The Kyben Stories

by Harlan Ellison

  “I’ve taught myself to think of you as some sort of refuse of the human race.

  “And,” he added, in lost frantic justification, “you’ve helped me think of you that way. Look at yourself!”

  Tallant knew what Parkhurst meant. He was garbage, he was a coward, he would run. He could almost picture his own slight body shaking as though under an ague, the sweat rolling off him, the fear a live thing around his body, his eyes large and white-ringed as they looked for a way out. Tallant knew he was a coward. It didn’t help any.

  He didn’t want to die like this!

  “So,” Parkhurst finished, “I hate you because I have to hate you, mister. And because I hate you, because I hate myself, and not you, I’ve done this to you. And because you are what you are, you’ll run and hide from those Kyban so that we can get to a relay station, and warn Earth they’re coming.”

  He began to swing up into the ship again, when Tallant once more clutched his arm.

  The coward had pleaded all through these last hours, and even now he knew no other way. A lifetime of sowing had reaped for him a harvest of spinelessness.

  “At least, at least tell me, is there a way to damp the bomb. Can it be done? You told them that it could!” The childish eagerness of his expression caused Parkhurst’s face to wrinkle with disgust.

  “There isn’t a bone in your body, is there?”

  “Answer me! Tell me!” Tallant shouted. Faces appeared whitely at the ports of the spaceship.

  “I can’t tell you, mister. If there were, if you knew for certain, you’d be off to the Kyban lines right now. But if you think it’ll go off when they touch it, you’ll wait a long time.” He shook the man’s hand loose and pulled himself up into the ship.

  The port began to slide home, and Parkhurst stopped it for a second, his voice softening as he said:

  “I know you. Goodbye, Benno Tallant. I wish I could say God bless you.”

  The port slid shut. Tallant could hear it being dogged, and the whine of the atomic motors starting up. He ran away from the blast area in wild blindness, seeking the protection of the bunkers set back from the blast pit. The bunkers beneath which the Resistance had their headquarters.

  He stood at the filtered window, watching the thin line of exhaust trailings disappearing into the night sky.

  He was alone.

  The last man on Deald’s World.

  He remembered what Parkhurst had said: I don’t hate you. But this has to be done. It has to be done, and you will have to do it. But I don’t hate you.

  And here he was, alone with a planet of attacking Kyban he had never even seen, and a total-destruction bomb in his stomach.

  V

  After they were gone, after the last drop of exhaust trail had been lost in the starry night sky, Tallant stood by the open door of the bunker, staring across the emptiness of the field. They had left him; all his begging, all his appeals to their humanity, all his struggling, all of it had been for nothing. He was lost, lost out here in space, with the emptiness of the field and the emptiness of his heart.

  The chill winds from the ocean came rippling across the field, caught him in their wake, and smoothed over him. He felt the hunger rising once more.

  But this time, if nothing else, he could drown himself in dream-dust. That was it! He would send himself into a dust stupor, and lie there in heaven till the bomb went off, killing him.

  He found the trapdoor, lifted it, and went down into the Resistance headquarters.

  A half-hour, throwing supplies around, smashing into lockers, breaking open cabinets, and he had found Doc Budder’s supply of medicinal dream-dust. Nurmo-heroinyte concentrate; the dream-dust that had found him, made him a slave after one small sampling when he was twenty-three years old. That had been a long time before this, and he knew this was his only rest now.

  He sniffed away a packet, and felt himself getting stronger, healthier, more fierce. Kyban? Yes, bring them on! He could fight the entire armada single-handed. Then let those lousy sonofabitching Earthies try to come back. Deald’s World would be his, he would be the king, the master of the universe!

  He strutted back up the stairs, slammed back the trapdoor, the white packets in his jumper pocket.

  Tallant saw his first Kyban then.

  They were swarming across the rocket field, hundreds of them. They were average-sized, more than five feet tall, less than six, all of them. They looked almost human—but golden-skinned; and their fingers ended in silky tentacles, six of them to a hand.

  Abruptly, the resemblance to normal humans terrified Tallant. Had they been grotesque, it would be something else; he could despise and hate them as monsters. But these Kyban were, if anything, handsomer than humans.

  He had never seen them before, but he had heard the screams that had echoed through the city’s canyons. He had heard a girl getting the flesh flayed off her back, and in his own way he had felt sorry for her. He remembered he had wished she might die from loss of blood. Wounds like that would only take three or four hours to kill her. With the Kyban, that would have been the quickest, least painful way.

  Yet they looked very much like humans. But golden.

  Suddenly Tallant realized he was trapped. He was caught in one of the bunkers, with no protection, no weapon, no way out. They would find him, and kill him, not realizing he had the bomb in him. They would not ask whether or not he carried a bomb…that was too ridiculous to consider.

  That was why Parkhurst had done it. It was too ridiculous to consider.

  They were looking for a sun-bomb, and that bomb—according to the logic of a searcher—would be in some obscure hiding place. In the ocean, under a thousand tons of dirt, in a cave. But not in a human being. A human being was the last thing they might consider.

  Nobody could be cruel enough to plant a sun-bomb in a human being.

  That was why Parkhurst had done it.

  He looked around the bunker wildly. There was only the one exit. And the field was crawling with Kyban—furious enough at having been outfoxed to gut the first Earthie they found.

  He watched them getting larger and larger in the filtered window.

  As he watched, he noticed something further about them. They all wore suits of insulating mail, and each carried a triple-thread blastick. They were armed to kill, not to capture prisoners. He was trapped!

  Tallant felt the fury of desperation welling up in him again. As it had when he had first learned he carried the sun-bomb. Not only to be boxed-in this way—to be a human bomb—but to have to keep running. He knew the Kyban were ruthless. They would already have started scouting for the bomb with ship-based emission detectors, spiraling over the planet in ever-decreasing circles, narrowing in on the bomb.

  When they found it was not stationary, they would know it was in a living carrier. They would close in relentlessly, then. He was trapped!

  But if these common foot-soldiers on the field got to him, he wouldn’t even get that far, far enough to run. They would scorch him and laugh over his charred carcass. If they had that long to laugh. The bomb was certain to go off if he died—Parkhurst had said as much.

  He had to get away.

  Parkhurst was right. The only escape was in flight.

  If he could stay alive long enough, he might be able to figure a way of dampening the bomb himself.

  Or he had to keep away from them long enough to get to the Kyban commanding officers. It was the only chance. If he kept running, and avoided them entirely—the bomb would detonate eventually. He had to get to the men in charge, and have them remove the bomb without triggering it.

  He would outsmart Parkhurst and his filthy bunch of survivors. He would not let himself get caught, unless it was by the right persons, in high places. Then he would offer his services to the Kyban, and help them hunt down the Earthmen, and kill them.

  After all, what did he owe Earth?

  Nothing. Nothing at all. They had tried to kill him, and he would make them pay. He would not
die! He would live with his beloved dream-dust forever. Forever!

  If he could remain alive that long, he would be able to think his way out of the Kyban camp. That was the answer!

  Yes, that was it.

  But now one Kyban foot-soldier was dodging, broken-field running, and now he was at the door of the bunker, and now he was inside, his triple-thread blastick roaring, spraying flame and death around the bunker.

  Tallant had been beside the window, behind the door. Now he slammed the door, so the others on the field could not see what was happening, and he found a new strength, a strength he had not known he possessed.

  He dove low from behind the Kyban soldier, tackling him. The soldier fell, the blastick jarred from his hands, and Benno Tallant was up, stamping the alien’s face in. One, two, three, four and the alien was dead, his head a pulped mass.

  Then Tallant knew what to do.

  He dragged the soldier by his feet to the edge of the trapdoor, lifted it, and shoved the Kyban through. The body went clattering down the stairs, and landed with a thump.

  Tallant grabbed up the blastick and slipped in before any more soldiers could appear. He let the trapdoor slam shut, knowing it would not be seen unless there was a thorough search; there was no reason to expect that, as they believed all Earthmen had left the planet. This was a reconnaissance mission, and there would be no search.

  He desperately hoped.

  He crouched down, beneath the trapdoor, the blastick ready in his hands, ready to smear off the face of anyone who lifted the door.

  Overhead he heard the sound of shouts, and the door of the bunker crashed open against the wall. He heard the rasp and roar of more blasticks being fired, and then the sound of voices in the sibilant hiss of the Kyban tongue. He heard boots stomping around above him, and men searching. Once a foot stepped directly on the trapdoor, and little bits of dust and dirt filtered through around the edges, and he thought he was caught then.

  But a shout from outside brought grudging answer from the soldiers, and they trooped out, leaving the bunker deserted.

  Tallant lifted the door to make certain, and when he saw it was clear, lifted it higher to look through the filtered window. The Kyban were moving off in the other direction.

  He decided to wait till they had gone. Night was upon the land, and he wanted to get away.

  While he waited, he sniffed a packet of dust.

  He was God again!

  He made it as far as the Blue Marshes before another patrol found him.

  He had been moving—unawares—in the most perfect escape pattern imaginable, circling outward, so that any Kyban ships tracking overhead with emission detectors could not pinpoint him. Eventually, of course, they would see that the target was not in the same place, and then they would recognize what the Earthmen had done.

  He kept moving.

  It was a totally cloudless, moonless night, with the stark black tips of the Faraway Mountains rising up beyond the marsh clingers and vines. The smell of the night was clean and quick, till he stepped off the land, and entered the Marshes. Then all the rot of the eternities swam up to offend his nostrils.

  Tallant’s stomach heaved, and for a moment he wondered if vomiting would set the bomb off. Then he recalled having been sick before, and knew action of that sort could not trigger the weapon.

  He stepped into the swirling, sucking blue-black mud, and instantly felt it dragging down, down at his boots. He lifted the blastick above his head for leverage, and stepped high, pulling up each foot with a muted, sucking thwup! as he slowly moved.

  The Marshes were filled with animal life, and whether vicious or harmless, they all made their voices heard. The noises swelled as he trod deeper into the dankness, as though some unimaginable insect telegraphy was warning the inhabitants that outside life was approaching. Ahead of him, and slightly to the left, he heard the deep-throated roar of a beast, and he knew it was big.

  The fear began to ring his belly once more, and he found himself muttering, “Why me?” over and over again, in a dull monotone that somehow helped him keep going. As he moved, the subtle phosphorescence of the blue-black muck swirled, coating his lower legs and boots with glowing tips, and each step left a moment’s round-edged hole in the stuff. Which was quickly sucked closed.

  It was as he was scrambling over a rotted stump, fallen across the open way, having set his blastick in the crotch of a bush on the other side, that the beast broke out of the clinging matted vines, and trumpeted its warning at him.

  Tallant froze. One foot in the air, the other shoved into a niche in the stump, his hands holding his full weight. His eyes opened wide, and he saw the dark gray bulk of the animal all at once.

  It was almost triangular. A smooth thorax rose to an almost idiotically tiny head, set at the apex of the triangle. The back was a long slope that tapered to the ground. Its eight legs were set under it, almost as a kickplate might be set under a bookcase.

  Two tiny red eyes gleamed through the mist of the Blue Marshes, set above a square snout and a fanged mouth that slobbered ooze. The beast stood silent for a moment. Then muted coughs left its throat, and its imbecilic head rose an inch on the non-existent neck.

  It sniffed the breeze, it sniffed the mist, it sniffed the spoor of Benno Tallant. It took one step, two, faltering, as though trying to decide whether advance was recommended. Tallant stared at the animal, unable to move from its path, a cold wash of complete terror hinging him to the stump as if it were the one solid form in the universe.

  The beast trumpeted again, and lumbered forward.

  Its scream struck out into the night, and the blast of fire that ripped at its gray hide came from nowhere. The beast rose on its back sets of legs, pawing at the sky. Another scheeee of power and the flames bit at the animal’s tiny head.

  For an instant the thing was wrapped in flame and smoke, then it exploded outward. Blood spilled through the leaves and vines, covering Tallant with warm, sticky liquid. Bits of flesh cascaded down, and he felt one slippery bit go sliding down his cheek.

  His stomach twisted painfully in him, but the explosion unstuck him. He was not alone in the Marshes.

  Since he was the last man on Deald’s World, there was only one other answer.

  Kyban? Kyban!

  Then he heard their voices above the trembling sounds of the Marshes. They were around a bank of bushy trees, about to burst into the clearing where the scattered hulk of the beast lay, quivering, even in death.

  Tallant felt a strange quivering in himself. He found a sudden inexplicable identification with the beast, lying out there in the open. That beast had been more man than he. It had died, in its brutishness, but it had not turned and run away. He knew the animal had no mind, and yet there was something…something…in the beast’s death that made him feel altered, changed, matured. He could never tell what it had been, but when the animal had died, he knew he would never give up to the Kyban. He was still terribly frightened—the habits of a lifetime could not change in a moment—but there was a difference now. If he was going to die, he was going to make sure he died on his feet—not in the back as he ran away.

  The Kyban came into view. They moved out from his left, almost close enough for him to touch them. They moved across the clearing, and he knew they had not seen him. But they had mechanisms that could trace the bomb’s emissions, and in a few moments they would get his track. He had to do something—and quickly.

  The five Kyban moved to the dead animal, obviously too engrossed in examining their kill to study their detectors. Tallant reached for the blastick in the crotch of the tree.

  He slipped on the stump, and his hand collided with the metal of the weapon. It clattered free from the tree, and fell with a splash into the mud.

  One of the Kyban whirled, saw Tallant, and screamed something softly deadly to his companions, bringing his own instrument up. A blast of blue power streaked through the space between them, and Tallant hesitated only an instant. It was almost an ins
tant too long. The blast-beam seared across his back, barely touching him, ripping wide his jumper’s covering, scorching his flesh.

  He screamed in agony, and dove headfirst into the muck himself, both trying to extinguish the fires of hell that arched on his back, and trying to find the weapon that had disappeared into the mire.

  He fell solidly into the stuff, and felt it closing over his head. It was a pool of mud deeper than he had thought.

  The stuff clogged his throat, and he struck out blindly. His hands broke to the top, and he suddenly realized this might be his only way out.

  He tried to reach bottom, found it with his flailing feet, and dragged himself across the pool, gagging with each step. He felt the land rising under him, and stuck his head out momentarily.

  The Kyban were still in front of him, but they were turned away slightly, thinking he was still in the same position, that perhaps he had drowned.

  He knew immediately that he had to kill them all, and before they could call in to their superiors, or the game was up. The moment the Kyban Command knew there was a human left on the planet, they would realize where the bomb was hidden. Then any chance he had of surviving was gone.

  He saw one of the Kyban—a tallish one with golden hair clipped into an extremely exaggerated flattop—turning toward him, his blastick at the ready. Then the adrenaline pumped through Tallant’s veins, and he saw the beast, and for the first time in his life—knowing the dream-dust had worn off, but not really caring—he moved with aggression. He started running.

  Lifting his feet high, he pounded around the rim of the pool, spraying blue mud and slime in every direction. The suddenness of the movement surprised the Kyban, and he failed to bring the blastick into play.

  In a moment, Tallant was on him, the drive of his rushing advance bowling the Kyban over. Tallant’s foot came down with a snap, and he felt the alien’s neck snap under the pressure of his boot.