have to sit on this stuff for years before I can push it. Sloppy worker, that Bastion killer. A complete amateur.”
“Four hundred thousand,” said Lane. “That's the least I can take.”
Tchaka shook his head. “No, Nicobar. Three hundred.”
He suddenly found himself staring into the business end of a screecher.
“I'm not kidding, Tchaka,” said Lane. “I need that money. You're going to make a six hundred percent profit as it is; don't throw your life away trying for a higher percentage.”
“You look like you'd really use that thing, Nicobar,” said Tchaka, standing stock-still.
“I'll do what I have to do,” said Lane. “I've got to fuel up the Deathmaker.”
“Three hundred thousand, four hundred thousand, what difference does it make?” said Tchaka. “You're going to be swimming around in fuel either way.”
“I'm not coming back this time until I kill it,” said Lane. “However long it takes, wherever the creature goes, whatever it does, I'm going to get the job done.”
“I don't like what this thing has done to you, Nicobar,” said Tchaka. “I thought we were friends.”
“I don't like what it's done to me either,” said Lane. “That's why it has to die.”
“Just remember that you want to kill it and not me,” said Tchaka. “Put your weapon away, Nicobar.”
“You'll pay me four hundred thousand?”
“Yes.”
“And give me your word that you won't try to rip me apart?”
“Freely given,” said Tchaka. Lane put the screecher back in his belt, and Tchaka poured himself a glass of Aldebaranian absinthe. “Still a teetotaler?”
Lane nodded.
“How long has it been since you've had a woman, Nicobar?”
“Don't start, Tchaka,” said Lane.
“All right.” Tchaka shrugged. “I'll get the money for you in the morning. It'll have to be in cash, though; I want no record of any financial dealings with you. Anyone dumb enough to kill two government agents had to leave clues behind.”
