Pirates of the Thunder

by Jack L. Chalker

  Sabatini had apparently been dozing on a cot, but now his eyes opened. “What did you say it would take to kill this whatever-it-is?”

  “Incineration or massive electrocution.”

  “Would the fence have enough power?”

  “Possibly—if it could be kept on long enough. You couldn’t count on it, though.”

  Sabatini was silent for a moment. “These torches—they’re oil fed, sort of, right?”

  “Yes. It’s synthesized in the transmuter from palm fronds. Why?”

  “How much could we get? Suppose the old bird could be lured, maybe forced, into touching one of them posts and then, while she was bein’ shocked, somebody poured this oil over her? Instant torch, right?”

  Clayben stopped puttering and turned to stare at Sabatini. “You are becoming interesting. Go on.”

  “I think it can be arranged. She’s been real protective of the girls, particularly the Chows and the Indians. The stream where we get the drinking water and the pit toilet are both real near the fence line, both in back, out of routine sight. I been itchin’ to teach them Chow bitches a lesson in humility.”

  “Think you could?” Nagy asked, smirking a little. “Seems to me I heard tell the last time you thought that they shoved you out an air lock.”

  “It was that China broad. I underestimated her, but you fixed her good, Doc. Them other girls ain’t no threat. China gave ‘em their guts. I’m pretty sure I could lure Koll back usin’ one of them.”

  Clayben stared at the former captain, the only one of them not out there of his own free will. “And then what, Captain? Assuming it works—then what?”

  “Huh? Then we—you—take over, like you said.”

  The scientist cleared his throat. “Yes, and I suppose you know how to do that as well. What? Slit Raven and Warlock’s throats? I doubt if that will be so easy, particularly the woman. She is a psychopath. She enjoys killing, and she is good at it, I suspect, or she wouldn’t be here. Hawks, too, of course.”

  “Yeah, sure. Hell, if I can take out Koll, then you sure as hell can take out the others. Five women, three of us, should be real nice, with the China broad as hostage to makin’ that computer do what we want.”

  Clayben glanced at Nagy, who rolled his eyes.

  “As foreign a concept as this might be to you,” Clayben said carefully, “diplomacy and deal making often gain more than brute force, Captain. However, I’m willing to meet you partway. You take out the creature for me, and I will make certain you get all the reward I can muster. Take her out and leave the rest to us.”

  Sabatini got up, yawned, and stretched. “Yeah, sure, Doc. Ain’t that what I said?”

  The pit toilet, dug as far from the huts and the water supply as possible, was very near the camp perimeter. Since the fence line could be breached by a projectile weapon such as stone, spear, or arrow, anyone using the facilities was in a vulnerable position. So no one went to the toilet without an armed guard. Manka Warlock or Reba Koll generally accompanied the women, since only those two had any experience with modern weapons.

  Sabatini had planned fairly well. He had only to sit, and wait, watching from a vantage point to one side of the huts, until he saw Chow Dai walk casually out toward the pit toilet. Reba Koll remained in the more protected hut area, where she could stand guard without becoming a target herself. She wasn’t even watching the girl, which allowed Sabatini to gather his small set of tools and make his way along the fence line unobserved. Chow Dai, finished, stood to adjust her ersatz skirt. Koll seemed preoccupied with something back toward the campfire area.

  “You’d look better without that skirt,” Sabatini said aloud to Chow Dai. “I remember you real good, honey. You been a long time without a man to give you what you need.”

  She started and looked at him in shock. Sabatini had cruelly tortured her and the others when they’d been helpless prisoners on his ship, and the memory of that remained.

  “Get away, you bastard,” she snarled at him bravely, although her voice was trembling. “If I need a man I will find one. There are none near me at this moment, only foul-smelling excrement.”

  “You little bitch! Do I have to teach you again?” He reached for her, deliberately, and with some melodramatic exaggeration.

  She wriggled free and started to run, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her back to him. She screamed.

  Koll’s head came around. For a brief second her hand went to the trigger on her pistol, but she didn’t dare shoot, since Sabatini had a wriggling, panicky girl in his grasp.

  “Sabatini, you worm!” she shouted, running out toward them. “You let her go right now! This has gone far enough!”

  He grinned evilly at Reba Koll. “You gonna stop me, you washed-up hag?” Coldly seeing that Koll had no intention of shooting, he flung Chow Dai away and stood to face the onrushing woman, who clearly was too angered to think straight or call for help. Chow Dai just lay on the ground, stunned.

  “I’ve taken far bigger and better’n you!” Koll snarled, assuming a judolike stance. Sabatini grinned and did likewise. Koll feinted, then jumped, her feet aiming for his stomach, but he moved aside, and she struck a glancing blow that did not unbalance him. He managed to turn a full circle and push her farther out toward the fence. She recovered but Sabatini reached into the grass and pulled up a long, thin wire that seemed to run all the way to the fence. She saw it, laughed, and jumped it, only to find herself tangled in a whole nest of wires carefully concealed in the grass between the pit toilet and the fence. She fell over, and he was on her, grabbing her and pulling her right hand to the charged post. She struggled, but she was caught in the wire and briefly confused, and he touched her hand to the post.

  There was a loud and nasty electrical buzzing sound that startled the insects and carried far in the wind. Chow Dai for a moment could not understand what had happened; if he had touched Koll to the fence, then why was he not getting the charge, as well?

  His boots! she realized suddenly. He’s wearing his pressure suit’s boots! They protect him!

  He let go and stepped back as Reba Koll’s scream of pain rose over the terrible sound of the fence’s lethal charge. He reached over and pulled away her pistol, suddenly afraid that the charge would make the bullets fire, then stepped well back again.

  Reba Koll’s hand blackened, charred, and bubbled, and the stench of burning flesh suddenly filled the air. It seemed as if the hand were made of plastic, melting into a terrible bubble as Koll tried to pull away.

  And Koll was pulling away, the right arm now connected to the bubbling mass that had been her hand by only some blackish, plasticlike goo, and then it was free—and she was free of the charge. Her hand was still on the post, still burning, but Reba Koll was no longer attached to it.

  Sabatini frowned and stepped backward. “This ain’t possible!” he muttered to himself.

  Reba Koll was obviously in pain, but she got to her feet, her blackened stump looking all the more horrible as she did so. There was no blood, and that horrified Sabatini most of all. He edged back still more, toward the bucket of oil he’d brought out with him and set down before accosting Chow Dai.

  “Now you’ve gone and done it,” Reba Koll said in a dry, nasty voice that hardly seemed human. “Now you went and really made me mad! Who put you up to this? Clayben? Naw, he’s too damned smart to think something like this would work. Okay, sonny, it’s time now. Time for you and me to have a real intimate get-together.” And, with that, she advanced toward him.

  There was just something about it all that completely unnerved Sabatini. He reached frantically for the bucket and tripped over his own wires, falling to the ground.

  Most of the others, attracted by the loud noises and commotion, had drawn up in a semicircle, watching. Too late to help Koll, they were unsure of what to do.

  Sabatini, still on his back on the ground, got hold of Koll’s pistol and brought it up. Seeing that, Warlock brought up her own pistol and took aim, but Clayben
reached out and pushed it down. “No! She’s not the one in trouble! Watch and learn!”

  The black woman paused and looked over at Raven, who took the half cigar from his mouth and nodded.

  Sabatini fired three times into Koll’s body at point-blank range. The bullets tore into her, knocking her down and forcing her back, but even as the man was getting untangled and rising, so was Reba Roll. She stood there, three big holes in her chest, and though there were signs of bleeding, no blood was flowing now.

  She laughed at him. “You’re mine now. You went and spoiled this old rag I had on.”

  Manka Warlock stared along with the others. “Those were good shots,” she said in wonder. “It is not possible! See the gaping exit wounds in her back!”

  Reba Koll ripped off her skirt and tore off her gunbelt with tremendous strength, and then leaped at Sabatini. This time the man could not move out of the way; he was as stunned and totally confused as Manka Warlock and the rest of them.

  Koll clung tightly to Sabatini, and the man’s body suddenly stiffened. He opened his mouth in a cry of pain and surprise but nothing came out.

  “Get away, Chow Dai! Get away now!” came a horrible, inhuman voice. The Chinese girl, suddenly animated, got up and ran to the others.

  The two stood there a moment, a frozen tableau, the small, frail-looking old woman clutching the chest of the big, muscular Sabatini—and then it began to happen.

  “Sweet Jesus!” Nagy swore. “They’re melting!” He’d been told about Koll—over and over by Clayben—but until now there always remained some lingering doubt over whether Koll was anything more than she seemed or merely the subject of a Clayben dementia. There was no doubt now in any of their minds that Isaac Clayben, sane or not, had not been kidding.

  Raven’s cigar fell out of his mouth.

  “Fortunately, it’s very slow,” Clayben remarked, his voice almost casual and clinical, as if discussing a sprained ankle. “That was the only reason we could capture and contain it at all. It’s been a long time since I saw this. I’m glad it’s no different. Gives me some odds.”

  His detachment was disturbing to most of them, but they could not take their eyes off the slow-motion drama now taking place before them.

  The merged bodies had become a single seething mass of amorphous flesh; it writhed and wrinkled like some great monster, and slowly, very slowly, a form began building out of the center, as if something inside the mass was now rising to and then through the top. At first it was a head, humanoid but hardly human, a death’s head with bloated, puffy flesh and no hair, eyes closed, lips and nostrils sealed. It was ugly and gruesome, but none could take his eyes off it even for a moment.

  There was a neck now, then the torso started to emerge —a broad, muscular frame lacking in detail—then the waist, and finally thick, sturdy legs. Finally a complete figure stood in a thick pool of protoplasmic goo, but it was still not human, more like a thing of plastic or wax, an artificial man before the artisans had started to work. It was still being fed by the mass in which it was rooted like some strange tree, and it was still changing.

  Subtly the skin texture and muscle tone changed, becoming flatter, harder, and more natural. The nipples, the fine detail of the male genitals, even, incredibly, a few minor scars on the torso were formed. Very slowly but steadily, so slowly that it couldn’t really be tracked by the eye—the way the position of the hour hand on a clock keeps changing even though its movement cannot be followed—the rest of the detailing came in, including the hair, the lashes, and the rest. The figure was clearly recognizable now as Sabatini.

  Then, quite suddenly, an imperceptible new energy was added to the figure, and it was no longer a statue of Sabatini, but a real human figure.

  It gave a shudder, then breathed deeply. Its lips parted, and it flexed its arms and knees and turned on its hips.

  The eyes opened, and he looked down at the mass of goo with distaste and stepped from it, strands of plasticlike flesh trailing, then breaking away. He squatted down and removed parts of it that still clung to his feet; behind him, the mass that remained seemed now devoid of purpose. It writhed a moment, then was still, all life and energy draining from it. It began to putrefy almost instantly.

  The new Sabatini got up and looked at them. “That’s the trouble with this if you’ve got conscience,” he said in Sabatini’s rich baritone. Even the accent was perfect. “One must either destroy those who are innocent and deserve life or one must make immortal the scum of the race. Don’t worry, Clayben—I’ll never eat you unless you force me to it. This is bad enough—to become you would be desecration.” He looked over at Hawks. “Now you see why I am essential to this thing. No matter what hell hole and no matter what monstrosity might have a ring, he is not safe from me. I can become his confidant, his lifelong friend, his lover. I can even become him.”

  And me as well, thought Hawks glumly, knowing the others shared the same thought. Never had he thought so furiously and so logically to cover himself. “Can you become five or more of us at once, friend?”

  The creature that was now Sabatini frowned. “What? Of course not. As you can see, the rest is rotting flesh.”

  “Can you become a Val, then, or a robot? Can you become Star Eagle?”

  “You know I cannot. Why are you pressing this way?”

  “It will take five different people working in willing concert to use those rings, I warn you, and if any of the five objects, it will be the destruction of them all. Even you could not withstand Master System in full defensive array and you know it. And you are only a bit less at risk than we. The Vals will be after you, as well. In a Val ship, in a machine environment, you will be as helpless as on Melchior and at the mercy of something far darker even than Clayben. Retain our partnership and you will share as I promised you would, but this is the last of our number that you will so consume.”

  “I intend to keep our bargain and my word, although I can see why you would fear. How would you know if I violated it?”

  “We’d all know,” Isaac Clayben said. “Because there wouldn’t be any Sabatini any more, would there?”

  “I, personally, and most of the others, as committed and full of hate as we are for the system, would bring in the Vals if this compact is broken,” Hawks warned. “Your—ability—is incredible, beyond anything I would have believed only minutes ago. It is why you are here, included in this band.”

  “I’ll behave,” Sabatini said, sounding quite natural and Sabatini-like. “You trusted Koll, didn’t you? She’s still here—somewhere. I confess even I am unsure how it works. The big problem I have is that I’m compelled to be a nearly exact duplicate. Even if you subjected me to full examinations, I would be Sabatini and Sabatini alone. You do not possess the equipment, nor the know-how to create it, to tell me apart. I have his urges, his temperment, and his habits. I simply have more self-control than he did, and more of a conscience. By tomorrow I’ll be Sabatini—a Sabatini who just changed sides, and knows more than he used to. I’m just not as stupid as he was.” He yawned. “I think I’ll get some sleep. It’s been a long time since I did this, and I’d forgotten how tiring it is.”

  He walked off, and they let him go.

  Raven crept close to Hawks. “Is that really true, Chief?”

  he whispered in Lakota. “About needing five willing ones?”

  Hawks shrugged and replied in English. “Beats the hell out of me, Crow.”

  Raven grinned. “Maybe you are the best man for this job, after all.”

  It was quite late, but many were not asleep. Hawks sat by the fire, impassive as always, his mind in some plane all his own, while behind him, in the center hut, Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman prepared to aid China in the imminent delivery of her child. It was neither tradition nor paternalism that found those two in there and he and the others away; nobody but the two women in attendance had ever done that sort of thing before.

  Isaac Clayben came over and sat down next to Hawks. For a while the
Hyiakutt did not move nor in any way show that he was even aware of company, but suddenly he asked, “Is Sabatini still sleeping?”

  “Yes. It is fully capable of being on the go within minutes after it consumes, but if it can it sleeps for a long time, which helps it integrate all the new memories and information into its mind. You heard it this afternoon—Sabatini never talked like that. It is an incredible process at that, so much integrated into a single mind. I sometimes amaze myself with my handiwork.”

  “Did you create it—or order it created?”

  “A bit of both. I did much of the theory, but others, more skilled than I, actually created it. The final single integrated program for it was the longest I had ever known. At computer speeds it took more than three days just to load that thing.”

  “It seems inconceivable that human beings could have created such a thing.”

  “Human beings created Master System. Just five of them, in fact, wrote all the code and debugged it and established it. Of course, it probably took an army of technicians to build even the initial primitive version and get it running right, but it was at its heart just five people. We don’t know a lot about them except that they were not even typical of the polyglot culture in which they worked. Only two were native to the nation that employed them, for example. A Chinese Buddhist from Singapore; a Jewish lady from Israel; a black Moslem man from someplace in Africa, I believe; a part-Japanese girl from Hawaii; and an old Jewish professor from someplace in eastern North America. Funny—we know their names, their origins, and, of all things, their religions, but little else.”

  “I know. Much of it was suppressed. I suppose it was Master System’s own choice to keep some details of them alive in the records. After all, they were, in a sense, its parents and creators. The Fellowship of the Rings, they called themselves. I understand it was from some popular work of the time. A joke. One masking a serious purpose. They knew their creation could turn on us all, Doctor. You should have learned something from that.”