A Jungle of Stars

by Jack L. Chalker

  The doctor shrugged. "Varies with the individual. A few hours--days. Not more than a month at the outside."

  Savage groaned.

  ***

  Paul Savage entered the small office without knocking. It was the first time he had ever been in Stephen Wade's Haven headquarters office, although he'd been in Haven itself several times.

  If the office was any indication, Wade was a pig.

  It was not a large room, as things go, but it had an enormous assortment of business machines, from a typewriter to a total communications system that would connect Wade with any part of his domain, Earthbound or otherwise. Books lined the place--not only covering every wall, but on top of file cabinets, desk, even piled up on the fancy stereo system. Mountains of paper covered the floor, and Savage had to thread a narrow passage to one of the chairs.

  Wade sat in a large, green highbacked swivel office chair that could scarcely move because of the junk around it.

  "Take a chair, Paul," he invited, not looking up from some reports he appeared to be sifting through.

  Savage unpiled some papers and books from a wicker-type chair and sat down. After a couple of minutes, Wade lit one of his fancy cigars and turned to him.

  "Aren't you afraid the place will catch fire?" Savage asked nervously.

  Wade shrugged and said, "In Haven, all things are possible. I think you know at least part of the reason I sent for you."

  Savage nodded. "I'm off the investigative payroll."

  "Yes. Unless you're willing to leave Jenny here at all times and go back to the normal routine, you're of no good to us on the outside. So I've put Bumgartner on your territory and you'll take his place here."

  "Bumgartner!" Savage's bushy eyebrows rose. "So destiny strikes again."

  Wade looked somewhat sheepish. "You know that you two have met before?"

  "You hired a detective, didn't you?"

  "I guess I did," Wade laughed. "Maybe one day we'll put the two of you together in a room and let you kill each other until you get bored with it. And, in our defense, I might say that we didn't invent that patrol--just took advantage of it--and if it hadn't been for Ralph's little gadgets you never saw, the VC would have found you and killed you all, anyway. Enough of that, though. I have more serious work here--a bum situation. It smells, and I need help."

  "Everything connected with this operation so far has smelled of something or other," Savage retorted. "Why should you be different?"

  Wade's face grew serious. "I've had 114 agents get dug up, exposed, or run out of town in the last few weeks," he said. "A total of only 92 made it, to get picked up."

  "So? Is that an unusually low number?"

  "No, it's an impossibly high one. Far too high to be mere chance. Almost a record."

  "So what's the problem?" Savage asked. "I'd think you'd be happy to get them out. They represent a substantial investment in training and experience, and we can always use them."

  "True," Wade agreed, "but--well, let's take these in my hand, here--which came from Bumgartner's pickup.

  "Item: One Aruman Vard, a Fraskan--which is meaningless to you. But the record says that Vard delayed unpardonably in getting his operation shut down, then made his way single-handed out of a domed city already secured by the enemy. Or this one:

  "Gayal, one of the wives of our resident agent. Absolutely no training. Now, while our resident agent goes off and gets his fool head blown apart Gayal runs the whole communications net on two days' training, yet sticks around until a Kah'diz with a nice silver rod starts converting the family to loyal citizens of the empire. Then, in the middle of the night, she sneaks out of a house filled with relatives and the enemy, radios her pickup, gets away after blowing up the installation, and hides out in the hills for three weeks, evading an intensive search until she's finally found by them at the very moment Bumgartner arrives to conveniently shoot a batch of them and spirit her away. Think about it. Or this one:

  "Koldon, a double agent who's always been reliable even if he was the bastard who originally outfitted Rhambda, gets taken for a sucker--one of the finest telepaths in history!--and lured onto a ship just teeming with the enemy. Despite this, he knocks off a few of them, steals a lifeboat--which is no easy matter--and escapes close enough to one of our worlds that his distress signal reaches us almost immediately, but somehow is never picked up by the enemy. He spends nine days in the lifeboat, yet Bumgartner finds him in ten minutes. See what I mean?"

  "You think they're ringers," Savage put in.

  Wade shook his head no. "No, they're not all ringers. I think one of those 92 is a ringer. I know all of them were helped to escape, to 91's good fortune. It's number 92 that I'm worried about."

  "Camouflage," Savage replied, seeing the point. "Too many suspects to really get down to cases on, and The Bromgrev's in and lost in the crowd."

  "Exactly!" Wade pointed his finger at Savage. "And one final note. That very daring attack on us was well planned. It came damned close to breaking the line. It caught us flat-footed, and it was as well directed as you can get. If The Bromgrev didn't have to keep all those reserves back on the occupied worlds, he could have taken us. But since that battle, not a single offensive, not a tiny grouping, not even a feint. They're avoiding battles whenever possible."

  "Like they're in a holding pattern?"

  "Right! If The Bromgrev's in Haven, he's out of contact with the Rhambdan mass-mind. That puts a strain on The Mind just to keep things together. In fact, the Rhambdans themselves have drawn back, leaving the conquered systems entirely to allied troops."

  "I suppose it wouldn't have done any good to kill or quarantine new arrivals?"

  "None at all," Wade replied. "The Bromgrev would just become someone else--and make the work even harder. Look at what it's taken us just to narrow things down to this number!"

  Savage shifted in his chair and reached for a cigarette. Wade passed him an ashtray.

  "So where do I fit in?" Savage asked.

  "I call myself The Hunter. That implies an offense, an aggressive seeking-out of the quarry. So far, I've spent all my time defensively--and I'm losing! On the other hand, The Bromgrev's conquests are agonizingly slow. He's obviously decided that the best thing to do to speed things up is to take me out. That's why I'm sure he's here, waiting for some chance at me. I'm sure of it!" Wade banged his fist on the desk. "And I have to get him first! To do so, I long ago developed a plan which so far is working out. But it can go against me at any moment."

  Wade explained things as they had progressed to date, to Savage. And cleared up a lot of minor mysteries.

  "And now the big one," Wade concluded. "I have divided the new arrivals into teams, three to five to an agent. The guise will be routine indoctrination and training, which will be complete. You'll undergo it with your people. Along the way, we'll sow some traps and see if my wayward brother falls into them."

  "And if not?" Savage objected. "You've blown up the cleverness of this character to diabolic proportions. What if there are no mistakes?"

  "Then you'll have to make certain that nothing happens to me," Wade told him crisply. "Right now, The Bromgrev's uncomfortable--he's one of a finite number in a finite space--and that space is of my choosing. I intend to start counterattacking across the length and breadth of his territory. The Bromgrev will be vitally needed elsewhere before too long--at least vitally needed outside of Haven for more than the short times everybody will be out. He'll have to make a series of moves whether he wants to or not."

  "But," Savage objected, "what good will it do if one of us does peg The Bromgrev? Imprisonment is impossible, control out of the question."

  "I thought you understood..." Wade replied softly. "I intend to murder him."

  Savage shot straight up in his chair. "But that's impossible! You yourself said as much! How do you murder an invincible immortal?"

  Wade smiled. "You'll know that, when and if necessary. In the meantime, those three I told you about are your assignment
." He passed the trio of files to Savage.

  Savage glanced quickly over them, then put them aside for later reading. "Well, that leaves only one horrible little problem in your whole master plan," he said sourly.

  "What's that?" Wade asked.

  "Suppose none of them are The Bromgrev...?"

  ***

  He had fixed a small apartment in the personnel quarters for Jenny and himself, and arranged the furnishings to be almost identical to those in her old apartment. All that remained of that terrible night, weeks before, was a remembrance of a bad time, much like a vivid nightmare which nonetheless is allotted a smaller and smaller space in the mind as time goes on. She never dwelt on it, preferring to think of the more positive aspects of that day that had so changed her life.

  They were lying in bed together when the intercom buzzer rang.

  Savage reached over and pushed the operational bar down. "Yeah?" he snapped.

  "Duty watch, sir," came an officious voice. "Your team is to report to the Small Briefing Room for orientation today at ten hundred hours."

  Savage glanced at the wall clock, which read 0915. "Okay," he responded, "I'll be there. Have you notified the others?"

  "Yes, all is ready," the reply came back.

  "Right, thanks," Savage told the watch, and clicked it off.

  "They pick the damnedest times," Jenny snapped.

  "I've got to do my job," Savage said philosophically. "Want to come along? The orientation talk will answer a lot of questions about Haven."

  "Hmph!" she snorted. "Forty minutes. And the only thing I have to wear is one of those stiff uniforms."

  "Come naked if you want, wench!" he teased. "Be a shameless harlot! After all, lots of the life forms around here are alien, and a lot of folks--human and not--go around in the buff. Nobody'd give you a second glance."

  She hit him.

  ***

  They entered the Small Briefing Room--really large enough for a dozen or so--and Savage saw that the others were there. He recognized them from the file photos. He seated Jenny in a chair and strode over to them.

  The three aliens all saw that his companion was blind by the way she moved and was led into these unfamiliar surroundings.

  Savage introduced himself to each in turn, then to Jenny; and Koldon and Gayal allowed Jenny to "feel" them--what she called "getting a good look at people." Vard remained polite but aloof.

  Savage beckoned them to be seated again, and sat down himself by his wife. "Pick up the earphones clipped on the right side of the desk," he instructed her. "Wade will speak in Universal, which you don't know. The gadget you've got there will translate. We'll have to get you plugged into Universal in the next few days--it's the language here."

  "I was always pretty good in French," she quipped. "Par-lays vows Frankias, and all that."

  "You learn this one by machine. It's a nightmare. And it's good."

  Wade would speak through the wallscreen, to minimize contact between himself and the teams. He did not want a chance meeting with The Bromgrev. He could see everyone on multiple monitors in front of him, however.

  As they waited, Jenny whispered, "I really am going to be a nature buff from now on! If that Gayal can let hers all hang out, so can I!"

  Savage laughed and hit her on the rump, then leaned over and kissed her.

  She bit him.

  The screen came to life. Wade stood at a podium, a small screen in back of him. He looked, for all the world, like a TV network newscaster about to give the six o'clock news, Savage thought.

  "Glad to see you're all here," Wade began pleasantly. "I'm going to start with some fundamentals many of you know. But this is supposed to be a gradual process, so those people who get bored please bear with me.

  "First of all," Wade went on, "you are all now in Haven, as we call it." A diagram of the Solar System, with an arrow pointing to Earth, appeared behind him. "Haven is reached by first reaching Earth, the third planet of a pretty young system out in the third spiral of the galaxy. It is not, however, actually on the planet, but is, rather, contiguous with it."

  The picture shifted to a view of the United States, with a good portion of the Southeast and Atlantic Ocean to out beyond Bermuda bracketed. The map changed again, featuring only the spotlighted area.

  "I've been on this world for some time," Wade continued, "and I became aware that certain places on it were really extraordinary. There were about a dozen such, where strange tides, weird weather patterns, and the like occurred--the one shown here, near an island the natives call Bermuda, is a good example. For centuries this place has puzzled the natives: the weather was freakish, currents reversed themselves or ran in circles, and there were records of ships and such being lost here with no sign. Because of its fairly geometrical shape it's called the Bermuda Triangle."

  The area was duly marked off on the map.

  "When I heard of it, I was fascinated," Wade went on, "and so, about sixty or seventy years ago, Earth time, I took a boat into the region. I suddenly found myself in a strange storm, and there was a roaring maelstrom--a whirlpool of air. Suddenly the lights went out, and I found myself in an enormous bubble of air and water suspended in... well, total blackness is the best, if inadequate, way to describe it. All sorts of things were floating around: ships, chunks of rock, even some stuff dating back to the prehistory of the planet. All dead, of course, as the temperature was killing, once you got away from the contact point with our planet here. Absolute Zero by the time you reached the rim--with even the air frozen solid."

  "Then why didn't it kill you?" came a skeptical question obviously from one of the newcomers.

  Wade's features registered surprise.

  "Why, it did, of course. As you all know--But, well, obviously you don't all know. All right, some real fundamentals coming up."

  Wade put his head in his hand for a minute, thinking. Then his head jerked back up.

  "I am a Kreb," he said at last. "One of the last two of my race. Combined, our race was, in every corner of the galaxy, God, controlling the spin of planets and the birth and death of suns. All of your races are the products of our handiwork."

  Wade heard the sound of murmuring, and some comments did not get translated. He ignored them, and continued.

  "My race was supposed to last until the Next Race evolved into our state; then we would pass on--to where or what, no one, myself included, is really certain. But--something happened. My people simply advanced too fast; they began passing into that next stage involuntarily. Finally, only a few of us were left, including The Bromgrev--as he now calls himself. We didn't have or need names. The Bromgrev, to put it simply, believed in more direct involvement than did the rest of us. He saw the races of the galaxy as small children who needed to be led--and who needed a tangible god to worship and obey. The Bromgrev, of course, would be that god.

  "In order to stop this, my remaining brothers... well, devolved him--into a parasitic creature capable of going from body to body but never merging with the superior races. To keep The Bromgrev from, nonetheless, causing great harm before the Next Race could develop, I volunteered to undergo the same treatment. It has not been necessary to act against him--until now."

  "But The Bromgrev is the title given to the Rhambdan mass mind!" someone objected. "Are you saying that this is not so? That the Rhambdans are not the enemy?"

  "Exactly that. I see Exmiril with a group over in 25. Exmiril, why don't you come around here and tell everyone the story? Okay, thanks!"

  They waited a minute or two, some quite restive, for the agent to make his way to Wade's stage room.

  "Is what he's saying true?" Jenny asked Savage, disbelief tinged with awe in her voice.

  "Pretty much," he told her. "At least, the main facts are there. Who's who is still open to interpretation."

  A creature appeared at Wade's podium. It was tall and wore a standard black uniform, but it looked like nothing Savage had ever seen before. It had a red skin--bright red--with a face someth
ing like a fox with the hair gone and the snout even thinner. Huge, elephantine ears projected from both sides, and the eyes were round, cat-like, but lidless.

  "I was there when The Bromgrev discovered Rhambda," it began in a thin, reedy voice. "It was very, very long ago--even for my long-lived race--but I remember it well. Let me tell you of it."

  Exmiril's voice took on a timbre not there before, and his eyes seemed lit by flames. So emotional and animated did he become that the listeners almost felt as if they, too, had been there...

  CHAPTER TWO

  "Switch to interior!" Captain Eurosan of the Caltik Federation Trade and Exploration Ship Admiral Gnarvan snapped.

  Swiftly, one of the three screens switched to the interior of the scoutcraft, while the other two showed an ever-nearing view of the planet below, green-blue and placid-looking.

  The two crew members were still in their seats, acting normally, and Jurian, the pilot, was flying with all the skill at his command, fighting the tremendous force of gravity.

  "Scout 1, Scout 1--come in! What is the trouble?"

  The two in the scout paid no heed at all to the call. They continued their silent downward plunge.

  "Jaxmal! Can you probe?" the captain asked the small, frail old one who sat impassively watching the screens.

  Jaxmal nodded, and the telepath shot mentally downward to the scoutcraft. Suddenly he screamed horribly, then collapsed and rolled onto the floor.

  Two crew members ran over to him and picked him up. One called for water, which was already forthcoming.

  In the background, the screens showed no change in the scout, except that the pilot was slowing to land in a cleared space below. The nose camera showed the features of the terrain: lush, tropical jungle which extended over three-fifths of the land surface of the planet.

  The old one moaned, and seemed to come to. Horror was written on his face. "You--you must destroy them--and the scout," he gasped. "They--they are not--not men. Not anymore. Not any--Ach! It's trying to get at me! It's clawing at my mind! Destroy the scout and flee while you can! Do it before--Oh, gods! It's killing me!"