Sensitive

by Dan Donoghue

  The sun on his face woke him to a vague awareness. He felt perfectly happy, drifting along supported by the massive flanks of the two kerries. He saw them as in a dream. He walked as in a dream, floating, his feet seeming not to touch the ground, his mind bathed in a glow of ecstasy. Vaguely he felt that something was wrong, but it was a tiny thought a long, long way away. All was beautiful, there was no hurt, only a wonderful floating to a far off point that pulsed with ecstasy. Then his feet caught, and he fell, though he knew it not, and the teeth of a kerry closed on his arm. He did not feel that either, but he saw it, and he was a hunter trained, and his training sparked a reflex action that snapped his body alert, and his mind closed.

  Pain! Waves of pain! Flashing! Scorching! Tearing through him. His skull slammed in on his brain, squashing it. Every nerve in his body screamed agony. His stomach churned and hot vomit gushed from his mouth and nose. He convulsed, and writhed on the ground, watched by the kerries impassively. For an hour, two hours, he clawed at the soil, and moaned between the violent upheavals of his body, then he slowly quietened, and curled up into a tight ball, and became still, except for the spasms that flicked, and quivered through his muscles.

  The kerries watched over him. The sun rose higher. The terrible heat built up. The animals grew uncomfortable. They nudged at him from either side. Then one caught the cloth at his shoulder and began to drag him.

  Slowly he came aware. The pain eased so that he could know other than its torment. His tongue was thick in his mouth with thirst, and agony still racked his body. Every nerve seemed to have become supersensitive. He felt the air burning down into his lungs, the reluctant stretch of his muscles as his ribs expanded, even his heart seemed to be pounding bruised flesh against bruised flesh. The temptation to open his mind to the balm of the power was almost beyond resistance. Only the knowledge that in it lay death, and the rigorous training of his youth, stood by him, to give him the strength, and the memory of Margaret gave him the will. She had seen him as almost God-like, and somehow she had imposed on him the need to justify that vision. So he bore the pain, and waited, living one breath at a time, dragging over the rough and spiky land.

  By mid-afternoon, he stirred, and resisted the kerry. It stopped, and allowed him to sit. The animals themselves were in a bad way. Their coats were thick with dust, and matted with sticks and dry leaves, their tongues projected from between their dry lips, and their breath came in rasping pants. They sought the shade of a couple of stunted trees, and lay panting.

  Wolf gathered all his determination, and strength, and climbed painfully to his feet. He staggered over to the trees and leant against the stem of one. He looked to his position. The blaster was still strapped to his waist, and the spare energy packs were in their pouches, but his pack, waterbottle, boots, and hat were lost. He would have to kill the kerries to go back to search for them, but he couldn't do that, for he needed the animal's strength. By himself, he could not cross the plain without falling asleep. He was trapped, committed. He couldn't go back far enough to escape the pull of the thing before he must sleep, and become vulnerable. He could only go on, and try to destroy it before it destroyed him, and he must do so while he had strength enough to hold his mind closed against the terrible siege.

  He tore cloth from his shirt to fashion a hat, and strips to bind his feet. Then he turned to face the north, north-east, and resolutely set off. The kerries heaved up off the ground and joined him, one on either side, touching him. He caught a handful of hair on the back of the male, and took a couple of steps. The animal did not react. He put more weight on it. It seemed not to feel it. At last, as he felt his strength ebbing, Wolf levered himself up until he was half-sitting half-lying along the animal's back. It broke into a smooth, ground-covering lope. The female ranged from side to side, and once broke into a great surge of speed, scattering a small group of little animals. She must have killed and eaten, for she was missing for about fifteen minutes. Then she caught up to them, and they sped on, and the hills began to take form and detail at last.

  The kerry was tiring fast, however. There came a break in the smooth stride, and a stumble over a roughness. Wolf slipped off and approached the other. She stood patiently as he struggled onto her back, and, on that nightmare steed, he went the quicker. The male fell behind, but followed. At last they reached the foothills, and a tiny stream that wandered along the side of the plain. As the animal stopped to lap at the water, Wolf slipped off to fall into the blessed wetness, unmindful of stinging fish or other foe.

  He lay for a long time sipping the water, and allowing it to soak into his skin, and soothe the burning of his throat and temples. When he stood again, he had a little of his great strength back, the pain in his head had eased to a bearable level, and, except for natural hunger and exhaustion, his body was almost normal.

  He looked around. The male kerry was approaching in an almost blind stagger, but there was other movement up along the stream. He focused against the glare. There was some sort of reptile-like animal there. Swiftly he began to move in the cover of the trees that lined the stream. One of the things dropped into the water, but he burned a second with the blaster.

  Though it was expensive on power, he cooked the animal with heat from the blaster, reasoning that he still had two energy packs left, and he was not likely to need them before he fell asleep, and once that happened, he was finished. He would never wake properly again, and if something did wake him, he would never be able to close his mind and survive. The meat was tough and tasted rank, but it supplied energy, and he moved on with the animals again on either side. Suddenly, however, they stopped. Wolf required their aid, and tried to urge them on. They sat. He caught the female by the hair at her throat and gave it a tug. She snarled viciously, with bared teeth dripping saliva, and was a savage beast again. It seemed they had reached the edge of their territory, and were not interested in going further.

  Night was approaching. He was more tired than he had ever felt before. Wherever the thing was he had to get to it quickly, and it seemed he was once more on his own. With a last look back at his erstwhile allies, he set off in the general direction they had been taking him.

  It seemed that they had been heading towards the mouth of a great gash in the foothills at the head of an embayment of the plain. On either side the hills became higher and steeper, forming wings to the gap. He reached it just as the sun touched the western rim.

  He looked at a great flat-bottomed, almost vertical sided gash. It was old and weathered, and hills and valleys ran naturally into it, but a knowledge of the land, and its ways, formed an important part of the skill of a hunter, and Wolf could not see how it had been formed. It was not natural.

  He stood looking along it to where the sides converged. At the very apex there was the dark mouth of a cave. At one time water must have poured over it. Now it was dry. The power hammered at the fortress of his mind, drumming down the valley. It was close, very close.

  He had arrived. The thing, whatever it was, was lurking there, in the cave.

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  Chapter 11

  She watched him leave once more, in the bright hour of sunrise, as he had left before. Then it had hurt her, but this time it was infinitely worse. Then she knew he would return; this time.

  She watched them gather in a little knot on the path at the bottom of the steps, Brian, her father, the early work shift, and Wolf. They stood for a few moments saying little. What can be said to a man you think will die? There are thoughts, terrible thoughts, heroic thoughts, but no words, because you are men, and not poets.

  Then he had turned and left, and a little chorus of farewells and wishes of good luck, and last minute advice, and warnings to remember, rose about her. She watched him go, through the flower beds, along the road, under the silhouetted blackness of the gate in the long flat rays of the lifting sun, then abruptly north, north-east, the way of no return.

  She watched him cross the
ploughed land and the new-grown dikseed where the sun-sparkled dew made a halo about the gaunt darkness of his shadow. A figure, incredibly tall he looked, and desperately lonely.

  At the very edge of the forest, he stopped and turned, and, for almost half a minute, he was so still that she wondered if her eyes betrayed her, and he was already gone. Then he lifted the spear in salute to any who remained to see, and she felt him, as though his eyes had sought hers in the dimness of her room. She saw but a slight flicker of movement, and he was gone, and only the sharp, dark footprints stitched a memory across the fields in the rapidly fading dew.

  She sat for a long time in the room, desolate in her loneliness. Her father hadn't called her, and she hadn't gone down. She remembered with pleasure the farewell of the previous night when she had felt excited, exalted, and supremely confident that he would return. With the cold hard light of morning, that confidence had left her, and, in its place, was the dead, thick, weight of despair. In his eye she could not counterfeit, and so she had kept to her room knowing that he would understand.

  For a few mad minutes after she could see him no more, she thought of dashing after him, of throwing in her lot with his, so completely that they lived or died together. It would force her father to send men to help them, and give him a better chance, but even as she thought it, she knew that he would not accept her sacrifice, and that was not the way to keep his love. With a sudden prescience, she knew that, if he did come back, there would be more such days as this, for there was a restless, searching quality in him that would drive him on and on, and she would have to learn to live with it, or forsake her love.

  So began long days of waiting that did not even have the comfort of a crisis day ahead. She could summon little interest in the task of running the great house that once had kept her busy and happy. She spoke little at table, and kept to her room, or wandered, apparently without care, through the fields, so that Cort was forced to drop his work, and go after her, lest she fall prey to the ever waiting kerries. He remonstrated, demanded to know what was wrong with her, found tasks to get her mind occupied, invited young people to the holding, all to no avail. Margaret seemed hardly conscious of anything outside her thoughts.

  At last he demanded of Brian what was wrong with the girl, and Brian sardonically told him what he already knew, but refused to admit. She was a girl in love.

  “She can't be!” Cort yelped.

  Brian's sardonic grin spread wider.

  “I won't allow it!” Cort snarled, angry now.

  “She's nineteen. You couldn't stop her. Not unless you're going to try to run him off. You reckon you could run off a man who's game to take on a kerry with nothing but a spear in his hand?”

  “But you, yourself, you said he was nothing but some kind of a cave man.”

  “I said he was, Dad, not is. Come a long way since they dragged him on board the Star-bird, has that gentleman. You notice the way he talks? You ever hear him stuck on anything about Earth, or High America for that matter. There were a lot of pretty shrewd characters on that Star-bird.”

  “You mean he read their minds?”

  “I'd say so. I saw some of those characters at work down there. Give them ten minutes, and they can lift everything you've spent years learning out of your mind, just like that.” He snapped his fingers.

  “You think he might have influenced Margaret some way?” Cort was worried now.

  “Influenced her? They can read minds—never heard of them being able to change your way of thinking, and they sure can't make people love them—hate them, yes, but not love them. Nope. I'd say Margaret just fell for him in the good old natural way, and there's damned all you can do about it except hope he doesn't make it back.”

  Cort looked up quickly. “I wouldn't go that far—man's got a right to live. You think he's got any chance?”

  “Well the kerries won't get him. I'd bet on that. If he does get that thing, he'll be sitting pretty—you ever thought of that? And me—if I was interested in farming now, and had a few creds to play around with, I might just take a gamble, and book a load of breeding cattle on the Star-bird—could probably get a four year start—could be worth a bit, I'd say. I think I'll go for a swim before dinner.”

  Cort shrugged his shoulders, and walked away. He cursed both Wolf and Courteau, and, as far as that goes, anyone else who happened to stray into his orbit. He set a man to watch Margaret should she leave the house enclosure, and went darkly about his work.

  So a week had passed when a great ship had flashed into braking orbit about the planet, and all else was forgotten in the intense curiosity it aroused. Rumour filled the radio waves. Plague had broken out on Earth. There had been a new world war. It was a state visit by some great dignitary, a new drive had been developed that cut travel time by half, a new planet had been discovered, the ship wasn't of human origin....

  A small shuttle planeted, and rumour gave way to curious silence. There came an urgent call for all freemen representatives to attend an extraordinary meeting of the advisory council. Cort went, and Brian, ever alert for political advantage, accompanied him. Then, unexpectedly, the great ship had ridden her rockets down, and suddenly the government radio had gone off the air, and the waves became thick with a sudden upsurge of small private transmitters crying warning and alarm.

  Warning and alarm came not in time. From out the sky plummeted four giant carriers racing in as only military craft can, and about them soared a score or more of fighting craft. Jump jets swarmed like spring bees, and the sounds of battle had startled distant holdings.

  All was confusion. Margaret tried to rally the men, and to bring them in from the fields. Freemen had to be separated from unreliable convicts, snap judgements made. Desperately, she searched the radio waves seeking news of her father. They made an effort to gather food packs in case the holding had to be evacuated, but they depended on their distance from the city to give them time. It was unwise. Suddenly jump jets had rushed across the sky, ignoring closer holdings, zeroing in on Cort's.

  Those in the first line of defence along the kerry wire had no chance. Laser fire cut them down from far beyond the range of their hand blasters. There was a brief, and deadly battle about the steps of the great house, but the enemy came in from all sides, through doors and undefended windows, riding the hissing jump-jets into the very heart of the house. The defenders died in a searing blaze of concentrated fire.

  Margaret was trapped at the back of the house while trying to shepherd women and children to the safety of the jungle. She shot once with her blaster, but then she was forced to hold her fire lest return fire destroy the children about her feet. Suddenly, she was grabbed from behind, and the weapon smashed from her fingers. Then she felt herself lifted. They were taking her away. She tried to scream, but a giant hand was gripped about her throat and mouth. Swiftly she was dragged away from the others, and into one of the machinery sheds, and violently flung against a bench.

  Breathlessly, she turned to face her captors. There were four of them, giant men, bigger even than Wolf, their faces dark and hawkish, and terribly savage as they crowded in on her.

  “The Sensie! Quick, girl! Where's the Sensie?”

  She gasped. Wolf! What did they want with Wolf?

  “Come on! Come on!” They shook her. “We know he's here! Where is he?”

  They wanted to harm Wolf. Fear turned to hate. She lashed out with the heel of her shoe, wrenched her arm away from one, squirmed out of the grasp of another, and ducked beneath the arm of the fourth. She ran a few steps, but then she was caught by cruelly clutching hands.

  “Little bitch! Want to play, eh! Let's show her Charlie.”

  “Come on, Charlie—it's been a long time.”

  “Wolf!” She screamed in her mind as she felt her clothes tearing from her body and read the savage purpose in their eyes.

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  Chapter 12

  Long seemed that walk up the path to t
he power. Dark, dark as the black holes of space, was the yawning mouth of the cave, but there was no place of darkness for the struggling mind. Like a fierce glare that glows redly through the eyelids, the power glowed about his skull, caressing gently through the shield, promising ecstasy, relief, the end of struggle, comfort, no more pain, a gathering up, a return to the womb. Stronger, and still stronger, like the terrible urge to drink to the thirst crazed, the need to eat for the starving, the desire of drug to the addict, it pulled at his mind as though to tear it apart, and he held it at bay with a fierce and stubborn will, and the memory of a vision in the mind of a girl.

  At the mouth of the cave, he hesitated. What was the thing that lurked in there? From what type of animal, machine, or monster, did such power emanate? What was its final attack? Impossible to use his mind, too dark to see unaided. The blaster must serve as torch, but as torch it was no weapon. Still his mind could not accept delay. Always it weakened under the continuous onslaught.

  With blaster on maximum light, but left hand gripping the lever to swing it completely through its arc, he crept in. The glare of the light went before, sparkling on polished walls, and a little trench of water that flowed like a black reptile along the right, making moving shadows in dips and hollows, and sharp lines of black about the bends.

  It was a broad, high tunnel, with a smooth floor sloping slightly upwards. The walls and ceiling were of fitted rock, and rough at a height above his shoulder. Below that, they were smoother as though many creatures had brushed them in passing, or the one creature that made this place its den was so wide as to rub against the walls. It was a frightening thought for the sides were some seven metres apart.