* * * *
During the next few days he concentrated on regaining old skills and reflexes, and spent some time thinking about welding them into a matched group. Of course, until he knew for certain that they would be allowed to go out together, there was not much use in concentrating on that. Each of them should first reach optimum level for individual survival.
The task of teaching Dallith close-quarter fighting was none too easy; she had a horror of hurting any of them and would withdraw at the last split second before making a stroke even with the breakable bamboo stick they had found for teaching her knife skills. But remembering how she had suddenly gone berserk when she faced the Mekhar, he supposed that if someone came at her with murder on his mind, she'd react as she'd done then, by picking up her attacker's murderous rage. And so he concentrated on getting the basics of attack into her head.
I can't teach her vulnerable points, though. We don't know what vulnerable points the Hunters have—or if they have any!
During all this time it struck him as strange that they never came close enough to other groups of the "Sacred Prey" to work out with them. Whether it was an unwritten law of the Hunters that they should not or by sheer coincidence, he wasn't sure. He suspected that the Hunters, though, discouraged any such pooling of survival skills, and this gave him some hope that their five would be sent out together, since they had not been separated and forced to wait for the Hunt individually.
He suspected sometimes that Server—or the whole complex of robot mechanisms which went by that collective name—watched over them at a distance and would intervene if they showed any signs of being too curious about the other prisoners. He realized, after five or six days of this unobtrusive surveillance, that he had not even any idea of how many other prisoners dwelt in the huge park-complex; he could still only surmise as he had done the first day, by seeing the others at a distance, or from brief and interrupted encounters in Armory or baths, that there might be between a dozen and thirty humans, and about as many more assorted aliens of other biological types.
It was a few days later, in the Armory, when he noticed again a pair of proto-felines, very much (at least in the distance, and to him) like the Mekhar, once again working out with a pair of something like kendo sticks. He asked Cliff-Climber about them.
"Are those the two you called common criminals? You seemed to feel that it was beneath the dignity of your kind to use weapons. Do those two use them because they do not share your standards?"
Cliff-Climber looked at them curiously. "They are not the same ones," he said. "I think I will go and see. If some members of my own clan should be here—"
He bounded away, at his curious loping run, but some time later he came back, looking puzzled. To Dane's question he answered, "I did not see them or speak to them." He looked quickly toward the far end of the Armory, with one of those movements that reminded Dane of a caged tiger, and said angrily, "This place maddens me! Mirrors, and reflections, and people who disappear and walk through walls when you try to come near them!" He stalked away, giving Dane the impression that if he had actually had a tail (he didn't) he would have been switching it angrily from side to side.
Not too much later, though, he came to Dane carrying one of the kendo sticks. He said, "I notice you do not use these seriously as weapons. But for footwork and agility they seem a sensible training device."
He said no more, and Dane, quite unexpectedly feeling a strange kind of sympathy for the Mekhar's alienation said, "You want to try working out with them?"
"It would seem a sensible precaution," Cliff-Climber said stiffly, "to accustom myself emotionally to the thought that I shall be facing an opponent of some other biological type than my own. For this you are probably the most suitable one against which to test myself."
"Damn right," Dane agreed. "For me, too." For all he knew, he might be facing something more difficult to guard against than Cliff-Climber with his artificially steel-tipped claws! It was all part of the business of arming himself psychologically, of psyching himself to kill.
He found Cliff-Climber appallingly fast on his feet; but against him, the old karate reflexes began to come back fast. It made him realize, too, that Aratak—or anyone of his proto-saurian species—would be a most formidable opponent, and that night, with Cliff-Climber's concurrence, they persuaded the giant saurian to take turns working out against both of them. At the end of these sessions, Dane had bruises and scrapes which had to be lengthily soaked out in the hot volcanic pools—he even accepted Aratak's offer of the hot sulfur-smelling mud for a poultice, and discovered that in spite of the smell it had remarkable healing qualities—but he felt a lot better prepared to meet his invisible opponents.
They initiated then a regular series of workouts; Rianna welcomed the chance to try her unarmed combat skills against Cliff-Climber, and the ensuing combat reminded Dane of nothing so much as an old Avengers TV show on Earth, with the redoubtable Emma Peel fighting against a variety of any kind of antagonist from tiger-cats to robots.
After each of them had come to a gasping draw, Cliff-Climber (looking at her with wonder and respect) apologized to Rianna for the bloody scratch on her arm. "I forgot myself," he said, extending his claws and their razor-steel tips. "But I think you have sprained my foot, so we are equal."
Watching Rianna and Aratak was also something of a revelation; although by sheer weight and size the enormous proto-saurian had the advantage and eventually demonstrated that when all else failed he could trip Rianna up and sit on her, she was by no means helpless.
Dallith could not be persuaded to take part, and finally Dane, remembering how she had exploded into instinctive violence, realized that this was what she feared; this, or hurting one of those she now considered friends and allies.
At last he accepted Aratak's advice to leave her alone. "She knows best what is safe for her," he said. Dane was afraid that it might, once again, be a withdrawal into willed death, but if it was there was nothing he could do.
CHAPTER TEN
Even during the day, the red light of the moon was brighter than the sun; the Red Moon seemed to obscure half the sky now, when, one evening, Rianna said to him near the baths, "There are men here—I mean humans, proto-simians very like us—who do not belong to the Unity."
"Of course. There's me. Why do you think the Hunters would confine themselves to raiding just your group of worlds in the Unity?"
"I don't mean that. I went and greeted them and they did not—or could not—answer. They evidently did not have translator disks."
"Poor bastards," Dane said. "They must be pretty confused."
"If so, they certainly didn't act it. I went to talk to them," Rianna said. "I've been taught nonverbal communication techniques. But they slipped away before I could come near them. I don't know where they went—of course this place is confusing, but still, it was like something done with mirrors."
Cliff-Climber had had an experience something like that.
"I wonder if it ever occurred to you," Dane said soberly, "that they might have been Hunters—or their servants."
"Hardly servants, when Server and all his pack are around. Dane! Do you mean the Hunters might be—human?"
He nodded. "It seems reasonable," he said. "There seem to be as many humans here as all other biological types put together."
"Would men hunt men?"
"They do," he said with a shrug, and explained his theory that possibly the Hunters preferred prey who could give them a good, equal fight. "And it would be a good way to size us up, observe us for the Hunt, decide what weapons we'll be carrying. Maybe even, now and then, take on one of us for a workout, though so far no one's come near enough for that."
Or pick out which of us would make the best trophies.... His mind refused to put away a gruesome picture which had come to him, one night, in a nightmare: the head of a Japanese samurai, still in armor and preserved four hundred years by some unguessable technique, hanging on the wall of a Hunter's dwell
ing....
Involuntarily, Dane shuddered, and Rianna reached for him and held onto him, hard. He clasped her in his arms, feeling her warmth and closeness as the only comfort on this strange, cold, red, mysterious world.
It was a bond. Unwanted. Undesired. But a bond. If he lived, he and Rianna would always belong to one another....
Over their meal that night, looking across at Aratak, Rianna brought that up again.
"If the Hunters are human, would they really want to take on someone the size and—and fierceness of Aratak?"
"Even on my world, big game hunting is regarded as more of a sport than shooting rabbits," Dane said. "A man who kills a tiger is considered braver than one who kills a deer." Once again he wondered how the words were coming across to the others through their translator disks.
He asked them, curious, and Rianna said with a shrug, "On my world, as on most, there are large fierce predators and small gentle ones regarded mostly as a source of food. If you'd given the scientific name of the creatures probably it would have come through as a strange sound and you'd have had to explain it. But normally the translator gives the nearest equivalent in your own language."
He accepted it at that. He had to; the technology which could evolve such a device was as far beyond Earth's best as a linear computer was beyond a spinning wheel.
Cliff-Climber said roughly, "I don't believe a race could acquire such a legendary reputation for ferocity if they were proto-simian. It is more likely that they are proto-felines, not too unlike the Mekhars. There are also a great many members of my own kind here—or, I should say, of biological types not altogether different from my own."
"That doesn't prove anything," Rianna flared, "except that we're both members of dangerous species!"
Aratak mused, "What you have said is interesting. My own species are of a peaceful habit, and if any of us proto-saurians are renowned for ferocity, I should be surprised, and yet—"
Dane interrupted. "I find that hard to believe. The most terrible predator in my planet's history—tyrannosaurus rex—was of saurian origin."
Aratak had no eyebrows but gave the impression of raising them anyhow. "Were they sapient, though?"
"No," Dane confessed, "they had no brain to speak of."
"Oh, well. Animal species of proto-saurian type are often fierce," Aratak said, "And the fierce ones are extinct, which proves the wisdom of the Divine Egg, in that those who seek for blood meet only bloody death. But when saurians develop sapience they usually display a peaceful manner of life. I can give you only philosophical reasons why this should be so, but I assure you I know of no exceptions within the Unity, at least."
"He's right, Dane," Rianna said. "As far as anyone knows, there aren't any, except in old legends."
Aratak bowed. "To resume. As I said, we are peaceful creatures; I am here almost by accident, as one might say. And yet, watching as we exercise, I have seen one of my own kind, and when I went to salute him in the name of the Divine Egg, believing him a fellow prisoner, he vanished quite suddenly and I could not find him again. For a moment it occurred to me that I had been the victim of some sort of optical illusion, but now I have another theory."
"Let's have it," Dane said. He had the highest possible opinion of the giant saurian's intelligence.
"This: that the Hunters are not a single race, but a clan or conglomeration; that they collect to themselves members from the renegades, the outlaws, the outcasts, and fierce mavericks of all peoples. A madman of my people, or an outlaw, might find himself here, one way or another. Most of us are peaceful people, and one who was not might find himself everywhere an outcast. As I said, I saw at least one, who has been tested presumably as we were tested, for desperation and courage, but if he had been a fellow prisoner he would not have tried to elude me."
"That doesn't follow," Dallith said unexpectedly. "He might be—ashamed to be found here. A peaceful creature who had—when tested—discovered strange and frightening ferocity in himself. He would hardly want to face someone who knew what he should be like...."
Dane realized that Dallith was speaking of herself; it was the first time it had occurred to him that she might deeply regret her outburst of wild fury on the Mekhar ship.
Aratak courteously considered Dallith's theory for a moment before shaking his head. "No," he said, "for he would know that I was in like case and would come to condole with me. So I conclude that he was one of the Hunters watching me, and that the Hunters are not one species but many. That would also explain why they choose Prey of such varying forms."
It was a valuable theory, Dane thought. It deserved consideration. It would explain why the Hunters had no recognizable form in legend; it would also explain why they did not show themselves to their Prey, but let all contact, even with the slave ships bringing their Quarry, come through the robot Servers. That way they could be certain no hint of their secret escaped.
And yet... he wasn't convinced. Could a conglomerate of renegades develop so formalized, so ritualistic an approach to the Hunt? And even more, would not some hint of their recruitment have stolen out into the Galaxy? They argued it far into the night, but went to bed unconvinced.
The shape and form of the Hunters! It obsessed him now, night and day. As the Red Moon grew in the sky toward the full, they took shape after shape in his nightmares, terrifyingly formless. He found a nonsense rhyme from Earth repeating itself again and again at odd moments in his consciousness:
I engage with the Snark,
every night after dark,
In a dreamy delirious fight....
But instead of hunting the Snark, it was hunting him... and there was every possibility that he would, indeed, "Softly and silently vanish away, and never be heard of again."
At times like this he would draw the samurai sword and look grimly at its edge before putting it away again. Not so softly and not so silently, he promised himself.
Later he thought that if this period of uncertainty had been prolonged much more he probably would have gone insane; as it was, Rianna shook him awake out of nightmare once or twice every night. (But they all suffered from nightmares. Once Dallith woke screaming wildly, rousing them all, and once Cliff-Climber staggered up in his sleep, roaring and fighting, and by the time they managed, by throwing cold water over him, to get him awake, both Aratak and Dane had long bleeding scratches from his razored claws.
Abruptly the period of waiting ended.
The great Red Moon had grown day by day; when it was all but full it seemed to hang low and suspended over them with a bloody light, cutting away almost all normal sunshine, ghastly and luminous and so large that Dane hated to look up at it; it was like walking under a great floating disk suspended by invisible means. It gave him claustrophobia; knowing it was ridiculous, he still could not banish the image of the moon somehow slipping, plunging down, crushing them all beneath it....
He had wondered what would happen when it was completely full, and on this night, as they were returning from the baths, he looked up, seeing the shadow beginning to creep across the great red disk. Of course, the moon was half the size of the primary planet; when the Hunter's World came between moon and sun, the Red Moon would be wholly eclipsed, darkened....
With startling rapidity the shadow crept over the face, blotting out the red and luminous disk, etching away more and more of the huge red face. Around them the whole color of the landscape changed, growing darker and stranger; there were odd rustlings, and from somewhere a strong rushing wind sprang up.
The five prisoners stood close together, Dane between Rianna and Dallith, knowing they were both clinging to him in the eerie darkness, as the Red Moon slowly faded from crescent to slim fingernail-paring to a pale red glimmer along one edge. And then, for the first time on this world, there was total darkness. Behind the great blot on the sky, dim stars sprang out.
"The Hunt is over," Dallith whispered. "With the moon in eclipse—the Hunt is over."
In the darkness Cliff-Clim
ber's rough voice muttered, "There are dead Hunters there, and dead Prey. And soon it will be our turn."
"But when?" Rianna said into the darkness. No one answered her. They stood there for hours, watching the Red Moon slowly emerge from darkness, the stars fade again into the background of crimson light. Finally, when it was glowing in its accustomed place again, they went silently to their quarters, but none of them ate much, and Dane, at least, slept little.
Was it their turn next?
The next morning, when Server brought their morning meal, he told them, "Last night was the night of the eclipse; last night, the Hunt ended. Today, the Sacred Prey who survived the Hunt—if there were any—will be rewarded and released, and you are bidden to the feast"
None of them had much appetite for breakfast after that. As the sun drew higher in the sky—a strange bright sun with the Red Moon invisible, far away on the other side of the planet—they went briefly to the Armory, and to the baths. But none of them did much in the way of training.
Dane said at one point, "I sometimes wonder. The survivors of the Hunt—we'll see them being feasted and rewarded, so they say, and freed. But I wonder if they are really freed, or if their feasts and rewards aren't for our benefit, to encourage us, and if perhaps they'll be quietly put out of the way afterward."
"That's a nice thing to bring up," Rianna said in disgust. "What are you trying to do to us, Dane?"
Aratak said soberly, "The possibility had occurred to me, as well."
Cliff-Climber turned from his shadow-dance before the mirror. He said, "No, they're freed, true enough. There is a man on my world—he is a distant connection to my clan—who returned from the Hunter's World, rich and successful. He founded an Arms Museum with his prize money; I have seen the museum, though the man died when I was still young."
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