Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  Hull entered the room, lean and elegant in khaki-colored silk, with a white silk bandanna knotted loosely around his neck. He carried a light pack, and strapped to one shoulder was a thin, wickedlooking rapier.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “Weapons all sharpened, packs on straight, shoelaces firmly tied? Excellent!”

  Hull walked to a window and drew the curtains aside.

  “Behold the first crack of dawn, a glorious streak in our eastern skies, harbinger of our fierce Lord Sun who rules the chase. I shall leave now. A servant will inform you when my half-hour grace is done. Then you may pursue and kill me upon sight—if you are able! The estate is fenced. I will remain within its confines and so shall you.”

  Hull bowed, then walked quickly and gracefully out of the room.

  “God, I hate these fancy birds!” Sammy Jones raved, after the door was closed. “They’re all alike, every one of them. Acting so cool and casual, so goddam heroic. If they only knew how bloody silly I think they are—me that’s been on hunts for twenty-eight lousy years.”

  “Why do you hunt? Blaine asked.

  JONES shrugged. “My father was an axeman and he taught me the business. It’s the only one I know.”

  “You could learn a different trade,” Blaine said.

  “I suppose I could. The fact is I like killing these aristocratic gentlemen. I hate every rich snob among them with their country club hereafter that a poor man can’t afford. I take pleasure in killing them, and if I had money, I’d pay for the privilege.”

  “And Hull enjoys killing poor men like you,” Blaine said. “It’s a sad world.”

  “No, just an honest one,” Sammy Jones told him. “Stand up. I’ll fasten your pack on right.”

  When that was done, Sammy Jones said, “Look, Tom, why don’t you and me stick together on this hunt? Mutual protection, like?”

  “My protection, you mean,” Blaine said.

  “Nothing to be ashamed of. Every skilled trade must be learned before it can be practiced. And what better man to learn from than myself, the finest of the fine?”

  “Thanks,” said Blaine gratefully. “I’ll try to hold up my end, Sammy.”

  “You’ll do great. Now Hull’s a fencer, be sure of it, and fencers have their little tricks which I’ll explain as we go along. When he—”

  At that moment, a servant entered, carrying an old, ornate chronometer. When the second hand passed twelve, he looked sharply at the hunters.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “the time of grace is passed. The chase may begin.”

  The hunters trooped outside into the gray, misty dawn. Theseus the tracker, balancing his trident across his shoulders, picked up the trail at once. It led upward, toward a mist-wreathed mountain.

  Spread out in a long single file, the hunters started up the mountain’s side.

  Soon the early morning sun had burned away the mists. Theseus lost the trail when it crossed bare granite. The hunters spread out in a broken line across the face of the mountain and continued advancing slowly and warily upward.

  At noon, the broadsword man picked a fragment of khaki-colored silk from a thornbush. A few minutes later, Theseus found footprints on moss. They led down into a narrow, thickly wooded valley. Eagerly the hunters pressed forward.

  “Here he is!” a man shouted.

  Blaine whirled and saw, fifty yards to his right, the man with the morning-star running forward. He was the youngest of the hunters, a brawny, self-confident Sicilian. His weapon consisted of a stout handle of ash, fixed to which was a foot of chain. At the end of the chain was a heavy spiked ball, the morning-star. He was whirling this weapon over his head and singing at the top of his lungs.

  JONES and Blaine sprinted toward him. They saw Hull break from the bushes, rapier in hand. The Sicilian leaped forward and swung a blow that could have felled a tree. Hull dodged lightly out of the way and lunged.

  The morning-star man gurgled and went down, pierced through the throat. Hull planted a foot on his chest, yanked the rapier free, and vanished again into the underbrush.

  “I never could understand why a man’d use a morning-star,” Sammy Jones said. “Too clumsy. If you don’t hit your man the first lick, you never recover in time.”

  The Sicilian was dead. Hull’s passage through the underbrush was clearly visible. They plunged in after him, followed by most of the hunters, with flankers ranged on either side.

  Soon they encountered rock again and the trail was lost.

  All afternoon they searched, with no luck. At sundown, they pitched camp on the mountainside, posted guards, and discussed the day’s hunting over a small campfire.

  “Where do you suppose he is?” Blaine asked.

  “He could be anywhere on the damned estate,” Jones said. “Remember, he knows every foot of ground here. We’re seeing it for the first time.”

  “Then he could hide from us indefinitely.”

  “If he wanted to. But he wants to be killed, remember? In a big, flashy, heroic way. So he’ll keep on trying to cut us down until we get him.”

  Blaine looked over his shoulder at the dark woods. “He could be standing there now, listening.”

  “No doubt he is,” Jones said. “I hope the guards stay awake.”

  Conversation droned on in the little camp and the fire burned low. Blaine wished morning would come. Darkness reversed the roles. The hunters were the hunted now, stalked by a cruel and amoral suicide intent upon taking as many lives with him as possible.

  With that thought, Blaine uneasily dozed off.

  SOMETIME before dawn, he was awakened by a scream. Grabbing his rifle, he sprang to his feet and peered into the darkness. There was another scream, closer this time, and the sound of hurried movement through the woods. Then someone threw a handful of leaves on the dying fire.

  In the sudden yellow glow, Blaine saw a man staggering back to the camp. It was one of the guards, trailing his spear behind him. He was bleeding in two places, but his wounds didn’t appear fatal.

  “That bastard,” the spearman sobbed, “that sneaky bastard.”

  “Take it easy, Chico,” one of the men said, ripping open the spearman’s shirt to clean and bandage the wound. “Did you get him?”

  “He was too quick,” the spearman moaned. “I missed.”

  That was the end of sleeping for the night.

  The hunters began moving again at the first light of dawn, widely scattered, looking for a trace of the Quarry. Theseus found a broken button and then a half-erased footprint. The hunt veered, winding up a narrow-faced mountain.

  At the head of the pack, Otto gave a sudden yell. “Hey! Here! I got him!”

  Theseus rushed toward him, followed by Blaine and Jones. They saw Hull backing away, watching intently as Otto advanced, swinging the bola around his cropped head. The Argentinian lasso hissed in the air, its three iron balls blurring. Then Otto released it. Instantly Hull flung himself to the ground. The bola snaked through the air inches above his head, wrapped itself around a tree limb and snapped it off. Hull, grinning broadly, ran toward the weaponless man.

  Before he could reach him, Theseus had arrived, flourishing his trident. They exchanged thrusts. Then Hull whirled and ran.

  Theseus lunged. The Quarry howled with pain but continued running.

  “Did you get him?” Jones asked.

  “A flesh wound in the rump,” Theseus said. “Probably just painful to his pride.”

  The hunters ran on, panting heavily, up the mountain’s side. But they had lost the Quarry again.

  They spread out, surrounding the narrowing mountain, and slowly began working their way toward the peak. Occasional noises and footprints told them the Quarry was still before them, retreating upward. As the peak narrowed, they were able to close their ranks more, lessening any chance of Hull slipping through.

  BY late afternoon, the pine and spruce trees had become sparse. Above them was a confused labyrinth of granite boulders, and past that the final pea
k itself.

  “Careful now!” Jones called to the hunters.

  As he said it, Hull launched an attack. Springing from behind a rack pinnacle, he came at old Bjorn the mace man, his rapier hissing, trying to cut the man down quickly and escape the throttling noose of hunters.

  But Bjorn gave ground only slowly, cautiously parrying the rapier thrusts, both hands on his mace as though it were a quarterstaff. Hull swore angrily at the phlegmatic man, attacked furiously, and threw himself aside just in time to avoid a blow of the mace.

  Old Bjorn closed—too rapidly. The rapier darted in and out of his chest like a snake’s flickering tongue. Bjorn’s mace dropped and his body began rolling down the mountainside.

  But the hunters had closed the circle again. Hull retreated upward, into a maze of boulders.

  The hunters pressed forward. Blaine noticed that the sun was almost down; already there was a twilight hue to the air, and long shadows stretched across the gray rocks.

  “Getting toward evening,” he panted to Jones.

  “Maybe half an hour more light,” Jones said, squinting at the sky. “We better get him soon. After dark, he could pick every man of us off from this rock.”

  They moved more quickly now, searching among the high boulders.

  “He could roll rocks down on us,” Blaine said nervously.

  “Not him,” Jones grunted. “He’s too damn proud.”

  And then Hull stepped from behind a high rock near Blaine.

  “All right, rifleman,” he challenged.

  Blaine, his rifle at high port, just managed to parry the thrust. The blade of the rapier rasped along the gun barrel, past his neck. Automatically he deflected it. Something drove him to roar as he lunged, to follow the lunge with an eager disemboweling slash and then a hopeful butt stroke intended to scatter his enemy’s brains across the rocks. For that moment, Blaine was no longer a civilized man operating under a painful necessity; he was a preying creature joyously pursuing his true vocation of murder.

  The Quarry avoided his blows with quick sullen grace. Blaine stumbled after him, anger sapping his skill. Suddenly he was shoved aside by Sammy Jones.

  “Mine,” Jones said. “All mine. I’m your boy, Hull. Try me with the pigsticker.”

  HULL, his face expressionless, advanced, his rapier flashing. Jones stood firm on slightly bowed legs, the battle-axe turning lightly in his hands. Hull feinted and lunged. Jones parried so hard that sparks flew, and the rapier bent like a green stick.

  The other hunters had come up now. They chose seats on nearby rocks and caught their wind, commenting on the duel and shouting advice.

  “Pin him against the cliff, Sammy!”

  “No, over the edge with him!”

  “Want some help?”

  “Hell, no!” Jones shouted back. “Watch out he don’t nip a finger, Sammy.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jones said. Blaine watched, his rage ebbing as quickly as it had come. He had assumed that a battle-axe would be a clumsy weapon requiring a full backswing for each stroke. But Sammy Jones handled the short, heavy axe as though it were a baton. He took no backswing but let drive from any position, recovering instantly, his implacable weight and drive forcing Hull toward the cliffs sheer edge.

  There was no real comparison between the two men, Blaine realized. Hull was a gifted amateur, a dilettante murderer; Jones was a seasoned killer. It was like matching a ferocious house dog against a jungle tiger.

  The end came quickly in the blue twilight of the mountaintop. Sammy Jones parried a thrust and stamped forward, swinging his axe backhanded. The blade bit deep into Hull’s left side. Hull fell screaming down the mountain’s side. For seconds afterward, they heard his body crash and turn.

  “Mark where he lies,” Sammy Jones said.

  “He’s gotta be dead,” said the saber man.

  “He probably is. But it isn’t a workmanlike job unless we make sure.”

  On the way down, they found Hull’s mangled and lifeless body. They marked the location for the burial party and walked on to the estate.

  16.

  THE hunters returned to the city in a group and threw a wild celebration. During the evening, Sammy Jones asked Blaine if he would join him on the next job.

  “I’ve got a nice deal lined up in Omsk,” Jones said. “A Russian nobleman wants to hold a couple of gladiatorial games. You’d have to use a spear, but it’s the same as a rifle. I’d train you on the way. After Omsk, there’s a really big hunt being organized in Manila. Five brothers aim to shove off together. They want fifty hunters to cut them down. What do you say?”

  Blaine thought carefully before answering. The hunter’s life was the most compatible he had found so far in this world. He liked the rough companionship of men like Sammy Jones, the straight, simple thinking, the life outdoors, the action that erased all doubts.

  On the other hand, there was something terribly pointless about wandering around the world as a paid killer, a modern and approved version of the bully, the bravo, the thug. There was something futile about action just for action’s sake, with no genuine intent or purpose behind it, no resolution or discovery. These considerations might not arise if he were truly what his body seemed; but he was not. The hiatus existed and had to be faced.

  And, finally, there were other problems that this world presented, other challenges more fitting to his personality. And those had to be met.

  “Sorry, Sammy,” he said.

  Jones shook his head. “You’re making a mistake, Tom. You’re a natural-born killer. There’s nothing else for you.”

  “Perhaps not,” Blaine admitted. “I have to find out for sure, though.”

  “Well, good luck,” Sammy Jones said. “And take care of that body of yours. You picked a good one.”

  Blaine blinked involuntarily. “Is it so obvious?”

  Jones grinned. “I been around, Tom. I can tell when a man is wearing a host. If your mind had been born in that body, you’d be away and hunting with me. And if your mind had been born in a different body—”

  “Yes?”

  “You wouldn’t have gone hunting in the first place. It’s a tricky splice, Tom. You’d better figure out which way you’re going.”

  “Thanks,” Blaine said. They shook hands and Blaine left for his hotel.

  HE reached his room and flung himself, fully dressed, upon the bed. When he awoke, he would call Marie. But first he had to sleep. All plans, thoughts, problems, decisions, even dreams, would have to wait. He was tired down to the very bone.

  He snapped off the lights. Within seconds, he was asleep.

  Several hours later, he awoke with a sensation of something wrong. The room was dark. Everything was still, more silent and expectant than New York had any right to be.

  He sat upright in bed and heard a faint movement on the other side of the room, near the washbasin.

  Blaine reached out and snapped on the light. There was no one in the room. But as he watched, his enameled washbasin rose in the air. Slowly it lifted, hovering impossibly without support. And at the same time he heard a thin shattering laugh.

  He knew at once that he was being haunted, and by a poltergeist.

  Carefully he eased out of bed and moved toward the door. The suspended basin dipped suddenly and plunged toward his head. He ducked and the basin shattered against the wall.

  His water pitcher levitated now, followed by two heavy tumblers. Twisting and turning erratically, they edged toward him.

  Blaine picked up a pillow as a shield and rushed to the door. He turned the lock as a tumbler shattered above his head. The door wouldn’t open. The poltergeist was holding it shut.

  The pitcher struck him violently in the ribs. The remaining tumbler swung in an ominous circle around his head and he was forced to retreat from the door.

  He remembered the fire escape outside his window. But the poltergeist thought of it as he started to move. The curtains suddenly burst into flame. At the same instant, the pillow he wa
s holding caught fire, and Blaine threw if from him.

  “Help!” he shouted. “Help!”

  He was being forced into a corner of the room. With a rumble, the bed slid forward, blocking his retreat. A chair rose into the air and poised itself for a blow at his head.

  And continually there was a thin and shattering laughter that Blaine unnervingly could almost recognize.

  CONTINUED NEXT MONTH

  JOIN NOW

  Crompton had made the most chancy possible mind bet—for winning it meant he literally had to collect himself on two crazy worlds!

  ALISTAIR Crompton ran into trouble during his first hour in Port Newton. On a lonely side street, two ragged men crowded him against a wall. One of them carried a little penknife, and the other had a strip of hardened tape across his knuckles. They seemed to be vagrants and they weren’t quite sober. The taller ragged man put his thick hand on Crompton’s chest. “This is one of ’em, huh, Charlie?”

  “Yeah,” Charlie said. “He’s a Splitter. Let’s bust him up.”

  Crompton knew they must have recognized him from his distinctly shaped briefcase, which contained his Mikkleton Projector. Perhaps he should have put it into a regular suitcase. But he hadn’t expected any trouble.

  He still hadn’t recovered from the long journey between Earth and Mars. He’d had cramps on the high-gravity climb to Station Three, and vertigo on the free-fall to Exchange Point. He had barely pulled himself together by the time Mars Station One was reached. There he had gone through the tedious routine of customs, immigration and health, and learned how to use the auxiliary stomach-lung. Still spacesick, he had been given his visa and shuttled down to Port Newton.

  BOTH derelicts crowded close against him. “Lousy damned Splitter,” Charlie said.

  “Robbing real men of work.”

  “Mars be better off if we take care of him right now.”

  “All the planets be better off.” There it was, that fanatical hatred that some men had for the few with the courage and stability to Split. Crompton, trying to keep his voice steady, pointed out that Splitters took work from no one. On the contrary, they did work that regular men didn’t want.