Dark Planet

by Charles W. Sasser

  That left it and I conjoined at the hip, so to speak. The only way to prevent the genie from unleashing its corruption was to take the case with me. That set Blade and me on a collision course from which only one would walk away. If Blade won, his greed over the lindal would turn the galaxy into a virtual Hell.

  But at least, I thought wryly, I didn’t have to worry about the Blobs. Apparently, there was only one of them on Aldenia; he would likely remain neutral on Blob mountain, continuing his job as decoy, no matter what, not interfering either for or against me as long as neither of us invaded his territory.

  I listened to the constant mutter of the downpour. I listened for Blade’s coming. He shouldn’t be underestimated. Lightning flashed and made a living silver curtain of the waterfall and, beyond it, brought into stark relief the reaching arms of the ghoulish landscape that surrounded me. Thunder crashed and reverberated over the forest.

  How was I going to handle this?

  The predator runs for his dinner, I thought wryly, while the prey runs for its life. Perhaps that was my advantage.

  I decided to head for the pod in the river at first light. I could take off and leave Blade stranded if I reached it first. If not, I would leave him dead — if I could kill him.

  The thought caused taa seepage, which I controlled with a mental effort.

  On the other hand, Blade must certainly expect me to try for the pod and strive for his own checkmate. But as long as I was alive, Blade was stuck on this planet, whether he obtained the case from me or not.

  I had one other alternative. I could start running in a direction away from the pod and keep running until time ran out and the pod took off on its own at the end of the ten days. Both of us would be left on the Dark Planet to perish. Better that both of us die than that the lindal leave Aldenia and eventually release its evil.

  That I must consider only as a last resort. After all, it was only a stopgap measure. Sooner or later other explorers would land on this planet; as long as the lindal remained on Aldenia, the Presence would be ready to guide the next Blade to it.

  I found a length of cord in a pocket of my battle harness. I tied it to my belt and put a single knot in it. Day one. In four more days, the pod would automatically fire up and take off. The DRT-bags of DRT-213 would be considered lost and dead, the same as the two previous DRTs. No one would bother to look for us.

  I breathed deeply, even though it hurt. I used mind control to relax every muscle in my body. I needed rest. Daylight required all my faculties if I were to stand any chance in this deadly contest.

  Before I drifted off, I wondered briefly about the fanger warning and how it had been delivered like that in time for me to act. It also occurred to me that I no longer sensed the Presence.

  C·H·A·P·T·E·R

  THIRTY

  The Presence came to me in the night and made my short sleep fitful with dreaming. The way I understood it, Zentadon dreams were so much more forceful than those of Humans and so real that Zentadon often ascribed to them the properties of an alternate dimension. The older Zentadon, the spiritual among us, believed that when we died we simply began another life in our dreams. In fact, the present life was only the dream of a previous existence and that in turn the dream of an even more previous life. Humans called it reincarnation, except that in reincarnation Human spirits, souls, survived to occupy new bodies. Both were interesting theories. I had no desire to test either at the present. What if, when you died, there was nothing, not even blackness?

  At first, in my dream, I was running in that painful, impossible nightmare way when you are being chased. DRT-213, led by Blade, was chasing me. The members were all dead, except Blade, who appeared to have transformed himself into some kind of Dark Planet humanoid monster.

  “Give it to me! Fu-uck! Fu-uck! It’s mine. Give it to me!”

  Shooting me again and again. Pain as sharp as slivers of ice doubled my wretched body into that of a permanent cripple.

  “Fu-uck! Fu-uck! Fu-uck!”

  Next came Pia with her pretty brown face dead and turned ghastly. One blue eye hung out on its stem. Flesh sagged in putrid lumps, revealing greenish bone and sockets underneath.

  “I regret it! I regret it!” she screeched in pursuit.

  Ferret and Atlas were even more repulsive, having risen from their graves half-rotted.

  “Prolie slut! Prolie slut!” Ferret yammered.

  “Execute him! Execute him!” Atlas shrilled.

  Sergeant Shiva was one big ugly skeleton with the scar hanging from his skull like one of the intestine-leech things we encountered in the stream at the bottom of the Blob basin.

  “Fresh meat! Fresh meat! Fresh meat!”

  Gorilla became something indescribably hideous with his black hide blistered and cracked and peeling off his big yellow bones.

  “It’s out of the bag! It’s out of the bag!”

  Captain Amalfi’s bones rattled as he brought up the rear, his head having turned into a giant bell with skin and a face stretched tightly over it. The bell rang madly.

  “It tolls for thee! It tolls for thee!”

  Kadar San? said an apocalyptic thought-voice. I jerked in my sleep at the odor and the muculent feel of the Presence. You are experiencing a preview of your future. When you die today, as you surely must, I will transport you permanently into this new dimension dream life. You will live it fleeing from the risen dead.

  What do you want? I asked, already knowing, but wanting it to answer.

  Give up the lindal.

  It is evil.

  So? What do you have against evil?

  Why do you not take it from me, if you are so powerful?

  You are trying to trick me.

  Take it. I dare you. You cannot take it.

  Before the day is over, you will beg to give it up.

  We shall see.

  It was like the Presence smiled inside me, although I could not see it and its smile tasted simultaneously oily and bitter. It took a different tack.

  I can do things for you, it said.

  Suddenly, the dream changed. I was back on dry Ganesh, out of the infernal Aldenia rain. I lived in a luxurious mansion overlooking a lake reflecting the incredible beauty of the Ganesh star-heavens. I knew I was both rich and powerful, that I could have anything I wanted simply for the asking. Rich food, rich surroundings, a rich life of luxury, forever rejuvenated.

  I was in a bedroom then with a wide window overlooking the lake and the stars. Silk from Earth, sheen from Ganesh, and other rare and expensive fabrics canopied the enormous bed raised upon a pedestal of what appeared to be gold. The carpet felt as soft as a cloud under my bare feet and was the color of a blue morning sky. I looked down and I was naked and I was throbbing, embarrassingly erect.

  Maid entered the room. My breath caught dry in my throat and I stared. She posed inside the door frame, one hand on her curving upthrust hip, the other arm gracefully raised to permit me an undisturbed view. All she wore were a warm smile and the blue bikini panties she had worn into the time couch. Her nipples were pink against rounded brown breasts, her merry eyes so blue they were almost deliciously painful to look into. Strands of fine black hair escaping from the V of her panties were the same color and texture as the short-cropped thatch of hair on her head.

  My groin ached.

  “I am not a virgin,” she said. “I can teach you many pleasures that the Human side of you should experience.”

  I couldn’t speak. I only stared.

  “Ohhh … look at it!” she whispered, looking. “It’s so hard and so ready. Is it breeding season?”

  “I-I do not know,” I croaked.

  “Let’s try it,” she suggested.

  She walked nearer. She seemed to flow. I caught the delicate scent of the little rose tattooed on her butt cheek, which she now revealed by slipping thumbs underneath the band of her panties and easing them down past the patch of hair to her knees. She lifted one leg, long and brown and clean, out of the
tiny underwear and flipped the bikini across the room with her toes. She stood before me wearing only the smile.

  “Shall we conjoin?” she teased, reaching out and grabbing me as if by a handle.

  “Humans call it romance,” I corrected.

  She led me that way to the bed. She lay down on it naked and spread her legs for me. I stared, dry-mouthed and breathing heavily. I knelt over her on the bed, both knees between her legs, and looked at the precious split jewel of hair and pink-brown flesh and drew in the exciting aroma.

  She reached and guided me toward it, caressing it slightly and still smiling up at me, her eyes half closed in anticipation. I lowered myself toward her silken brown body. I was almost crying from pleasure.

  Suddenly, she vanished. So did the mansion and the view from the window. The Presence shrieked with awful, mocking delight.

  You can fuck her all the time, it said. Fuck like a Human.

  I realized I was being tempted in the wilderness. First threatened, then tempted. Why did the Presence even bother, if it possessed powers as it claimed?

  Then I knew. Its powers, whatever they may be, were nonetheless limited.

  You fear me, I said.

  I was being chased again by the ghoulish Captain Amalfi and his dead DRT-bags.

  You will join them in another day, the Presence cried.

  Whatever you are, I responded, you are afraid of me because I can win.

  He is the more evil man.

  That is why I will win.

  Take the lindal yourself and become rich. I can help you. You can have everything.

  Everything except my soul.

  You will die.

  You fear me! I laughed. The Presence shrieked in rage. Then it was gone.

  C·H·A·P·T·E·R

  THIRTY ONE

  The Presence was still with me when I awoke. Unseen, but not unfelt. The chill of this invisible entity piercing to the marrow — the stubborn, psychotic, thorny spirit of piercing its beleaguered prey even unto death. Like an invisible, scabby prolie from the Human slums of crime and degeneration.

  I also felt something else, yet another presence. It didn’t feel dark and venomous like the first; it did not gag me when my thoughts tasted it. A counterbalance to the Presence, the antithesis of the evil I felt in it? Pia had said it before, and it was also something ubiquitous in Zentadon culture, this philosophy of opposites. For dark, there was light; for right, there was wrong; for good, evil.

  Then they were both gone. For every presence, an un-presence.

  I was hungry and stiff. The mournful trees through the little waterfall huddled massed in the liquid gray light. I went through the pouches of my battle harness looking for food. I found a protein processor that converted virtually any organism to food. I also found a squad radio, but assumed it useless with the team gone. The processor was just as useless; Blade’s bullet had damaged it beyond repair. I tossed it aside. Soon, I would have to take the time to forage and eat organisms unprocessed, for which I presently lacked inclination.

  Watchful and guarded, I left the shelter of the waterfall and crouched in forest undergrowth for a long five minutes, examining my surroundings for a bush that showed double, a reflection of rain against itself, a mirage movement of a part of the forest. Satisfied at last, I took the Indowy case, much as I already despised it, and continued downhill toward a stream I heard rushing through the canyon.

  The stream was broad and black. I assumed one stream led to a larger, and the larger to yet a larger until one of them emptied into the sea. This particular one flowed toward the black river where the landing pod was moored. I contemplated building a float of some sort and riding the current, but immediately dismissed the idea. Building a craft, like foraging, took time. Besides, the water, as we had already seen, was as infested as the land with strange and dangerous monsters. Though Zentadon were smaller than Humans, we were significantly more dense of muscle and bone. Few of us ever mastered swimming, even the half-breeds like myself. I would drown should something happen to any boat I hoped to build.

  I continued on foot. I started out at a fair pace, following the stream as the day’s storms built up and rolled across the menacing skies. I quickly tired. What I hadn’t counted on was the debilitating extent of my physical injuries. A Zentadon’s chest plate was not merely ersatz ribs, as a Human’s. It was both protection for the vital organs and a node center that served the same function as the nerve center in a Human’s spinal column. The amount of pain I suffered warned me of nerve damage.

  Also, the plate’s qualities as a diaphragm for taking in adequate air during periods of high exertion were severely limited. I realized I was lucky for the time being if I could move as fast as the sniper, much less outrun him. The most I could hope for was to maintain my small lead.

  I tested my senses, let them sniff around through the high country in hopes of picking up Blade’s spoor. Blade erected in his mind an icy barricade against my probing. I almost felt him sneer at my puny efforts. I sensed him, always nearby, but when I sensed him it was almost like he and the Presence were one. The trouble was, I couldn’t tell where he was. Just that he was there. Near. Coming. Relentless. Like the skilled hunter he was.

  The best I could hope for was that my Talent act as a barometer for his emotions, that I might judge the rise of his excitement to determine exactly how near he was. He had thrown a rage after having botched the assassination and allowing one of his targets to escape with the prize, but it was not a mindless rage. Quite the opposite. Although his fury reached such extremes that, in spite of his blocking efforts, I actually palpated it with the fingers of my senses, his thoughts remained cool and calculating and focused. I could tell now that he knew from my slow progress that I was hurt and my abilities to resist limited.

  I felt him as a predator excited by the distress of his injured victim.

  My feet left deep, lasting impressions in the crusty forest floor. Water quickly filled the prints to leave a track readable from a hundred meters away by a blind man. Blade didn’t need the sensors and the LF tracker scavenged from the dead. It wasn’t even necessary that he be an exceptional tracker to follow my trail as I made an obvious beeline for the pod.

  I attempted to place ridges between us in order to foil the LF. I waded streams and backtracked to cover my trail; but still I felt him and the Presence always with me, driving me toward the pod. I even took a rocky canyon that led off at a tangent from the due north azimuth that pointed toward the black river, but Blade refused to be fooled. He seemed elated that I was in more open country where his chances at a sure shot increased.

  Alarmed, I returned to the forest where my chances of fighting back with the short-range Punch were better. Blade seemed to anticipate my every action.

  I recalled from the old histories of the Human Rebellion how the ill-armed and outnumbered Humans had won their freedom from the Indowy and we Zentadon warrior slaves through the general utilization of guerrilla tactics. Roving bands of Earthling fighters tormented the enemy with ambushes, sudden raids, sabotage, assassinations, and terrorism. They appeared as unexpectedly as birds of prey, then disappeared like smoke.

  One of their most effective tactics was the use of what they referred to as “booby traps.” Entire areas of the battle zone on Galaxia were made off-limits to Indowy troops because of man pits, sharpened stakes, mammoth whips … The Humans used everything available to impale, maim, injure, and kill the enemy by enticing him to trip the traps himself.

  My battle harness contained a small clasp knife. The blade was too short to be considered a weapon. As I walked, fleeing, I cut lengths of a tough bamboo-like plant, each about two feet long, and sharpened them on the ends. I collected about a dozen before I lay my trap.

  First, I left a trail of footprints across a small open marsh. That was the bait. In the forest on the other side I selected a tough, springy branch that reached across the trail about chest-high to a Human man. Using the knife, I inserted the sharp
ened stakes at intervals of two inches for the entire length of the branch. Finally, I cut a tough vine with which to pull the branch into tension, and a much thinner vine to arrange a trip wire across the trail. The dripping rain from the trees, tendrils of fog, and the dimness provided by cloud cover and the forest canopy made the trip wire almost invisible, merely one of many such plants intertwined. If my luck held, the next thing Blade Kilmer felt was the teeth of the whip lashing out to skewer him through and through.

  It troubled me that I had it in me to coldly calculate the slaying of another sentient, but I assuaged my conscience by telling it that what I was doing was for the good of all in the galaxy, not for mere self-survival. The power of the Indowy lindal must not be released. Besides, it wasn’t actually like I was killing him with my own hands. Concentrating on that thought kept my taa contained.

  I felt Blade coming. I felt him near. He was cautious, wary, suspicious. That was his nature. That was the nature of anything that would survive on the Dark Planet.

  I ran hobbling deeper into the forest. Drenched foliage lashed at my face. I had to get as far away from the actual killing field as possible to avoid lintatai. I made my mind go blank.

  The whip triggered with a force that shook the trees involved. I suppressed the sudden taa that threatened to burst into my system. I experienced a moment of satisfaction, if not exactly elation. Blade had fallen for the trap. I stopped and looked back.

  A peal of maniacal laughter swept through the jungle. It was difficult to determine where Blade left off and the Presence took up. Chills engulfed my body. He — they — were still coming. The trap had not got him.

  If the Presence feared me, it wasn’t something that showed.

  C·H·A·P·T·E·R