by E. C. Tubb
"I can't find a place, Earl. There aren't any caves. I don't even know in which direction the nearest stop-over is. The Sungari-Earl!"
He dropped his burden and held her in his arms until the quivering had stopped and she was calm again.
"If we can't find a place to stay then we'll make one." He gestured at the things he had assembled. "Need it be strong? Do the Sungari actually attack? Are they large or what?"
She didn't know as he had expected. Her fear was born of rumor and whispered convictions of a knowledge based on a lack of evidence. But, unless he were to end with an insane woman on his hands, he had to pander to her delusion.
As they worked she said, "Why couldn't we have used the wreck? Couldn't it have been easier?"
"No." Dumarest adjusted the fabric which he had stretched over the curved rods and lashed with wire. Rocks surrounded the crude tent and now he covered it with a thin layer of sand. "It was too big," he explained. "Too heavy to move and too awkward to seal. And I don't want to be there when they come looking for us."
"Looking?" Her eyes widened, filled with purple from the dying light. "Who? Gydapen?"
"A clever man." Dumarest dusted more sand over the shelter. "He knew you would be eager to get back home and, if we'd crashed over the Iron Mountains, we'd have stood no chance. He even guessed that you might suspect him and head for a stop-over but, as you said, you'd have to ride high to spot one. Either way he couldn't lose."
"The explosion," she said, dully. "He sabotaged the raft."
"Which is why he insisted that we take wine with him and kept us busy with his cat and mouse game. He needed time to set the bomb and he wanted it to be late when we left." Dumarest looked at the woman. "He wanted to kill you," he said, evenly. "And he will want to be certain you are dead."
Would already be dead if it hadn't been for him. Lavinia had a sickening vision of herself, broken, bloodied, the prey for scavengers. It had been so close! If Dumarest hadn't suspected, hadn't acted when he had-and even then it had been close.
She felt a momentary weakness and closed her eyes, thankful she wasn't alone, thankful too that it was Dumarest with her and not Roland or Alcorus or even Charles when alive. Charles-how ignorant she had been! And Gydapen -how stupid!
She heard the rasp and scrape of stone against steel and turned to see Dumarest squatting, knife in hand, sparks flying from the blade. Some finely fretted material lay before him on a small heap of whittled twigs. A nest which caught the sparks and held them as, gently, he blew them to flame.
A fire-but why?
Watching, she saw him feed the glow, building it to a blaze which he lifted with the aid of metal torn from the roll of foil and carried to a place between rocks well to one side. More foil, the rest of the roll, made a humped shape behind it.
"A decoy!" Finally she understood. "If anyone should come they will see it and think we are with it. But no one will come at night, Earl."
"Can you be sure of that?"
"How could they spot the wreck?"
"There are ways." He added more fuel to the blaze. Smoke wreathed his face making it cruel in the crimson light. "We found the bomb but a tracking device could have been fitted."
"They won't come at night," she insisted. "Not even Gydapen."
Perhaps not, but the man wasn't alone and mercenaries had few compunctions as to how they earned their pay. Gnais would be free of the planetary phobia concerning the dark. Infra-red devices could be available to track down the living if they had escaped death in the wreck. The fire would confuse such apparatus and mask their own body heat.
Things he explained. Lavinia listened, nodding when he had finished.
"You're clever, Earl. Now, for God's sake, let us get out of the night!"
Chapter Fifteen
The shelter was small with barely enough room for them both. Without light, the walls pressing close, Dumarest was reminded too strongly of a tomb. Carefully parting the opening of the flap he looked outside.
The suns had vanished, the sky now blazed with stars, the pale, ghostly luminescence painting the rocks, the tufted vegetation with frosted silver. The glow of the fire was a dull reflection caught and dimmed by facing rocks. A ruby nimbus of shifting light in which figures moved in an intricate saraband.
A man in armor, gilt and tinsel over red and green, a helmet framing a skull in the eyeholes of which worms crawled and lifted heads which sighed with ancient yearnings. A fancy, gone even as seen, replaced by another which spun like a pinwheel, semi-transparent, a cut-out which danced, a face filled with bulging eyes. Red stained the mouth and ears, more the nose and cheeks. Tears of blood which dripped and left a trail in which paper-thin fingers dabbled and rose to trace symbols on the air.
Chagney!
Wheeling on his eternal journey among the stars.
His eyes bulged at the sight of unimaginable glories. His blood was a benediction to all who had spilled their lives in the void. His appearance was an accusation.
As was the woman with hair of flame.
Had he loved her, the real woman, or merely the shell she had worn?
Had she known and, knowing, taken a subtle revenge?
Kalin-had she lied?
Dumarest closed his eyes, shutting out the imaginary figures, feeling the tension at the base of his skull, the inward pressure. Something… something… but it was so long ago and now was not the time to remember.
Now was the time of the Sungari.
"Earl!" Lavinia was beside him, pressing close, her breath warm against his cheek. "Close the opening-please!"
Had they never built strong rooms fitted with thick windows? Were they afraid of the madness such rooms would bring?
"Earl! Please!"
Dumarest drew in his breath, shuddering, conscious of the ache at the base of his skull, the pressure. The hallucinations had been too real, too accusing. Fragments of the past, enhanced, given the acid sauce of hindsight, the torment of what might have been. A blur of images of which only a few had been prominent but, behind those few, ghostly yet horribly alive, had thronged others.
A man lived every second of every hour since the time of his birth and each of those seconds held all that had happened to and around him.
A vastness of experience. An inexhaustible supply of terror and pain and hopeless yearning. An infinity of doubt and indecision, of ignorance known and forceably accepted, of frustration and hate and cruelty and fear.
A morass in which glowed the fitful gleams of transient joy.
Each man, within his skull, carried a living hell.
Watching, Dumarest had seen it.
"Earl?" Lavinia touched his face and felt the sweat which wet her fingers. Felt too the little quivers which ran through him so that he trembled like a beast which had been run too hard for too long. She pushed back his hair, touching the gash on his scalp, the sting of the salt on her hand a pain which, meeting, diminished the rest. "For God's sake! Earl!"
He was trapped, buried, stifling. Sand clogged his lungs and mountains weighed his limbs. He threshed, tore at the opening, jerked it aside and lunged through to roll on the stoney ground to rise, to stare wide-eyed at the stars.
Earth!
Which was the sun which warmed Earth?
"Come back, you fool!" Lavinia screamed from within the confines of the shelter. "Come back! The Sungari- hurry!"
It was already too late.
Dumarest heard a thin, high pitched whine, the drone of something which passed, the lash of air against his face, his eyes. It came again and he dropped, feeling a jerk at his hair, something which touched his scalp and burned like fire.
Against the stars there was a shimmer, a blur. Night mist falling or something else?
Then again the whine, something which struck his shoulder, to rip the plastic and tear at the metal beneath. A blow which bruised and hurt and shocked him from his daze. Alerted, his instinct to survive replaced conscious thought.
He dropped, felt the whine of disturbed air slash
through the spot where he'd been standing, rolled to see sand and dirt plume inches from his face. The shelter was close and he dived towards it, seeing the opening part a little, the pale glimmer of a face. It backed as he advanced, making room for him to pass through, legs kicking, his boot hitting something and being hit in turn. Jerking up his knees he drove the edge of his hand against something which shimmered, again at something else which droned.
"Earl!"
"Something to block the opening? Quickly!"
The fabric was too thin. He held it, smashing at it with his fist as it bulged, wedging the fabric handed to him against it, lashing it with strands of wire. Above, on the roof of the shelter, something scrabbled, rasping, making eerie chitterings.
"It's too thin," she whispered. "Too thin."
And he had been too confident of her mistaken fear of the dark. It had been no mistake. Thinking so had almost cost him his life.
"They'll get us!" Her voice rose a little. "They'll break in."
"No." He reached out and found her. She was naked, the fabric she had passed to him the clothing she had ripped from her body. "They won't break in," he soothed. "Not now we're out of sight."
Out of sight their scent masked, but that need have nothing to do with it. Sight alone would have been enough. The fury of the attack had caused it to last after he had vanished from view. A delayed action which even now was ending.
As he listened the scrabbling faded, the chittering died.
"Earl?"
"It's over. All we need do now is wait."
Wait as she moved against him, soft and warm and with a femininity which could not be denied. A burning, demanding creature of passion who held him and touched him and sent her lips questing over his cheeks, his eyes, lingering on his mouth until his arms closed around her. A cleansing, human thing who washed the fragments of delusion from his mind and filled the tiny shelter with a heat which rose to engulf them both.
Which ebbed to flood again at the approach of dawn.
Dumarest stirred, looking at the tumble of hair against his shoulder, the face it stranded, the eyes closed, the lips swollen, the whole lax in satiation. The morning light was dim as it percolated through the fabric, brightening as he cleared the opening, becoming a pale flood as he pushed aside the flaps.
Crawling outside he rose and stretched. His hands stung and he saw the knuckles scored with shallow wounds, the fingers dark with blood. More dried blood matted his hair and traced a pattern on his face. His boots were torn, the pants showed long gouges as if sharp knives had slashed at the material. On the sanded surface of the shelter the grains were fanned into intricate designs.
The fire he had lit had died, a patch of ash marring the sand with greyish blackness. He gathered fuel and lit another, feeding it gently, adding leaves and tufts of greenery so that a thin column of smoke rose into the air. A column which thickened and turned an oily black as he fed slivers of plastic into the flames.
"Earl?" Lavinia had woke and dressed herself in the torn shred of her clothing, the gleam of nacreous flesh showing through the rents as she crawled from the shelter and straightened. Her eyes, like her lips, were puffed a little, soft with tender memory, the pleasure so recently enjoyed. "Why the fire? A signal?"
"If anyone is looking for us I don't want them to waste time." Dumarest looked at the sky, squinting, the dried blood on his face giving him the appearance of a savage warrior.
"But last night you were worried about Gydapen finding us," she pointed out. "That's why you built the fire as a decoy."
"That was last night."
"And now?"
"We're stranded in the wilderness. We need food and water and shelter against the night. We have no maps and no compass. Can you guide us to safety? Get us to a stop-over before dark?" He shrugged as she made no answer. "If all else fails we'll have to try, but I don't think it will be necessary. Gydapen will want to check that we are dead. The fire will tell whoever's looking that we're not. He'll land. When he does we'll take his raft."
If anyone came. If he landed. If he could be overpowered -Dumarest made it sound so simple.
"We need water," she said. "Something to wash in. Your face and hands are covered in blood." As was her cheek, her shoulders and back, the swell of her breasts. Blood from Dumarest's injured hands and face. "And I'm hungry."
"We've nothing to eat."
"Maybe I could find something. There could be berries and roots. I'll look around."
"You'll get back into the shelter and stay there," he said, flatly. "Sleep if you can but don't come out for any reason. Movement is easily spotted from the air."
The tiny space was a mess, the sand torn with the fury of their passion, splotched with blood. To one side something glinted as it rested against an edge of the shelter. Dumarest picked it up. It was a foot long, wings now broken, scaled body now crushed to ooze a thin ichor. Six legs ended in vicious claws. Two huge eyes glowed like flawed gems. Gaping mandibles were serrated like razor-edged saws. A streamlined creature, armed and armored, which could fly and strike and be as effective as a missile.
"What is it?" Lavinia frowned as she studied it. "How did it get in here?"
He had carried it with him when he had dived into the shelter. He had crushed it, rolled on it, broken it with a slash of his palm. Had the final attack been to recover it? If any others had died they were not to be seen.
"The Sungari?" Lavinia glanced at Dumarest. "Is that what it is?"
A part but never the whole. No Pact could be made with such a thing. It was an extension as a bee was to a hive. A nocturnal flyer programmed to attack anything in the shape of a human. A collector of food which scoured the terrain during the hours of darkness.
Somewhere, buried deep, must repose the intelligences which directed it. The true Sungari.
Throwing aside the creature Dumarest said, "Get into the shelter now and wait. And remember what I said-don't leave it for any reason."
"And you, Earl?"
"I'll be close."
Meekly she obeyed, finding a pleasure in having decisions made for her, orders which she had to obey. The day brightened and she heard small scuffling sounds followed by silence. Through the opening she could see the thick column of smoke rising upwards. A shape rested beside it, manlike, still. Dumarest sleeping? Lying quietly as he tended the fire?
Turning she looked upwards along the slope of the hill towards the wreck. The summit traced a sharp edge across the sky, shadows like paint at the foot of rocks and tufted vegetation. The sky was clear, traced only with the thin strands of high-flying mist which gleamed at times like silver lace.
Her thirst increased and hunger caused her stomach to ache. She moved, pressing herself against the sand, forgetting physical misery in memory of the night. Never before had it been so wonderful. Never again would she need to envy another woman her experience of love.
Restlessly she turned, conscious of the heat, the cramped confines of the shelter. Beside the fire the shape lay as before, unmoving, a gleam coming from the ripped fabric. It vanished as she turned her head; a mirror now throwing its reflected beam elsewhere. How could Dumarest remain so still?
Softly she called to him. "Earl. Earl, are you asleep?"
The words died in the silence and, suddenly, she was convinced that he was dead or gone and that she was alone.
"Earl!"
The fabric at the opening parted as she thrust herself forward. Twisting she looked up the slope of the hill and saw the bulk of the wreck, the sharp line of the summit, the dark shape of the raft which hung above.
For a second she froze then jerked her head back into the shelter, praying that the lone occupant of the vehicle hadn't seen her. It was the mercenary, Gnais, leaning forward as he sat at the controls, head moving from side to side as he scanned the area.
The raft dropped lower, its shadow passing before her, the thin whine of the engine surprisingly loud as it hovered close to the column of smoke.
"Hey,
down there! Is anyone around?" His harsh voice grated through the air. "You by the fire-you hurt or something?"
Watching she saw the figure twitch a little. An arm moved and, from where he leaned over the edge of the raft, Gnais lifted his laser and fired.
Earl!
Lavinia tasted blood as her teeth dug into her lower lip. Her hands, clenched, drove nails into her palms and she felt physically ill. Dumarest dead! Murdered! Slaughtered like a stricken beast!
Vomit rose in her throat as she crouched, trembling in the shelter. A helpless animal as she watched the raft swing slowly over the area to finally come to rest a few yards from the wreck. The mercenary, casual, stepped from the vehicle and walked towards the fire.
"One down," she heard him mutter. "But where's the other? The woman?"
He spun as she moved, the laser lifting, freezing in his hand as he saw her face framed in the opening. Smiling he took a step towards her, another, a third.
"Come out, my dear, I won't hurt you. I saw the smoke and came to investigate. What happened? Were you attacked? Are you hurt?" His arm gestured upwards towards his raft. "I've water and food if you need it. Come out now, there's no need to be afraid."
A liar and she knew it. He would take her and use her and leave her body on the sand to be disposed of by scavengers. She could read it in his eyes, in the moist anticipation of his mouth. A vileness who, armed, was confident he could do as he liked without opposition. One who gestured with increasing impatience.
"Don't be foolish. Come out of there. I won't hurt you. Come on now." His voice thinned, became a snarl. "Move, you bitch! Get into the open before I teach you a lesson. What'll it be? Some channels burned into your back? A breast charred? Holes in your buttocks? Come out or I'll burn you!"
He meant it, wanted to do it, would probably take greater pleasure from the sadistic play than if she yielded meekly to his desires.
Yet she couldn't move.
Couldn't!
"Your last chance," he snapped. "No? Well, you asked for it."
Deliberately he fired. One of the rods supporting the flimsy roof of the shelter fused and fell to one side, fabric and sand falling to coat her body and soil her hair. Again the laser spat its beam and she screamed as fire touched her thigh to sear her flesh.
