by Various
"All I have to do is throw myself before the free dancer, and Braxan's voice remains," Keller announced. "I swear to do that, Luntee," he vowed. "I won't let your voice be heard."
A singular moan swelled through the crowd at this shocking declaration. Approval... shock... everything. He had to push.
He'd guessed right - nobody had ever said such a thing among the Living. He was glad to shock them. He needed their respect. All of the people here, and on the other side of the gateway.
His hand was on his tricorder, but he dared not use it now.
Around him, Luntee, Braxan, and Kymelis a sea of hunters rounded their shoulders against the bitter wind, their soft link shirts ablaze with reflected lights from overhead.
So the free dancers would decide. Except that the tricorder would have more influence. Braxan was already immunized. Keller hadn't done himself yet.
And now, he wouldn't. Braxan had to live. Luntee's voice couldn't be allowed to prevail. Keller would stand on the hunt plain, and take his chance the hard way. No tricks.
"Crackle!" one of the hunters called. "There's crackle above! We have descent!"
The hunt plain turned gunmetal gray under snaggle-toothed sparking from overhead as a blizzard of candle-flies panicked and shifted in giant tides. The free dancers had begun scooping them up, causing the bio-haze to boil. A sense of imminence crawled over every shoulder.
"Descending!"
The cry was picked up and transferred through the hunters all across the plain. It rang like an echo.
Overhead, the first free dancer released its heat and floated down toward the Grid to take its meal. Above it came others, also sensing the crowd of hunters.
Nick Keller's fingers were stiff with cold, his neck stiff, teeth gritted, legs aching. The hunt was a perfectly nightmarish experience, both physically and mentally. Everything hurt.
Around them, the hunters began to scatter, to fill out the Feast Grid in the way determined by centuries of desperate efficiency, the best way for the dirigibles above to spot them and be tempted down. Billions of candleflies caused a sparkling cloud to fog the Feast Grid.
With his mind racked at the probabilities - dying out here right now, for one - Keller moved away from Braxan. When they were alone on the field, when the free dancer came for him, he didn't want to be anywhere near her. Strobe lightning and candlefly fog damned his vision. The nearest free dancer must almost be down!
He closed his eyes and stripped the tricorder strap off his shoulder. His fingers were cold, slow. Fear balled up in his stomach. He hadn't bet on this as his last act, but it would have to write its own poetry later. Maybe he'd be a legend someday, like Ennengand.
Suddenly he stumbled and fell to one knee, yanked hard by a force on his left arm. His tricorder flew from his hand, its strap raking his arm as he grabbed for it.
"Hey - hey!"
He twisted, still on his knee, off balance. Over him, Luntee was aiming the tricorder directly at him.
"Hey!" Keller shouted. He lunged, but fell short.
The tricorder chirrupped and set up the electrical interference, with its short-range focus aimed at Keller. A few seconds ... the deed was done.
Now he would never be chosen! He would give the free dancers a burning mouth.
Too far away to change anything or know what to do, Braxan called through the curtain of panicking candle-flies. "Keller! What are you doing! The free dancer is descending!"
With a shove Keller vaulted to his feet, knotted his fists, and would've struck Luntee if they had been two paces closer. "How'd you know? How could you possibly know about that?"
Luntee held the tricorder as casually as a Starfleet yeoman. Somehow he seemed to regret what he was being forced to do. "I have lived here a lifetime. Energy is our tonic. Now I've been to the Outside and I know all things behave in strange dances."
He dumped the tricorder on the mats, turned, and raced away from the center of the Feast Grid. He didn't realize Braxan was already immunized.
But now Keller was immunized too. If the free dancer chose neither of them, time would run out before another decision could be hammered into place. Luntee would still be able to keep his people here.
Pretty simple. One-dimensional, like this pewter pot they lived on.
"I'll be damned," Keller grumbled. "All right, I can play too." He turned and shouted over the noise from overhead. The free dancers were getting closer. "Kymelis! Kymelis, wait!"
In a clique of hunters, some of whom were her family, the stocky Elder squinted her one working eye at him. "More? But we have descent!"
She pointed to the sky, to the giant bulbous animals growing larger and larger.
"This decision is too important!" Keller called. "There's only one way to really be sure. Luntee will stand on the plain with Braxan and me. All three of us take our chances."
"Why should this be?" Luntee demanded. "Order has already been established!"
Keller turned to Luntee and suddenly there was no one else in the universe but these two men and their challenge. "If your voice remains, there won't be any doubts. Braxan will do what you want. I will too. That's my promise to the Living."
Through the haze of heat waves and candleflies, Kymelis and several hunters hurried back toward the center of the Grid. She was already thinking. Her one eye was crinkled with puzzlement. "What is this way of thinking?" she asked.
"Why should I stand with you?" Luntee demanded. "You are my surrogate. Braxan represents the hunt challenge. All is correct!"
"Don't be so tied to your rules that you make a big mistake." Keller peeled off his mail shirt and tossed it to Donnastal. It flushed and eddied like water between them. "I'm ready."
Luntee hunched against the flash and wind and turned to Cyclops. "I reject this! He uses our rules against us!"
"He's afraid of real random order," Keller pointed out. " Kymelis looked up at the lowest free dancer, a truly horrifying sight no matter how many times experienced. "All things come from random order," she said, and looked at Luntee. "If you're afraid, then I side with Braxan and we will go tomorrow."
Her single eye fixed on Luntee.
Rain began to pummel the confused crowd. The hunters were nervous, glancing up. Pellets of ice were melting in the heat of the first few free dancers as they came down directly over the hunt plain, long strands of electrical floss snapping like a woman's hair in the wind.
All the hunters were on the plain, with Keller, Braxan, and Luntee at dead center They had left their nonconducting mail shuts behind and thus would be unprotected from the savage tendrils of floss.
"Clear the plain!" Kymek's shout was carried dutifully through the throng, and the hunters raced for the perimeter to pull their mail shirts back on - there to stand and watch as a great decision occurred on the Grid. For a woman who had trouble making a decision, she was done with this one.
"What happened?" Braxan called. With Luntee still standing on the plain, she didn't understand the change. She was afraid - that showed clearly enough through the tides of candleflies.
"Stay there!" Keller called. "It's the three of us now!"
"Why!"
"Just stay put!"
Luntee had no choice but to stand his own ground as the first free dancer came down and the hunters flooded off the Grid. As far as anyone else knew, this was a fair fight. Only Keller and Luntee knew otherwise.
The shock floss moved toward Braxan, a maneuver which Keller had to battle in his own heart. He wanted to run and protect her, but he'd already done all he could, with his tricorder. Luntee never bothered to look at Braxan.
Of course - he must assume Keller would already have immunized her.
Yes. Of course.
The tendrils snapped around Braxan, but quickly retracted at the "taste" of her.
Luntee knew, for sure now, that he was the only vulnerable person here. "I thought you were not so brutal," he charged. "You know who is chosen now."
Just between the two of them
, Keller offered a nod of understanding. "Yes. But it's your life against all these others. One person's life - one selfish person - against a whole community of lost souls."
"Then you sentence me?"
"One more death in this place?" Keller told him bitterly. "You know, it's almost a joke. That's the way it is. I'm sorry for it. I'm sorry!"
He was shouting. No choice now.
The free dancer came down, confused because a moment ago it had seen a herd of hunters and now it was searching for any at all. An easy target - but this time there was no call to ready the arc spikes, nets, pulpers, reactor clamps, or other equipment to reap a harvest of candleflies or to transfer energy from the captured free dancers. All those had been left behind, on the perimeter of the Feast Grid. Today the free dancer would descend to feed and instead be the jury in a very strange case.
Keller summoned all his resolve to stand firm while everyone else was running off the Grid. The emotional suction was overwhelming! Despite a year in this place, despite the work of the tricorder, he had to fight hard against the pressure of self-preservation.
He drew power from Braxan's determined face and narrow hunched shoulders as she stood her own ground thirty paces in front of him. His thoughts were lost under the scream of shock floss and the puffing of the giant over his head.
Several paces from him, Luntee squinted and raised his arms to shield his face, but he was doomed.
Floss snapped and sizzled around them, between them. Keller couldn't see Braxan. In his mind he knew she was immunized and that he was too, that the free dancer would taste them and bully them, but probably leave them alone and snap up Luntee into its electrical processors. Even so, instinctive terror overrode what he knew in his mind. As he gritted his teeth and tried to see Braxan, perfect panic rose in his guts and he pushed up all his resolve to keep from bolting. If nothing else, these people needed to see him not running away.
He couldn't see Braxan anymore. His only duty now was to move away from Luntee and let fate take its course. He had to live, to take these people home.
A step, another step - he began to shift sideways away from Luntee. A dozen feet over their heads, the lowest free dancer roared and screamed and flapped its floss. Tendrils slapped the Grid mats viciously.
Luntee closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and prepared to lose. But he never ran, never even attempted to protect himself or change what had been choreographed either by random order or by Keller's manipulation.
Keller ducked the tendrils and the electrical crackle and watched Luntee a couple more seconds before he finally snapped.
"Aw, hell, why aren't I rotten? Braxan, down!
Braxan!"
"Where are you!"
"Never mind! Get off the Grid! Get off! Run!"
He swung around, cupped his hands at his mouth, and shouted to the crowd on the perimeter. "Donny! Arc spike!"
Donnastal was ready. The boy seized the nearest spike, raised it to his shoulder, and heaved it like a Roman pilam. The fifteen-foot spear flew poorly, but enough to sail over Luntee's head toward Keller. In a maneuver that would've been impossible a year ago, Keller bunched up his body and propelled himself into the air. With his high hand he knocked the spike out of its path. It cartwheeled once and thumped to the mats ten feet from him.
He came down - it seemed to take a month - on one knee, and rolled until his hands made contact with the spike. The long device leaped into his grip. He hugged it, rolled again, and turned the spear-end upward. With one hand he found the bitter end, cupped it, and gave a mighty shove.
The body of a free dancer was fifty percent guts and fifty percent hot air. The long spike punched through the hide with skill honed of thousands of hunts over thousands of years. Like a fish sealer, it knew its job to perfection. Oily glue poured over Keller's hands, but he didn't stay to receive the rest of the spillage.
Rolling to his knees, he kept a grip on the end of the spike and endured the deafening whine of the injured free dancer over his head while he plunged at Luntee. He caught the other man with the point of his shoulder and drove him down. Once on top of Luntee, Keller dug his fingers into a seam between the gum mats until his fingernails scraped metal.
The planet's surface!
With all the strength in his lean and muscled arm, he hauled back on the woven gum. With the other hand he grounded the arc spike's blunt end into the now-bared spot of surface metal and rolled for his life.
A conflagration erupted over them. The gum mats coiled around him and Luntee. Keller kept rolling until the mats were tight around them both in a rubber coffin.
Crushed against him, Luntee made a strangled shout and hammered his fists against the gum.
"Stop it! Lay still! I mean lie still!"
He couldn't hear himself over the giant frying pan that sizzled around them. The free dancer was grounded. All its stored energy flashed into the planet in a single, instant, roaring display of pyrotechnics and raw voltage.
The gum mat became instantly hot. From outside the lightning flash was so bright the opalescence even penetrated the layers of woven rubber. Keller crammed his eyes shut. His skin was burning! Luntee's body jolted against him. They were frying!
Cramped tightly against him, Luntee let out a long cry of panic. His elbows tucked tight, Keller buried his face in Luntee's body and determined not to make a noise. The rubber box vibrated and jumped with them in it, slammed down, jumped again, rolled, as they were nearly cooked inside. Every hair on Keller's body stood up and spun. His back and legs tightened inside the rolled mats, trapped, yet every muscle contracted as if he were running full out.
Grounded!
What he felt on his skin, though his body, he saw as an ultimate picture of destruction in his mind. The free dancer had made direct contact with the planet - instant, complete energy transfer.
Indescribable heat had soon filled up his brain and broiled away his thoughts. Time lost meaning. He was aware only of a terrible hammering from outside, as if the rubber roll and its pathetic inhabitants were instead the head of a mallet.
The planet surged up under the great electrical bladder and sucked back what it had once given in some weird ancient trade. When the last crackle sounded, Nick Keller had stopped trying to handle the moment and simply allowed himself to be slaughtered. All the more surprise when he found himself alive.
With his aching hips he changed the balance inside the coiled mats and forced himself and Luntee to roll free. Like Cleopatra falling out of the carpet, the two men suddenly sprawled free.
Keller tried to move his legs, but his arms shifted instead. For five or ten seconds he worked to retrain his brain on the use of limbs. When he found his legs, he crawled to Luntee. Hot, alive - and not melted. The worst they each suffered was a bad sunburn.
Around them and rising several stories on one side was the cooked mess that had once been the free dancer that nearly killed them, now a mountain of blackened flakes.
"Why - why did you - " Luntee's gasp ended in a weak cough.
Keller crawled to him, pushed him flat on the still-sizzling gum, and sat on him. "Shut up a minute. Braxan! Braxan!"
She didn't answer... then, she did.
"Keller? Keller! Where are you!"
He couldn't see where she was through the flying ashes and powdery remains of billions of toasted candleflies.
"She's alive," he growled down at Luntee. "So are you, chickenhawk."
"Why?" Luntee choked. "Why would you save me?"
Possessed with sudden ferocity, Keller grinned and snarled at the same time. "Because I don't have to accept the verdict of random order. Those aren't gods in the sky. They're animals. The free dancer chose you to die, but I choose for you to live."
Luntee stared up at him. Behind the frothing hiss of the barbecued free dancer they heard the cheer and rave of the hunters who were just now coming to understand what had just happened. Donnastal was the first to appear. Braxan came behind him, her narrow face crumpled with fe
ar. Next were Kymelis and her family, Issull and his brothers, Serren by himself, and two by two, three by three the rest of the hunters pushed through the mountain of ash and fibrous smoldering flesh until there were hundreds crowded on the melted segment.
Shaking with aftershock and satisfaction, he managed to stand up. With Donnastal on one side and Braxan on the other, he glared down at Luntee.
"Random order is finished here," he announced, without any particular force. The word would spread itself. "I'm in charge now. We don't belong here and we're not staying. Finally, blessedly, we're gonna saddle up and leave this moodless world."
Frigate Challenger, Bridge The twenty-ninth hour "This is like waiting for somebody to come out of a coma, except with every hour there's less brain activity. You know what's coming, don't you?"