A Jungle of Stars

by Jack L. Chalker

  Savage cut him off. "Eat first. Then I'll tell you everything you want to know. There's plenty of time--now."

  ***

  The agony, the death, the trauma was subsiding. Already The Hunter could feel himself clear, sort, and grow. The power surged into him, and he fed deeply on the energy of the cosmos.

  I am! he exulted. I am again!

  He reached out and found the inhabitants of this pitiable rock they all occupied. Just four, he saw. They had fulfilled their purpose. They were no longer relevant to him, and he quickly forgot their existence.

  The Pull began, that ancient geas laid upon him in times past by The Race, that curse that tied him to his planetary sphere.

  Thousands of times before, he had been thus; and thousands of times before, he had resisted--in vain. Now, this time, he could choose a host from any along the route, defeating or delaying The Pull.

  But he would not resist. He flew, taking the energy he needed from the stars that shone all around him. He soared confidently, triumphantly, seeing the universe as his race had seen it, joyous in the sudden return, if fleeting, to godhood.

  To meet the ship, that fragile shell, which carried The Bromgrev to him.

  ***

  "Right from the beginning," Savage began, "I had this feeling that things weren't quite right. But it didn't really all come together for me until one day in Wade's office, when he told me the impossible stories of your escapes. Oh, they were real and dangerous to you--but they sounded like low-grade movie thrillers.

  "And they were! That's what tipped The Hunter that The Bromgrev was making his move. Suddenly I saw how The Bromgrev thought--and realized that your stories weren't the only low-grade thrillers around. Everything I had experienced since going on that wartime patrol was like that--set up, contrived, like we were all unknowing actors in a plot, with the author's heavy hand all around. Nothing rang true.

  "I was a soldier sent on patrol. But I was improperly briefed, and I was supplied with men who had no stomach for the mission and were ready to do anything to louse it up. Ultimately, I was faced with mutiny, and shot by a man--one of my own--named McNally. And then this same McNally made certain that my body, with its potentially incriminating evidence, got back to home base."

  "You were killed?" Gayal gasped. "But--you are not dead!"

  "Yes. I am dead. I exist only because The Hunter 'met' me on a metaphysical plane and kept me from going to the place of the dead--and restored me to my body. My hand was left behind to the enemy--the only part of me that Hunter did not restore."

  "Yeah, that's bothered us for some time," Koldon put in. "When you remade yourself into your version of tall, dark, and handsome, why did you keep the claw?"

  Savage smiled as if at a private joke. "Hunter understood--at least at the end. It was, well, my reminder and my symbol."

  "Of what?" they both asked simultaneously.

  "That Hunter had limitations," he replied. "It was something--one thing--he could not do with a wave of his hand. It made him less than godlike, more human--and, therefore, more vulnerable. He had limits. It may have been silly or stupid to retain it, but, for me, it was necessary. As long as it existed, a small part of me still belonged to me." He took a sip of water and continued.

  "I was part of the first step in Hunter's master plan. All of it depended on figuring out who among the trillions of sentient beasties in the galaxy The Bromgrev was. Haven and The Hunter's powers put one place off-limits to The Bromgrev's agents and surrogates--and it was the nerve center of resistance to The Bromgrev's conquests. The Hunter deliberately created a situation where only the physical presence of The Bromgrev would do."

  "I think I see," Gayal interjected. "There was no way to tell who The Bromgrev was with all of those surrogate selves around to give the orders. So, rather than sifting through uncounted beings, hoping to come up with the right one, he brought The Bromgrev to him."

  "Right," Savage agreed. "And I was part of the team he developed to identify The Bromgrev once he arrived."

  "But why come at all?" Koldon asked. "The Bromgrev was winning, wasn't he? Why risk everything by exposing himself to danger?"

  "Several reasons," Savage replied. "Specifically, the sheer scope of conquering the known galaxy. How many millennia would it take? How many lives? And what would be left? Back in Vietnam we had an officer who once destroyed an entire village to 'save' it from being taken over by the enemy. The enemy never took it over, all right--but who won? And, of course, there was the terrible hatred both had built up against each other in the eons they had been battling. A hatred, I think, transcending all bounds of logic and reason. They knew each other well.

  "Also, The Hunter had been expelled from The Race and left behind, out of the godhood he coveted. The Bromgrev was the last, although degenerate, symbol of that race that cost him his glory--But, we're getting away from the answers." Savage paused to light another cigarette.

  "I was part of the team The Hunter developed to identify The Bromgrev once he arrived," Savage continued. "I discovered early on in the game that the man who killed me--McNally--didn't exist. The Hunter had arranged the patrol; The Hunter put Ralph Bumgartner, alias McNally, in there specifically to kill me and yet get my body out in one piece."

  "Bumgartner!" Gayal exclaimed. "But he was the one who rescued me! I--"

  "Just another pawn in The Hunter's little game," Savage cut in. "I wasn't certain until one of The Bromgrev's agents lured me to a small town for a private chat. He put forth the proposition to change sides."

  "And you did!" Koldon spat.

  "No. I didn't," Savage corrected him. "I never really had a side. Not one of theirs, anyway. The Bromgrev offered totalitarianism for the good of the galaxy, The Hunter offered an anarchy where he could play little tin god all he wanted. So I kept my options open until I saw what both games were--and, once I had all the answers in this game of galactic war, I started playing, too. Particularly when I saw that I had become, by accident or design, the pivot in both sides's schemes."

  "How could you possibly know that?" Koldon put in. "After all, there were thousands of agents."

  "The Hunter went to too much trouble to recruit me just to discard me--and The Bromgrev went to even more trouble to talk to me personally when a phone call would have done the trick as well. So already things were moving toward me as the focal point for both sides.

  "Then came you--not just the two of you, but many more. A lot of our people, trapped on planets with the enemy breathing down their necks, made almost impossible escapes. Why? The only answer was that you were supposed to escape."

  "I'll have you know it wasn't easy," Koldon snorted. "Gayal and I both almost got killed!"

  "It wasn't supposed to be easy. Just--suspicious. A few of our people still got it--enough to show how hard it was. But the fact remains that so many hair's-breadth escapes, coming one on top of another, made everyone a suspect. The Hunter saw The Bromgrev in each of you--as The Bromgrev intended."

  "So that's it!" Gayal exclaimed. "We were camouflage for the real Bromgrev!"

  "Sure," Savage continued, "but The Bromgrev was smarter than we were. He sent all those suspects in the front door, then came in like a thief in the night, in a way totally unexpected."

  "You mean none of us was The Bromgrev?" Koldon gasped. "Then, who is?"

  Savage smiled. "You both should have figured it out long ago. The clues were all around--and at least one mistake was as good as putting up a sign."

  ***

  The Bromgrev's ship was in sight, on its way to kill a helpless Hunter.

  But The Hunter was already there. Quickly, he matched velocities with the ship and dissolved into the energy field. He sensed them all within, and saw with satisfaction that the one he had identified as The Bromgrev was indeed there.

  "The War will not end with the death of The Hunter," he hears The Bromgrev say.

  "I know," agrees Ralph Bumgartner. "There is always conflict in the jungle, and this has disr
upted the orderly flow. The War will go on."

  "The War will go on," The Bromgrev intones.

  The War ends here, Hunter thought with satisfaction, but they could not hear. He saw ahead the huge scoop of the engines, like the great gaping mouth of a monstrous beast. Slowly he began to change his shape, acquiring mass as he drew what he needed from the matter around him. One by one, slowly, methodically, The Hunter neutralized the safeguards by transmutation.

  ***

  "Yes," Savage told them, "both of you should have known The Bromgrev when I did."

  The others were thoughtful. Then, suddenly, Koldon banged his fist on the table, shaking the dishes. "Oh my God!" he exploded. "Jenny!"

  "Yes..." Savage acknowledged in a low, sad tone. "Jenny. Not from the start--at least I have that."

  A deep hurt was in his face and manner, and they were hesitant to intrude upon it. Finally, Gayal broke the silence.

  "But--but I don't understand," she said in a puzzled tone. "How could we have known?"

  "Because of you, curse me for a fool!" Koldon snapped in an angry voice. But the anger was directed at himself. "Look," he said more calmly, "do you remember when Jenny got her eyes? The training flight?"

  Gayal nodded, but her face still betrayed puzzlement.

  "Remember, the Valiakean brought each of us in turn for her to see?" Koldon continued, getting excited again. "When she saw you she said--"

  "She said I was blue," Gayal recalled. "But I don't see--"

  "Jenny was blind from birth," Savage reminded her. "She had no pupils. There can be no color for a blind person--not even the concept of color, to one who has never seen. Terms like 'red' and 'blue' have no meaning. You were blue and she saw you as such, but she should have had no way of knowing that blue was blue unless she'd seen blue before. Without pupils there was no way. Ergo, the only way she could have known that blue was blue was because it wasn't Jenny."

  "And all this was based on that?" Gayal asked.

  "Well, that was the clincher. But there were earlier slips--small ones, like mentioning the time without feeling the clock and the like--that led me to the suspicion that Jenny was The Bromgrev. And with that discovery everything fell into place for me--and saved our lives. For The Hunter would have killed us all, if he hadn't been convinced that I would do his work."

  "Yes, I was wondering about that myself," Koldon said. "Why was The Hunter so sure you'd be on his side?"

  Savage grinned. "He knew me well. That's why he picked me. I was bullheaded, self-centered, and revenge-minded. Never in my whole life had any woman paid any attention to me--because of my looks... I never had had sex with a woman I hadn't paid. But... Jenny couldn't see the deformed exterior: she 'saw' me in different terms, and she accepted me... The only spark of human warmth I had ever known--and The Bromgrev took her away from me, killed her because it was a good move. There was no other way I could have acted--and Hunter knew it."

  "But how could The Bromgrev be Jenny?" Gayal said in an unbelieving tone. "How would he have the chance? And how could he know you two would fall in love?"

  "Because he engineered the whole thing," Savage answered. "You heard of my experiences with the Kah'diz--Charley or whatever--and how I met Jenny?"

  They both acknowledged that they had.

  "Well," Savage continued, "that was the next of the things that didn't add up. Charley was shot down during the attack on Earth--but why attack at all? The Bromgrev had to know that the defenses here were the strongest of the resistance, and he couldn't afford to throw all his forces into the fight by withdrawing from the conquered places. He also knew that, even if he destroyed Earth, Haven would survive. The Hunter could escape, in any event, to begin it all over again. The entire reason for that attack was as a smokescreen to sneak The Bromgrev in!"

  "Then The Bromgrev was--" Koldon began.

  "Charley, of course," Savage completed, nodding. "Oh, I seriously doubt if all that happened was planned in advance, but The Bromgrev was a master of improvisation.

  "All The Bromgrev wanted to do was to get killed in the neighborhood. Don't ask me why, but they can't kill themselves. Something psychological, I think. After death, they have a period of time--apparently a good deal of time but still finite and predictable--to find a new host body. In order to have enough time to pick a really appropriate one, he wanted to die in as close proximity to Earth as possible. The Kah'diz form was a logical one. Imagine the Kah'diz's power amplified and coupled to the unknown powers of the Kreb! It was ideal as a war identity--but not very good for infiltration."

  "Then he didn't intend to crash?" Koldon interjected.

  "I doubt that he thought he would get the chance." Savage lit yet another cigarette. "But when he saw an opening and got away, he realized the additional opportunities. Our defenses reported that his ship had veered in its course--he had decided to land alive, and picked my area. I'm sure I wasn't the only agent who had been contacted and primed, but I was the one closest to Haven, and The Bromgrev obviously saw many of the ways in which I was vulnerable. It was clear from his agent's conversation that they'd made a special study of me.

  "After the ship plunged into the lake, he set out to find a new host--green lizards aren't exactly inconspicuous in that area."

  "Then the crash wasn't as devastating as it might have been?" Koldon asked.

  "No. It wasn't a crash at all," Savage explained. "When I went out to the ship, it was on the bottom, not in the bottom. The engines were shut off but the auxiliary power generators were on. It floated in to Earth, you see, which implies that the engines were operational. There were also the three crew members--all dead, all strapped in. And yet the fourth survived unhurt: the body of the lizard we later recovered wasn't banged up in any way. We saw, with Vard, that The Bromgrev could take over a being when it suited his purpose and then will it to die when that purpose was accomplished. All three of the other crew members were Bromgrev surrogates--he wouldn't have trusted any other type of crew for so delicate a mission. Having served their purpose, they were told to die--to reinforce the crash idea.

  "The Bromgrev was still swimming toward shore, mounted on the surviving lizard, when he met old man McBride swimming out to get his daughter. The Bromgrev worked a quick Kah'diz loyalty conversion on the man, and had both a possible host and hideout.

  "What bothered me, after the fact, was that McBride had talked to the State Police and other authorities--he could hardly avoid it, what with the accident and all. That's why the lizard's body was missing: McBride couldn't be the host until the interviews had been cleared up. Of course, by the time I got there The Bromgrev had formulated his plan, put it into effect, and was perched on McBride's back.

  "The next problem with the scenario was another that bothered me: Why make yourself conspicuous? Particularly when you knew trained agents of Haven would be around? The answer was obvious, but I didn't see it. He wanted me to discover him. He eavesdropped on me and Jenny that morning under the guise of selling ice cream, and found the two of us very much attracted to each other. He knew I was the agent simply because he couldn't read anything but my surface thoughts; Jenny, though, was wide open. Only when the two of us came down to breakfast did he break off contact. By then the plan was set."

  "You told me it was a whirlwind romance," Gayal put in. "So this was all according to The Bromgrev's plan?"

  "Exactly," Savage affirmed. "Using the Kah'diz's powers he stepped up both Jenny's and my own emotional relationship, pushing an instant attraction into a passionate love affair and binding us together. It bothered me at the time how irrationally I was acting, but I continued to act that way, never thinking that The Hunter had never blocked the empathic paths to my mind. Using children and implying the possibility of a morning takeover of the whole town, The Bromgrev induced quick action while making certain that Jenny stayed with me."

  "But how could you have known?" Gayal sympathized. "After all, he put on such a good show."

  "A flawed show, dammi
tall!" growled Savage. "I'm a trained observer and problem solver, yet I continually let the obvious slip by. If he had a force-field generator from the ship sufficient to protect him, why did he let us through? Why not just seal himself in the cellar until the ship was raised? Only one reason--because he wanted me to seek him out and kill him. I'm sure it was a shock that Jenny did the deed, but the same result was obtained."

  "And the passion he induced...?" Koldon prompted.

  "Camouflage, to give some glimmer of a rationalization for the fact that we got in at all. But that, too, was a major mistake I should have noticed and did not, since it forced home the fact that my empathic channels were open and I was as open to that sort of manipulation as Jenny. It should have been a tipoff, and I missed it."

  Savage paused for a second, and there came a faraway look in his eyes.

  "He took her almost immediately..." he whispered.

  ***

  Satisfied now that the ship is vulnerable, The Hunter draws from the energy around him what he needs to transmute the liner material inside the scoop to his purpose: a material that is fluid, much denser than lead, but with far less mass.

  The material forms around him as he works, and begins slowly to flow into the depths of the great engines. Had the safety mechanisms not already been neutralized, the knowledge of the gaps in the lining would have been instantly transmitted to the cybernetic pilot in time for a system shutdown. No alarms ring. The ship goes on, the material oozing back into the figure-eight-shaped plasma bottle; past the high-flux density coils it flows. The material begins to slow the generated tachyons to the point where separation becomes impossible. Huge numbers of tachyons are created, having both positive and negative half-spin.

  ***

  "So The Bromgrev entered Haven by the back door, while we concentrated all our efforts on the new arrivals like yourself."

  "So why blow it by taking over Vard?" Koldon asked. "Surely he was perfectly hidden, and we could only suspect he was there."

  "True," Savage replied, "and it's here that the improvised plan showed its weaknesses. As Jenny, The Bromgrev wasn't on a crew and so couldn't get outside easily. I think The Bromgrev was telling the truth when he told me, as Vard, that he was 'squeezed' in Haven. But he did need that information--and he accomplished two other things at the same time. One was to focus attention on the two of you, since all three of you had been kept apart from the rest of the new arrivals, and the second was to precipitate action on The Hunter's part. The non-space of Haven shocked him; I think The Bromgrev planned to have his host and Hunter's killed at the same moment, and then engage Hunter, Kreb to Kreb. For some reason, he thought he could win on those grounds--perhaps prevent Hunter from getting a new host, or force him to a host that would neutralize him. A crystalline world with a much slower time rate, for example. But he dared not take the chance in the null-space of Haven, whose properties Hunter knew and he did not. Therefore, he had to get The Hunter out of Haven.