The Killer Thing

by Kate Wilhelm

  He thought of the storm, of the cold, wet winds smelling of seas, of the blindingly bright lightning thrusts, and he wondered at the strange desires the thoughts aroused in him.

  “Our weather is gentle always,” Lar had said. He had been saddened by the words, without knowing why. Trace lifted a rock and fell with it, letting go of his burden only an instant before crashing to the ground. He lay there with his eyes closed and wondered if he would be able to get up again, later, when he risked the effort. A swift flood of desire for Lar pounded through him and he knew that always he had wanted to take her with the violence of a storm that loves the land that it pounds. He wanted to hold her naked in his arms while the lightning flashed and thunder reverberated; he wanted to share the terror evoked by the elements, and forget the terrors in the violence of love making.

  “You were wrong, Mother!” he moaned, his eyes tightly closed in pain: the pain of his tormented body, worse, the pain of his desire that was not ebbing, but rising still.

  Marry Conine, dear. It’s a gesture only. There are family monies, records, a bit of land here and there… Someone should inherit it after you… Don’t turn away, dear. This is how it is done. Your father and I saw each other only three or four times, after all. It was a very satisfactory arrangement… Corrine won’t make any demands, other than a son…

  To be a soldier…?

  Of course. We have the family tradition, as does Corrine. We have always bred soldiers. You are a man now, dear, with a man’s responsibilities… Love is nothing. You must believe this. I know you are romantic, dear, all of you youngsters are. You should be, but you should also be realistic. You think that out there somewhere is the perfect girl for you, that after you retire you will find a piece of paradise somewhere and marry a princess and live happily ever after… Darling, it isn’t like that. Earthmen are not compatible with any aliens yet found. There can be no mating with any aliens. They are never human, you know.

  Lar mocking him with black eyes shining. You don’t have to ask me, Captain. You know that. The others don’t ask the women. They take them. You would pretend it is something that it isn’t?

  Damn you, Lar!

  I met this girl, Duncan, small girl, back hair, black eyes, a nurse…

  I know what you need, boy. Some dish, eh? Come on, let’s go get ‘em.

  You’re hurting me, Captain. Please…

  I want to hurt you, you slut. You bitch! You alien bitch!

  Bleeding and weeping, large blue eyes tear-filled, contorted face…

  Lying on the hot ground Trace thought of the girl he had misused after leaving Lar untouched. He didn’t even know the girl’s name, or how badly he had hurt her… He thought of other girls, other women… “Lar,” he whispered, “I am sorry. I am sorry.”

  After a moment he pushed himself away from the ground; the sun was coming straight down on him. It was noon. His body felt only soreness then, and a distant ache that never really left him, an emptiness that nothing seemed to satisfy. He didn’t look again at the wall, but staggered from the passage reeling drunkenly as he went.

  Inside the dinghy he rested several minutes without thought. Time seemed to be changing somehow; he had no awareness of time passing when he was not actively thinking of it. He could not have said if he had rested for five minutes or for half a day when he rose from the bed. He knew he had to eat, had to drink, knew that he had to finish the search for the robot’s dinghy. Even his thoughts were distorted, each one occupying his entire being, as if his whole organism was involved with thinking through a simple thought like, I must eat.

  He chose a fruit mixture, and a meat preparation, and he forced the contents of both tubes down. He found that it was easier if he didn’t think of what he was doing, but paid attention only long enough to get his hands started, to get his throat muscles swallowing properly, and then forgot the process. He felt far removed from it all. He measured out his water carefully and sipped it, letting his thoughts remain distant, sorry as soon as the water was gone that he had not concentrated on it, for suddenly he felt that he hadn’t had any at all. He searched through the medical supplies and found nothing that he could rely on to bring him back into firmer contact with his surroundings, but he felt that as long as he realised this curious dissociation was his symptom, he would be able to cope with it, make allowances for it. He tried to swallow anti-fever capsules and found that he couldn’t swallow them dry any longer; they stuck to his mouth and throat, choking him until he took water and washed them down.

  He took his photograph-maps out then and made his eyes see the radiation trails he had crossed; he discovered that with no volition on his part, his eyes drifted from the trails and began weaving in and out of the towers of rocks that threw shadow patterns on the map. Very carefully he set controls on the panel of the dinghy, and then double checked them. He never had used these controls except in practice. If he stopped controlling the little craft, it would hover where he relinquished control, then would return to this spot at the end of a two-hour period of flight. He changed the time to allow him three hours for the search, and then, knowing that he would be returned to camp in the event that he blacked out, he eased the dinghy out from the rocks and took off. He felt very lightheaded, sometimes feeling that he was on the inside of the craft, and that it was motionless, other times feeling that he was on the outside of it with the ground tumbling away from him. The dinghy was flying almost entirely on automatic when he rejoined the radiation lines he had mapped before. Every time the craft came to another trail, crossing the one it followed, it hovered until he took over. When it hovered, the down drafts of air blew up columns of sand that then settled in neat little hills over each juncture when he went on. Once he let the craft fly out for twenty-four miles before he turned it around and followed the trail back to the first cross-trail. It all seemed to be so far removed from him personally, so unimportant. The radiation alarm sounded incessantly, and it became the voices of Duncan, of the men aboard the fleet ship in orbit, his mother, the voices of the boys back in the barracks…

  He dared not land. His dinghy would get hot and his radiation alarm would then be useless. He laughed. If he landed somewhere else and came back on foot, he would get hot… He had been out for two hours when he began to come wide awake and alert again, and he cursed vehemently when he checked his mileage. In the state he had been in he could have flown over the other dinghy a dozen times without its making an impression on his befuddled mind. It would be on his film if he had, but he had no way to know until he examined the film. Below him there seemed to be at least half a dozen trails leading in different directions, and he realised that the robot had been using this as its starting point in its search for him and Duncan. Later it had learned that it need not return to the starting point after each false trail, but here, it seemed the thing had come back again and again…

  Trace jerked wide awake then. It had returned to this location. Its starting place. That meant that the dinghy had to be close now. He slowed and studied the ground, searching for the basalt cliff where he had seen the robot. There were too many of the black shadows for him to be able to tell if any given rocks were black or white, or any of the shades in between. The dinghy itself would not be radiating; its radiation would be entering the ground underneath the shield of invisibility. He searched for an area in the midst of the hot trails that was free of radiation. There were several such blank spaces. Carefully he covered the area beneath the dinghy so that the cameras would be certain to have every inch of it on film, and then it was time to turn and go back to the valley. There was still much work to be done on the passages. As he turned he saw the basalt cliffs.

  He stiffened with excitement, and disregarding the automatic pilot light that blinked off and on, as if in annoyance, he took over the controls and circled the cliff, trying to pick out the ledge on which he had stood that day. They had landed on the other side of it, and he had found the ledge that he could climb, winding around the cliff, giving him
a view for ten miles around almost. He circled the site of the first landing; he saw the ledge he had climbed. The radiation trails were thick and heavy under him; the robot had found the site of their landing then. Knowing that the entire area was on the film, that he could study the film and find the right spot to locate the other dinghy, he did turn back. Within minutes he was landed and had his maps spread out, superimposing the films over them.

  There, or there… There were four blank areas, any one of which could be the other dinghy. Within twelve miles of his valley there was fuel, oxygen, and water. There had to be a way of getting to it without getting too hot, or letting his dinghy get too hot… There had to be a way of entering it once he did pinpoint it exactly… He couldn’t waste his dwindling fuel in flying back and forth again until he had his plan readied. Tomorrow. He’d have figured it out by tomorrow and then… He thought of the cache of water that must be in the other dinghy and he almost sobbed wanting it. “Damn you, Duncan,” he whispered. “Damn you, damn you.” He thought hungrily of the water dripping off the injured man’s body, soaking into his clothing, wasted on him… He swallowed a mouthful of his remaining water, and he knew that it would be gone on the next day. He had to find the other dinghy on the next day, or he would die of thirst. He had to finish sealing his valley so that if the robot came before he took off, it wouldn’t be able to get him. He laughed and got up to go back to his fence. He had an hour before the wind would drive him back inside. He would finish the fence by then. Tomorrow he would find the other dinghy. It would take time to find it, to transfer the water and fuel, to sabotage it… If the robot got to him before he finished with everything, it wouldn’t matter any longer. He could take off and be out of range before it could swing its laser to cover him, even if it were on the rim of the valley itself by then. He would study the map, make a plan, he had all night to perfect his plans… He touched his cracked lips and knew even that didn’t matter. Soon there would be plenty of water. He finished building the fence, made it six feet high, and when the wind started to blow he went back to the dinghy and pulled out the maps. He didn’t take off his suit, didn’t even remove his hands from the gloves and when his head fell down to the maps, the face mask cushioned the fall so that he didn’t even feel it.

  Fifteen

  Trace had been sleeping, but was no longer. There was nothing he could see; his body felt nothing, his hands were somewhere and he couldn’t be certain where. He floated, drifted, with no knowledge of which way was up, which down. There was no sound anywhere. It was peaceful for a time, but then his eyes began straining to see something, anything. His field of vision was small, dark, completely black, a window blacked out. It grew, expanded until it filled all the space before him, then abruptly shrank to a keyhole-sized window again, but always black. Worse than the black of nothingness was the silence, with his body noises stilled, no sound of air in his chest, or in his nostrils. No sound of anything anywhere.

  “I am awake; this isn’t a dream. Delirious? I must be delirious… It will pass.” There was a noise from somewhere… voices. He listened to them intently. Fleet voices raised in the dirge:

  We’ve grown old and weary

  And travelled too far

  To return to our birthplace.

  We followed a star.

  If in a hereafter

  We’ve asked what our hopes are

  Worshipped in a jar

  “To follow a star.”

  Oh, a handful of earth

  Worshipped in a jar

  Is a God for a Fleetman

  Following a star.

  Some time later there were images, framed in glaring colours, sometimes like snapshots, sometimes like 3-D. They came very quickly, started small, grew to fill the window, were gone with the next already speeding up out of nowhere: god in a jar slides and desks don’t you understand at all if you know you belong you don’t fight swirling gases with figures growing green and blue flowers on wavery stems and figures rising from gases smelling of ovens and kilns children’s thumb pots blue and grey and brown either or this or that up or down black or white. It isn’t like that at all! Don’t you understand at all? I don’t decide now I will feel my happiness: I feel happy. Don’t say now I will think about this: think about it. Child again where you do things for nothing, just because you do pots smashed smelling of kilns contorted figures in death dances. Dances Corrine cool and untouched clean brittle clean scalded-and-painted-over-clean. They are pigs back on Earth, filthy pigs surrounded by filthy little pigs all sucking, sucking, standing on top of each other’s heads, copulating in beds overcrowded with little pigs already. Nobody ever goes back there! Dirty, dirty, filthy. Like a disease spreading through the universe. Broad circles black and light narrowing towards a centre somewhere far away, smooth, frictionless surfaces, sliding downwards towards the centre and is it black or light? No closer; too hot. Whole top layer seething, stark with atmosphere. A demonstration only boys, others will bow down down. Demonstration only. Couple of hundred years come back and re-seed it, start a paradise of our own. Mellic next seething to outermost atmosphere, find a piece of paradise and live happily ever after all lies sluts and bitches and god’s in a jar you are the new gods, didn’t they tell you alien bitches good for one thing you stick it in and let ‘er go, boy! alien bitches sluts not human die in convulsions of rejection Lar twisting in convulsions bleeding red and hot screaming around her figures rising in death dances from misty smoke and gases hideous room with a bed touching each wall dirty soiled bed words on the walls open windows with faces open mouths watering eyes clawing hands reaching inside Lar twisting and writhing with someone else using a strap on her, half human, inhuman unfinished human figures unfinished dancing drawing percussion weapons deafening noises of explosions and smells of gunpowder screams targets chained to trees out of range of their bullets beams touching them touching them only not lingering only touching them out of range of their bullets out of range of their bullets… Brunce’s gun in his hand spreading circle of blood on the shoulder of Gene Connors Brunce’s eyes boring into his the smoking revolver in his hand still behind Gene behind Trace… Running past Gene’s body… You’ve been to Tarbo boy! You’ve been to Tarbo totarbototarbo… don’t want to kill them. You don’t want not to. Indifference is worse than sheer brutality Captain Tracy. They are people like you like me like the Outsiders.

  Trace was sitting where he had dropped, still clad in his all-weather suit, one arm dangling, the other stretched out on the maps, both numbed and asleep. The stool on which he sat was small, plastic, and he could no longer feel it under him, nor could he feel his feet and legs held too long in one position. His face mask and helmet protected his face from the surface of the pull-down desk-top, and with any slight shift of his position, he felt that he was floating, as he was, surrounded by foam and the ungiving rigidity of the helmet and face piece. He had turned off the audio and the helmet was soundproof within it. He had forgotten to turn on the night glow inside the dinghy and without it there was a complete absence of light. He had no sense of touch, of heat, cold, sound, sight… no sensory data of any kind, only a mind, free-floating, unattached…

  Before his open, straining eyes paraded images superimposed one on another until there was no interior quiet; in his inner ear voices were raised and lowered. He could not tell if it lasted for minutes, or hours; he could not tell if he felt the sensations he experienced in his mind only, or in mind and body. When the figures were threatening, sometimes he ran, feeling hot and flushed with the effort, feeling the strain in his leg muscles and in his chest. His body told him he was running and he believed it. Lights began to come and go, patterned lights, blocks of yellows, with smaller rectangles of red and green, or violet and orange… lights that grew from coin size to cover the entire field of his vision, lights of dazzling brightness, other lights that were so dim that he squinted in order to see them better. There was a meaning in the lights, if he could only decipher it. The lights lost their precise forms
and began wavering, looking like flames, tongues of colour that leaped, rose, fell, grew again. He understood that the lights represented his life: they had started subdued and dim without form and had become more and more violent, with rigid shapes, but now again they were formless. To his horror he saw that the clarity of the colours was diminishing; they were becoming muddied and ugly, and he realised that they were blending, all coming together, getting darker, muddier, uglier. He screamed at them to go away. He screamed again and again, for he could not hear the screams that were echoing through the dinghy. The colours ran together and began dripping away from the framework that had held them together. They ran down to form a puddle of colourless muck, and from it rose ship after ship. Outsiders’ ships of gold.