Anti-Man

IV

We stood a third of the way down the next slope, nothing behind which we might hide, no trees to climb, nothing at all to do but wait and hope that they passed us by, crossed another hill, went down a distant ravine and never knew our presence. But my scalp tightened and cold chills crept up my spine, flushing through all parts of my body when I considered the unlikelihood of that. A wolf is a formidable opponent. It has exceedingly sharp senses, among the keenest in the animal kingdom. And with the wind blowing our scent in the direction of the guttural, melancholy howls, there was almost no chance at all that we would escape detection.

"I've read only a little about wolves," He said. "But they are vicious, very vicious, when they are hungry and hunting. Am I right?"

"Too right," I told Him, drawing my pin gun and wishing, now that I was going to have to face beasts instead of men, that I had something more lethal than narcodarts. It had been a harsh winter; I could tell that from the depth of the drifts, the bow of the trees after they had borne so many weeks of heavy snow. The wolves had been driven out of the higher levels of the park, down from the dense upper forests into the more civilized areas. Food would be scarce up there in this weather. Farther down, there was still good hunting… "They must have caught the odor of blood-maybe from the rabbits you skinned. If that's the case, they've been searching for some time now, and they're bound to be near mad with excitement."

Just as I finished, the first wolf loped into sight, a scout of the main pack. He came over the brow of the next hill and stood looking at us across the little valley that separated him from us. His eyes were hot coals, feverish, gleaming between the beads of the snow curtain that draped the night. His muzzle quivered, and he bared his teeth. Two prominent fangs arched up from his lower jaw and shone wickedly yellow-white in the gloom, fangs that could rip out a man's throat in seconds, free the bubbling blood in human veins. He danced backward, then forward again, examining us, his excitement growing by the second. Then he raised his head and dropped his lower jaw to howl.

I leveled my gun and fired a burst of pins that caught him in the throat. He gagged, shook his head, and toppled over. He writhed a moment, his legs kicking spasmodically, and lay still, sleeping. But the sounds of his comrades indicated little gap between the scout and the body of the main force. They would be on us in seconds. Their reaction to the limp body of their companion would decide our fate-whether they advanced for revenge or turned tail and ran. Somehow, the latter seemed unlikely.

The other wolves crested the ridge and stopped like a line of Indians confronting the cavalry in a cheap Western movie. They moved around uncertainly, taking turns sniffing the scout's body. When they realized he was not dead but sleeping, some of their bravura was restored. They pranced around more lightly now, their feet hardly touching the ground, springing like wind-up toys-though their teeth were real enough. A few threw their heads back and let go some really wild howls at the low sky. The echo beat around the foothills, carried to the wall at the base of the mountain and boomed back in a loud whisper.

"What should we do?" He asked, though He didn't seem very concerned-nowhere near as concerned as I was when I looked at those brutes.

"Let's wait and see what move they make," I said. "If we try to run, that might give them enough confidence to attack."

Meanwhile, I counted them. With the scout, there were sixteen.

Sixteen.

I could swear it got colder and that the wind blew the snow more insistently than ever, but it may have been my imagination. Besides, I was sweating, a switch if ever I saw one. We waited.

They made their move. Three of the braver beasts started down the opposite slope, gained confidence and loped full speed across the small valley which they easily covered in a dozen strides. When they reached the base of our hill, I shouted, "Fire!"

We opened with our pin guns and stopped them before they were halfway up our hill. They kicked, jerked, went down in a tangle of legs, lay very still, the drugs doing quick work on them. One of them, the largest and most darkly-furred, snored.

The other beasts snorted and snarled among themselves, much like football players planning strategy in a huddle. They milled around, looking at each other, then at us, then back to each other.

"Maybe they'll go away now," He said.

"Not a wolf. For one thing, we've insulted them. A wolf is too proud a creature to give up without a fight. Besides, they look rangy, hungry. They won't stop as long as they think they've found their supper. And that's just what we must look like to them."

Just then, four more wolves flashed down the slope and after us, snarling, foam flecking the corners of their twisted mouths, their eyes fierce and glowing like crimson gems. The attack was a surprise and launched with startling swiftness, almost as if they had mutually agreed to take us unaware. But our vantage point was too good, too safe. I brought the last one down only a dozen feet away from me. Just in time to hear the vicious growl behind us!

We whirled.

Two wolves had detached from the main pack and had slunk around behind us and had come up the back of our hill, almost in the footprints we had made. Now we were surrounded. I caught one with a narcodart burst as he leaped for me. He twisted in midflight, his entire body wracked with spasms as the drugs relaxed his mind and released his tense muscles from their constriction, draining the savage fury from him like a tap drains a keg. He crashed short of me by two feet, throwing up a spray of snow. He choked, tried to get up, and slammed back to the ground, passed out. The second wolf had come too fast and had landed on His shoulders, bearing Him to the ground and sinking teeth into His pseudo-flesh. Apparently, the pseudo-flesh, the cultured meat that was grown in the Artificial Wombs, was as good as regular meat, for the wolf did not draw back, but went after its prey in a frenzy.

It swung its head down to tear open my android's neck. I fired a round of pins, but they rolled just then, and the narcodarts sank uselessly into the snow. The next moment, the beast's teeth raked over the exposed skin of His neck, but did not sink in very deeply. Little rivulets of blood ran down His skin. I was searching for an opening, when He suddenly swung His fist against the side of the wolfs head and crushed its skull as completely as if He had used an iron mallet. He had evidently hardened His flesh into a hammer-like weapon, just as He had earlier shaped it into a scoop. The wolf gurgled once and fell off Him.

"Your face," I said. His cheek had been badly chewed, and He was bleeding profusely.

"It'll be all right." Even as He spoke, the bleeding slowed and stopped. His cheek seemed to crawl with a life of its own, wriggling, shivering, pulsating. He reached up and tore away the flap of flesh the wolf had loosened. I could see, beneath, the welling brightness of smooth, new skin. In moments, there was no sign of His wound; He had healed completely. "The other six," He said, indicating the last of our enemy.

But they were slinking off along the ridge, watching us carefully but with no apparent intent of attack. They had seen ten of their kind fall before us, and they had suddenly lost some of their pride-enough, anyway, to let them give up in hopes of finding easier prey.

"Let's go," I said, "before they change their minds and come back. Or before their comrades wake up."

"Just a minute," He said, kneeling before the wolf He had killed with His hand. He flopped it onto its back and began working on it. In a minute, He had skinned it as He had the rabbits. He tore large chunks of meat from its flanks and stuffed them into His mouth, ripping with His teeth just as the wolves would have ripped us had we not been too much for them.

"Wolf meat should be stringy," I said inanely.

"I need it," He answered. "I don't much care about the taste or the texture. The changes are accelerating, Jacob. I'll only be a few minutes here." He swallowed noisily. "Okay?"

"Yeah. Sure."

"Good," He said.

He continued cramming the bloody meat into his mouth, swallowing it with the minimum of chewing. I guess He had adapted His digestive system in some way to handle what He was throwing at it. Such a bolted meal of raw flesh would have had anyone else retching for the next three days as the stomach cleansed itself. I would have given just about anything at that moment to have been able to X-ray Him, run tests on Him to see exactly what He had done to Himself. It was the doctor in me, the medical curiosity surfacing even while wolves stalked in the night and World Authority police ranged somewhere behind, closing the gap. Ten minutes later, He had devoured most of the animal and was ready to go.

We walked down the slope and across the wolf-strewn valley.

I kept looking behind, expecting the flash of teeth, a guttural snarl, ripping claws.

It was going to be a bad night

An hour and forty-five minutes after dawn, afraid every minute that we would be seen and apprehended even though the park seemed deserted, we reached the cabin. The sight of it filled me with the first warmth I had felt since the wolves had set me to sweating inside my bulky insulated clothing. The place was as I remembered it, a comfy nook nestled in a grove of pine trees with its back door facing a sheer cliff and its front door giving view to a breathtaking panorama of snow and trees and gentle foothills. It was not the sort of place a hardy outdoorsman would go to rough it. Harry and others like him paid well for the modern conveniences in the trappings of rustic simplicity.

I had no key this time. Even if I had thought of coming here right from the beginning, I would not have gone to Harry and implicated him by getting a key. This was my folly, and I would have to bear all the grief and punishment if things fell down around my head. I had to break a pane of glass in the door, fumble around for the inside latch, all the time wondering when someone would come running into the living room shouting, "burglar," and wielding a twenty-gauge shotgun. But the place was empty as I had imagined it would be.

Inside, we found a cardboard box and used one of the sides to cover the hole I'd made, thereby keeping out the worst of the wind. I plugged the heaters in after He started the generator in the attached utility shed to the rear of the cabin, and I thanked the gods that Harry had electric heaters as well as fireplaces. The fireplaces would give off smoke that would have every World Authority ranger and copper down on our backs inside of the hour. The electric jobs would keep the living room sufficiently warm and the remainder of the house just comfortable. And that was sufficient. We could not expect total luxury in our position. This little bit of peace and quiet and rest, after our days and days of running, did seem like total luxury. The heavy, whining noise from the generator would have to be risked. It was well-muffled, and if anyone got close enough to hear its low whumpa-whumpa, then chances were they were already suspicious and investigating the cabin.

"Good," I said, watching the coils begin to glow inside the heaters and feeling the first warm drafts of air as the blowers came on.

"The food," He said. "I want to see what I have to work with."

"This way," I said, taking Him down into the natural icebox of the cellar. There was very nearly a whole cow hung from meat hooks embedded in the ceiling. The meat was frozen solid and filmed by a thin coat of fuzzy frost. It was most probably a tank-grown cow, but the meat would still be tender and tasty. The walls of the room, natural rock, were coated with thick, brown-white ice, as was the floor. The cellar had been carved directly from the base of the mountain for the purpose of food storage; it was a fine job.

Next, I led Him back upstairs and showed Him the pantry where Harry kept about two hundred cans of various fruits, vegetables, and meats. At one time, when World Authority was threatened with a power crisis and looked as if it might topple at any moment, Harry had rented the cabin and had fixed it up as the perfect bomb shelter here in the Alaskan polar winds that would be relatively free from fallout. He had never quite gotten over the fear of a world holocaust, and he kept his pantry regularly stocked against it, though the present solidarity of World Authority seemed permanent.

"Take out everything you will need to keep you for three days," He said. "I'll take all that's left plus the beef down there in the cellar."

"You're going to need all that?" I asked, incredulous.

"Maybe more."

"More?",

"I can't really say yet. Not until I'm farther along with the changes. But you might have to go hunting for me, Jacob. Can you hunt?"

"I've done a little. Mostly gamebirds, though. Duck, pheasant, a bit of turkey. And it has been three or four years since I've even been out for those. What would I hunt here?"

"Well, we've seen that there are wolves. Geese, if it's that time of the year. Rabbits. I understand the park is noted for its elk herds and its white-tailed deer."

I laughed.

"I'm serious," He said.

"Let's see you eat what you have here first. That should take a month. If you manage that, then we'll talk about hunting."

I went to the window to check the weather. It was still snowing hard, and there did not appear to be any breaks in the cloud cover. The wind was whipping up the white stuff and jamming it against the cabin in dandy drifts. I was all for a blizzard. Aesthetically, I enjoyed the beauty of it. Also, and more importantly, it was unlikely that a search of the park could be initiated now even if some bright young World Authority executive candidate had thought of it. Helicopters couldn't move in that soup, and foot parties could easily get separated and lost. It was snowing much harder than before. The wind seemed strong enough to snap the towering pines all around us. Satisfied that we would not be interrupted by any nasty WA patrols, I went into one of the two bedrooms, stripped, and fell into bed. I didn't even mind that there were no sheets, just the spread. For all I knew, I could have been in the Astor, high up in the best suite available, curled on a five-thousand-dollar bed.

I had bad dreams. Real bad.

I was running through a dark, thick, silent forest in the first dream, pursued by some nameless, faceless hulk that moaned as it crashed through the brush. Several times, its long, thick fingers touched the nape of my neck, tried to draw me into its murderous grasp. Each time, I would have to double my speed to put more ground between us. But the night wore on and on, and the beast was tiring more slowly than I. It would get me. I knew it. As I ran, I screamed… In another dream, I was in an old, many-roomed castle at midnight, again pursued by something nameless that breathed heavily, chasing me from room to room, gurgling thickly in its throat and chuckling now and then when it almost trapped me in a deadend hallway or on a stair when I tripped and fell.

But the dreams failed to wake me. I woke naturally that evening, having slept the morning and afternoon through, with a faint sense of nausea from the unreal exertion of my nightmare chases. I felt a moment of terror as I realized I had allowed myself to sleep so soundly with the enemy breathing down our necks. Then I remembered the snow and slowed my heartbeat by deep breathing and conscious effort. I dressed and went into the living room. He was nowhere in sight, I called His name. There was no answer.

He's gone, I thought.

I had been expecting it all along, ever since that moment when we took flight from the laboratories. All along the line, I had been loking for Him to leave me high and dry, to strike out on His own. It was that concealed facet of His personality that gave me such pessimistic visions. I wondered if that secret portion of His soul knew that He did not need me, that He was, in fact, superior and needed no one. Now He was gone. Now it had happened. I felt a curious mixture of sadness and relief. I could go back now, give myself up. What would they do to me? Jail? Death? Conceivably nothing? It would be interesting to find out. I decided to get something to eat and then to leave for the trek back to the main gate, back to Cantwell, back to New York and the World Authority labs. I walked into the kitchen — and found Him.

He had changed.

Changed

"What the hell-" I began, backing toward the door, my heart laboring, my lungs momentarily forgetting their function.

"It's all right, Jacob," He said. His voice was deeper and just a little difficult to understand. Still, it was parental, soothing, reassuring.

"All right?" I asked, looking Him over. The floor was littered with nearly two hundred empty cans. He must have been eating steadily since I went to bed that morning. Every can seemed to have been licked clean; there was no residue in any of them. He squatted on the floor in the middle of the tin mess, half again as large as when I had left Him. He had gained a good hundred and twenty-five pounds, maybe more. There was virtually no distinction between His head and neck, just one solid mass that connected with His shoulders. He had His shirt and trousers off, quite naked. Of course, He could never have fitted in them now. His chest was ringed with folds of tissue, though it was muscle and not fat. His arms were huge, as big around as gallon jugs at the biceps and a good eleven or twelve inches at the wrists. His manhood was lost in pouches of muscle that made Him sexless, hung between His legs Me some grotesquerie of Nature. His legs were swollen pillars now, shiny like sausages. The bones of His knees were invisible, padded beneath pounds of muscle that must surely hinder the use of the joint. His feet were buckets, the toes like fat cucumbers painted a flesh color, the nails engulfed by flesh, peeking out only here and there.

I had the feeling that I was in some small, tasteless carnival sideshow gawking at the strangest freak to come down the pike in centuries. Come and See Muscle-man! the signs would read outside the tent. So Bound With Muscles He Can Barely Move! Something To Tell Your Grandchildren About! One of the Marvels of the Modern Age!

He laughed. It was a fat, unpleasant chuckling sound far down in the tight mass of His throat. "Jacob, Jacob, Jacob," He crooned. "Have faith. I told you I was changing."

"But whatever good is a change like this?" I could not take my eyes from Him, for I did not know if I could pull them back again once I had looked away. It was like the sensation you feel at the scene of a bad accident where parts of bodies are strewn around like old weeds. You do not want to look, but you are transfixed, knowing you must look if only to grasp for a short while the immediacy of Death.

"This is only an intermediate step, Jacob. This form is no good at all. It is what I am heading for that will matter, that will be important. Can you understand that? Or am I making no sense at all?"

"I don't know," I said quite honestly. "What is it that you are heading towards?"

"You'll see," He said. "You'll see, Jacob."

"How did you manage to gain all this-tissue in so few hours? And from just a couple of hundred cans of fruit and vegetables?" Medical curiosity again. It all started with Harry giving me that doctor play kit when I was a toddler.

"My system," He said. "My system doesn't waste anything. It employs nearly all of what I consume. Precious little feces. Can you imagine that, Jacob? It works at converting all matter, not just the nutritious elements. Everything is convertible. When I take in a pound of food, I create nearly a pound of tissue."

"Impossible!"

"Not so, Jacob. Oh, there is water loss, to be sure. But that is all. And I manage to contain a good deal of the water, for my new systems need it. Still, I'm afraid I had to make a good many trips outside."

I sat down at the kitchen table, my knees weak and trembling, and I looked at Him. My head seemed ready to pop off my shoulders and balloon around the room. "I don't know," I said, still examining Him in detail. "At first I thought you were something good, something that could help mankind. I guess I'm still an idealist even after all these years. But now I am no longer sure of you. You're grotesque!"

He was silent a moment, very still. If I squinted my eyes, He faded into a brown-gray blob, something unliving, a pile of wood or grass. Then: "I need two more days, Jacob. That's all I ask of you. After that, I will benefit your people. I will revolutionize the world, your lives, Jacob. I can bring mankind an unlimited life-span. I can teach you the many things I have learned. Yes, I can even teach Man to heal himself and shape his own body just as I am able to do. Will you trust me for two days?"

I looked at Him. What did I have to lose? He was going to develop with or without me. I might as well stay along for the ride. Besides, I might be able to discover what was going on in Him, satisfy some of my longing for knowledge about his lightning evolution. "All right," I said. "I trust you."

"So now I have to ask you for something," He said.

"What is that?"

"I have had this radio on several times today, listening for word of the hunt. It seems that they are narrowing the area of search much more rapidly than we anticipated. They are forming a massive search network to start on the park tonight."

I sat up straight. "They will think of the cabins relatively early in the search. If they haven't already thought of them."

"Exactly," He said, His new, deep voice a little more palatable now that I was getting used to it.

"But I don't see what we can do."

"I've thought. I have an idea."

"Which is?"

His strange, bloated face looked concerned. "It will be dangerous for you, I'm afraid. This close to the end, I would not want to see you killed, shot down so far away that I can't reach you in time to resurrect you."

"I haven't worried about getting shot for seven days," I said. "The first day, I was scared. Then after flying bullets became common, I got used to it. What's the idea?"

"If you could leave here," He said, "and go back out of the park, you could take a flivver or rocket or monorail to someplace far away from here. Let yourself be seen, recognized. Then the chase will switch, and the heat will be off us, at least until they trace you and discover you came back here. But by then-"

"Down through the park again," I said.

"I know it will be one helluva job."

"But you're right," I said disconsolately. "It's the only thing we have to do."

"When?" He said.

"I'll leave as soon as I grab something to eat and get into my gear."