by Dean Koontz
Docanil stood next to the room's only window. The heavy, amber velvet drapes had been tied back with thick cord. Outside, the early morning light was weak. The snow continued. Docanil seemed to be looking beyond the snow, beyond the ruins, into some pocket universe only he had the vision to penetrate.
Banalog watched the other creature with barely concealed interest. He was fascinated by every detail of a Hunter, always had been. This was a professional concern that was not faked. He longed to take a Hunter under analysis, longed to work deep into one of their minds to find out what went on in there. But a Hunter would never need a traumatist's care and counseling. They were totally in control of themselves at all times. Or so the legend said . . .
Docanil was dressed in snug, blue slacks that were tucked into black boots. A sweater-like garment cloaked his torso, came up high on his long, thick neck. The blue of these was almost dark enough to be called black. Around his waist was a stretch belt with dull, silver buckle and over the buckle the insignia of his trade: the reaching hand, claws extended to capture the enemy, the circle of wicked-looking nails enclosing this. Tossed across another chair was his greatcoat, a heavy, fuzzy thing that looked like it was made of fur-lined velvet. This was black. On the shoulders there were black leather decorative straps. A black leather belt around the middle. There were buttons instead of a pressure seal, and they were as large around as a naoli eye, stamped from heavy black metal, each with the reaching claw and the ring of nails.
Banalog shuddered.
He knew that Hunters wore clothes for a practical reason: as Hunters, destined to their trade even before birth, they were in all ways more sensitive to external stimuli than other naoli. Their body temperature could not easily adjust to changes in the atmosphere as could those of normal naoli. In intense summer heat, they were forced to remain in shadows as much as possible and to drink great quantities of fluids to replace those lost by their bodies. In bitter winter cold, they needed protection against the elements just as fragile humans did.
Yet, there was something sinister in their clothes. Not just in the fact that they wore them—but in the type of garments they chose. Or was this just a childish fear of the unknown? Banalog thought not. He could not pinpoint what, exactly, disturbed him about the sort of uniform the Hunters had adopted, but his uneasiness persisted.
Docanil turned away from the window, looked across the gloomy chamber to the traumatist. Hunters did not seem to need much light to see well . . .
"What you have told me is of little value," he said. His voice was haunting, a deep, whispered hiss of a voice that somehow managed to carry as well as Banalog's own.
"I have tried to—"
"You have told me about the guilt. About the sort of trauma growing more common which has caused Hulann to act as he has. I understand what you say—though I do not understand the trauma. But I must have more information, more theories about how this individual will act now that he is on the run. I cannot go by normal standards."
"You haven't tracked naoli before?" Banalog asked.
"It is rare, as you know. Once before. But he was a common criminal, similar in his reaction patterns to our enemies. He was not, however, a traitor. I cannot understand Hulann."
"I don't know what else I can say."
Docanil crossed the room.
His boots made soft ticking sounds on the floor.
He stopped by Banalog's chair, looked down from his great height, his hideously high cranium picking up bits of the glow lamps. He looked down, smiling the most frightening smile Banalog had ever seen. Beneath his blue-black sweater, his heavy, abnormal muscles bulged and rippled as if they were alive.
"You will help me further," he hissed to Banalog.
"How? I have told you—"
"You will accompany me in the chase. You will give me your advice. You will try to analyze Hulann from what he does and try to project his next move."
"I do not see how I—"
"I will use the Phasersystem in an attempt to get his general location. That should succeed. Whether it does or not, we will then begin. Be ready in an hour."
The Hunter turned away, started for the door into the other room of his quarters.
"But—"
"An hour," he said as he passed through the portal and closed it behind him, leaving Banalog alone.
The tone of his voice permitted no argument . . .
On the northernmost petal of the daisy-shaped continent of the home world of the naoli system, next to a pincer-formed cove where the green sea beat softly insistent, stood the House of Jonovel, a respected and ancient establishment. Deep within the rock-walled, hand-hewn cellars of the venerable mansion was the family's brood hole in which the most recent Jonovel children rested and grew. There were six of them—blind and deaf and mostly dumb as well—snuggled in the warm, wet richness of the brood hole mothermud. Each was no larger than a human thumb, looked more like a small fish than a naoli. There were no visible legs, though the tail had already formed and would remain. The arms were little more than filaments. The tiny heads were buds that could be crushed between thumb and forefinger with little effort. They laid in their individual womb-wads, the slimy white semi-living discharges that had carried them out of their mother after the first stage of their development had been achieved. Fine amber-red ganglia connected them to the wads. Traceries of darker wine-hued blood vessels fed them fluid and took away their wastes. The wads pulsated around their charges, regulating all the delicate processes of life. In two months time, the wombwads would no longer be needed. The Jonovel children would squirm loose of them. The wads, deprived of their patients, would die. The rich mothermud of the hole would then begin to break them down and absorb their protein-laden tissues to maintain a healthy mixture for future births. The children, moving now, no longer blind nor deaf—and totally free to speak their nonsense words—would feed upon the cultures of fungus ringing the walls, sucking for their own life upon the mothermud. The children, at the end of six months, would be brought forth. The Phasersystem contact would be surgically implanted. Education, then, would be rapid, fed right into their overminds without need for vocal instruction.
Retawan Jonovel stood above the brood hole, looking down from the entrance foyer onto the mothermud and his six offspring. They were his first brood in fifty-one years. And, damnit, there should have been nine of them!
Nine. Not six!
But Hunters had to come from somewhere . . .
Shortly after his mate and Retawan had come forth from sixteen days in the warren, the central committee had authorized the Hunters' Guild to treat three of the barely fertilized foetuses and to withdraw them from the woman's womb for development in the artificial wombs beneath the Hunters' Monastery.
He should have expected it sooner or later. The Jonovel's were ancient, pure stock, just the sort the Hunters liked to use. If they had not come for part of this brood, they would have come the next time.
Still . . .
The six below cluttered and squealed mindlessly.
Retawan Jonovel cursed the Hunters and the need for them that made their existence a reality. He left the brood hole, closing the iron door behind. The heat, smell, and noise was getting to him . . .
A white-haired man stood in a cleft of rock, letting the wind flap his clothes and uncomb his frosted mane. It felt good to stand here in the open on his own world after so long in the depths of the fortress, so long in artificial light and darkness. He watched the foamy breakers toiling in toward shore, cresting, battering, spraying up on the rocks three hundred feet below at the foot of the mountain. It was a truly wonderful sight.
Taken from them now. As everything had been.
Unconsciously, he scanned the sky for sign of a naoli copter. But the skies were clear.
The sea rolled in . . .
. . . crashing, spitting up, frothing.
The sea had great strength. Perhaps the world could survive this. Perhaps man could. No, not perhaps. They wo
uld survive. There could be no doubt! For doubt would be the end of them . . .
The scattered clouds burned away. The sun was full and radiant. It felt warm on his face, even though the wind was cool. A long while later, he turned and went into the channel in the cliffside, followed the twist in it until he came to the well-known spot. He made the recognition signal, waited for reply. The door in the rock slid slowly open. He stepped into the Haven and returned to the dismal burden of his duties . . .
Chapter Nine
Hulann pushed the access door up and away to his right. Instantly, the booming storm winds rushed down the hole he had made, swept by him, made Leo, who was standing at the foot of the rungs, shiver and hold himself with his arms to contain his heat. Hulann went up two more steps until he could see above the roof of the cab. He inspected the suspension bracket for damage, though he was not certain he would recognize any if he saw it. As the cold bit at him and the wind decided to take off the flat flaps of his ears, he tried to think of some way to avoid crawling onto the roof—and decided there was none. He climbed the rest of the way out, staying on his hands and knees to offer as little resistance as possible to the wind.
He edged his way over the icy roof toward the suspension bracket, grabbed hold of it with both arms when he reached it. He was breathing heavily, and he felt as if he had traveled a dozen miles instead of eight or nine feet.
He looked back the way they had come, at the endless length of swinging cable. Nothing wrong behind them. He turned, looked forward the dozen feet to the header station. There it was. Two feet before the car wheels, there was a lump of dark-cored ice a little more than four inches thick, perhaps half a foot long. The wheels had come up against that, repeatedly, and had been forced back.
It was a minor miracle that they had not been bumped off the cable to crash on the rocky slopes below.
Below . . .
He looked down, over the edge of the cab, then quickly looked back up. The distance down had seemed frightening from inside the cabin. Unenclosed as he now was, it was perfectly terrifying. He realized, with little surprise, that he was never meant to be a rebel. He was never designed, emotionally, to be on the run, to take risks, to be an outlaw. How had he gotten into this? Guilt, yes. He hadn't wanted to turn the boy in to be slaughtered. But that all seemed so petty now. He was willing to turn a hundred boys in if necessary. Just so he would not have to do what he was beginning to understand he must do if they were to survive.
"What is it?" Leo called.
Hulann turned. The boy had climbed the rungs and had poked his head out of the hole in the roof. His yellow hair seemed almost white now, fluttering above him, sweeping down now and then to blot out his features.
"Ice on the cable. A huge chunk of it. I don't know what caused it. Very unnatural."
"We'll have to go back," Leo said.
"No."
"What?"
The car began swaying slightly more than usual as a stronger gust of wind caught it broadside.
"We can't go back," Hulann said. "I might have tried climbing half the mountain before. Not now. We both got battered around in the cab. We've lost more strength. I'm afraid I'm getting too cold. I have no feeling in my feet at all. We have to get there by cableway or not at all."
"But we'll be thrown loose trying to cross the ice."
"I'm going to break it loose."
The boy, even with his face distorted in the cold, looked incredulous. "How close to the car is it?"
"A couple of feet."
"Can you stand on the roof?"
"I don't think so," he said.
"You mean you plan on—"
—"hanging on the cable," Hulann finished.
"You'll fall. You're scared of heights even inside the cab."
"You have any better ideas?"
"Let me," the boy said.
For answer, Hulann stood, gripping the cable, and held it as he walked gingerly along the roof toward the edge.
"Hulann!"
He did not answer.
It was not that he was heroic or that he indulged in acts of foolish courage. At this moment, it was abject fear which drove him, not courage of any stripe. If he did not break that ice, they would die. They would have to go back to the boarding station at the middle of the mountain and make their way up the slopes to the top. Though the storm had not increased in strength, it seemed to have gained thirty miles an hour in velocity, for he could not withstand its battering as well as before. And the wearier they became, the more fierce the storm would seem—until they would collapse in it, go to sleep, and die. There was no sense in sending the boy out on the cable to do the job, for he would surely be blown loose, fall, and shatter upon the rocks. And then there would be no point in going on. It would be as good to die.
He left the roof, holding to the cable with both hands, the muscles of his brawny arms corded and thumping under the strain.
He did not hang on a plumb line, but was blown slightly to the left. He had to fight the wind, his own weight, and the growing ache in his arms . , .
He found that his hands had a tendency to freeze to the cable.
His lungs burned as the bitter air scorched them. He would have been better off on one set of nostrils, but he could not close the primarys down and still operate on full capacity. And he needed everything he had . . .
Some of the outer layers of scales were pulling loose. He did not feel any pain—chiefly because the wounds were artificial, but also because his flesh was numbed.
A moment later, he reached the ice lump. He looked up at it, saw a dark, irregular shape within. He could not guess what it might be, but he had no time for guessing games anyway. He let go with one hand, holding the other ready an inch from the cable in case one arm proved too weak to hold him. But, though his nerves screamed and his shoulder threatened to separate at its socket, he found he could manage on the single arm. Raising the other hand, he swung at the ice lump, claws extended.
The very ends of the hard nails shaved the ice. Some of it fell away and was lost in the pulsating snow sheaths.
The impact of the blow sent a tight vibration through the taut cable. The vibration coursed down the arm by which he hung, made his flesh pain even more.
He swung again.
More ice was sliced off. A major fracture appeared in the lump. He reached up, worked his claws into the crack, twisted and pried. The ice broke. Two large pieces fell away. He saw, then, what had caused the lump. A bird had struck the cable, lodged itself on long enough for ice to form to freeze it in place. Since then, the ice had continued to build over it.
He knocked off more ice, then tugged the mangled bird free, looked at it. Its eyes were frozen solid, white and unseeing. Its beak was broken and covered with frozen blood. He dropped it, grabbed the cable with both hands, and began the tricky turn-about to head back for the safety of the roof, then the cab, then the header station, and finally the shelter of the blessed FRENCH ALPINE HOTEL . . .
Docanil the Hunter sat in a gray swivel chair before a bank of blinking lights and shuddering dials, flanked on either side by Phasersystem technicians who watched him from the corners of their eyes as one might watch an animal that seemed friendly but which one did not quite trust, despite all assurances. "How soon?" he asked the room.
"Any moment now," the chief technician said, flitting about his own console, touching various knobs and toggles and dials, turning some, just brushing others for the assurance they gave him.
"You must find all you can," Docanil said.
"Yes," the technician said. "Ah, here we are now . . ."
Hulann, the voiceless voice said.
He woke. Though not completely. The voice murmured to him, kept him slightly hazed as it asked questions of him. He felt it probing into his overmind, looking for something. What?
Relax, it whispered.
He started to relax . . .
. . . then sat bolt upright!
Open to us, Hulann.
&nbs
p; "No." It was possible to close down one's contact with the Phasersystem. In the beginning, centuries upon centuries ago, the central committee had decided that if the naoli could not have privacy when they wanted it, then the Phasersystem might become a tyranny, a thing from which there was no escape. Hulann was thankful for their foresight now.
Open, Hulann. It is the wise thing.
"Go. Leave me."
Turn the boy over, Hulann.
"To die?"
Hulann—
"Go. Now. I am not listening."
Reluctantly, the contact faded, broke, and left him alone with himself.
Hulann sat in the dark lobby of the hotel, on the edge of the sofa where he had been sleeping. A few feet away, Leo snored lightly, drawn into a foetal position, his head tucked down between his shoulders. Hulann thought about the Phasersystem intrusion. They had, of course, been probing to find where he was. He tried to recall those first few moments of the probe to see whether he had given them what they wanted. It did not seem likely. A probe takes several minutes to be truly efficient. They couldn't have learned anything in six or eight seconds. Could they? Besides, would they have prodded him to give up the boy if they had discovered his whereabouts? Highly unlikely.
Before his thoughts could begin to stray to his family in the home system, to his children that he would never see again, he stretched out on the couch and, for the second time in less than an hour, disassociated his overmind from his organic regulating brain, slipped into the nether world pocket of death sleep . . .
"Well?" Docanil asked the chief technician.
The man handed over the printouts of the probe. "Not much."