Hunt the Space-Witch! (36 page)

“But they wouldn't have come into existence if you Medlins hadn't aided them!” Harris protested. “Obsolete? Of course. And you've done it!”

Beth smiled oddly. “At least we were capable of seeing the new race without envy. We helped them as much as we could because we knew they would prevail anyway, given time. Perhaps it would be another century, or another millennium. But our day is done, and so is the day of Darruu, and the day of the non-telepathic Earthmen.”

“And our day too,” Wrynn said mildly. “We are the intermediates—the links between the old species and the new one that is emerging.”

Harris stared at his hands—the hands of an Earthman, with Darruui flesh within.

He thought:
All our striving is for nothing
.

A new race, a glorious race, nurtured by the Medlins, brought into being on Earth. The galaxy waited for them. They were demigods.

He had regarded the Earthers as primitives, creatures with a mere few thousand years of history behind them, mere pale humanoids of no importance. But he was wrong. Long after Darruu had become a hollow world, these Earthers would roam the galaxies.

Looking up, he said, “I guess we made a mistake, we of Darruu. I was sent here to help sway the Earthers to the side of Darruu. But it's the other way around; it's Darruu that will have to swear loyalty to Earth, some day.”

“Not soon,” Wrynn said. “The true race is not yet out of childhood. Twenty years more must pass. And we have enemies on Earth.”

“The old Earthmen,” Coburn said. “How do you think they'll like being replaced?
They're
the real enemy. And that's why we're here. To help the mutants until they can stand fully alone. You Darruui are just nuisances getting in our way.”

That would have been cause for anger, once. Harris merely shrugged. His whole mission had been without purpose.

But yet, a lingering doubt remained, a last suspicion. The silent voice of the unborn superman said,
He still is not convinced
.

“I'm afraid he's right,” Harris murmured. “I see, and I believe—and yet all my conditioning tells me that it's impossible. Medlins are hateful creatures;
I know
that, intuitively.”

Beth smiled. “Would you like a guarantee of our good faith?”

“What do you mean?”

To the womb-bound godling she said, “Link us.”

Before Harris had a chance to react a strange brightness flooded over him; he seemed to be floating far above his body. With a jolt he realized where he was.

He was looking into the mind of the Medlin who called herself Beth Baldwin. And he saw none of the hideous things he had expected to find in a Medlin mind.

He saw faith and honesty, and a devotion to the truth. He saw dogged courage. He saw many things that filled him with humility.

The linkage broke.

Beth said, “Now find the mind of his leader Carver, and link him to
that.
”

“No,” Harris protested. “Don't—”

It was too late.

He sensed the smell of Darruu wine, and the prickly texture of thuuar spines, and then the superficial memories parted to give him a moment's insight into the deeper mind of the Darruui who wore the name of John Carver.

It was a frightening pit of foul hatreds. Shivering, Harris staggered backward, realizing that the Earther had allowed him only a fraction of a second's entry into that mind.

He covered his face with his hands.

“Are—we all like that?” he asked. “Am I?”

“No. Not—deep down,” Beth said. “You've got the outer layer of hatred that every Darruui has—and every Medlin. But your core is good. Carver is rotten. So are the other Darruui here.”

“Our races have fought for centuries,” Coburn said. “A mistake on both sides that has hardened into blood-hatred. The time has come to end it.”

“How about those Darruui outside?”

“They must die,” Beth said.

Harris was silent a moment. The five who waited for him were Servants of the Spirit, like himself; members of the highest caste of Darruui civilization, presumably the noblest of all creation's beings. To kill one was to set himself apart from Darruu forever.

“My—conditioning lies deep,” he said. “If I strike a blow against them, I could never return to my native planet.”

“Do you
want
to return?” Beth asked. “Your future lies here. With us.”

Harris considered that. After a long moment he nodded. “Very well. Give me back the gun. I'll handle the five Darruui outside.”

Coburn handed him the disruptor he had dropped. Harris grasped the butt of the weapon, smiled, and said, “I could kill some of you now, couldn't I? It would take at least a fraction of a second to stop me. I could pull the trigger once.”

“You won't,” Beth said.

He stared at her. “You're right.”

He rode down alone in the gravshaft and made his way down the street to the place where his five countrymen waited. It was very dark now, though the lambent glow of street-lights brightened the path.

The stars were out in force now, bedecking the sky. Up there somewhere was Darruu. Perhaps now was the time of the Mating of the Moons, he thought. Well, never mind; it did not matter now.

They were waiting for him. As he approached Carver said, “You took long enough. Well?”

Harris thought of the squirming ropy thoughts that nestled in the other's brain like festering living snakes. He said, “All dead. Didn't you get my signal?”

“Sure we did. But we were getting tired of standing around out here.”

“Sorry,” Harris said.

He was thinking, these are Servants of the Spirit, men of Darruu. Men who think of Darruu's galactic dominion only, men who hate and kill and spy.

“How many were there?” Reynolds asked.

“Five,” Harris said.

Carver looked disappointed. “Only five?”

Harris shrugged. “The place was empty. At least I got five, though.”

He realized he was stalling, unwilling to do the thing he had come out here to do.

A silent voice said within him,
Will you betray us again? Or will you keep faith this time?

Carver was saying something to him. He did not hear it. Carver said again, “I asked you—were there any important documents there?”

“No,” Harris said.

A cold wind swept in from the river. Harris felt a sudden chill.

He said to himself,
I will keep faith
.

He stepped back, out of the three-foot zone, and activated the subsonic generator in his hip.

“What—” Carver started to say, and fell. They all fell: Carver, Reynolds, Tompkins, McDermott, Patterson, slipped to the ground and lay in huddled heaps. Five Darruui wearing the skins of Earthmen. Five Servants of the Spirit.

He drew the disruptor.

It lay in his hand for a moment. Thoughtfully he released the safety guard and squeezed the trigger. A bolt of energy flicked out, bathing Carver. The man gave a convulsive quiver and was still.

Reynolds, Tompkins, McDermott, Patterson.

All dead.

Smiling oddly, Harris pocketed the disruptor again and started to walk away, walking uncertainly, as the nervous reaction started to swim through his body. He had killed five of his countrymen. He had come to Earth on a sacred mission and had turned worse than traitor, betraying not only Darruu but the entire future of the galaxy.

He had cast his lot with the Earthmen whose guise he wore, and with the smiling yellow-haired girl named Beth beneath whose full breasts beat a Medlin heart.

Well done
, said the voice in his mind.
We were not deceived in you after all
.

Harris began to walk back toward the Medlin headquarters, slowly, measuredly, not looking back at the five corpses behind him. The police would be perplexed when they held autopsies on those five, and discovered the Darruui bodies beneath the Terran flesh.

He looked up at the stars.

Somewhere out there was Darruu, he thought. Wrapped in its crimson mist, circled by its seven moons—

He remembered the Mating of the Moons as he had last seen it: the long-awaited, mind-stunning display of beauty in the skies. He knew he would never see it again.

He could never return to Darruu now.

He would stay here, on Earth, serving a godlike race in its uncertain infancy. Perhaps he could forget that beneath the skin of Major Abner Harris lay the body and mind of Aar Khiilom.

Forget Darruu. Forget the fragrance of the jasaar trees and the radiance of the moons. Earth has trees that smell as sweet, it has a glorious pale moon that hangs high in the night sky. Put homesickness away. Forget Darruu.

It would not be easy. He looked up again at the stars as he reached the entrance to the Medlin headquarters. Earth was the name of his planet now.

Earth.

He took a last look at the speckled sky covered with stars, and for the last time wondered which of the dots of brightness was Darruu. Darruu no longer mattered now.

Smiling, Aar Khiilom turned his face away from the stars.

Spacerogue

Chapter One

They were selling a proteus in the public auction place at Borlaam when the stranger wandered by. The stranger's name was Barr Herndon, and he was a tall man with a proud, lonely face. It was not the face he had been born with, though his own had been equally proud, equally lonely.

He shouldered his way through the crowd. It was a warm and muggy day, and a number of idling passersby had stopped to watch the auction. The auctioneer was an Agozlid, squat and bull-voiced, and he held the squirming proteus at arm's length, squeezing it to make it perform.

“Observe, ladies and gentlemen—observe the shapes, the multitude of strange and exciting forms!”

The proteus now had the shape of an eight-limbed star, blue-green at its core, fiery red in each limb. Under the auctioneer's merciless prodding it began to change slowly as its molecules lost their hold on one another and sought a new conformation.

A snake, a tree, a hooded deathworm—

The Agozlid grinned triumphantly at the crowd, baring fifty inch-long yellow teeth. “What am I bid?” he demanded in the guttural Borlaamese language. “Who wants this creature from another sun's world?”

“Five stellors,” said a bright-painted Borlaamese noblewoman down front.

“Five stellors! Ridiculous, milady. Who'll begin with fifty? A hundred?”

Barr Herndon squinted for a better view. He had seen proteus lifeforms before and knew something of them. They were strange, tormented creatures, living in agony from the moment they left their native world. Their flesh flowed endlessly from shape to shape, and each change was like the wrenching apart of limbs by the rack.

“Fifty stellors,” chuckled a member of the court of Seigneur Krellig, absolute ruler of the vast world of Borlaam. “Fifty for the proteus.”

“Who'll say seventy-five?” pleaded the Agozlid. “I brought this being here at the cost of three lives, slaves worth more than a hundred between them. Will you make me take a loss? Surely five thousand stellors—”

“Seventy-five,” said a voice.

“Eighty,” came an immediate response.

“One hundred,” said the noblewoman in the front row.

The Agozlid's toothy face became mellow as the bidding rose spontaneously. The proteus wriggled, attempted to escape, altered itself wildly and pathetically. Herndon's lips compressed tightly. He knew something himself of what suffering meant.

“Two hundred,” he said.

“A new voice!” crowed the auctioneer. “A voice from the back row! Five hundred, did you say?”

“Two hundred,” Herndon repeated coldly.

“Two fifty,” said a nearby noble promptly.

“And twenty-five more,” a hitherto-silent circus proprietor said.

Herndon scowled. Now that he had entered into the situation, he was—as always—fully committed to it. He would not let the others get the proteus.

“Four hundred,” he said.

For an instant there was silence in the auction ring, silence enough for the mocking cry of a low-swooping sea bird to be clearly audible. Then a quiet voice from the front said, “Four fifty.”

“Five hundred,” Herndon said.

“Five fifty.”

Herndon did not immediately reply, and the Agozlid auctioneer craned his stubby neck, looking around for the next bidder. “I've heard five-fifty,” he said crooningly. “That's good, but not good enough.”

“Six hundred,” Herndon said.

“Six twenty-five.”

Herndon fought a savage impulse to draw his needier and gun down his bidding opponent. Instead he tightened his jaws and said, “Six-fifty.”

The proteus squirmed and became a pain-smitten pseudo-cat on the auction stand. The crowd giggled in delight.

“Six-seventy-five,” came the voice.

It had become a two-man contest now, with the others merely hanging on for the sport of it, waiting to see which one would weaken first. Herndon eyed his opponent: He was a courtier, a swarthy red-bearded man with blazing eyes and a double row of jewels around his doublet. He looked immeasurably wealthy. There was no hope of outbidding him.

“Seven hundred stellors,” Herndon said. He glanced around hurriedly, found a small boy standing nearby, and called him over.

“Seven twenty-five,” said the noble.

Herndon, whispered, “You see that man down front—the one who just spoke? Run down there and tell him his lady has sent for him and wants him at once.”

He handed the boy a golden five-stellor piece. The boy stared at it popeyed a moment, grinned, and slid through the onlookers toward the front of the ring.

“Nine hundred,” Herndon said.

It was considerably more than a proteus might be expected to bring at auction and possibly more than even the wealthy noble cared to spend. But Herndon was aware there was no way out for the noble except retreat, and he was giving him that avenue.