A Jungle of Stars (1976) (12 page)

"You see how easy it is?" it said casually. The creature was obviously enjoying their shock and horror, almost bathing in it. "If you're thinking of leaving," the Kah'diz warned them after a long pause, "I would advise against it. I have people around to see that no one leaves, and you cannot even be certain of your lifelong friends anymore. Besides, there is nowhere to run.

Accept the new order, and work better than before. I shall be finished here in two days, anyway."

With that, it turned and left.

There had been no mistaking that last: within two days, the entire plantation would be run by loyal slaves willing to work themselves to death to please their conquerors.

Later that night, Gayal had slipped away to the hidden passage in the stone wall of the main hail. No one saw or heard her, as it was the outside that was guarded.

She stepped into the elevator, and the wall in front became solid once again. For the final time she went to the War Room, and for the final time she made her report to the anonymous, alien voices.

"This location is in enemy bands. Those horrible parasites are enslaving everyone here. If I do not get out now, it will be too late."

"Get away," came a tinny reply. "Seek some place to stay that is safe for a few days. We're very busy, but we'll get someone there as quickly as possible."

"My sisters and children?"

"Only you. We trust Fala's judgment. Also, more than one of you will be too many to remain hidden until we can get there, and a child would be impossible to hide for days on end. Go. Pull the switch and get out by the emergency exit. This is the last transmission."

"But how will you find me?" she-asked.

"We will," came the voice for the last time, and the line went dead.

The little whine had begun instantly in her head.

Gayal had been living in caves with only that whine for company for almost ten days.

She got up now, reluctantly, from her grassy mat and headed back to the cave. As she neared it, she sniffed the air for unfamiliar scents. There was no scent in the air at all.

She stopped dead in her tracks. There is never no scent in the air at all.

They were waiting for her to return to the cave. Looking hard through the darkness, she thought she could detect movement.

Slowly she edged back down the slope and, when at a safe distance, started running for the little patch of forest just on the other side of the fields from the hills.

She had just made the first trees when she heard noises on the hill behind her: four clear shots, pop, pop, pop, pop, then silence. She stopped and stared at the trail, clearly visible from her position.

After a short interval, a creature appeared, walking slowly on the trail, from time to time consulting a little device which glowed. In its right hand was a large rifle of a design she had never seen.

Abruptly the creature halted, and seemed to be looking around. She saw that it wore goggles.

A night viewer!

She froze.

"It's all right, Gayal," the creature called in her own language. "I am here to pick you up. The four who sought to capture you are dead." It patted its rifle.

Gayal was puzzled and frightened. How could she know if this weird creature was friend or enemy?

"I'm locating you by the device in your head and the device in my hand.

You are -- let's see -- behind the fourth tree and slightly to the right of me. Since I know where you are, you might as well trust me."

Gayal had never felt such fear, but the creature was right. She was saved -- or dead. She arose from her hiding place and came toward it.

Ralph Bumgartner smiled and slung the rifle over his shoulder. Four dead, another soul saved. All in a day's work.

4

THE LAST RESCUE was the easiest for Bumgartner and his cyborg pilot.

"We have the lifeboat in sight," the cyborg's voice told him as Gayal entered from the aft compartment.

The trip had not been wasted on her; she had been handling language tapes and had progressed very well in several of the "essential" languages needed to get along in The Hunter's polyglot world of refugees, and she'd been making use, of the ship's master library to acquaint herself with the conflict into which she was so newly propelled. Bumgartner kept the atmosphere in the ship deliberately rich in oxygen for her sake, toning it down day by day, so she could get used to the Terran atmosphere.

"What's the story on this one?" she asked him in Universal, the trading language used by most of the galaxy's races when communicating with those not of their kind.

Bumgartner shrugged. "Nothing much. Koldon's world hasn't been touched directly by the war, and probably won't be. They're a race of nasty telepaths with the ability to jam some of The Bromgrev's most useful mental frequencies, and they can't be conned by the Kah'diz or have a successful attitude change.

Also, their I planet isn't very valuable -- a neutral clearing house for interplanetary business, run by Koldon's race of middlemen. Take them out --

and The Bromgrev would have to take them out -- and it would foul up trade and communication, not to mention finances, on such a drastic scale that it would hurt The Bromgrev as bad as us."

"They are salesmen, then?"

"And bankers. Strictly mercenary, loyal only to money."

Gayal was appalled by the vision of such cold, robotic, greedy creatures. "So what do we want with one of them?" she asked.

"Oh, Koldon's on our side. He was a commodities broker -- would buy and sell anything, really, for a price. When The Bromgrev took over Rhambda, be acquired three billion willing servants. You remember that, don't you?"

"Yes," she replied gravely. "A whole world of unblocked telepaths. The mass mind."

"Right. Well, The Bromgrev had three billion little Bromgrevs, but because they had lacked competition for so long it was an extremely primitive world, too. To put those soldiers into action required technology: starships, weaponry, and the like. To get them, The Bromgrev went to Koldon."

"Then this -- this Koldon is responsible for the war!" she exclaimed.

"He should be killed, not rescued!"

"Well, perhaps, but Koldon didn't know who or what he was really dealing with. It seemed legit on the surface, and if he hadn't made the deal, somebody else would have. At any rate, Koldon has suffered his guilty conscience over the deal ever since the first shots were fired. He feels as you do: that the war is his fault. He's been working with us over since."

"But, if that's so, what's he doing being picked up?"

"Well, after several years of being a double agent, somebody caught on.

They decoyed him onto a liner, where he thought -- or was led to think -- some highly sensitive information on Bromgrev fleet movements would be passed to him. They caught him; but, he's a rather imposing sort of fellow and he broke free, got to a lifeboat, and cast off. Now his cover's blown, so we have to pick him up."

"Lifeboat alongside," reported the metallic feminine voice of the cyborg. "Prepare to link." A pause was followed by a mild bump. "Lock linked."

Bumgartner and Gayal went back to the lock area to receive the latest refugee. Gayal watched and waited as the pressure gauges showed the air transfer. The red light turned green and the ship's lock door opened.

Gayal wasn't quite sure what she expected, but she could not shake the image of a mechanical man of some kind, all facts and figures. Or perhaps a wizened, serious gnome accustomed to dreary offices and accounting books.

Koldon was not so easily stereotyped.

"I thought you'd never get here," came a voice. No, not a voice, really.

It seemed to boom, full of life and emotion, yet no sound had been uttered.

The words formed inside her head.

"Your fat belly could stand to lose some lard," Bumgartner shot back good-naturedly.

The creature he addressed was almost three meters tall. It had to bend to get through the port. Gayal had seen nothing remotely like it in her life, but to Bumgartner the creature could have been a reddish-blond grizzly bear with a skeletal structure better suited to walking upright. Its eyes were huge, a bright blue, and very human; while its long, thick forelegs ended in stubby, fur-covered hands with coal-black palms, three fingers and an oversized thumb that was almost as long as the hand itself. Gayal also noted that he was incredibly fat; it hung in droopy layers all over him.

The newcomer spotted her.

"Ah! What's this? A Delialian? And a female at that!"

"What's so odd about that?" she snapped angrily. She didn't care for the continuously humorous note of the newcomer's thought projections.

Telepathic Koldon caught this immediately and grew serious. . .

"I know what your world must have gone through. I'm terribly sorry. I feel, well, somewhat responsible..."

"So you should!" She almost shot the words at him.

He showed it, and his "voice" took on a tone that was incredible for its depth and range of sadness and hurt. She felt suddenly sorry for the big creature.

"I ... I don't know what to say," he went on. "There has been too much tragedy already, and this is, I fear, only the beginning of it. But you must learn to accept those who are on your side you know, no matter what you think of them personally. We live, work, breathe for the same cause." He pointed a stubby red finger at her. "But never lose that moral tone! It's what separates us from them."

The great bear-creature went over and plopped down on a cot. It was far too short for him, and he finally lay straddling the end of the cot with his great hind legs as it sagged and creaked.

"I trained Fala, you know," he said quietly.

Gayal turned as if shot. "What do you know of Fala?" she asked sharply.

"When this network was set up long, long ago, I trained him. He was just a boy then. An orphan alone, a castoff among his own kind."

"But why?" she asked, remembering the strong sensual man she had known for so many years.

"He was born weak, a runt, with little to ensure survival. Too much inbreeding, I think. He was a bleeder, and had a humped back. They threw him out to die in the fields."

"That's not so!" Gayal protested. "He was neither of those things!"

"Oh, but be was," Koldon replied. "Our field agent discovered him and took him in, realizing that in that rotten body was a keen intellect, if properly developed. We took him to where we're going now: to a world called Valiakea, in the Aruni Cluster. They're master biologists -- had to be. Things are so unstable on that planet that they change shape and metabolism ten times an hour just to stay alive.

"They fixed him up. I don't know how, they just do, that's all. You'll see. Made Fala into the best proportioned, most athletic Delialian ever. He and I lived together for almost five years, off and on, and I got to know him very thoroughly."

Gayal nodded. "I think I understand."

Koldon raised himself up, a little. "No, you do not.. I am a telepath, a very good telepath. No one, except The Bromgrev himself, can be false with me, for I know their innermost thoughts and feelings; I dream their dreams. Oh, God, the dreams! He sank back down. "Leave me be for now," he snapped suddenly.

She started to say more, but thought better of it, realizing that this was not the time. She continued to stand near him for a while, however. Then she saw that he was asleep, his massive chest rising and falling rhythmically.

She sought out Bumgartner, who was sipping a drink while reading some reports.

"This Koldon is a very sad person," she said.

Bumgartner barely looked up as he grunted and replied, "Everybody's got a problem, and for him it's the weight of the universe. You didn't help any, you know."

Gayal felt very guilty. "I know. . ." she replied hesitantly. "I -- I didn't realize at the time."

"Neither did he," Ralph Bumgartner interjected, and went back to his reports.

The ship sped on to Valiakea.

"Successful trip, Ralph?" Koldon asked over his dinner, which was massive.

"Not really," replied the Terran, nibbling a sandwich. "We got you two, and the Fraskan in the baggage hold, but we lost two. One we had to zap and the other got trapped in his own headquarters before he could destruct and wound up taking the whole gang with him."

"Anybody I'd know?"

"Don't think so. Pyayya of La'abin, pretty green and prone to mistakes; needed a few more years to season. And an unpronounceable blob of jelly from Flalkan's Star The Bromgrev's agents made before they even took the place."

Koldon grunted audibly. "Things aren't going so well for the good guys, are they?"

Bumgartner chuckled. "There are no good guys, Koldon. You know that.

Only those who do what they want to do, and their victims."

"The side really doesn't matter to you, does it?" Koldon prodded.

The Terran smiled broadly. "You know the only side that counts is my side, you old grizzly. The army of my country trained me to kill people. After a while, I found I liked it; it was the greatest game of all. The trainers really thought so, too, deep down, no matter what patriotic platitudes they spouted. If they didn't, they'd have been in a different line of work.

"Me, I progressed until I was too big to do the stuff, myself. I graduated, you might say. I arranged revolutions, started civil wars, whatever my country asked me to do in the name of freedom and democracy."

"How'd you ever get mixed up in this mess?" Koldon asked him. "Seems to me that you were headed for fifty anonymous medals and a heart attack."

Bumgartner shook his head. "There are universal constants in behavior, Koldon. Intelligence develops on worlds where organisms need it to survive; that's the law. You, me, Gayal, and Old Frozen back there, all of us are as different as night and day on the outside. But in here--" he tapped his head,

"we're all the same, really. It's the real definition of what my people call

'human.'"

"So?"

"We fight, we strive, we survive. And in the struggle there're always people like me. We're born for it, bred to it. We're always in demand to go out and herd the cattle. It's what The Hunter looks for in his agents. Why I'm here. And why the others are here."