Deathbeast

by David Gerrold

  DEATHBEAST 29

  Ethab was still up on one elbow, still looking right at her. “You doubt me?”

  “No, not at all. I believe you’re sincere in everything you say.” She pulled her scanner close to cover her expression. She studied it carefully and added, “So were the last five hunters who said the same thing.”

  “And... ?” Ethab asked slowly. “What happened to them?”

  “They died.”

  Ethab stared at her.

  She didn’t notice. She shut off the narrow-beam scan and went back to wide range, closing the control cover and pushing the unit away again. She turned back into jjer sleeping bag and curled up. After a beat, she said, “Good night."

  Ethab remained up on one elbow. Staring at her.

  It’s impossible for a person to sleep while someone is staring at him. After a moment, Megan turned around and looked back at Ethab. He nodded, not in agreement with her last statement, but in understanding. “They weren’t very good, were they?” A moment after, he added, “Tomorrow. We’ll see.”

  Megan couldn’t fathom his expression. “You have two and a half days.”

  “Good night,” he said, and turned away. The conversation was over. He pulled his sleeping bag up around himself.

  Megan stared at him for a second, allowing herself a moment of annoyance—and reassessment. Ethab wasn’t as obvious as he seemed. He had tried to manipulate her, and when that hadn’t worked, he had turned her own responses against her. He was obviously a force to be respected. She exhaled in distaste and curled back up again, thinly shielded against the night, trying not to think about him.

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  The stars were alien'eyes above. Lying on his back, Ethab saw them without seeing. Under his blanket, one hand touched his chest and stayed there for a moment, a gesture of awareness, self-caressing. A whispered, “This time... I’ll get him this time.” And then he fell immediately, mechanically,'asleep.

  Three

  THINGS THAT GO£
  Nusa had taken off her helmet, unleashing long, tawny hair that fell down past her shoulders, and was snapping pictures with her holo-fax. It was a seemingly transparent frame with a handle on each side. You looked through it at your subject, pressed the thumb control, and that Was it. What you saw was recorded, and could be immediately retrieved from the fax’s bubble memory and replayed through the viewing frame. Looking through the frame was like looking through a little window at the original scene; a holo-frame memory cartridge could hold seven minutes of moving images, stereo and color, sixty frames per second, plus two channels of sound, or 25,200 stills, also stereo and color. The resolution was 7,500 lines per scan, or 15,000 lines per frame; that high an information density was mandatory if holographic coherency was to be maintained.

  In truth, the unit was not a pure holographic recorder, not like the professional models. Instead of infinite points of view, it recorded a triangular gridwork of viewpoints,

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  spaced two centimeters apart, then later reintegrated them into a seemingly coherent stereo image. A sharp- eyed observer would detect a. slight strobing of motion when moving his head from side to side, but for most semiprofessional uses this model holo-fax was most practical; it was light, portable, and semicompatible with professional-level memories. With logic augmentation, the missing points of view within each triangle could be extrapolated.

  Nusa was snapping close-up stills and short moving shots of Tril and Eese, Loevil, and the immediate campsite. Each shot activated a faint blue-white glow on the face of the holo; the frame was automatically augmenting the orange light of the heater-stove in order to keep the color balance of its images correct.

  Tril was methodically testing her fuel charges, inserting each one into the butt of her rifle, reading its meters, and noting its strength. Eese was resting next to her, his rifle held proudly in his lap. It was a shiny piece of technology, gaudy and overaccessoried—it had logic-scan, vari-spread beaming; a vibra-lock sight with laser-dot pretargeting; multiple-spectrum phasing; dual-cell power capacity for instant recharge, with half-second heat-delay as opposed to the standard one-second recycle time; ready- gauge readouts and beep-cues; not to mention auxiliary- spectrum backup beams for high-density targets—it was a weapon for a well-heeled amateur trying to look like a pro. It glistened and gleamed like an expensive whore, all shiny and oiled and ready for exciting new adventures in lust and savagery. Eese glowed like a parent, stroking it fondly and cradling it in readiness. If anything came up suddenly, Eese would be on top of it in seconds with his own surprise.

  He kept sighting across the n%ht with the ruby-laser target beam—played with it across the distant rocks, the

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  trees, the shrnbs; he jiggled it with little palsied motions to make his own impromptu patterns on the clouds. He pointed the beam at Loevil’s chest, etching a spear of light between them. The target dot burned like an ember right above his heart

  Loevil looked up from his scanner, looked down at the dot of light upon himself, and then to Eese. Eese grinned back at him.

  “I suggest you point that somewhere else,” Loevil said.

  “Don’t be so upset,” smirked Eese. “The safety’s on. And the target beam’s not bright enough to bum.”

  Loevil made a half scowl; he was bored with halfwit hunters. He flippecl the plastic utility cover of his scanner open; it was a mirrored grid, a repeating pattern of tiny right-angje reflectors; it popped up, interrupting the beam of the laser and angling it exactly back the direction it had come. “Okay,” said Loevil. “Press the trigger and let’s see.”

  Eese stared at the beam, fragmented into semiincoherency and striped with interference patterns; it pointed right back down the barrel of his toy. “Neva: mind,” he said, and switched it off.

  Loevil shook his head to himself, mouthing an oath about, “Dumb, bloody amateurs.” Besides, Eese was too damn good-looking; all those shiny white teeth! Loevil hated handsome people, on principle, because they made him feel jealous.

  The B-type laser was rated primarily as a sports weapon; the military used the larger multiple-spectrum beams, but for most hunters a rifle that could put out a beam registering nine kilocalories at a distance of ten meters was more than sufficient, and with a supercharger applied, the beam would measure fifteen kilocalories, but at increased stress to the crystals and a correspond-

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  DEATHBEAST

  ingjy shortened lifespan. Super-chargers weren’t recommended.

  Besides, coming armed to the teeth and looking for something to kill wasn’t the best way to survive an expedition—survival tends to be a product of caution. Look out for the things that are out to kill you, and you stand a better chance.

  The primary problem with using B-lasers is that animal tissue is ninety percent water—heat dissipates faster through the air, and only when the bum can’t dissipate fast enough that way does the flesh start to cook inward. If the target is too large, then the hunter can’t pump enough heat into it fast enough to hurt it. Think of a dinosaur as just a large bag of water on the hoof; success in killing one is almost always a measure of the hunter’s ability to calculate the mass-to-volume ratio of the target and the capacity of his weapon to significantly raise the temperature of that large a volume of water.

  In some ways, it really wasn’t much of a sport... .

  The sound of Tril’s fuel cells clicking in and out of her weapon was getting irritating. Loevil closed his scanner and asked, “Is that the fifth or sixth time you’ve done that drill?”

  Tril looked embarrassed-flustered as she pushed another charge into the rifle. “Eese told me to,” she said.

  Eese sat up stiffly. “We can’t be too careful, you know. We have to check everything.”

  Loevil blinked innocently. “Oh,” he said. As if he
had never been on a mission before.

  Tril echoed Eese’s pride—she basked in it, she reflected it like a fire’s glow. “We’re going on watch soon,” she said. “We can’t afford to make mistakes.”

  Eese was already standing. He offered a hand to Tril.

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  “Relax a little,” said Nusa. “It’s only a sport.” She snapped a shot of them, grinning through the frame.

  Loevil looked over at her. “Not to the dinosaurs. To them it’s life or death.”

  Nusa took one more shot of Eese and Tril as they moved off. Then, turning to Loevil, snapping one of him, she asked, “What difference does it make? They’ve been dead a hundred million years—what difference could a few years either way make?”

  Loevil shrugged. “What could a few years either way mean to you in your life?”

  “I’m not a dinosaur,” said Nusa. As if that explained everything. She put her holo-fax down.

  “So? Does that justify it?”

  Nusa turned to look directly at him; her curiosity was piqued. “That’s really a strange attitude for you to take,” she said, surprised. “You’re a guide.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Loevil, noncommittally. “I guess it is.” “Are you going to explain it?”

  “No,” he said. “Why should I? Don’t worry about it.” He tossed the question back at her. “Why are you here?” She looked up sharply, across the camp. “I used to sleep with Ethab.”

  “Used to?”

  “Until tonight.”

  Loevil followed her glance. She was looking at Ethab’s sleeping bag—which was directly next to Megan’s. It didn’t worry him. Megan could take care of herself.

  They were interrupted then by Dorik, wheezing and puffing from the exertion of moving his puffy body across the uneven terrain. He plopped himself down next to them; his breath was ragged and fast, and when he pulled noisily at his canteen, water slopped down around his chin and onto his vest. He began loudly unwrapping a ration

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  bar; it crumbled in his clumsy hands. Loevil and Nusa exchanged half-amused glances.

  “How many of these you been on?” Dorik asked Loevil, then shoved half the bar into his mouth and chewed noisily.

  Loevil shifted his position to one more comfortable. “Seven,” he answered.

  “And Megan?”

  “Twelve.”

  “Are they all like this?” Dorik sprayed a light shower of crumbs in Loevil’s direction when he spoke.

  Loevil shrugged. “Like what? No, every hunt is different.”

  “Is it good work? You like it?” Dorik was trying to make conversation.

  Loevil sighed. “It’s a living.”

  Dorik waved the answer away. “No—what I mean is—” He took another mouthful and spoke around his chewing. “What I mean is—mmf—what happens on these hunts?”

  “You saw that this morning—the unexpected. That’s why people come on a Time Hunt—to be challenged.”

  Dorik paused to wash his meal down with another guzzle from his canteen. “Well, how about some advice— I mean, isn’t there something we ought to know?”

  Loevil shook his head. “You were briefed.”

  “There has to be something more than that.”

  “Well...” Loevil said thoughtfully, “You might want to be very careful.”

  “Careful—?”

  “Uh... ” Loevil glanced around to see if Nusa was still listening—not only Nusa, but Kalen behind her as well. He had joined them silently, moving out of the darkness like a ghost. “We always lose a couple of hunters. Always. Every time.”

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  Dorik and Nusa became uncomfortable. Kalen looked stoic.

  “Aah, you’re just saying that,” muttered Dorik.

  Loevil shrugged it off. “Well... you know. Something you disagree with might try to eat you.”

  Dorik looked unhappily at the remains of die ration bar still in his hand, then put it aside, his appetite suddenly diminished. “This one will be different,” he said.

  “Sure it will.” Loevil made reassuring noises, which nobody believed.

  “Ethab knows what he’s doing,” Kalen put in softly. They all turned to look at him.

  “i’ve heard that one before too,” said Loevil.

  Kalen grinned. “Well, what are you worried about? You’re a guide. You’re neutral; the lizards won’t bother you.”

  Loevil grinned right back. “Sometimes they have a little trouble telling the difference between a hunter and an innocent bystander.”

  “Well,” put in Nusa, with a suddenly mocking grin, “you knew the job was dangerous when you took it.”

  Loevil looked at her, surprised.

  “Good night,” she said sweetly. She began to climb into her bedroll. Kalen moved off, disinterested. Dorik kept eating, oblivious of the exchange.

  Loevil looked at Nusa, shaking his head. He didn’t know whether she was serious or mocking. He finally decided she was being gently sarcastic. “I must be getting overconfident,” he said to himself, and turned to his own sleeping bag.

  From a distance, the camp was an oasis of light, a dim orange glow inside a velvet sack. The stars spangled the sky, but their light was cold and almost malevolent. The camp was a lonely target of light; the markers of the

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  electronic perimeter were soft glowing flares—they were the brightest lights in the night, pools of nominal brilliance, but they failed to provide reassurance to the nervous watchers, Tril and Eese.

  The night made insect noises and tugged at them with the wind—its breath was hot and dry and carried unfamiliar scents: pungencies from nearby blossoms and sharper smells from things less knowable; the background feel of the air was alien. Eese had his goggles raised, and sniffed uncomfortably, trying to identify the source of his discomfort. The darkness seemed to throb with a heartbeat of its own.

  He glanced across the camp to where a single figure stood silhouetted in the light of the fence. He touched his communicator and whispered, “Watch your ass, Tril.”

  A moment later, her answer floated back. “You watch your own”

  Eese nodded, smiling, and resumed his patrolling. He was cautious, but leisurely. If there was something moving through the night... he would deal with it. He took three steps and listened, five more and then listened again. In this way, he moved steadily around the circle; Tril was doing the same, and the two of them stayed always opposite each other.

  Around them, the night breathed quietly to itself. And then it stopped. As if waiting. The air grew still and silent as the rustle of the wind faded to a whisper. Underfoot the dry mosslike plants crunched with every step Eese took; it was the only sound. All was motionless; even the insects had fallen quiet....

  —there was a dry click and the green light on Megan’s scanner flickered out, was replaced by a winking yellow one. But she was sleeping, turned away from it; she didn’t notice. It hadn’t beeped....

  DEATHBEAST 39

  —out near the edge of the fence, Tril paused. She listened.

  Was there something there?

  There was a spotlight mounted on her blazer-rifle. She switched it on, waiting for it to come up to full brilliance; it took only a second, turning red, redder, orange, yellow, flaring into white, then whiter—a dazzling glare, a swath of flattening intensity. The night went shadowy and blue beyond it, the air gleaming with the reflection of the light, suspended dust becoming tiny spangles.

  The beam moved of its own volition—like an eye it swept the landscape, illuminating Tril’s curiosity and fear as if it were a prowling dog. It was like a bar of sunlight, too harsh to look directly at. From behind it, Tril peered out at a world abruptly garish—shapes of white and yellow, blue and black. The light flattened every object that it touched into a cardboard cutout of itself.

  The landscape was
empty, studded here and there with scrawny bushes. The pebbled ground cast shadows out beyond, a streaked and grainy pattern that faded into darkness.

  Tril stood poised and listening, terribly alone and fragile-looking. She was slight, and her blazer-rifle seemed almost too large for her. She held it like a cannon and peered over the bulge of the spotlight with eyes so wide they gleamed in the reflection of the beam.

  Across the camp, Eese had turned to stare at the sudden brilliance. He saw Tril now as a silhouette against a flaring whiteness. What was she looking at? What was she looking for?

  She swept the beam slowly back and forth. Back and forth.

  There was nothing there. If there had been, perhaps the light had frightened it away.

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  She turned to look at Eese. Could he see her? She shook her head to indicate that there was nothing.

  And yet—

  She turned back and listened once again. It sounded like something large had moved. Something large was breathing slowly in the distance. It seemed closer than before.

  But when she listened for it, it sounded only like the wind.

  Even though there was no wind.

  It was like an afterimage on the retina, just off-center. If you tried to look directly at it, it moved away from you. Like something just beyond the comer of your eye, you could only see it when you looked away from it— that’s what this sound was like. You couldn’t listen for it, you could only hear it when you weren’t listening.

  From across the camp, Eese watched her, puzzled. What was she listening to? He held his position and tried to hear it—but there was nothing, not even the buzz of insects. No birds crying in the distance, no wind, no noise of water running in a stream, no sound of any kind at all—except the sound of his own heart, and his blood rushing in his ears. It was so quiet now he could hear the functioning of his own body. It unnerved him, and he switched his spotlight on and pointed it beyond the camp, looking for the source of his and Tril’s discomfort.

  Maybe it was just nerves, he thought That seemed probable. Just nerves. He took a deep breath, then another. He slid into one of the relaxation-readiness exercises he used to use when he was still in competition as an athlete. It was his life to be strong, to be ragged—uncertainty was not something he could tolerate. He flexed his broad shoulders and held his weapon with new assurance. If Tril had found something, he would deal with it. He began moving around the camp toward her, keeping