Beastchild

by Dean Koontz

  Now they were into the province of California after a high speed, all night run. They could soon begin a quest for the Haven, for the final safety and a new life—if this Hulann did not betray them.

  As the train's computer answered David's programming with brilliant blood letters on its response board, Hulann pressed palms against the side window, as if trying to push the glass away to get a better look at something. His four, wide nostrils were all open, and his breathing was more than a little ragged. Abruptly, his tail snapped and wound snakelike around his bulging thigh.

  "What is it?" Leo asked, coming out of the command chair next to David.

  "Docanil," Hulann replied. He pointed to the sky, far above them. A coppery speck flitted along the bottom of the high clouds. It was monitoring them, maintaining perfectly matched speeds; that could not be accidental.

  "Perhaps he doesn't see us," Leo said.

  "He does."

  "Yes."

  They watched the copper until big muddy droplets of rain spattered the thick glass. In this dark sheath of mist, the Hunter's helicopter was lost to their sight.

  The Bluebolt thundered on, hugged the rails as the sky lowered and the clouds appeared to drag by at little more than arm's length overhead. The four heavy rubber wipers thumped back and forth in hypnotic, melancholic rhythm (tunka, tunka, tunka), efficiently sloshing the water off the windscreen and into the drainage scoops.

  When Docanil struck, it was too swift to allow even for surprise. Several hundred yards up the track, the familiar copter bobbled out of the scudding clouds, skimmed toward them only inches above the rails. A firing tube opened in its side, and the first of its small power launch tubes spat a fist-sized missile.

  Involuntarily, they flinched from anticipated impact and dropped to the floor, clutching at handholds. The concussion almost threw them erect as the missile exploded a hundred feet ahead in a rich wash of crimson. Docanil had not been trying to kill; such a long-range retaliation would not have absolved his humiliation. He had only been trying to derail them so that he could reach them easily for a more personal revenge. Such was the way of a Hunter . . .

  The engine's front wheels leaped the twisted ends of the steel track, sank through the crossties and into the yielding sand. The cab tilted, toppled sideways in painfully slow motion. It pulled the other cars inexorably after it, whirling them free of the rails and hurtling them onto the wet sand. The shrieking, clanging, squealing noise grew until it was a vicious, impossible assault on the ears—then died with the abruptness of an exhausted man falling into sleep.

  David felt blood trickling down his head from a number of superficial cuts on his skull and a nasty gash on his right temple. For the first time in his life, the meaning of the war came home to him—like a fist in the guts. He had been separated from it before. He had told himself that a writer's duty was to be separate from the grossness of his generation. Later, he could comment. But now the blood was real.

  Aching, bloodied, they got to their feet inside the disordered, canted cabin, struggled upwards toward the sheered section of the big cab where the Hunter Docanil waited, silhouetted by the light gray dreariness of the stormy sky.

  A few drops of rain fell.

  Somewhere, there was thunder.

  Outside, the three fugitives stood against the overturned hulk of Bluebolt, watching Docanil parade proudly before them, recounting the details of his careful search from the first moments of the Phasersystem alert. In a human or a naoli normal, such behavior would have been known as a braggart's act. But with a Hunter, it was more than self-aggrandisement; it was something more sinister, something tied closely to sadism.

  When Docanil finished his account, he described in brutal detail what he would do with them. He obviously relished this chance to stretch out the actual executions, glorying in the anticipation. When Banalog objected that they were to be brought back alive, Docanil withered the traumatist with a glance that frankly threatened him. That done, he began his series of revenge deaths with David. Again, his bare hands came out, twitching. David's flesh, reacting to the invisible weapon, took on a ruddy glow.

  Docanil played his hands over the man's body, back and forth with obvious pleasure, then used one hand to increase the force of the deadly plague on David's right arm. The clothes flashed and burned away from that arm, fell onto the ground as ashes.

  "Stop!" Banalog pleaded miserably.

  Docanil ignored him.

  The outer layer of skin on David's arm began to shrivel as if it were dehydrating. It broke open and exposed pinker layers beneath. These too were quickly browned by the Hunter's weapon. There was a smell of roasting meat.

  David was screaming.

  Leo was screaming also, holding his hands up to the sides of his head as his mind thrust memories at him: memories of his father beneath the grenade launcher, twisted, broken, charred . . . dead . . .

  Hulann put his arm around the boy, tried not to let him see what was becoming of David. He felt, surprisingly, as if the boy were one of his own brood, of his own loins. And the touch of the human child was warm, not ugly and frightening as it had been that first time when he had tried to dress his wound in the Boston cellar. But Leo felt worse for not knowing what was happening and pulled away to watch.

  David rolled, cradling his damaged arm under his chest to keep it from being totally ruined. Even now, it would take months to heal it. But what was he thinking? He would not be alive months from now—or even minutes from now. He was dying. This was real.

  Docanil brought his fingers to center on David's legs. The boy-man's clothes caught fire and ashed, as did the first layer of his tender skin. Docanil laughed, a terrible cackling sound and—abruptly gasped, tried to scream as his victim had been screaming, eyes wide. He staggered two steps, then fell forward onto the sand, quite dead. Protruding from his back was the hilt of a ceremonial knife of the sort Hunters used to cut out and eat certain parts of their victims' bodies. Banalog had taken it from the prepared Hunter's Guild Altar, had brought Docanil to an end he so often distributed to others.

  As the others stood transfixed, still not clearly comprehending the magnitude of what they had witnessed, Banalog, moving dreamlike, withdrew the blade and wiped every drop of Hunter blood from it. He then turned the point against his chest and slipped it quietly between two ribs, deep into the eighteen layered muscles of his pulsing heart. He tried not to think of his brood, of his precious family name, of the history he had denied to his children. Instead of crying out in pain, he smiled rather wistfully and collapsed onto Docanil, lying very, very still indeed.

  Hulann could not straighten out his emotions. Here, in the moments of disaster, death, and disgrace, they had been salvaged after all. It was nearly like being resurrected. They could go on now, find Haven and try to do something about the misunderstanding between the naoli and the non-spacer Earthmen. Yet Hulann was not a violent creature. He wove forward, somehow managed to lift the traumatist's body as if it weighed only ounces, carried it off several feet so that its precious blood would not mingle with that of the Hunter Docanil.

  It was raining lightly again.

  The rain diluted the blood.

  Hulann returned and scuffed away all traces of what blood had mingled before he had acted.

  With that accomplished, the joy of the moment began to gush into him and gain the upper hand of his emotions. They were in California . . . The ocean roared near them . . . The tracks paralleled the sea, so they could follow those to search for the Haven. Leo would be safe. He could grow, become a man, have his own brood in his own way. And would not the boy's brood have, as part of its cultural and historical heritage, the history of Hulann the naoli? That thought gave wings to his mind and made him feel even more free and happy with life. He turned to Leo, wanting to lift the boy and dance with him as he might have with one of his own lizardy children, and he felt the first bullet sink deep into his side, ripping through vital things and bringing with it a horrible, final
darkness . . .

  Chapter Eighteen

  At first the blackness had seemed like the plunge into sleep. But it was very much different, for he became aware of the blackness and was able to speculate on it. In sleep, such speculation would have been impossible for the naoli mind. In time, the blackness began to phase into gray, then soft blue. In the azure expanse that stretched to all sides, there was a gentle white radiance directly before him, pulsating much as the heart does within the chest . . .

  Death: Hello, Hulann.

  Spirit: What is this place?

  Death: This is The Changeover. You have been here before, of course. You do not remember, because memory is not the way of Changeover.

  Spirit: Where do I go from here?

  Death: A brood hole. Back into your own family.

  Spirit: Which I have disgraced.

  Death: Which you have honored. You will be raised, in your new husk, to revere the memory of Hulann.

  Spirit: But I left life a failure. I did not achieve the whole purpose.

  Death: The humans who shot you were from Haven. They thought you molested the boy, though they soon learned their error. They took you to their fortress for surgery. But they knew little of naoli anatomy. They failed to keep you alive. But they will find a means for bringing the truth to the occupying naoli. The war will end soon, before the human race is destroyed.

  Spirit: That's very good news. (He ponders the specter of Death a moment, somehow little interested in the past life now that he has been told the result of his role in it.) You are death?

  Death: I am.

  Spirit: And I am to be born again?

  Death: You are.

  Spirit: Then you are not permanent.

  Death: No. Your race long ago programmed me not to be. I operate on the proper laws, recalling your souls at their departure from your temporal husks and remaking you within a new husk. I have all the facilities for that sort of thing.

  Spirit: You are a machine!

  Death: Yes.

  Spirit: The humans . . . ?

  Death: I know not of their Death; they are of a wholly different cloth. Though I believe they have not thought of the concept of "abstract mechanism." Sadly, I believe their deaths are permanent. But if you thought the war against men a little justified learning that death was not permanent, you are wrong. Your race has forgotten its abstract mechanisms, forgotten my creation as a restorer of souls. And so it was meant to be—to keep the race at least a little humble. And to help purify the race morally. To that end, we must get on with your reincarnation. By practice, as programmed, I am to ask you what single thing or lesson you wish to remember from your previous life, what Truth.

  Spirit: (Hesitating.) The Hunter. Docanil. Whatever would a naoli like that want to remember? What would he have to save from his previous life?

  Death: Surely you jest. A Hunter has no soul.

  Spirit: (Pondering for a time.) Then that is what I will remember. I wish to carry into my new life the knowledge that a naoli Hunter has no soul.

  Death: It is an unusual request.

  Spirit: It is all I will accept; it is the only thing worth remembering.

  Death: So be it!

  There was an explosion of life into rebirth . . .

  The white-haired man stood in the nook of rock overlooking the blue-green sea that ruffled in toward him, far below and like a liquid dream. He watched the boy named Leo and several of the men from the Haven as they buried the alien body in a grave dug in the beach above the high tideline where the eroding waters could not reach it. In the gloominess, with the rain obscuring details, their electric headlamps looked startlingly like flickering votive candles. As the boy bent over the deep hole and threw the first sand onto the stiffened alien shell, he could have been a wizened little priest in some ancient European cemetery, administering the final rites at the graveside of a good parishioner.

  The rain spattered his face, but he did not wipe it off.

  The wind howled in the nook, cancelling out whatever was being said below.

  He thought that, perhaps, he should have gone with them after all, added his office's prestige to the funeral of one who—apparently—had done so much. But he had not been able to bring himself to that. That was a naoli, one of those who had killed his race, or very nearly had done. He had been trained, almost since birth, to loathe those creatures. He knew now what the situation was. Men had always allowed foreigners to judge the common men of their nation by the personalities and activities of their soldiers and diplomats. That, of course, was a mistake, for soldiers and diplomats were not representative of the common citizens, did not much share his goals, his ideals, or his beliefs. This same age-old error had been made and amplified on a cosmic scale with the spacers. And, at last, it had proved disastrous.

  The sand filled the grave quickly.

  Grain after grain . . . Each obscuring more of the dead alien.

  The huddled mourners worked swiftly as the rain drove harder upon their shoulders.

  The white-haired man thought about going back into the Haven to the pile of work now awaiting him. There was so much to do, so many tiring, tedious things ahead of them—and so much danger. But he would have to wait until he was able to settle his emotions. A leader of men should not be seen in tears . . .

  Elsewhere at that time:

  David laid in healing bandages, swathed like a mummy, basking in the warm rays of the speed-heal lamp, attended constantly by machines and men (for a human life was a terribly precious thing now). He could neither move nor speak—but his mind was active. Another book was in his mind now, the first he had thought about writing in longer than he cared to admit. It would be about Hulann, about the boy Leo, about the war. He thought he might even have to write himself into the end of the story. He had always thought a writer should be detached from his work—but now he thought he was going to be able to write better than ever by playing on his own emotional involvement. He would begin the book in Hulann's room in the occupation tower, with Hulann asleep, tucked into the nether-world pocket, his overmind detached and blank.

  Leo stopped walking away from the beach and looked back one last time at the almost invisible grave where Hulann laid beneath the suffocating sand. He felt much as he had when he had first seen the shattered form of his father beneath the grenade launcher. He wondered how Hulann felt about him, how he regarded him. He remembered the naoli putting a protective arm around his shoulders when Docanil had them up against the overturned locomotive. They had postured like father and son. Yet, only a week ago, Hulann would have thought of him as a Beastchild, a primitive. At last, the rain was running down his neck, making him shiver quite badly in his thin and somewhat raggedy suit of clothes. He turned and left the beach, the evening, the rain. Hulann had lived for centuries; he had told Leo so himself. The boy would only have another hundred years or so. He would have to try very hard to make those decades as full as possible, as sort of a monument.

  The Spirit entered the flesh of a woman, sank deep into her pouch, settled into the egg as it was fertilized. It had no personality at such an age. It had no thoughts, save one: A Hunter has no soul.

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