by Dean Koontz
Peneton was a Master Hunter.
He shaped.
He changed . . .
In a storage tank in Atlanta: rats . . .
In the morning light, the Great Lakes conversion crater's light looked more yellow than green. Along the southeast rim, the first team of naoli anti-bacterial warfare technicians deployed their equipment and began to introduce the proper anti-toxin to eliminate the hungry, microbes. By nightfall, the warmth and the heat arid the lovely emerald radiance of conversion would be gone . . .
Chapter Fourteen
Ahead was only desert, a vast stretch of yellow-white sand broken through with patches of redder dirt. Now and then, a volcanic plug arose to break the monotony, great columns of stone, freaks of the land-forming process. There was a sparse scattering of vegetation, none of it particularly healthy looking. It was not a place to be. Hulann stopped the shuttle on the crest of the ridge, looked down the highway that crossed the endless spanse of desolation.
"It'll make good beater surface for the shuttle, even if we get off the road," Leo said.
Hulann said nothing, merely stared ahead at what they must cover. The last eight hours had brought a lot of soul-searching. He had turned the facts over and over in his mind, and still he did not cease to be amazed, intrigued, and horrified by them. The awful, bloody war, had been totally unnecessary. But who would have guessed any race would have been breeding spacemen like naoli bred Hunters? Did this lessen the naoli guilt? Did this make their acts of genocide somehow more justified—or, at least, reasonable? Could they be held responsible for such a whim of Fate? Surely not. Yet ...
Even if one considered "the trick of Fate, the war did not become acceptable. Instead, it became morbidly amusing. Two giant races, both able to travel between stars with relative ease, waging total, blows-to-the-end combat over a simple misunderstanding. The entire affair became a cosmic comedy. And such awe-inspiring death counts should never be fodder for humor.
"What are you thinking?" the boy asked.
Hulann turned from the desert and looked at the human. So much had transpired between their races— with so little meaning. He looked back out the windscreen; it was easier to meet the glare of the desert than the soft, patient eyes of the child.
"We should tell them," Hulann said.
"'Your people?"
"Yes. They should know about this. It changes everything so much. They wouldn't kill you once they knew. And they wouldn't wash and restructure me or hang me or whatever. They couldn't. Oh, some of them will want to. But the evidence does not permit it. If any humans are still alive, we must do whatever we can to help them."
"We aren't going to the Haven?"
Hulann considered it. "We could. But it would serve no purpose. It would solve nothing. Our only chance is to let the others know what I've found. Oh, they'll get it on their own sooner or later. There are archaeological teams sifting the ruins of every city not ruined. There are anthropologists piecing your culture together. Others will find that the spacers were a different breed. But it may take months—even years. And in that time, the few remnants of your race may be found and killed. And then knowing about the spacers will do no good at all."
"I guess," Leo agreed.
"Then I'll call the Hunter off."
"You can do that?"
"I can try."
"I'll go for a walk," the boy said. "My legs need stretching." He opened the door, stepped onto the road, slammed the door behind. He walked off to the left, stooped to examine a small, purple-flowered cactus.
A moment later, Hulann opened his contact with the Phasersystem.
He sensed the channel of minds.
"Docanil," he said with his mind. "Docanil the Hunter."
There was silence. Then:
Hulann . . .
He shuddered at the coldness of the thoughts.
"We will not run any longer," he said to the distant Hunter. "If you will listen to us, we will not run,"
Listen, Hulann?
"To what I have discovered. I—"
Am I to understand you are surrendering yourselves to me?
"More or less, Docanil. But that is not what is important. You must listen to what I have discovered about the humans—"
I wish you would run. If you are begging mercy, you are not being realistic.
"You will not want to kill us when you hear what I have to say."
On the contrary. Nothing you say can influence a Hunter, Hulann. A Hunter cannot be made to sympathize. And a Hunter cannot be deceived. There is no sense in what you plan.
"Listen and you will not kill—"
I will kill on sight, Hulann. I will dispose of you at once. It is my prerogative as a Hunter.
Docanil the Hunter had only been humiliated once in his life. Having little emotional range, a Hunter clings to and nourishes whatever deep feelings arise in him. Even if those feelings are humiliation, anger, and hatred . . .
I know where you are Hulann. 1 will be there soon.
"Please—"
I am coming, Hulann.
Hulann spread the area of his broadcast, boosted it so that it was something that could not escape the notice of any naoli on the Second Division system. He said: "I have discovered something vital about the humans. It is something which makes the war senseless. You must listen. The humans—"
But before he could continue, the psychological conditioning dreams began . . .
He was standing on a dark plain. There were no boundaries to either side, nor any ahead or behind him. He was the highest point for a thousand miles. He stood upon a cushion of vines that tangled in upon one another, concealing the real floor of the land.
We are in an unknown place, the conditioning chanter whispered. This is not the home of naoli . . .
He realized, for the first time, that there were animals in the spaces between the vines, hiding beneath the surface. He could hear them rustling, scampering about. He thought they must have long claws and sharp teeth, small red eyes, poisonous venom. Though he did not see any evidence to support this conception and did not know why he imagined them as beasts.
Because they are beasts, the chanter said.
He felt their fingers at his feet, trying to topple him. He knew that, if his face came close enough, they would shred it, go for his vulnerable, green eyes.
They are clever . . .
He thought he felt one coming out of the vines and starting up his leg. He kicked, tossed it free. He began to run, though he found that when he moved his feet tended to slip between the vines, down into the holes where the things waited . . .
He fell, rolled, gained his feet. There was blood running down his face from where the claws of a beast had struck in the split moment he had been down.
There is no running. They are everywhere. The naoli had to realize this. There could be no running, for the beasts came wherever the naoli went.
Slowly, he began to realize that the beasts in the vines were really humans. The Phasersystem increased his fear tenfold, fed him a host of anxiety patterns.
The only thing to be done was exterminate the beasts. Exterminate them or be murdered ourselves . . .
He found himself with a flamegun in his hands. He trained it on the vines.
Yellow-crimson fire leapt forward, flushed into the growth.
The beasts squealed below.
They leaped into the open, Burning.
They died.
The vines did not burn: a naoli only destroyed that which had to be destroyed.
The beasts did death dances on flaming toes, tongues lit, eyes turned to coals and then gray ashes . . .
And Hulann enjoyed it. He was grinning. Laughing now . . .
. . . and suddenly gagging.
He choked, felt his stomachs contracting. The conditioning dream had not been strong enough to counteract the truth he had learned. The humans weren't vicious enemies. They were basically as peaceful as naoli. What should have been done was this: the Hunters should hav
e been pitted against the spacers. And the normal citizens of both races should have been left to their gentle lives.
The dreams were your last chance, Docanil said through the Phasersystem. I did not agree to the flan. But others thought you could be reached.
Hulann said nothing. He opened the door and vomited on the sand. When both stomachs were empty, he became aware of Docanil the Hunter still speaking on the Phasersystem link.
I am coming, Hulann.
"Please—"
I know where you are. I come.
Hulann broke his Phasersystem contact. He felt seven hundred years old, in the last of his days. He was hollow, a blown glass figurine, nothing more.
The boy returned to the car, got in. "Well?"
Hulann shook his head.
He started the engine.
The shuttlecraft moved forward, down the rise into the great desert, on toward the Haven somewhere in the mountains of the west . . .
Half an hour later, Docanil the Hunter brought his copter down on the same knoll where Hulann had stopped to contact him. He looked out across the plain of sand and stone and cactus, grinning. A very, wide grin. Some minutes later, he looked away, took out the maps, and looked them over. Banalog watched him trace a route for a moment, then said, "Aren't we following them?"
"No," Docanil said.
"But why?"
"There is no need."
"You think the desert will kill them?"
"No."
"What then?"
"The naoli have some expensive and effective weapons systems," the Hunter said. "But none more expensive or more effective than the Region Isolator."
Banalog felt the scales of his scalp tighten painfully.
"The next two hundred miles was—at the beginning of the war, a major nuclear weapons stockpile for the humans. An Isolator was dropped to effectively cut the humans off from the greatest number of their warheads. It has not yet been dismantled. It will seek out any human life with its sensors, engineer a weapon, and destroy that target. The boy, if he is not dead already, will perish before nightfall."
Banalog felt ill.
"Then, what will Hulann do?" the Hunter mused. "I can hardly imagine. If they planned on going to the Haven, that will be impossible. He could not get in without the boy's aid. We will fly around the region affected by the Isolator. There is only one highway exit. We will wait there to see if Hulann continues his journey."
He was grinning quite widely—for a Hunter.
Chapter Fifteen
In a glass bubble laced through with fire, the gnome danced, its feet snarled in filaments of spun milk, millions of puppet strings stretching away from it into invisibility. The creature was no larger than a man's hand, but fired with the energy of multitudes. It spun and waltzed and jigged with itself, flailing its tiny arms about, leaping and frolicking this way and that until the transparent walls of its prison made it turn and twirl in a new path. As it cavorted, it cackled and gibbered, laughed at its own gems of humor, spoken in a tongue of nonsense and folly.
The glass ball spun slowly, slowly, as if the gnome were upon a revolving stage.
He danced more furiously than ever to a music that did not exist. He laughed and cackled and whooped explosively, stomping his tiny feet hard against the inside of his prison. He began to whirl, standing on his toes like a ballet dancer, faster and faster, his feet stamping smartly in a tight circle. His face flushed, and perspiration rolled out of his flesh, beaded on his miniature forehead, trickled down his doll's face. Still, he moved at an increasing pace until he was all but a whirl.
Then his flesh began to grow soft. His facial features melted and ran together. He no longer had a nose or mouth. His eyes flashed and dribbled down his face . . .
He did not slow his pace. From deep within him, the sound of his manic laughter continued—though the lack of a mouth denied the sound full egress. He bobbled, bounced, weaved, his smooth whirl becoming more erratic as his feet and legs began to fuse and obliterate the ankles.
The glass sphere filled with licking green flames to replace the warm orange tongues that had been there.
His arm fused with his side and ceased to exist, except for a thumb which stuck out just below his last rib. A moment later, the second arm disappeared as well.
The emerald fire became all-consuming: the gnome was reduced to a thick pudding within the glass, a semi-living jell that gurgled and sloshed against the sides of the small sphere and was, at last, silent . . .
The Isolator regarded the glass ball, juggling it on fingers of pure force. It began to shape the jell into another figure, but suddenly felt a wave of depression wash through it, battering the foundations of its being. It dropped the glass ball and watched the trinket splash down into the pool of its own temporal mass. It digested the thing and waited . . .
Waiting had been what the naoli had designed it for— waiting and destroying. But there had been so little of the latter and so much of the former since the war had been won that the Isolator craved activity (and tried to satisfy the longing through toys like the gnome). Perhaps, the Isolator mused, it was not wise to build weapons which were alive. Did their designers know how bored a thinking weapon could get—when it had been designed only to think about its job and its job had become obsolete?
Then it ceased to think about that. The naoli had made certain that the Isolator could not think about itself, as an entity, for more than a few seconds at a time. In that manner, they could be certain it would never get ideas of its own beyond those programmed into it
The Isolator, gurgling within the huge vat that contained it, raised its alert to red station and began checking the monitoring posts in the outlying areas. Its pseudopods of plastic flesh thinned into two molecule thicknesses and pressed through the vat, beyond the Isolator station and into the warm sands of Earth's desert. In a moment, it had formed a net beneath the land for a thousand feet in every direction. Such first-hand data gathering was senseless when its mechanical aides could assist so dependably, but the only way to defeat the boredom was to do something.
It pulsated beneath the sand, fifty percent of its body withdrawn from the subterranean vat. It wished it could go further and explore the surrounding terrain. But its physical bulk could not extend more than these thousand feet from the vat. It was not truly mobile. It was only a thing, not an individual, no matter how much it tried to bridge the gap into full awareness.
A thing, nothing more.
But a very efficient thing.
The harsh sting of the alarms sliced through the Isolator from the monitors in the station. Quickly, it withdrew from the sand, back into the vat. It formed an eyeball of a thousand facets and examined the three-" dimensional vision on the bank of screens on the station's second level. For the first time in months, it knew excitement. It almost rushed the majority of its bulk through the wall into the screen room and managed to check itself just a hair this side of disaster (at least half of the Isolator must remain within the nurturing vat at all times). There, on the screen, was a floating shuttlecraft, fluttering along the sand, stirring clouds of dust in its wake. It had not issued the recognition signal; any naoli would have done that. Which meant it was more than likely a human . . .
The Isolator tapped one of the monitoring posts which the shuttlecraft was approaching, released a spy-bee from the distant outpost's storage unit. As the bee spun out across the desert, the Isolator guided it, watching what the mechanical insect saw as the images were projected on the largest of the screens. In moments, the shuttlecraft appeared in a swirl of sand. He directed the spy-bee directly at it, toward the windscreen. The mite passed through the whirl of dust, shot across the hood of the vehicle, then hovered inches from the window. Beyond the screen, a naoli sat at the wheel, peering ahead at the shimmering heat blankets rising from the sands.
The Isolator felt despair as it looked at the lizard face. It was about to destroy the spy-bee and return, its attention to the making of gnomes and oth
er baubles when it thought to turn the bee's attention on the passenger's seat. And there, of course, was the boy, Leo.
There was no more time for gnomes.
Within the vat, the Isolator rejoiced. It heaved upward in a great, joyous surge, pushing stickily against the cap of the vat which it could have penetrated had it wanted. It splashed down into itself, then ceased its celebration and turned to the chore at hand.
It had killing to do.
"Look at this, Hulann," Leo said, leaning forward in his seat, straining against the automatic belt that held him.
Hulann shifted his eyes from the terrain ahead. It was not necessary to watch the path so cautiously in a shuttle-craft, and he had only been using that as an excuse to avoid conversation and let his mind race through the plethora of new data it had accumulated in such a short period of time. It was good, now, to give his eyes a rest. "Look at what?"
"Out the window. A mud wasp," the boy said.
Hulann looked, and when he could not spot it immediately, asked the boy to show him.
Leo leaned even farther forward, pressing a finger against the glass toward the hovering wasp. "How can it do that? "he asked.
Hulann looked, found the mud wasp, and felt his scalp tighten painfully as fear gripped him, squeezed him, and nearly voided his lungs of air.
"How can it do that?" Leo repeated.. "It's flying against us, yet it's standing still."
"A machine," Hulann explained.
"Machine?"
"A naoli weapon," Hulann said, gripping the wheel, his eyes riveted to the electronic mite hovering before them. "Or, rather, a scout for a weapons system. The thing directing it is called a Region Isolator."
Leo frowned, made slits of his eyes. "I've heard about them. But no one really knows what they do. No one has ever gotten close enough to find out"
"I know. The Isolator is deadly. It is also expensive and prohibits mass production because of the time involved in structuring one. They were used sparingly in the war—or it would have all been over much sooner than it was."