Dark Planet (30 page)

You said the Presence was stronger
, I pointed out.
Does that mean evil dominates?

It depends
.

On what?

On whom we influence. Sometimes evil prevails. Sometimes it does not
.

I sighed.

You bet on the wrong horse race
. I looked to Pia to see if I had got the old, old Earth expression right.

You are half-Human and half-Zentadon
, said the Good Presence.
Both suffered from the Indowy and their wicked inventions. You have the opportunity to prevent further evil from those times, to make amends for what was done to both peoples. You can be the right horse
.

I scoffed.
I see. I am the son of a Human whore and a Zentadon fool … and I can save the world?

We have to use what is available
.

Exasperated, I attempted to shut the GP out of my head. I felt it waiting, waiting.

Start afire
, it said.

What?

Start afire
.

How is that going to help? We will suffocate. The smoke has nowhere to go
.

I cannot help. I can only influence. Start a fire
.

If that will satisfy you …

It will satisfy you
.

I felt around on the cave floor until I found a nest of dry twigs built by some small mammal. Using an energy stick left in Pia’s battle harness, I soon had a fire going. The light from it revealed a rather large chamber. Instead of the smoke clotting in the chamber, it sucked into the back of the cave and down a small corridor. The cave had a back door!

That gave me an idea. But first I had to rest, regain strength.

We have made a wise choice in horses
, said the Good Presence, sounding satisfied.

B
lade’s only choices, if he would leave the planet, were to either kill Pia or leave with her. That meant he had to follow the signal given off by the Indowy artifact. He had thirty two hours — one Galaxia day, two Aldenia days if you counted each of the short nights — to accomplish his treacherous mission. We had the same thirty-two hours to accomplish ours.

I felt somewhat recovered, my ebbing spirits and courage restored, after sleeping three of the four hours of the longer night. I roused with a renewed sense of purpose and mission. It was up to me to make sure the Indowy box of evil vanished. Sen, warrior, and savior of the known world. Commander Mott would be stroking that useless tail of his furiously if he knew of my predicament. Even if I succeeded, however, no one must ever know about it, else scores of other adventurers, opportunists, pirates, and assorted riffraff, with or without tails, would descend upon the Dark Planet looking for other boxes that might have survived to make them rich.

Pia awoke and was solicitous of my injuries. Zentadon have amazing recuperative powers. My leg was stiff and painful, my chest plate beyond tender, I was hungry, I lacked sleep, the taa hormone was kicking in a little again and acting up under stress … Other than all that, I was five-by, good to go. I felt fully capable of kicking the ass of any one-hundred-year old deaf and blind paraplegic Human on Galaxia.

I didn’t tell Pia that, though. I didn’t want her to think of me as a braggart.

“It is a bit stiff,” I said of my leg. “Wait here, lovely Human female. I will be right back.”

I kicked up the fire again, adding another mammal nest of twigs, dried grass, and other stuff that stank worse than a lizard’s breath. The lizards waiting outside barked sleepily. There was still some night to go.

Aided by the firelight, I followed smoke into the natural chimney. The cleft narrowed and squeezed around me so that soon I had to drop to my belly like a legless, blind reptile. I pulled myself forward and ever upward with the tips of my fingers and progress was measured in inches. I heard Pia coughing back in the chamber from the buildup of smoke. I was clogging the flue with my body.

I thought I tasted fresh air soaked with the incessant rain, but there was not even a trickle of water oozing down on me. That concerned me. An opening on top of the ridge would surely collect water, unless the chimney came out into another protected chamber or something. I had to hope for that.

I rested frequently, a necessity of my enfeebled condition. During one rest break, I probed with my mind and touched Blade in that unguarded moment of his first awakening. He was nearby, I could tell that. I sensed his desperate awareness that time was running out. Then he slammed the door on me, accompanied by a peal of thunder that crashed and rolled across the sky like pins in that silly alley game of Human prolies.

I breathed deeply for a few minutes, still tasting fresh air. I felt my way forward, unable to see so much as the backs of my eyelids. I came to a small opening that even my slender elfin body could not negotiate. I attempted to force myself through but without success. I touched around it. Nothing but rock and it apparently solid. Outside air circulating beyond mocked me with its inaccessibility.

I dropped my head on my arms. Moisture in my nostrils and in my eyes collected dry dust, making it difficult both to breathe and blink my eyes. Frustrated and all but defeated, I lay still for a few minutes and simply breathed.

It would soon be daylight. Blade would be coming to drive off the lizards with his rifle. Good for Sergeant Kilmer. Then all he had to do was lob a grenade into the cave, fire a round from his Punch gun …

Goodbye cruel world, hello eternity. Rich Blade. Poor enslaved world once more ravished by the savage heirs of the recently pacified Indowy.

I had to keep fighting. If not for myself, then for Pia. And for the ultimate destruction of Pandora’s box and the salvation of the galaxy. A lot of weight on one lowly Zentadon’s shoulders.

I tested the small opening again, reaching through where the chamber widened once more. I felt some moisture in the dust. I ran my hand around the opening on the other side. There. A small rift in the rock, a tiny fracture. I pried my fingertips into it and worked and pulled until the moisture was my own blood and not rainwater.

I thought I detected a slight give in the rock. I concentrated my entire strength into it. Nothing. My muscles must surely snap from the effort, like a rubber band stretched too tautly.

Suddenly, the rock gave. A little pile of rubble came out with it. Elated, I shouldered my way through, using both hands to pull.

Another fifty feet of easy going and I saw the flash of lightning. Smoke boiled out behind me. The flue suddenly opened as I dropped from the chamber into another small cave. It was protected by a ledge with water pouring over its mouth like a curtain. I looked outside. It was still dark. Flashes of lightning revealed a forested valley twisting around to the east and paralleling the black river.

I gave smoke time to clear out of the chimney before I returned to where Pia waited. I explained my plan to her.

“Rest,” I told her. “I will draw Blade and the lizards away from the cave. When I give you the word, head due north. You should make the black river within six hours or less.”

“I can’t leave without you, Kadar San!” she protested.

“You will not be leaving without me, Pia. We Zentadon believe we are eternal and that we become a part of the essences of those to whom we are closest. At least one of us must return to carry the intelligence about the Blobs.”

“Kadar San. Let me come with you …”

“Hush.” I placed my fingertips to her lips. “It is better this way. Besides, I will be back.”

“I love you, Kadar San.”

I thought of my father and mother and the bastard they produced who belonged comfortably in neither of their worlds. Now was not the time to confront it, however. There was a better than even chance that neither Blade nor I would be accompanying Pia on the pod shuttle when it took off. I had to keep our final minutes together light. For her sake, and for mine.

“Does this mean we are exclusive?” I asked.

That brought up another worry instead.

“Where will we go?” she asked. “We’re against the law within the Galaxia Republic.”

“There has to be a place. Maybe we could go to Earth.”

“Earth …” she whispered longingly. “I have heard there are places on Earth free of the mutants. Perhaps we really could go there.”

“We will go,” I promised.

“Do you think the Blobs are on Earth?”

“We will deal with the Blobs, then go to Earth.”

That seemed to satisfy her.

We raided her combat harness for anything that might be useful to my scheme. Its pouch contained a clasp knife, some personal items, and a roll of what DRTs called “thousand-mile-a-minute” tape. It stuck like cement glue to anything it touched. Blade had taken everything else when he ransacked bodies after the killings.

“Perfect,” I said, taking the tape.

The dying firelight reflected in the incredible blue pools of her eyes. She ran her hand through her black crop of hair, the way she did whenever she was upset or nervous. My ears twitched. She placed both hands over them. She kissed me tenderly.

There was nothing else to say. I rose quickly, picked up the black box, and headed for the chimney. It was the day of reckoning.

“Kadar San?”

I paused.

“I’ll keep the light burning for you.”

T
he rules of the game were now under my control. I intended changing them. Since my plan called for leading the sniper into a trap, it was vital that I make new contact both with him and with the lizards, then break it again at the appropriate time after luring them away from Pia’s cave. I derived considerable satisfaction in knowing that Pia had a chance, even if I didn’t make it. Love was a strange Human condition. The word was applied emotionally to everything from “greasy Big Burgers” and fast hovercraft to pet terriers and each other. Zentadon had a single word, unpronounceable by Humans, which applied — and then only rarely — to the bonding of exclusives. Only death broke such a bond, not courts of divorce or a sweaty tryst with a non-mate on a long interstellar flight.

I felt that unpronounceable word for Pia Gunduli as I squirmed back into the chimney and emerged into the open beneath the rain-veiled ledges on the ridge above. I permitted myself a moment of sadness as I waited for enough light to travel by. Then I shut it out. A hero did what a hero had to do and never looked back.

I plunged into a strengthening downpour and circled around to where I attracted the attention of the lizards. I took a chance on inciting another shot from Blade, whom I sensed vaguely in the vicinity, but it was a risk I had to take. If I didn’t draw them away, the lizards seemed tenacious enough and one-tracked enough to lay siege to the cave for days. I needed to give Pia every possible advantage to make it safely to the pod.

“Hey!”

The big king of the reptiles jumped up and looked puzzled, inasmuch as a beast could look puzzled. He began barking surprised commands to the three survivors of his dwindling patrol. Although the lizards were intellectually evolved tooth and claw, so to speak, above the other inhabitants of this wet and dreary planet, they were still stupid. But not stupid enough to try to take me on face to face again. At least not right away. I was counting on their following me while they screwed up their courage and devised another pattern for my takedown.

It worked well enough. They fell in behind me at a distance, like a troupe of trained Hrimfaxi zantels the Humans captured and trained to entertain and pacify the prolies in their circuses. I counted on Blade following the signal from the Indowy Hell Box; that was his only choice.

Whenever the lizards got too close, became too froggy, to coin one of Pia’s old, old Earth expressions, I turned and pointed the Punch Gun at them. They backed off, barking and grumbling among themselves.

I first angled toward the pod to make Blade think Pia and I were making a desperate run for it. Along the way, I captured a couple of the newt-things for breakfast. I had to have energy. I closed my eyes, put a damper on my returning taa and broke the backs of the little organisms, skinned them with my clasp knife, and ate the flesh raw. It immediately renewed my strength.

In spite of my injuries, I willed myself to function at some level above what I might have otherwise been capable by releasing minute traces of taa into my system. It reduced the pain of my leg wound and gave a modest sensation of well being. With it, I could do this job, accomplish what I and the GP expected of me.

I sensed Blade’s bewilderment when I unexpectedly changed directions and headed as rapidly as I could for the large burn I had discovered a few days earlier. I expected him to be slightly ahead and to the northwest between me and the pod, where he would attempt to establish a hide from which he could launch a long-range ambush. My sudden change of directions to the hard east had to confuse him while it momentarily gave me the advantage of increasing the distance between us. He took the bait and followed. What other choice did he have?

Kadar San?

I am fit as your fiddle, Pia. What is a fiddle?

An instrument for making music
.

I can hear the music. I will contact you telepathically from now on. Do not contact me unless it is an emergency. I must keep my mind clear. When I am thinking of you, it is not clear
.

That is a compliment?
She sounded pleased.

Yes
.

Please take care.

It was a good feeling to have someone treasure me. It gave me strength and courage. I liked my Human side for perhaps the first time.

I counted on the burn being populated with herds of the giant Goliath beetles, as it had been the first time. They seemed to relish the new growths of pioneer weeds that sprouted in the wet char. I was not disappointed. Their dark forms dotted the burn, smudged and eerily ghost-like through the layered gray membranes of rain.