The Quillian Sector

Chapter Ten

It loomed on the horizon, a smudge against the harsh clarity of the sky, a blur which gradually gained resolution. A high peak, flanked by lesser hills, all joined by a series of slopes which ran down to a shore of black, volcanic sand, toothed with rocks against which the sea lashed in foaming irritation.

In pools, they found limpets and mollusks which provided a mouthful of moist nourishment-the fish they had caught had been consumed in the three days they had waited to be carried to land. Edging the shore, vegetation rose in a dull, green wall, boles darkly brown against the sand, the leaves spined and serrated like the blades of vicious spears.

"There could be a break," suggested Egulus. "If we follow the coast, we could find a river or something."

"We need water, food and shelter," said Dumarest. "We won't find them by hugging the shore."

"But can we move through that tangle?" Dilys touched a leaf, moved it to one side, looked at the web of branches waiting in the gloom. "We'll be cut to shreds."

"Not if we take precautions." Dumarest glanced at the raft. It held materials which could be fashioned into forms of protection. "We've got clothing and can use extra padding. Get ready, now. Wear all you can, and make sure you protect face and hands." His voice hardened as only Bochner made a move. "Do it, damn you! If you hope to live, get to work!"

Bochner had his quilted and protected garb, as Dumarest had his own clothing. With thick gloves, crudely shaped but serviceable, and with heads enclosed in metal cans cut with slits to provide vision, they moved to take the lead. The vegetation was stubborn, falling slowly beneath their knives, the metal edges blunting and showing the stains of acid.

"We need lasers," grumbled the hunter. "Heavy duty weapons to burn a path through this jungle. With knives alone, we haven't a chance."

"It should thin further within." Dumarest rasped the side of a stone over his blade. "We'll take turns, me, then you, then me, again. Short spells and halt to sharpen. A narrow passage will do as long as the branches are cut to allow progress. We'll halt to rest when we reach a clearing."

It took three hours during which they hacked and cut and squeezed past ripping thorns and jagged spines, their padding torn, sweat running down their bodies, the roar of blood loud in their ears as they sagged from exhaustion.

Dilys collapsed as they reached the clearing, lying to gasp, to pull the fabric from head and face, to sprawl, panting like a dog. Threnond was little better. Egulus leaned back against a mass of branches and looked upwards. The sky was hidden beneath a roof of greenery.

"Food," he said bitterly. "Water and shelter. Well, I guess we've found that, at least. The shelter of a grave. We could die in here and no one would ever be able to find us."

"If anyone is bothering to look." Bochner looked up from where he sat. "Any luck with the radio yet?"

"I've been sending a distress call for days, now." Threnond looked at the radio equipment in his hand. It was a jumble of adapted components, powered by a small energy cell. "If anyone's heard it, they haven't answered."

"Or you haven't caught it, if they did." Egulus was pessimistic. "What difference does it make? They'll never find us in here."

"Not here," agreed Dumarest, "but we'd be easy to spot if we were on the summit of that peak we saw."

"The peak?" Dilys lifted her head. "Earl, that's miles away! We can't-"

"We can!" He rose and stepped toward her and lifted her upright with an explosion of violence which gave his face the likeness of a savage animal. "We can if we try. If we want to. But we won't if we just sit around moaning that it can't be done. Now, move! On your feet and move!"

The sun passed zenith and headed toward the horizon. An hour before dusk they found a small stream and bathed, cooling their bodies and filling their stomachs in turn, as others kept watch; a precaution Dumarest insisted on and one which Bochner noted. A trait of his quarry's character-how many would have thought to be so careful at such a time and in such a seemingly harmless place?

Later, as the shadows closed in, he said, "We need to eat, Earl. Climbing to that peak will take energy the rest haven't got. Of course, we could leave them here and send help later."

Or forget them. The simplest way, but he didn't hint at that. The bait had been enough. He could learn from the way it was taken.

"We could," said Dumarest, "if we find help. If that help is willing to do as we ask. If it can find them when it tries."

"An old man," said Bochner. "A captain without a ship. A woman."

"People."

"True, but there are so many people." Bochner looked into the shadows. "With water there could be game. If so, it would follow trails-need I tell you what is obvious?"

They set snares made of woven wires and waited and caught small, furred creatures which squeaked and died and were skinned to roast over a fire created by sparks struck from steel. Daylight provided more food from the snares which had been set overnight, and again they began to climb. At dusk, the vegetation had developed into tall trees which soared like the columns of an ancient cathedral, their upper branches plumed to hide the sky. Progress was easier, but slowed by the thick humus which held the damp consistency of mud.

And there was no more game.

Its lack puzzled Bochner.

"There are fruits," he pointed out. "And there should be things to eat them. There are insects and yet no apparent lifeform adapted to prey on them. See?"

With his boot he scraped back a portion of the dirt, revealing a host of scurrying beetles. The fruits, small, hard-skinned, now rotting, lay where they had fallen.

Dumarest looked at the trees, the immediate area. Life took many forms, but always it followed certain patterns. The large preyed on the small and where there was food there was something to eat it. The animals they had snared and eaten had been rodents, ratlike things with teeth and jaws adapted to an omnivorous diet. They had been fairly plentiful further down the slopes-why not here?

Threnond said, "What's the matter? Are we lost?"

"No."

"How can you tell?" The dealer in items of death was hungry and irritable and conscious of his overriding fatigue. He set down the radio and moved off into the shadows clustered between the boles. "While you decide, I've something to attend to. A natural function-you understand."

A delicacy he had demonstrated before, but not with such abruptness. Dumarest took a step after him, halted as Bochner rested a hand on his arm.

"Let him go, Earl."

"There could be danger."

"Always there is the possibility of danger, my friend. In the wine you drink, the food you eat, the bed in which you sleep. We are surrounded by perils, but to guard against them all is beyond the ability of man. We take what precautions we can and, for the rest we trust to luck. If our luck is good, we continue to survive. If it is bad-" he shrugged, "then we cease to have cause to worry."

And no man should be fool enough to burden himself with the welfare of another-a point Bochner hadn't emphasized but had left in no doubt. A tenet of his philosophy revealed in the tone of his voice, the expression of his eyes, the words chosen to illustrate a meaning. When a man played cards, he betrayed more than he guessed to a skilled observer and Dumarest had assessed his motivation. The cult of self, the way of the feline. The law of the beast who has only one instinct, one drive. To survive at all costs. To live. To continue to exist, for without personal existence there was nothing.

And yet he had dived into the ocean, risking death to save another.

"Threnond!" Dumarest raised his voice. "Shan? Shan, where are you?"

Silence, broken only by the rustle of feet in the humus as the woman and Egulus came to join them. A silence which held a sudden, brooding menace.

"Shan!"

"He can't be far," whispered Dilys. "There was no need for him to go far."

"Shan!" Dumarest looked up and around, feeling the old, familiar prickle of impending danger, the primitive warning which had served him so well before. "Stay together," he said. "Keep watch. Bochner, you light a fire. Hurry!"

He moved to where a clump of saplings stood between separated trees. As flame rose from the fire the hunter had built, Dumarest cut down four of the slender poles, trimmed them, sharpened their ends to form crude spears.

As Dilys took hers, she said, "Why this, Earl? Trouble?"

"Maybe not. Just hold on to it, in case. Use it to lean on if you like."

"Sure, just like an-"

She broke off as he lifted a hand, listening. From above and to one side, falling with a gentle rustle through the leaves, came something which twisted and turned to land like a flattened snake.

"A belt!" Egidus lunged forward. "By God, it's a belt!"

After it came nightmare.

It dropped with a thin chatter of castanets, veiled, gems flashing in the firelight, fans and parasols flared and shimmering with a nacreous sheen. A thing which followed the bole, suspended on a thin strand, swinging, touching Egulus, who yelled and sprang back and yelled again as he fell, to roll helpless on loam.

To stare with horror at the mammoth spider dropping towards him.

"Earl! My God! What-"

Dilys spoke to empty air. Dumarest was gone, lunging forward with a speed which, in the firelight, made him seem little more than a blur. To halt, spear upraised, butt on the loam beside the fallen captain, the sharpened point buried deep in the mat of fur covering the spider's thorax, wood shredding beneath the snap of its mandibles, silk pluming from the pulsing spinnerets forming clouds of gossamer which drifted like a mantle to clog his head and arms.

A silken shroud from which he tore himself with desperate energy.

"Earl!" Bochner shouted from where he came running, "Above!"

A hint of movement in the shadows and another monstrous creature plummeted, to strike and seize and lift its prey to the lair it owned high in the topmost branches of the trees. Dumarest sprang aside, steel lifting from his boot, point and edge cutting at the snapping castanets of the mandibles, stabbing at the gems of the eyes. Ichor dripped on his hand, and an acrid stench filled his nostrils as hooked limbs tore shreds from his padding. Limbs which jerked as they were slashed, to lie severed on the loam, twitching as the body of the creature twisted on its suspending filament, to attack with mindless ferocity again, to die as Bochner impaled it with his wooden shaft.

"Back!" The hunter looked up. "Back, Earl! There could be more!"

"Get to the girl!" Dumarest stooped, grabbed the captain by the arms and dragged him upright to his feet. Bochner hadn't moved. "Damn it, man! Get to the girl!"

A fraction of hesitation and the hunter obeyed. Dilys stood beside the fire, eyes wide, spear trembling in her hand as she stared into the shadows. From above, from all sides, came a thin cluttering, a scrape and rustle of chiton, the impact of limbs against branches and leaves as things edged forward through the upper layers of vegetation.

"A nightmare." Egulus looked ill. "A thing from hell itself. It almost had me. It would have had me but for Earl, Threnond?"

He hadn't been as lucky. Dumarest held out the belt he had recovered, together with the spears.

"Is it his?"

"I don't know. It could have been." Egulus shivered. "What now?"

"We build up the fire. Gather fuel-go with him, Bochner. Keep guard while he picks up what he can."

"And me, Earl?"

"You stay here." He looked at the woman. "Keep the fire as high as you can. Don't move away from it, but don't stay immobile. Move about, look around, keep watch and if you see anything, scream."

"And that will drive them away?"

"No." He was blunt. "But it may distract them."

"For how long?" She stared into the darkness, her voice high, thin, verging on hysteria. "All right? And after that, what? Can we stay awake all the time? Can we hope to beat those things off as we move? Earl! What the hell can we do?"

"We wait," he said. "We watch and we plan. We keep our heads. Now tend the fire."

A job which would keep her busy and occupy her mind. Flames rose as she fed scraps of wood to the coals, leaping tongues of red and orange, edged with grayish smoke, the light painting the boles around with shimmers of transient brightness, glows which faded to flare again, to give the impression of movement, of watching eyes.

"They'll come again," said Bochner. "They've tasted blood and they'll be eager for more easy prey."

Egulus said, "Threnond-a hell of a way for a man to die. Squatting, thinking, then something swinging down to-" He broke off, swallowing. "He didn't even have time to scream. And then what? They lifted him up? Carried him? Held him in a web like a fly? Thank God, he knew nothing about it."

"Maybe," said Dumarest.

"He was dead," said Bochner quickly. "He had to be dead. Otherwise he would have screamed or struggled. We'd have heard something."

"We did."

"His belt falling. What does that mean?"

Dumarest said, "He wore that belt under his clothing, so to fall, it must have been exposed. Which means he was stripped."

"So where's the rest of his clothing?"

"I don't know," admitted Dumarest. "Maybe it was shredded and scattered around. Maybe it's up in the trees and the belt fell by accident."

"If it hadn't, I'd be dead by now," said Egulus. "We could all be dead." He looked up and around, eyes uneasy, a muscle twitching on one cheek. "For God's sake, can't we get away from here? Move back down the slope? Find a clearing or something?"

"Tomorrow, yes."

"Why not now?"

"We're trapped," said Bochner. "If we move away from the fire, they'll have us. If we try to take it with us, they'll follow. All we can do is to keep it alight and watch. If we're lucky, they won't attack in force."

"And if not?"

"We'll be dead." The hunter smiled. "We'll die fighting, but we'll be dead just the same. A brave finish, you agree? To stand with companions battling hopeless odds. Sagas have been written about less. But have hope, friend. Always have hope."

Dumarest said, "They won't attack in force. If that was their habit, we'd have been overrun long ago. I think it's a matter of territory-game belongs to the spiders under whose trees it strays. At the moment, we're at a junction, as it were, and so present a problem. When the vacancy we made by killing those things is filled, then the newcomers may attack."

Dilys said, "And if they do?"

"We fight back. We win."

"And leave?"

"Yes," said Dumarest. "After we have found Threnond."

Bochner stirred, not asleep yet not wholly awake, his mind drifting in a vague region composed of memory and fantasy, constructing regions of what-might-have-been together with those of what-could-be. Dumarest was far more complex than he had at first appeared. There were levels within the man which he was only now beginning to fully appreciate. A sense of function, of fitness, of instinctive reaction which added new dimensions to apparent simplicity. Nothing he did could be simple, always there had to be a complex motivation directed not even on a conscious level but operating on the subconscious need to ensure survival. And yet, there were elements which negated that facile theory. A man driven by the need simply to exist was predictable and so made poor sport. Threaten, and he would respond in one of certain ways; he would beg, run, bribe, plead, bargain, even kill. Dumarest would do all these, if necessary, and yet that was not all. There had to be more. If not, how had he managed to elude the Cyclan for so long?

And what made them so desperate to find and hold him?

Always it came back to that-the tantalizing promise of fantastic reward. Not just for the sake of material gain but for the other, far more intense pleasure of personal achievement. Of running down the most wily and the most dangerous quarry he had ever known to the final, bitter end. Not just to make a kill-any fool could destroy-but to win on all levels so that when the hunt was ended, the stalk consummated, and he was closing in for the termination, the usual orgasmic pleasure would be multiplied a hundredfold.

To win.

To pit mind against mind, body against body, skill and cunning and intelligence against equal attributes and to win. To be proven the best. To gain in stature by the other's defeat.

To live!

A noise, and he was fully awake, one hand reaching for his knife, the other for his spear. Against the glow of the fire, the bulk of the woman showed monstrous; female flesh rendered even more shapeless by the clothing and padding she wore. For a moment he compared her with Gale Andrei and her slim boyishness, then dismissed them both. Women, never important, were now an unwanted complication.

Dumarest stood beyond her, head tilted, eyes searching the heights. Egulus, lying supine, stirred and coughed-the noise he had heard-and Bochner lifted himself from the loam to rise and flex his muscles. A creature of the wild preparing himself for action.

They had, he thought, been lucky. It was close to dawn and the night had passed without incident. Lying, resting his bones if nothing else, he had waited on the edge of instant alertness, ready for any attack, eyes acting as watchful guardians as, apparently, he dreamed. Now, with the new day, they could move back down the slope, skirt the area, press on up the hill to the peak.

If the area could be skirted.

If there was no attack.

Standing, he felt his mind flash to an alternate possibility. He and Dumarest, wandering this world, two hunters living on the land, knowing and relishing the taste and feel of a primitive existence, sharing and finding joy in their own, personal world.

A moment, then it was gone and only a semiregretful glow remained. The main hunt still remained. The stalk, the challenge, the need to act, to delude, to beat intelligence and caution with the same of his own.

He said, "Earl? Are we ready to move out?"

"Not yet." Dumarest, Bochner noticed, had removed all the padding he'd worn. "Strip. I want everything but your own clothing. You too, Dilys. And you, captain."

"Why?"

"For smoke. Most of the padding is plastic and it'll produce a thick, black cloud when burned."

"Smoke?" Egulus frowned, then thought he had the answer. "To get rid of the spiders? Will it work?"

"It might. At least, it will stop them seeing me."

"Seeing you?" Dilys remembered what he had said. "Earl, you're not going after Threnond!"

"Someone has to."

"But why? He's dead. You said so yourself."

"No, others said that. I'm afraid he could still be alive." Dumarest stooped and lifted burning sticks from the fire, "If he is, then he's in the worst land of hell. We can't leave him in it."

He carried the mass of burning wood to the place where the belt had fallen and she followed him, searching for words, for a reason why he shouldn't do what he obviously intended to do. Only a madman would want to climb the tree to face what could lurk above. Threnond was dead-he had to be dead. How could he possibly be alive?

Bochner knew. He said urgently, "Earl, the risk is too great. Even if they did sting and poison him, there's nothing you can do. We have no cure. You'd be throwing your life away for nothing."

Dumarest said, "If you want to help, stand guard while Dilys feeds the fire. If not, get the hell away from here. Captain?"

"I'm with you, Earl." Egulus came forward, his arms filled with discarded padding, eyes anxious as he stared into the dying night. "I don't understand this, but in space we help each other. Threnond wasn't a spacer, but he'd bought passage and I guess I'm responsible for him, in a way." He added with simple dignity, "Just tell me what you want me to do."

"Stand guard, keep watch, take care of anything which might attack." Dumarest glanced at the bole of the tree, his eyes following it to the summit. "It's light up there. Dilys, start making smoke."

It billowed from the embers as she fed plastic to the embers, thick, black, acrid. Rising in a pillar about the bole of the tree, drawn upwards by the dawn wind blowing over the forest, spreading in odd vagaries of shape, coils hanging as if solid, to writhe, to drift like reluctant phantoms, to stain the greenery with fingers of pollution.

In the midst of it, Dumarest climbed upwards like a mechanical doll. A rope circled the tree, the loop enclosing his body and forming a rest against which he could strain while his boots found holds on the trunk. Hands flapping the rope upwards, body moving in synchronization with feet and support, he was gone before they knew it, a dim shape which vanished into darkness.

"They'll get him," said Egulus. "He won't be able to see them and they'll get him before he knows it."

"No." Bochner released his breath in a long sigh. "He knows what he's doing. The smoke will clear the area."

Of spiders and oxygen, both given time. And the released poisons could be as fatal to man as arachnids. Why was he risking his life? Why?

High above, Dumarest paused, blinking, conscious of the pain in his lungs, the constriction. The cloth he had wrapped around his mouth did little to filter the smoke from the air and it was time to lose even that protection. A quick move and it was around his throat, the blade of his knife clamped in his mouth, and again he was climbing up to where the leaves made an umbrella to trap the smoke as it hid the sky.

The sky and other things.

Something thin and sticky touched his cheek, stinging, as he forged upwards and tore it free. Another traced a silken path over his sleeve, more joined it, formed a mesh which parted as he jerked his arm, lifted to settle on his hair. The smoke protected him, settled vapor preventing the silk from adhering as designed to do, maintaining the freedom of motion he needed. A rustle and his hand lifted, caught the hilt of the knife, slashed as mandibles snapped an inch from his cheek, slashed again to complete the ruin, then again to send the oozing creature from its perch to plummet below.

One taken care of-how many others would be waiting?

The things were the size of a small dog, legs doubling the body area, mandibles capable of closing around a neck. The hooked limbs could rip and tear flesh from bones, but the most dangerous part was the venom which would numb and paralyze with immediate effect. One bite, if it broke the skin, and he would be worse than dead.

A branch interrupted his upward progress and, in a sudden area of clarity in the smoke, he saw a scuttling shape, silk streaming from its spinnerets, limbs rasping as it lunged towards him. Chiton broke beneath the smash of his fist, covering his knuckles with ooze, and a thrust of his knife drove steel into the main ganglion, cutting and twisting and severing the muscles leading to the mandibles. Higher, and the smoke thinned, ebon wreaths tracing smears across the morning, soiling the first pearly light.

Touching the twinkle of diamond dew, which graced the clouds of gossamer hanging in delicate veils.

Laying a patina of darkness on the long shape shrouded and bound with layers of web to branches which crossed and made a platform.

A bier for the, as yet, undead.

Threnond was stung, paralyzed, locked in a mental torment of helpless awareness. Meat processed for later consumption by the newborn spiders which would hatch from the eggs festooning his chest and throat, his stomach, groin and thighs. Doomed to lie immobile while the hungry mandibles gnawed into his flesh. To know the horror of being eaten alive.

His eyes were open, glazed, already seats of torment. Targets for the glare of the rising sun. Blindness would be the first of his many extra hells.

There was no cure and only one mercy.

Dumarest administered it, then slid down the bole of the tree to land, coughing, doubled and retching as acrid vapor tore at his lungs. He heard Bochner cry a warning, then the impact of a sudden weight on his back, the snap of mandibles at his shoulders, the touch of chiton against his cheek. A touch which fell away as the hunter smashed the scrabbling spider to the loam, to thrust his wooden spear into its thorax, to crush it with his boot as it fretted the shaft.

Another which, crippled, moved slowly back up a tree. A third, which Egulus killed as Dumarest, fighting for breath, stumbled free of the smoke.

"So, you found him." Bochner glanced at the red smears where Dumarest had wiped his knife against his thigh. "And gave him an easy way out."

"Thank God for that." Egulus glanced uneasily up at the smoke. "I know what it's about now. Some spiders sting and paralyze, and others do not-how did you know which kind these are?"

"I didn't." Dumarest straightened, fighting a sudden giddiness. He had inhaled too much poison. "I just couldn't take the chance."

"He was lucky," said Bochner. "Threnond, I mean. He was damned lucky."

Dilys said, "Lucky? I thought he was dead."

"He is. That's what I mean." The hunter glanced at Dumarest. "Sometimes that's what a friend is for-and he had one of the best."