The Soul Eater

by Mike Resnick

  Lane ignored the statement. “I'll be by for it at sunrise.”

  “Whenever you wish,” said Tchaka. “By the way, what makes you so sure you're going to find the monster this time, Nicobar? You've been chasing after it for years and years.”

  “I'll find it,” Lane said savagely.

  “That's what you said last time,” Tchaka pointed out.

  “Last time I was wrong. This time I'm not. I'll have enough fuel to keep the Deathmaker in space the rest of my life if need be. I know more about the creature than anyone else alive. And I want to kill it more than any man ever wanted anything.”

  “We always kill the things we love,” said Tchaka.

  Lane's eyes blazed for a moment, and Tchaka thought he was going to pull out the screecher again; but slowly, by dint of almost visible effort, the hunter forced his rage to subside. “You will never say that or anything like that again,” he said so softly that Tchaka had difficulty hearing him. “Do you understand?”

  “Whatever you say, Nicobar,” said Tchaka. “But you must understand that you have become a very frustrating man to try to talk with.”

  “You won't have to worry about it much longer,” said Lane. “I'm leaving as soon as my ship is ready.”

  “I have the feeling that this is the last time I'll ever see you,” said Tchaka.

  “You'll live,” said Lane.

  “Ah, but will you?” said Tchaka. “I come originally from Abilla III. We're not exactly mutants, but we've undergone a few changes over the millennia. For instance, I have every reason to expect my vitality and virility to continue undiminished for another forty or fifty years. But what about you, Nicobar? You look like you've got one foot in the grave already. You're an old man. What makes you think you'll live long enough to kill your Dreamwish Beast?”

  “Because I hate it too much to die before it does,” said Lane. “However long it takes, I'll keep alive one way or another.”

  Tchaka shook his head. “Hatred's a frail thing to depend on for nourishment—especially a hatred that's as poorly constructed as yours. If it was Tchaka, he wouldn't waste the rest of his life on hatred. Lust, maybe, or love, or even hunger. That might keep Tchaka going. But hatred? Never. It's not worth the effort.”

  “No one is asking you to make the effort,” said Lane.

  “True,” agreed Tchaka. “But then, no one asked you to make it either.”

  “I have to,” said Lane softly. “It can never be allowed to do to anyone else what it has done to me.”

  “I'm glad to know that's an altruistic statement,” said Tchaka, “because it sure as hell might sound like jealousy or possessiveness to the uninitiated.”

  Without word or warning Lane reached for his screecher, but Tchaka was faster and grabbed his arm before he could withdraw the weapon. The huge man disarmed Lane, gave him a mighty backhand slap, and then walked back to where he had been standing.

  “That was stupid, Nicobar,” said Tchaka disgustedly. “Just plain stupid. If you kill me, who will give you your money?”

  Lane glared at him, sullenly and silently.

  “Look,” continued Tchaka, “if it'll make you any easier to get along with, I hope you kill the goddamn thing. I hope you chop it up into little pieces and make each piece suffer the agonies of everlasting perdition. I really do. Mostly, though, I hope you'll stop trying to kill me every time I mention the blasted monster. Whatever it's done to you, just keep telling yourself that it's not Tchaka's fault. You've got a real thing about it, Nicobar. One minute you're as calm and logical as ever, and then you start talking about the damned creature and suddenly you're a homicidal maniac. You should have stuck to liquor and women, Nicobar; they feel just as good and they don't warp your brain. Look at me: I want a woman right now every bit as much as you want your Dreamwish Beast, maybe even more. But I don't go into a killing rage because of it.”

  “Just give me my money and let me go,” said Lane.

  “I can't,” said Tchaka. “Not until morning. You know I don't keep that kind of cash on hand here. You'll get your money, never fear.”

  “And my screecher.”

  “You'll get that too,” said Tchaka. “I'll have it placed on your ship. You can hunt it up once you've taken off.”

  Lane stood up and walked to the door.

  “One last thing, Nicobar,” said Tchaka.

  “What?”

  “How long have you been chasing the Dreamwish Beast?”

  “A long time.”

  “What do you plan to do after you catch it?”

  “I've already told you,” said Lane. “I commissioned a weapon that utilizes the entropy principle. Once I get the creature in my sights, the weapon will simply dissipate it.”

  “You don't understand me,” said Tchaka. “That's what you're going to do when you catch it.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” said Lane.

  “You've used up all your money and all your youth,” said Tchaka. “You're probably being hunted for murder at this very moment. You've reneged on so many contracts that it's doubtful you'll ever be able to set up shop as a hunter again. So I repeat: What are you going to do after you catch it?”

  Lane stared uncomprehendingly at him for a full minute, then turned and walked out the door.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  CHAPTER 18

  The Deathmaker had one last stop to make.

  Lane put the ship down less than a mile from the Dorne village. There was no need for secrecy; by the time the police traced him here he'd be long gone.

  He allowed the Mufti to cling to his shoulder as he walked the short distance to the row of dilapidated shanties. It was very cold now that the sun had set, and he hastened his pace.

  When he reached the village he found that he couldn't remember which hut was Vostuvian's, so he stood at the midpoint of the single row of dwellings and called the Dorne by name.

  A moment later Vostuvian emerged, expressionless as ever.

  “I knew you would come back,” he said in his now-familiar half-whisper.

  “Do you still want to go?” said Lane.

  “Yes.”

  “Then get as much concentrated food as you can beg, borrow, or steal, or prepare to spend the entire hunt eating what I eat.”

  “We have no concentrated foodstuffs,” said Vostuvian.

  “All right,” said Lane. “Round up enough food to last you for a week or two, until your system gets used to a steady diet of my stuff. Will you need anything else?” He could not resist getting the dig in; “Clean rags, for instance?”

  “What I am wearing will be quite sufficient,” said Vostuvian.

  “Good. I'll give you two hours to hunt up your food and say your good-byes.”

  “May I ask what has brought about this change, Lane?” said the Dorne. “As I said, I knew that you would come back for me, but I didn't expect you this soon.”

  “No choice,” said Lane. “There is very likely a warrant out for my arrest, and if there isn't, there soon will be. I have enough fuel and money to run the Deathmaker for the rest of our lives and then some, and it stands to reason that if I'm ever going to need you, I'd better get you aboard now. It won't take the police very long to figure out that I've been here a couple of times on business.”

  “Why are the authorities after you?” asked Vostuvian.

  “They think I've graduated from a killer of animals to a killer of men.”

  “And have you?” asked Vostuvian.

  “Does it make any difference to you, as long as I take you along on the hunt?”

  Vostuvian closed his eyes and stood rigid and unbreathing for a moment. Then he looked up. “No, Lane, it makes no difference at all. The only killing that concerns me is that which lies ahead.”

  “Good,” said Lane. “Should you bring along any tools to repair the diluter if it goes on the blink?”

  “On the blink?” repeated the Dorne.

  “Breaks do
wn.”

  “It will not break down, Lane. As long as your ship runs, the entropy weapon will function.”

  “Good enough,” said Lane. “I'll have to take your word for it. Go scare up your food and get back here as fast as you can.”

  The Dorne disappeared into the darkness, in what Lane assumed was the direction of the community kitchen. The hunter leaned against the shanty to wait for Vostuvian's return, his eyes scanning the heavens. He wondered where the creature was at that very instant, whether it was gliding through space or feeding off the dust cloud, or perhaps waiting for the Deathmaker. It had been a long time since he'd seen it, but he could still feel the sensations—the hatred, the fear, and those other, darker emotions—as if he had just experienced them minutes ago. He knew he'd feel the apprehension again, cascading over him in irresistible waves—but this time things would be different. This time he was ready for it, ready and armed and eager to get on with the hunt.

  His concentration was broken as the Mufti began jabbering insanely and launched itself toward the ground. A moment later it waddled back to him, a huge golden-backed beetle carried proudly in its mouth. It played with the insect for a while, and when the beetle finally expired it tossed the tiny carcass into the air, catching and swallowing it on the way down. A moment later it was back on Lane's shoulder again, but this time its entire body was tense as it scanned the ground for another late-night snack.

  Lane turned his head and stared at his strange little pet as best he could. If the Mufti had a redeeming social virtue he had yet to discover it, and yet he was strangely attached to the maniacal creature. He found its chattering and gibbering a comfort during his long months in deep space, and felt a certain warmth in the knowledge that the Mufti stayed with him by choice. There had been hundreds of times on a multitude of worlds that the little animal could have gone off and left him if it had so desired, but it never evinced any interest in doing so. He was about to give its head a friendly pat when it shrieked like the idiot he suspected it was, dove to the ground again, and a moment later was munching happily on another beetle.

  They remained in the cool darkness, man and Mufti, for the better part of an hour. Then Vostuvian returned with a foul-smelling sack slung carelessly over his shoulder, and they walked to the Deathmaker.

  A moment later Belore was a globe of ever-decreasing size in the viewscreen, and Lane, after many years and many false starts, began the final hunt of his career.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  CHAPTER 19

  Vostuvian set up housekeeping in a corner of the pilot's cabin. The Dorne put in his time acquainting himself with the control and instrument panels, but otherwise never willingly crossed the imaginary line around his quarters. He refused to use the Dryshower until Lane made it a use-it-or-get-off-the-ship proposition, and his two-week supply of odoriferous food turned out to be a two-month supply instead. The fact that it had rotted and stunk to high heaven long before the two months were up didn't seem to bother him in the least.

  As for Lane, he spent most of his waking hours at the instrument panels, searching vainly for some sign of the creature. He kept up his rigorous exercises for almost three months, then let them tail off; after all, he reasoned, he was just going to shoot the damned thing, not wrestle with it.

  The first six months in space were uneventful. The next twenty were even worse. Vostuvian was quite content to go weeks on end without saying a word, and Lane was damned if he was going to be the first one to break the silence. He had never begged for anything in his life, and he sure as hell wasn't going to beg an alien he had grown to hate to talk to him.

  So time continued to drag. Even the Mufti became irritable, and Lane finally put it into Deepsleep. When their thirtieth month in dust cloud came and went with no noticeable change, he went back to his exercise routine, and took regular stints outside the Deathmaker, letting the ship tow him via a lifeline.

  He stopped wondering where the creature was hiding and started to wonder if it was dead. He wanted to make radio contact with other ships or ports and find out if there had been any recent sightings, but the knowledge that he must surely have a price on his head by this time always prevented him from doing so. So he sat, and watched, and waited.

  When the Deathmaker was thirty-three months out from Belore a fast-moving object showed up on Lane's instrument panel, but a moment later the sensors confirmed that it was merely an old cargo ship on a milk run. Still, the incident seemed to reawaken the predator in him, and he spent another month glued to his instrument panel before he became convinced that one solitary sighting didn't necessarily presage any others.

  They were thirty-eight long, boring, silent months out from Belore when it finally happened. Lane was exercising on the outside of the ship, walking up and down the length of the hull with heavy, magnetic boots, flicking the magnets on and off with each step, when he heard Vostuvian's calm, unhurried voice in his earphone.

  “I think you had better come in, Lane.”

  “Something malfunctioning?” asked Lane.

  “No.”

  “Is it the Mufti?” he asked, walking laboriously to the nearest airlock.

  “No,” said Vostuvian. “I think I have spotted the straigor.”

  “The what?”

  “The Dreamwish Beast.”

  Lane was inside in another three minutes, and bending over the instrument panel thirty seconds after that.

  “It's the creature, all right!” he said, unfastening his space suit and throwing it on the floor in a heap.

  “About half a million miles, I should estimate,” said Vostuvian.

  Lane brought the ship to a halt, then began edging forward. If the creature really could sense the presence of the diluter, he wanted to get as close as he could before it knew he was there. The Deathmaker got to within two hundred thousand . miles, and just as Lane was releasing the various safety mechanisms from the diluter, the creature took off like a bat out of hell.

  The Deathmaker jumped forward in pursuit. It had lost another fifty thousand miles before Lane could react, but now, as both creature and ship approached light speeds, the interval remained constant.

  “It's veering away from the dust cloud,” remarked Vostuvian tonelessly.

  “It knows I mean business this time,” said Lane, his eyes and hands never leaving the instrument panels. “What did you say the maximum effective range of this thing is?”

  “About seventy thousand miles,” said the Dorne.

  “That's for killing, right?”

  “I do not understand you, Lane,” said Vostuvian.

  “If I can maneuver to within, say, one hundred and twenty thousand miles, will the diluter be able to wing it?”

  “Wing it?”

  “Wound it,” said Lane. “Slow it down.”

  “I doubt it,” said Vostuvian. “And, while seventy thousand miles is the maximum range, I feel you would be far wiser to hold your fire until you are less than thirty thousand miles away.”

  “Both those problems are going to be academic until it starts running out of juice,” said Lane. “We're going damned near maximum right now, and I'd be surprised if we're gaining much more than ten yards a minute.”

  The creature had indeed left the dust cloud and was now racing in a straight, true line toward the galactic rim, some tens of thousands of light-years distant. And running just as straight and just as true was the Deathmaker.

  Three days into the chase Lane, despite all his efforts and amphetamines, fell asleep at the panel, and Vostuvian worked the controls for the next eleven hours. When Lane awoke there had been no appreciable change in the positions of the ship and the quarry.

  Nor was there any change for the next month. Once or twice Lane thought he had lost it, for his ship's sensing devices were far less efficient at light speeds, but the creature remained on course, and sooner or later Lane was always able to get a reading on it.

  They were approaching the Outer
Frontier now and still there had been no letup in the creature's speed. Lane began to seriously wonder if it ever required rest. He put the question to Vostuvian.

  “Who can say?” replied the Dorne. “When my people waged war on them, they made no effort to escape, so I have no data upon which to base a conclusion.”

  “In other words, it is conceivable to you that we may chase this thing the rest of our lives and never get appreciably closer to it.”

  “It is a possibility,” said the Dorne. “However, any life form, no matter how unique in composition, must have limits of energy expenditure which cannot be transgressed.”

  “True,” said Lane. “But since this creature has been around for eons, there's no reason to assume that those limits will occur in our lifetimes, is there?”

  “No,” said Vostuvian emotionlessly.

  “There used to be a saying about a prophet named Mohammed and a mountain,” said Lane. “I won't quote it to you, since you probably wouldn't understand or appreciate it, but I think I'm going to apply its principle.”

  With that, he pressed the firing mechanism on the vibrator and aimed it in the direction of the fleeing creature. For ten minutes there was no reaction; then slowly, almost imperceptibly, it began to slow down. Lane slowed the Deathmaker down as well, keeping a quarter-million-mile distance between them.

  Within an hour both the creature and the ship were at rest, and Lane began firing the vibrator at twenty-second intervals.

  And then, carefully and tentatively, the creature began approaching the ship. When it got to within one hundred fifty thousand miles Lane felt a wave of eagerness spread over him, and realized, with a sense of mortification and shame, that the creature was still too far away for it to be any emotion other than his own.

  Now it was within one hundred thousand miles, and suddenly it paused, throbbing wildly.

  “What's the matter with it?” asked Lane.