back into the pouch. Then he put his eye up to the hole.
It was dim inside, but a brazier was flickering a spastic
light across the walls and ceiling.
His search for Grice was ended.
Grice was inside. What was left of him.
Juanito had seen some peculiar and terrible things in
his years at the School. He had seen men crack from
strain, and he had seen stereoplays of torture and death;
he had witnessed and practiced many forms of pain infliction, he had learned how to steel himself against the onslaught of many enemies. But the Jukchus had their
own particular way of doing it
For the first time since he could remember, he was ill.
Deathly ill. Violently ill, against the snow and the side of
the hutch, in dry then slimey heaves. And when it bad
passed, his bead swam with waves of nausea,
DOOMS MAN
He lay there, his face pressed to the clean snow on the
other side of him, for the first time in his life lost in fear
and fascination of death.
He took some snow in his mouth, and more on his feverish forehead. Then he slumped against the side of the hutch and allowed his eyes to close. In the center of this
enemy village, with the remnants of a Ruskie-Chink horror battalion on every side, he slid into reverie.
He had to do it. Madness lay waiting a second away.
After a while, he was able to look through the hole
again. He had been wrong; Grice was not alone. There
were four others there, and from what little was left of
their clothing, he could see they had been members of the
Hi Guard, probably sent out to scout for the village and
captured by the Jukchus.
The half breeds were slicing them up.
It was a peculiar execution, for execution it had to be.
The men had been hung from the ceiling to almost floor
level, with ropes under their armpits and thighs. They
were, in effect, in a eat's cradle. Other bonds held them in
place, and each warrior who came through used his
scimitarlike longknife with skill and accuracy. It was not
a question of killing, but rather of maintaining life as long
·
as possible.
The Jukchus were a resourceful band, and skilled in
this form of death, for one of the men still hanging-like
so much beef on a hook-was without legs or arms, half
his torso sliced away, and his entrails dangling. Yet he
lived.
They all lived.
Grice lived.
Though his eyes were gone, his feet were severed from
his body, and the ropes under his armpits were held up
by strips of cloth tied to the loops. For he had no arms.
The prisoners uttered not a sound; it was apparent they
had been drugged somehow. Then, as Juanita stared
through the burnhole in the hutch's wall, he saw Grice's
eyes flicker open, and he knew the man was not drugged
after all. It was more a case of shock, insensitivity at the
nerve ends, at this stage of dismemberment. But Grice
was alive!
And Juanito had no way of getting to him.
DOOMSMAN
Even as the assassin watched, warriors passed before
him, making their terrible movements on the five things
that had once been men, hanging from the hutch's ceiling.
A lean, yellow-weathered Jukchu took a stance, swung
his longknife around his head as though it were a cat by
its tail, and sliced a chunk of flesh from the body on the
end of the line. The swish and plop sounds came to Juanito, and he knew he must act quickly. There was no telling how long this torture had been going on-from the looks of it, of the dried blood on the ground beneath each
carcass, for quite some time. It was strictly chance that he
had gotten here before Grice was completely cut to
shreds.
The possibility of obtaining information from the man
was even slight; but any further waiting would result in
loss of the one link to the man in the N. Chicago Chambers. Juanito thought swiftly, clearly.
He had to get that sliced hulk out of there, and get it
alone for a few moments. He had to make Grice talk. But
would-or could-Grice talk? Was he lost in a world of
shock and half life? Juanito had to take the chance.
He crawled away from the hutch, toward the outer ring
of light the torches threw. He saw one Jukchu warrior
leaning against a gnarled, white stump of what had once
been a hardy bush. The Jukchu was drinking from a
leather flasklike bag, and wiping his frozen mustache with
gloved hand.
, Juanito belly-crawled-just outside the half breed's
line of vision-till he was directly behind the man. Then
he got to one knee, drew his vibro-blade . . .
And in one fluid movement swarmed over the man
driving the shuddering whisper-thin death instrument into
the Jukchu's neck. The blade severed the man's vocal
cords at the instant before the blade pierced upward into
the brain. He died instantly, slumping back against Juanito.
The assassin dragged the man into the shadows, and
stripped him of his bulky, animal hide clothing. Then a
sparing application of dirt and skin-tinctures from his
pouch, the collodin scar to emulate that on the Jukchu's
cheek, a bit of plastoid material in imitation of the mous-
DOOMSMAN
tache, and Juanito emerged from the shadows a f�w minlater the perfect replica of the dead half-breed.
With little difficulty Juanito managed to get into the
nne of circling warriors. For an instant he thought he
might have trouble, for one of the Jukchus did not care
for the crowding, but Juanito mumbled a throaty nothing
at the man, and brandished his own longknife. The other
fell back a step and placated the apparently angered
Juanita with mild blubberings.
Juanita paid no attention to the man thereafter, but advanced as the line advanced.
The group moved swiftly-for how long did it take to
slash lick and clean a longknife?
In a few minutes he was at the open door of the rude
hutch, and still his plan was not wholly formed. Juanita
was relying on instinct and reflexes to carry him. And
then he was inside. The hutch smelled terrible.
The odor of musky incense mingled darkly with the
unell of dried blood, and worse, the smell of freshly
slaughtered meat Juanita held his breath aud then let it
out slowly.
He saw a tall Jukchu with weathered yellow skin and a
peaked miter standing beside the hanging horrors. After
each warrior took his swing, the mitered Jukchu would
apply a long stick with a slimey substance on it to the
wound; he was caulking the blood off. That explained
why the Hi Guards and Grice had not long since died of
blood loss.
Juanita's longknife was at the ready, as the man before
him took a cut from the cheek of the man beside Grice.
Then Juanita's reflexes were in the ascendant, and he
knew the only way to get Grice away from here. The brazier that burned fitfully beside the yellow-slonned Jukchu.
As gaily as possible, for such a happy occ
asion as this
was to the Jukchus, he stepped forward Awkwardly.
Clumsily. His shoulder caught the back of the man ahead,
busy licking his longknife,
The man stumbled ahead, throwing luanitoealculatedly---ofl-balance. Juanito went c&eel!J.i.ng mto the mitered Jukchu who threw him back in &df-defc:nse. Juamto went into the brazier, flailing it away from himself The fire caught in the straw on the f!oor, on the bound
DOOMSMAN
sheaves of wall matter, on the sticky substance coating
the wood bundles, on the Jakchu's clothing. In a second
the inside of the hutch was an inferno.
Flames licked greedily up the bodies hung from the
ceiling, and the last lights of life died in the tortured eyes
of the slashed hulks. Flames bit at the air, and filled the
hutch with smoke as the ceiling caught fire. A great blast
of heat smashed at J uanito, and he leaped toward the
swinging raw meat that was Griceo Even as he dodged
forward-as the mitered Jukchu went screaming from the
place, his hair and cape afire-the warrior behind him
was shoving the line of men back.
"Out! Out!" Juanita kept shouting, and a guttural cry
as urgent as his own was picked up by the others.
In an instant, in the tune it took for a spider's leg to
wither, Juanita had severed the ropes holding up the
torso of the half-dead Grice. He beat out the flames and
threw himself--clutching the part body to his chest like a
baby-through the rear of the flaming hutch.
The snow was aflame with ruby shadows, dancing in a
mad tune to the sounds of the Alaskan night. The wind
roared down the hills, and the snow swirled crazily, and a
lunatic moon gibbered in the trees as Juanita beat back
through the wilderness, away from the Jukchu village,
carrymg his terrible burden.
Grice had to live!
He had to name the man
It was a short life, and ugly But he would know that
name, Or Grice would yet learn what torture was.
Somewhere back in the whiteness, under a cliff, in a
shallow defile that might someday become a cave, Grice
died. But first he talked.
There was not much he could say, in his condition, but
when Juamto laid the appendageless hulk on the snow,
cuwred and swathed in animal hide clothing from the
dead Jukchu, Grice's eyes flickered open, A part of his
bead was gone, and his hair had been burned off complete!y Suoty matks coated his eyelids and forehead. Had he not been stout, there would have been less of him
than Juanito h'ad saved.
DOOMS MAN
e-M-"" Grice managed to mouth, when he looked up
at Juanita Montoya. His lips were blood-caked and
cracked from no water. His face twitched uncontrollably,
and what might have been a smile on anyone else showed
as a death's-head grin on his white, exhausted features.
"Hello, Grice," Juanita said in Speak.
Grice slowly-through an arc of less than an inchnodded his head. His voice came from the black bottom of the sea as he replied in Speak. "H-hello, Montoya.
Yuh-yuh-yoo f-found me, bah?"
Juanita acknowledged with a soft, mournful nod. Grice
gave the terrible smile again. "Y ou-y-y-you should h-have
gotten h-h-here t
. " he broke into a fit of shallow
•
.
coughing and blood spattered against the snow, black and
warm. His eyes closed and for a second Juanita thought
he had lost the link to Eskalyo. Then Grice opened his
eyes again and finished his sentence. "-t-two weeks 'go,
fella
th-that'�; when they s-st-strung m-me up. Oth
.
,
•
ers'd been uh-uhp f-for a week bub-before I got there . . .
"
"Try not to talk, Grice," Juanita soothed the dying
shell. He wanted him to talk only one phrase, and did not
want Grice to waste his breath on anything else.
"They caught you spying out the village, right?" Juanita asked. Grice nodded yes. "Some kind of a ceremony for captured enemies, was that it?" Again the affirmative
nod. "Grice, I got you out of there to ask you-"
Grice interrupted, and a flash of fire ran wild in his
dying eyes. "Yoo, yuh-you got m-me out there so I'd tell
y'how t-tuh find-" a fit of coughing severed the words,
but he plunged on through coughs and blood,
"-th'm-man in Noo Chii, in't th-that it, Montoy-y-a
e
, " His shuddering added · the question mark.
..
Juanita nodded solemnly. "I followed half across
AmericaState, Grice. It's important to me, more important to me than anything in the world, that I find Eskalyo. 1-1 found out he's my-my-"
He did not need to finish the sentence. Grice smiled an
arrogant smile and said softly, in a whisper, "Your father."
Iuanito's dark eyes opened wider. "How did you-"
Grice smiled again. This time insipidly. "I have you to
thank for my being here, Montoya," he said, and there
DOOMSMAN
was no slightest trace of pain or halting in his voice. The
clarity before death? Juanita hastened him to speak on.
"You don't th-think you fooled them at the School, do
you, Montoya? No one gets his assignment changed just
because he goes in to see a Probesman. They changed
you because they wanted you to find me-and think you
were doing something b1g and secret. They planted me,
Montoya! They took me out of classes and planted me at
that Combats Meet.
"I'm not from Argentina
.
I'm from Oklahoma
•
•
. but they wanted you to get interested in Eskalyo.
•
•
They revived those memories of him, and wanted you to
think you were outwitting the Seekers and the Probesmen
and AmericaState and all of them; then when they made
sure you found Eskalyo, they were going to have you kill
him-whether you wanted to or not!"
His face was drained. There was only a scrap of life
left to be eaten in him. How he managed to go on with
such determination, Juanita could not understand.
"So you see, Montoya, you are the reason I'm here. If
they hadn't wanted to get you to assassinate Eskalyo, and
if it hadn't been imperative that you think you were on
your own, I would have had a soft berth in Oklahoma
not cut to nothing out here . . .
" He began to cry.
•
.
.
"The name!" Juanita pleaded, not yet convinced of the
truth of what Grice had said .
for how could the
.
•
School make him kill his father if he did not want to do
it? He did not believe
but he had to know that
.
•
•
.
name.
"Y-ysss," Grice trembled. "The man's n-name is Tedus
Nur
he is head, huh-head executioner-f-fuh-field
•
•
•
div
divishn , . . N. Chicago C
hambers . . .
"
.
•
•
The portly assassm's face started to pale toward milk
white. Juanita bent low and mumbled, "!-I'm sorry,
Grice
I'm sorry this had to happen because of me-"
.
.
•
But Grice did not die then
He managed to laugh once more.
A round, full laugh, that was edged with sorrow.
"D-don't b-b-e sorry for muh-me, Mont-t-, don't b-be
sorry for m-me. I'm gettin' away easy . . . I f-f-feel sorry
for yooo . .
they got hell p-p-planned fo-for you,
•
Monnnnn-"
DOOMSMAN
Then he died.
Oddly enough, Juanito was afraid. There had been an
obvious note of pity in Grice's voice. Now why would he
pity Juanito?
It was difficult digging the snow for a grave.
Juanita believed. Had he not been able to escape the
Hi Guard territory, had the sort of restrictions he had
been led to believe AmericaState imposed to keep men in
line, been imposed on him to keep him from leaving
Alaska, he might have thought Grice was delirious. Or
lying. But there had been no difficulty escaping.
One dark night after he had returned to the Hi Guard
GHQ and reported Grice's death, the fate of the other
missing Hi Guards and the destruction of the Jukchu
chieftain-for that had been the mitered Jukchu in the
hutch-he slipped out of the GHQ and found-
A jetcopter idling and ready for someone absent.
He took the opportunity, and stole the copter, not
realizing til he was four thousand miles away that the
ship had been planted, and this was probably what the
Seekers and AmericaState wanted. The realization came
to him suddenly, shockingly, and he was quick to take
remedial steps.
He crash dived the jetcopter into the center of Lake
Michigan.
His skintite was equipped to withstand the temperatures of Lake Michigan in the Fall, but it was not a substitute for a life belt. He had to swim for it.
. Just within the space of time left to Juanita to stroke,
he was sighted by a CbiTroop cutter which bleeped in on
him and scooped him from the water.
They did not question his story of having been jaunting
Doomsman - the Theif of Thoth Page 4