by Dean Koontz
"Wheres Lotus?" I asked.
"Out picking berries somewhere. You know her."
"You know what about her?" Lotus asked as she drifted over a nearby corral fence, her blue-fog wings fluttering gently as she glided on the breezes. "What would you say of me behind my back, Crazy?"
Crazy Horse stomped his hooves, folded his hands in supplication. "What could I say behind your back, pretty one, when you are possessed of such marvelous ears?"
Lotus settled on the ground next to me. She fingered the delicate, elongated shells that were her elfin ears, looked at Crazy. "Yours are bigger. I dont think I should make nasty remarks about another persons ears if mine were distended bladders like yours."
Crazy snorted, shook his huge head so that his wild mane of hair flopped, fluffed, and covered his baggy ears.
Satisfied, Lotus said, "Im on time, I trust."
"Trouble is," I said, putting an arm around her tiny waist (twenty inches) and looking down on her small form (four feet eleven), "is that you know damned well wed wait for you all day and not be angry."
"Thats cause Im the prettiest girl around," she snapped, her green-blue eyes adance.
"Not much competition on an all-male ranch," Crazy muttered.
"And you, Crazy, are the handsomest horse Ive seen here." She smiled, and she said it so that he didnt know whether to be mad or to laugh. So he laughed.
That was Lotus. She was cute as Christmas multiplied by Halloween and Easter-and she knew it, which wasnt always so bad because she could pull her own weight easily enough. Aside from being one of the best botanists specializing in post-A-war plants, she was our aerial reconnaissance expert since she could fly ahead, land where a floater would never fit, and let us know what was dangerous or interesting that stood in our way. You say, But why a botanist on a bounty hunt? Well, true, we usually stalked killer animals that disturbed the small towns on the rural (since the war) planets. But now and again there were plants which were every bit as deadly as the Beasts. There were those walking plants on Fanner II that latched onto the nearest warm-blooded thing (often human), lashed roots around it, grew through it all night long, absorbed it, and walked away with the sunrise-a few inches taller, sporting a few new leaf buds, and satisfied until darkness came again. Which was every nine hours on Fanner II. Thus, Lotus.
"Lets get going," I said. "I want these cameras set before dark."
"After you, Butterfly," Crazy said, bowing as low as he could, considering his less-than-human posterior, and sweeping his arm in a courtly gesture of chivalry.
Lotus breezed into the floater like a puff of smoke. Crazy followed, and I went last, dogging the door behind. We had three seats across the front of that tub-Lotus between us. I was pilot.
A floater is a round ball with an inner and outer hull, each independent of the other. This way, if you ever meet an eighteen foot bat, like on Capistrano, you can have an outer hull beaten all to hell and never feel it inside or let it deflect the floater, shunting you off your course. The inner hull carries the drive engines.
I pulled back on the stick, lifted us, set out for the forest-jungle that had spread outward from the Harrisburg Crater. The screens gave us a view of the woods: ugly, festering, and at the edges gray-green ferns with thick leaves interlaced with spidery fluff that held heavy brown spoor balls. Later, these gave way to giant trees that choked the ferns and did away with them but were still just as gray and lifeless.
"You havent said much about this Beast that killed Garner," Crazy said. Garner was his brother. His twin, in fact, though Garner was perfectly normal.
"Im trying not to think about it."
"Tell us," Lotus said, pulling the thin membrane of her wings about her like a cloak. "Tell us all that Mr. Penuel told you."
"Mainly, were the fifth team to be sent after this Beast."
"The others?" Crazy asked.
"Garner wasnt its only victim. There were twenty-two in the other four teams all totaled. Twenty were never seen again."
"The other two?" Lotus asked.
"Rescue parties brought them out-in pieces."
Below, the world was gray-green...
Five miles into the forest where the huge, gnarled trees were dominant, I set the floater down in a small, rare clearing. Lotus went ahead to check for other clearings and crossings where it might be wisest to place the cameras and their triggers. If anything passes the electric eyes set ten feet before the cameras, it starts the film spinning. Chances were, we would get plenty of strange things on the film, but our killer would be easy to spot in the crowd. We had three descriptions from townspeople-all three making him around eight feet tall, man-like, and ugly. There were a lot of things that fit the first and last parts, but few of these Beasts were man-like. None of the descriptions gave any indication, however, why twenty-two experienced bounty hunters had not killed it.
Crazy was setting up the electric eyes and stringing the trip wire back to me, concealing it with a fine layer of dust. I was rigging the cameras in the rocks and bushes. Both of us had our backs to the same part of the forest.
That was a mistake...
* * *
II
Crazy would have heard it first except he still had his hair down over his ears, hindering his usually keen hearing. When I heard it-the snapping and low, fierce keening-it was almost on top of us. Whirling, I brought my gun up...
And up and up and up... Damn, was it big! Big and quiet, which is a combination we hit upon more often than you might think. It stared down through the trees at us, thirty feet high, its bulbous body burdened by an underslung belly which was slashed, in turn, by a wet, wicked mouth that opened and closed over us like an enormous vise. No long, slow throat-to-stomach affairs. Just open up and-slurp! Spiders make me sick. They are a common mutation, and they are always hideous and revolting. This one made me sicker than usual. There were ugly, cancerous scabs all over it, pus-coated hairs hanging heavily from each ripe disease pocket.
"Dont shoot yet!" I told Crazy. But he didnt have to be told. More than once, he had seen these things react reflexively to a shot, leap in and chomp up whatever was holding the gun. A big spider is not as large as it looks, because it is mostly spindly legs which can squeeze together fast into a little ball, drop the spider fifteen feet in height, and let it scuttle in under the trees after you. Spiders are handled with gentle, loving care until youre ready to kill them. Any other way, theyll kill you first.
"The rocks," I said quietly, watching the multi-prismed eye watch me. Very slowly, and with grace, we edged our way along the rocks where I had been setting that particular camera. Tiptoes and marshmallow footfalls...
The spider watched, swiveling its strangely tiny head to follow us, a row of fine hairs atwiddle below its eyes. Except for those hairs, it seemed petrified, immobile. In a split second-even before the splitting could be finished-it could be moving faster than a man could ever run.
The rocks we were negotiating were actually the ruins of centuries, tossed here by the A-blast that had leveled Harrisburg, a provincial capital at that time. It was a vast tumble of caves, valleys, mountains of bricks and stone and powdered mortar.
Moving a tentative step, the spider settled massive legs through the brush with a minimum of noise, keened a bit louder, an out-of-tune harmonica.
Ulysses, you were a punk hero!
We reached a place where the rock broke open, forming a small valley, closing again four hundred feet away and ending at the mouth of a dark tunnel that led further into the ruins-a tunnel too small for a Beast like this, but not too small for Crazy and me. "Now," I whispered. "Run!"
We turned, loped into the valley, cutting ourselves off from the view of the spider. Crazy reached the tunnel first. His legs are often an asset when speed is needed-but, God, you should see him try to dance!
I was halfway down the valley when the spider mounted the one valley wall and looked down on us. The colossal red eyes glittere
d accusingly. Supper had run away. Bad, bad. Then the belly appeared, mandibles open and clacking. Clackinty-clack-clack!
Fsstphss! Crazy opened fire with his vibra pistol, caught on of the legs. The spider drew its member up, twiddled it madly. Crazy fired again, caught another leg and blew it completely off. The huge limb bounced over the rocks, wedged between two of them, and continued squirming, not yet aware that it was loose, a thing away from its owner and soon to rot.
I ran.
The spider started down into the valley.
I pressed my aching lungs and screaming muscles to even faster operation.
Crazy fired again, caught the Beast in the side, tore it open. But spiders dont bleed, and a fist-sized hole wasnt stopping this baby.
Besides, we had overlooked, in our haste, a very important thing: tunnels make nice homes-for things. Crazy was raising his pistol for a shot at the giant head when a pinkish grub-like creature came wriggling out of the tunnel in defense of its abode, casting off three inch, hard thorns, one of which struck Crazys arm, sent him tumbling, his gun lost in the stones.
The spider screeched insanely, head hobbling, stomach clacking.
The grub, suddenly a more immediate danger, hissed, arched its ribbed back, and flung itself forward in spasmodic lurches that were immediately followed by the jerking release of the spines that in some places, were hurled with enough force to penetrate rocks. I ran to Crazy, tried dragging him to the walls where the Beasts could attack only from the front. But dragging three hundred and fifty pounds of unconscious horse-man is harder to do than it sounds-and it sounds pretty damn hard!
I crouched behind Crazy Horse, back to the spider, pulled the spine from his arm. There was a lot of blood pumping out of that arm. Entirely too much blood. Nothing there to stop it with, either. I turned to the grub, looked for a vulnerable spot. Most of its belly was calloused, but the first two segments always seemed to be aloft in the manner of a "running" snake. I aimed my vibra-pistol at these first two soft segments, pulled the trigger and held it down. The worm went kicking into the air, turning over and over, tossing off spines that shot over our heads. It crashed back to the ground when I stopped firing, was very still.
But the spider...
It was at the opposite end of the valley now, having used the grubs diversions as a chance to make an easy entry. Behind it, anchored to the rubble, was a thin web structure. It was getting ready to snare us.
Crazy moaned, kicked a foot, lapsed into unconsciousness again, blood all over him, face twisted strangely.
The spider leaped.
All those legs just tensed, and it was moving through the air, hitting the ground, running. Silent.
I fired.
The shot caught it in the legs, folded the spindly members up under it, and sent it tumbling backward like a greasy dust ball caught in a strong draft. After it came to rest, it lay still so long that I thought it was dead. But finally it stirred, stood, and clung to the rubble wall, watching me. I was mentally charting all possible pathways of advancement for it, trying to anticipate its next move. But I didnt expect the silk to come spitting out like liquid smoke from so great a distance. Lazily, it twirled toward us, undulating like a snake formed of mist. The spider could, it seemed, direct two of these lines at the same time, for two of them approached. One struck the wall to the left, curling over a rocky projection halfway up; the second hit an equal height on the opposite wall, lacing through loosely stacked rubble and welding its hold into a solid position. Then the Beast began swinging the lines, wrapping them back and forth from wall to wall, closing us in.
I sat on the ground, braced my back against Crazy, thumbed the controls of the pistol to full power. The web dropped over us, fouled my hand. I had to spend several valuable seconds untangling the sticky mess from the gun and my fingers. When I raised the weapon again, the spider had advanced fifty feet. I fired. But the web was so dense now that it absorbed the blast, diffused it, dissolved it. Still, I could not dissolve it as fast as the spider could make it.
Another filament dropped across my back. Another curled over my right ear, dropped across my shoulder and down to wind at my waist. Crazy was almost covered. I shot it again. The web absorbed it. The web dissolved. The web was replaced. The spider was keening more frantically than ever, no longer quiet in its advance, now assured of victory, now jubilant. Several sticky strands lashed around me, pinning my arms to my chest. More. Still more. I was being cocooned. The gun dropped out of my hands as circulation was cut down in my arms, my hands made numb and useless.
A strand crossed my face, fouled an eye. It was amazingly cool against my skin.
Another strand curled over my lips, drifted upward into my nostrils and stuck there, tickling.
Crazy was invisible beneath a white drift of the snowy thread.
The spider tensed to leap...
* * *
III
Lotus when there is danger? A helpless, frightened rabbit of a girl? No. Thats not Lotus at all. Lotus is a girl who comes fluttering over the treetops when a spider is about to devour her friends and leaps onto the spider because she has no gun.
Why no gun? A knife, thats why. She keeps it in her waistband. Only the red gem handle shows-until she has to use it. Then, lightning isnt any faster.
I was pinned by the web, watching the hairy black mutant dance across the foggy highway it had built when she came into view in the morning sky and spotted the action. She dipped, swayed with half a seconds hesitation, then landed on the twisted semi-shoulders behind the Beasts head. She tossed her legs around that neck, riding it like it was a wild bronc and seeming to enjoy the ride as much as the cowboys on real horses back at Horners ranch. It swiveled its eyes, trying to catch sight of her, but the eyes didnt revolve far enough. Just when they were at the apex of their revolution, she drove the silver blade into the left orb, up to the crimson gem hilt, and slashed downard.
The spider reared.
The stream of web fluid ceased abruptly, and the Beast wobbled backward down the inclined silken plane, throbbing its voice like a thousand flutes gone sour. It staggered sideways like a drunk. I wanted to shout that it might try to roll over on her, but my mouth was blocked with fast-drying web, and I could not move my arms to clear it.
She pulled the knife out, found the second eye with it. The spider flailed, ran at the cliffs, found it too much trouble to climb out and still bear the pain that was wracking it. Blindly, it stumbled from one cliff to the other, seeking some pathway in the darkness and finding none. Then it rolled.
"Lotus!" I screamed. But it came out a choked, reverberating whisper, strained through the matting on my lips.
But she was flying again, her wings beating furiously until they had taken her high enough to catch the low breezes. They fluffed out then, carried her back and forth across the chasm, letting her watch the spider.
It died. Slowly, and with lots of kicking. Once I was sure it was going to blunder onto the web and fall in on Crazy and me, but it never did. When it was down for good, Lotus drifted in to the web, settled very gently at its edge. "Andy! Crazy!"
I tried to call out. The result was a low-key vibration in the web.
"I hear you! Ill get you out."
I blessed her elongated ears. A moment later, she began hacking into the silken fiber with her knife. In time, she reached me, cut away the fuzz that bound my arms and closed my mouth. Together, we removed Crazy, ready for the worst.
But it wasnt that bad at all. He was still unconscious, but the webbing had matted over the grub-spine wound, putting a stop to the blood that had been fountaining from it.
"Well have to take him back," I said.
"The cameras?"
"We were only setting up the second one."
"You finish."
"I cant just-"
"You finish," she insisted. "I checked ahead. Follow the main trail for half a mile, and youll cross six major intersections. That should
give us enough coverage to see if the Beast uses these trails regularly. If you bring the floater here first, I can get to the medikit and take care of Crazy."
"He may be-"
"Hell be okay. Therere enough supplies in the floater to fix him up without any trouble."
She was a good nurse; I knew that from wounds of my own she had bound. "Okay," I said. "Ill be back in a minute." Actually, it was four minutes, but when I settled the floater down next to the pieces of web, she already had Crazy uncovered and clean of every fragment of the stuff. I took the cameras, slung them over my shoulders, and set out-lugging what two were meant to carry-keeping my gun drawn and an eye out for hairy trees...
Three hours later, I stumbled back, worn out and showing it. Lotus and Crazy were sitting there laughing about something. "Nice way to get out of work," I said, standing over them.
Crazy looked up and whinnied that silly whinny of his. "You can have this blasted arm if you want. Id rather have gone setting the cameras than nursing this."
"A likely story."
"Wed better be getting back," Lotus said. "Looks like a storm, and I dont want to see what might come tramping around in the rain."
It was heavy rain that gave Fanner IIs vampire plants their most voracious appetites.
"Okay. Can you walk, Crazy?"
"I can manage."
One day, the men start looking like animals to you. Noses metamorphose into snouts. Eyes grow beadier. Ears suddenly become tufted with hair. Fingernails take on the appearance of claws. And you realize you are allowed to shoot animals: it is within you to shoot animals, though men are off limits. You go to oil your guns... But you also realize you are just imagining them as animals so that you will be able to shoot them and revenge your mother-and maybe wipe out that entire chapter of your life. Deep down, you fear that you want to spill the rich blood of men-spill it and drink it...