It was like a dance—turn, swing, fire—the only dance he had ever done. Turn, wheel, extend the arm. Boom! Blam! Turn again, gracefully duck, turn, fire, fire again, then go forward…
He heard Stan gasp and slip. Gill scooped him up and put him back on his feet. “Can you go on?”
“Yes. Thanks…” Stan was saving his breath.
Gill was worried about the doctor. That dose of pure royal jelly hadn’t seemed to help any. He knew how much Stan had been expecting to find some sort of divine elixir that would cure his cancer. Gill had no particular hope that this would happen. It was illogical. The royal jelly was not a cure; it served merely to diminish the pain. Why should a pure strain do more than the other, adulterated strains?
He knew that humans liked to entertain far-fetched notions. All of the humans, in a way, were like those Spanish conquistadores he had learned about during his hypnopaedic learning sessions, those men in armor who had painfully trekked across the American plains, searching for the Seven Cities of Cibola, imaginary places that had never existed outside the dreams of mythographers.
Stan’s belief in a cure for his disease was like that. It was forlorn, even silly. No android would be capable of such folly. Yet Gill didn’t think that made him better than Stan. Quite the contrary, it made him subhuman, because he could not participate in the delusions, both the pathetic and the sublime, that made the human race what it was.
The aliens were massing behind them. Gill had to slow down more and more to flight rearguard actions.
Julie pressed on ahead, hoping that the turns she took were leading them toward the outside of the hive rather than deeper into it.
Gill switched the plasma rifle to automatic fire and laid down a sheet of flame as half a dozen aliens came crawling out of a pit and, rearing to their feet, loped toward him.
Stan stumbled and fell, and lay still. Gill scooped him up and draped him over one shoulder, leaving one arm free to aim and fire the heavy plasma rifle.
By now the aliens were coming from side turnings as well as from behind. The little party wasn’t surrounded yet, but it looked imminent. Gill threw his last thermite grenade, shifted Stan higher onto his shoulder, and noted that the charge in the plasma rifle was almost depleted. He turned, ready to fight to the end.
Then Julie cried, “There’s light ahead! We’re almost out of it!”
Gill turned and saw the faintest glimmer of grayness penetrating the profound gloom of the hive. He let go of the depleted plasma rifle and pulled a chemical slugthrower out of a side pouch. Four quick shots blasted a close-packed group of aliens with high explosives. Then Gill turned and ran, with Stan on his shoulder, toward the light.
His feet slid on the hard-packed clay of the tunnel’s floor, and then suddenly he was out of the hive and into the sepulchral gray light of AR-32.
Behind him he heard Julie say, “Get out of the way, Gill.”
He managed to stagger a few steps farther. This gave Julie a chance to reset her plasma gun to full heat. She held it steadily, hosing the entrance to the hive through which they had come.
It took Gill a moment to understand what she was doing. Then he put Stan down, rummaged in his pouch, and found a plasma-rifle refill. He reloaded and swept the spot where Julie was beaming.
The beams glittered and coruscated on the hive face. The aliens were forced back, deeper into the cave, to wait until the noise and heat died down.
But Julie had something else in mind. She kept on firing until, with a sudden thunderous roar, the cave mouth collapsed. A cloud of dust and smoke arose, and then it was quiet.
Julie turned off her weapon, as did Gill.
“That’ll do it for a little while,” she said.
“Until they find another exit from the hive,” Stan said.
“Well, it’s better than nothing. Now, where in hell are we?”
Stan pointed. “You’ve done a great job, Julie. Look down there.”
Julie looked, and saw, less than a hundred yards away, the squat hull of the harvester.
“Now we’re getting somewhere!” she said. “We just have to get aboard.”
“Yes,” said Gill. “But there’s a difficulty.” He pointed again.
It took Julie a moment to see it. But then she saw the small black dots moving at the base of the hive. She could finally make them out: aliens! They had found another exit from the hive sooner than she expected. And they were blocking the way to the harvester.
She asked, “What now, Stan?” But Stan was unconscious again.
Julie and Gill looked at each other, then glanced up as a shadow crossed them.
It was a ship. For one moment Julie’s hopes flared. But then she took in the ship’s markings and design, and a great despondency came over her. That was not the Dolomite. That was the Lancet, commanded by Potter, the Bio-Pharm man. It hovered in the air, and nothing about it stirred. It seemed obvious to Julie that Potter was going to let them die here, watching and maybe videotaping their final agonies.
Stan revived and sat up. “The harvester, did you say?”
“It’s right down there.” Julie pointed.
Stan looked and nodded. He struggled to his feet. “We’ve got to get there. From there, something may be possible.”
“There are quite a few aliens in the way,” Gill pointed out.
“So I see,” Stan said. “Have you ever heard of the old American Indian stunt of running the gauntlet?”
“I don’t believe so,” Gill said.
“You’re about to learn history in a very practical way,” Stan announced. “Load what’s left of the ammo and we’ll be on our way.”
Despite the mortal danger of their position, Julie could have kissed him at that moment.
65
Stan gave the signal and they were off, trotting down the rocky path that led from the edge of the hive to the plain. Fifty yards away, more or less, was the harvester. In the sky above them, the Lancet hovered, silent, watching.
And then the aliens came.
They came singly and in pairs, and then in threes. They seemed to crawl out from under rocks and to appear out of holes. They came in silent ferocity, fangs bared, talons extended, forming a rough line between the hive and the harvester. Stan and the others ran through the line, blasting as they went. They had all shifted now to rapid-fire weapons. Never did Julie display better hand-eye coordination. She managed to move at full stride, at the same time keeping a look on all sides of her and releasing sizzling bolts of energy at anything that moved. The rocks turned white-hot under the glancing energy beams. The aliens surged forward, and died. Julie and Gill were doing fine…
And then Stan collapsed.
He had been doing very well, for a man in his condition. But his illness and general debilitation were not to be denied forever. Pain coursed through his chest like a sea of fire. He gritted his teeth and tried to continue, but now everything was turning dark before his eyes. He couldn’t see where he was going. His feet stumbled on the rocky surface, a pebble turned under his foot. He felt himself falling, and a black pit seemed to yawn in front of him. He threw his arms wide as he fell, but before he hit, Gill scooped him up.
“Don’t stop for me!” Stan said.
“Order denied,” Gill said, setting him on his shoulder and running again.
They cut their way through the ranks of the aliens. Flesh, blood, and bile spilled in all directions. It was like a free-for-all in a slaughterhouse. Julie hadn’t imagined there was that much gore in the whole world. Scattered parts of aliens lay everywhere, arms and legs, long ugly tails, heads with the teeth still snapping. And still they came on. Julie thought that every alien on the planet must be here, or on its way.
She was firing two weapons now, cutting a path for herself through a growing mound of living matter—the locked bodies of aliens, still trying to get at them. Gill, running along hard on Julie’s heels, with Stan bouncing up and down on his shoulder, was cutting wide swaths in the clustered ali
ens. Julie saw her left-hand weapon flare and die. Firing right-handed, she snatched a vibraknife from her waist pouch to set it on high. The blade had to make physical contact to do any harm, but it had come to that now with the aliens pressing ever closer. It seemed to her that this was the end; aliens pressed in and she had no idea where she was. And then Gill was shouting, “The harvester, Julie!”
They were there. Gill raced up the landing platform and dumped Stan inside through the entry port. Then he turned, feet braced, firing a bazooka-style weapon that gave out great gouts of green flame. Julie ducked into the harvester under his arm.
She saw Stan, lying on the floor, unconscious again. Something big and black and many-toothed was bending over him. It was an alien, damn it! The harvester was filled with the creatures—two, no three of them. She cut them down. “Gill!” she screamed. “Get inside so we can close the door!”
Gill cut and slashed and backed through the door. Julie cut down an alien and now there was one left. It stood in the doorway, towering over her, and just at that instant her gun began to fail.
She must have screamed, because Gill slung a handgun across the harvester to her. She caught it, aimed, and triggered it in one rapid moment. The alien was in her face, but she had no choice: at extreme close range she blasted him.
The alien’s throat exploded. One wildly waving claw came completely off. His forelimb, severed at the wrist, waved wildly in the air. The milky white acidic substance that was the blood of the alien spewed forth in a stream.
Some of the acid hit Julie. She screamed and went down, and it seemed to her that she could hear Gill yelling something, too, and then she didn’t know anything anymore.
66
Stan returned to consciousness angry that the dose of pure royal jelly hadn’t done anything for him. Luckily he still had some of the older product left. He’d take some of that soon.
He was not really surprised that the pure royal jelly hadn’t helped him. He had always suspected that it was too good to be true, the idea that some other form of the jelly would cure him in some miraculous way. It just doesn’t work like that, he told himself.
His mind raced back to earlier days. He thought of all the work he had done, all his accomplishments. He’d had a lot of chances in the poker game that was his life. Could he have played his cards some other way? He didn’t really think so. And it was strange, but he knew that for some strange reason there was no place he’d rather be than here, right here, at the end of a glorious venture, with Julie and Gill, his friends.
Gill was at the other side of the harvester, looking after Julie. There really wasn’t much he could do for her. Just see that she was comfortable. Most of the acid had missed her, but some drops had fallen along the side of her neck and penetrated deep under the skin. Her face was ashen, her breathing labored. Her vital signs were diminishing.
Gill found himself struggling with new emotions, things he had never felt before. He realized that there was a comfort in being a synthetic man. The trouble with android status was that nothing ever felt very good. There was no joy, no exultation. But the advantage was that nothing ever felt very bad, either.
Strange, though. Now he was filled with unaccustomed emotions: pity for Julie, and something else, some tender feeling that he couldn’t quite identify, couldn’t quite find a name for. He touched the vein on the side of her neck. It pulsed, but not strongly. He reached over to make Julie more comfortable and only became aware then that his left arm was missing a hand and half its forearm. He had been too busy to notice when the hand went off-line. It was that advantage, again, of being a synthetic: you felt no pain. Now, looking back, he could reconstruct how it happened. The harvester’s hatch had been closing, and he had just managed to get inside. But not quite all of him had made it. One hand had still been outside as the alien’s big claw closed over his wrist. Stan had pulled, and the alien had pulled back.
There had been a deadly tug-of-war, with the alien pulling one way and Gill the other, sawing his arm back and forth along the door frame. None of the others had been in a position or condition to help. Stan had been out cold, and Julie, staggered by her acid bath, was out of action, too.
Gill and the alien had fought their deadly game. Gill hadn’t been exactly sure what happened next. Presumably the door edge had severed some of the cables that controlled his arm movements. Or the combined pulls of Stan and the alien had pulled the skin welds on his arm apart. Suddenly, and with an audible pop, his arm had let go several inches below the elbow. Cracks had appeared in the tough synthetic skin, and had immediately widened. Fine-control cables had come under tension, pulled taut until they sang, and then snapped.
Cables and wires had coiled around Gill’s wrist, then pulled free when Gill pulled what was left of his arm the rest of the way inside the ship and the hatch slammed shut. It had been a good sound, that sound of the hatch closing. After that, Gill had been too busy looking after Julie and ascertaining Stan’s condition to pay much attention to his own condition. He looked to himself now.
He could see that there was no way of fixing himself. He could have tried a jury-rig if he’d had spare cables with him. But in the close confines of the pod he hadn’t brought along the repair and spare parts kit that every synthetic tried to keep with him at all times. And even if he’d had the cables, he was still lacking several transistors and capacitors. Reluctantly he took the arm off-line. He had no motion in it at all. From the shoulder down, it was as dead as a hundred-year-old Ford.
“Gave you a little trouble, did they?” Stan’s voice came from over his shoulder.
Stan had revived, calling on reserves he never knew he had. He had even gotten to his feet. He was filled with a strange knowledge; that he was both a dead man and a living one. The two sides of himself were warring now, each trying to establish dominance. Stan thought he knew who was going to win.
Somewhat unsteadily he crossed the harvester and gazed at Gill’s wound.
“Pulled it right off, did they?”
“Yes, sir. Or perhaps I did.”
“Comes to the same thing,” Stan said. “Doesn’t give you any pain, does it?”
“No, Doctor, none at all. I register the loss of my arm solely as an analogue of loss, not as the real thing.”
“It’s abstract for you, is that it?”
“I suppose you could say that, sir.” And yet, Gill knew it wasn’t quite true. No human could really imagine what it was like to be a synthetic. And to be a synthetic suffering loss—that was really beyond their scope. Except, he thought, maybe Julie could understand it.
67
“Well, Gill,” Stan said, “I think it’ll be best if you look after Julie for the time being. I have some work to do on the radio.”
“I don’t think much can be done for her, sir. Not without regular medical facilities.”
“No, I suppose not,” Stan said. “Maybe there’s not much that can be done for any of us. Still, we must avail ourselves of every twist and turn. That’s what it’s like being a human, Gill. You avail yourself of every little opportunity. You assume you’re not dead until you can no longer move. I hope you’re taking note of all this.”
“Indeed I am, Doctor,” Gill said. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“I’m afraid not,” Stan said. “Unless you happened to bring along a replacement body. No? I didn’t think so. But the royal jelly is finally starting to take effect. I’m all washed up, Gill, but I’m feeling a lot better.”
“Glad to hear it, sir.”
“Thanks. We’ll talk more later, Gill.”
Stan turned to the radio. Gill watched him, and he was disturbed. It seemed to him that Dr. Myakovsky was in some sort of shock. He was hardly registering his grief at Julie’s condition. Was it a callousness about him that Gill had missed? Gill thought it was something else. He had noticed that humans from time to time went into a condition they called shock. It was when something terrible happened, either to them or to someon
e close to them. It was how humans shut down when they experienced overload. But synthetics could never shut down.
68
As Stan turned to the radio it suddenly burst into life. An unfamiliar voice said, “Hello? Is there someone aboard the harvester?”
Stan sat down at the instrument panel. “Yes, there is someone here.”
“I thought as much. This is Potter, captain of the Bio-Pharm ship Lancet. You are trespassing on Bio-Pharm territory. Identify yourself at once!”
“I am Dr. Stanley Myakovsky,” Stan said. “There are only three of us here—myself, a woman, and an android. We are all that is left of a survey expedition sent to inspect the hive on AR-32.”
“I knew you were here, Doctor,” Potter said. “That says it all, I think.”
“Maybe you don’t know everything, Captain,” Stan said. “Our ship was damaged during the recent storm. We require help badly.”
“I understand,” Potter said. “I am sending men to pick you up. Be prepared to leave the harvester. That is all for now.”
Stan put down the microphone and turned to Gill. “He says he’s sending help. I suppose you can guess what kind of help Potter is going to offer.”
Gill didn’t answer. He was watching through one of the view panels as the Lancet’s primaries flared briefly and the great ship dropped slowly and majestically down through the sky in a shining glitter of landing jets. The big ship settled effortlessly on AR-32’s plain. Soon after the landing, there was a sparkle of bright lines along the ground, and then something almost transparent that looked like the ghost of a wall erected itself around the Lancet.
“I see you have your force field up,” Stan said. “A wise precaution, I can assure you.”
The Complete Aliens Omnibus Page 42