And he was carrying an M-16 by the handle on top of the barrel.
He wasn’t looking for me. He was just wandering. He was lonely. Howler monkeys live in packs; in his dumb instinctive way, he was probably looking for company— without knowing what he was looking for. He might’ve gone right on by without noticing me.
But when he hit the branch, the lurch made me move. Just a few cm.—but that was enough. It caught his attention. I should’ve had my eyes shut, but it was too late for that now. The howler knew I had eyes—he knew I was alive, in about five seconds he was going to know I smelled like blood.
He took the M-16 in both hands, tucked the stock into his shoulder, wrapped a finger around the trigger.
I stared back at him and didn’t move a muscle.
What else could I do? I couldn’t reach him—and if I could, I couldn’t. move fast enough to keep him from pulling the trigger. He’d cut me to pieces before I touched him. I wanted to plead with him, Don’t shoot. I’m no threat to you. But he wouldn’t understand. He was just a monkey. He would just shoot me.
I was so scared and angry I was afraid I was going to do something stupid. But I didn’t. I just stared and didn’t move.
The howler was curious. He kept his M-16 aimed at my chest, but he didn’t shoot. I could detect no malice or cunning in his face. Slowly he came closer to me. He wanted to see what I was.
He was going to smell my blood soon, but I had to wait. I had to let him get close enough.
He kept coming. From four meters to three. To two. I thought I was going to scream. The muzzle of that rifle was lined up on my chest. It was all I could do to keep from looking at it, keep myself staring straight at the howler without blinking.
One meter.
Very, very slowly, I closed my eyes. See, howler. I’m no threat. I’m not even afraid. I’m going to sleep. How can you be afraid of me?
But he was going to be afraid of me. He was going to smell my blood.
I counted two heartbeats with my eyes closed. Then I moved.
With my right foot braced on the trunk under me, I swung my left leg hard, kicked it over the top of the branch. I felt a heavy jolt through my knee as I hit the howler.
Right then, he started to fire: I heard the rapid metal stuttering of the M-l6 on automatic, heard .22 slugs slashing through the leaves. But I must have knocked him off balance. In that first fraction of a second, none of the slugs got me.
Then my kick carried me off the branch. I was falling. I went crashing down through the leaves with M-16 fire swarming after me like hornets.
Three or four meters later, a stiff limb caught me across the chest. I saw it just in time, got my arms over it and grabbed it as it hit. That stopped me with a jerk that almost tore my arms off.
I wasn’t breathing any more, the impact knocked all the air out of me. But I didn’t worry about it. I craned my neck, trying to see what the monkey was doing.
He was right above me on his branch, looking right at me. From there he couldn’t have missed me to save his life.
But he wasn’t firing. As slowly as if he had all the time in the world, he was taking the clip out of his rifle. He threw it away and reached back into his knapsack to get another one.
If I’d had a handgun or even a blaster, I could have shot him dead. He didn’t even seem to know he was in danger, that it was dangerous for him to expose himself like that.
I didn’t wait around for him to finish. Instead I swung my legs under the branch and let myself fall again.
This time I got lucky. For a second. My feet landed square on another branch. That steadied me, but I didn’t try to stop. I took a running step down onto another branch, then jumped for another one.
That was the end of my luck. I lost my balance and fell. Probably would have broken my leg if I hadn’t had those plastene struts along the bones. But I didn’t have time to worry about that, either. I wasn’t any more than ten meters off the ground now. There was only one branch left between me and a broken back, and it was practically out of reach.
Not quite. I got both hands on it.
But I couldn’t grip with my left. The whip of my weight tore my right loose. I landed flat on my back at the base of the tree.
I didn’t feel like the fall kicked the air out of me—I couldn’t remember the last time I did any breathing anyway. But the impact didn’t help my head much. I went blind for a while, and there was a long crashing noise in my ears, as if the only thing I was able to hear, was ever going to hear, was the sound of myself hitting the ground. I felt like I’d landed hard enough to bury myself. But I fought it. I needed air. Needed to see.
That howler probably had me lined up in his sights already.
I fought it.
Got my eyes back first. Felt like hours, but probably didn’t take more than five seconds. I wanted to look up into the tree, try to locate the monkey, but something else snared my attention.
A coughing noise.
It wasn’t coming from me. I wasn’t breathing at all. It was coming from somewhere off to my left.
I didn’t have to turn my head much to look in that direction. It was practically no trouble at all. But right away I wished I hadn’t done it.
I saw a brown bear. A big brown bear. He must’ve been ten meters or more away, and he was down on all fours, but he looked huge. Too huge. I couldn’t fight anything like that. I couldn’t even breathe.
He was staring at me. Must’ve seen me fall. Now he was trying to decide what to do. Probably trying to decide whether to claw my throat out or bite my face off. The only reason he hadn’t done anything yet was because I wasn’t moving.
But I couldn’t keep that up. I absolutely couldn’t help myself. I needed air. A spasm of carbon-dioxide poisoning clutched my chest, made me twitch. When I finally took a breath, I made a whooping noise I couldn’t control.
Which told the bear everything he wanted to know about me. With a roar that might have made me panic if I hadn’t already been more dead than alive, be reared up onto his hind legs, and I got a look at what Paracels had done to him.
He had hands instead of forepaws. Paracels certainly liked hands. They were good for handling weapons. The bear’s hands were so humanlike I was sure Paracels must have got them from one of the dead bunters. They looked too small for the bear. I couldn’t figure out how he was able to walk on them. But of course that wasn’t too much of a problem for a bear. They were big enough for what Paracels had in mind.
Against his belly the bear had a furry pouch like a kangaroo’s. As he reared up, he reached both hands into his pouch. When he brought them out again, he had an automatic in each fist. A pair of .22 Magnums.
He was going to blow my head off.
There was nothing I could do about it.
I had to do something about it. I didn’t want to die. I was too mad to die.
Whatever it was I was going to do, I had about half a second to do it in. The bear hadn’t cocked his automatics. It would take him half a second to pull the trigger far enough to get off his first shot—and that one wouldn’t be very accurate. After that, the recoil of each shot would cock the gun for him. He’d be able to shoot faster and more accurately.
I flipped to my feet, then jumped backward, putting the tree between him and me.
I was too slow. He was firing before I reached my feet. But his first shots were wild, and after that I was moving. As I jerked backward, one of his bullets licked a shallow furrow across my chest. Then I was behind the tree. A half dozen slugs chewed into the trunk, too fast for me to count them. He had ten rounds in each gun. I was stuck until he had to reload.
Before I had time to even wonder what I was going to do, the howler opened fire.
He was above me, perched on the leaning dead tree. He must’ve been there when I started to move.
With all that lead flying around, he took aim at the thing that was most dangerous to him and opened up.
Damn near cut the bear in half.
/> Nothing bothered his aim, and his target was stationary. In three seconds he emptied an entire clip into the bear’s guts.
He didn’t move from where he was. He looked absolutely tame, like a monkey in a zoo. Nothing could have looked tamer than he did as he sat there taking out his spent clip; throwing it away, reaching into his knapsack for a fresh one.
That was the end of him. His blast had knocked the bear backward until the bear was sitting on the ground with his hind legs stretched out in front of him, looking as human as any animal in the world. He was bleeding to death; he’d be dead in ten seconds. But bears generally are stubborn and bloody-minded, and this one was no exception. Before he died, he raised his guns and blew the howler away.
I didn’t spend any time congratulating myself for being alive. All that shooting was going to draw other animals and I was in no shape to face them. I was bleeding from that bullet furrow, the back of my head, and a half dozen other cuts and scrapes. And the parts of me that weren’t bleeding were too bruised to be much good. I turned and shambled away as quietly as I could in the direction of the stream.
I didn’t get far. Reaction set in, and I had to hide myself in the best cover I could find and just be sick for a while.
Sick with anger.
I was starting to see the pattern of this preserve. These animals were nothing but cannon fodder. They were as deadly as could be—and at the same time they were so tame they didn’t know how to run away. That’s right: tame. Because of their training.
Genetic alteration wasn’t enough. First the animals had to be taught how to use their strange appendages. Then they had to be taught how to use their weapons, and finally they had to be taught not to use their weapons on their trainers or on each other. That mix-up between the bear and the howler was an accident; the bear just happened to, be shooting too close to the monkey. They had to be taught not to attack each other every chance they got. Paracels probably boosted their brainpower, but they still had to be taught. Otherwise they’d just butcher each other. Dogs and rabbits, bears and dogs—they don’t usually leave each other alone.
With one hand, Paracels gave them guns, mines, grenades; with the other, he took away instincts for flight, self-preservation, even feeding themselves. They were crippled worse than a cyborg with his power turned off. They were deadly—but they were still crippled. Probably Paracels or Ushre or any of the handlers could walk the preserve end to end without being in any danger.
That was why I was so mad.
Somebody bad to stop those bastards.
I wanted that somebody to be me.
I knew how to do it now. I understood what was happening in this preserve. I knew how it worked; I knew how to get out of it. Sharon’s Point was unnatural in more ways than one. Maybe I could take advantage of one of those ways. If I could just find what I needed.
If I was going to do it, I had to do it now. Noon was already past, and I had to find what I was looking for before evening. And before some animal hunted me down. I stank of blood.
My muscles were queasy, but I made them carry me. Sweating and trembling, I did my damnedest to sneak through the woods toward the stream without giving myself away.
It wasn’t easy, but after what I’d been through, nothing could be easy. I spent a while looking for tracks—and even that was hard. After all the rain, the ground was still soft enough to hold tracks, but I had trouble getting my eyes focused enough to see them. Sweat made all my scrapes and wounds feel like they were on fire.
But the only absolutely miserable trouble I had was crossing the meadow. Never mind the danger of exposing myself out in the open. I was worried about mines. And rabbits with hand grenades. I had to stay low, pick my way with terrible care. I had to keep off bare ground, and grass that was too thin (grass with a mine under it was likely to be thin), and grass that was too thick (rabbits might be hiding there). For a while I didn’t think I was ever going to make it.
After that, the outcome was out of my hands. I was attacked again. At the last second, my ears warned me:
I heard something cutting across the breeze. I fell to the side—and a hawk went whizzing past where my head had been. I didn’t get a very good look at it, but there was something strange about its talons. They looked a lot like fangs.
A hawk with poisoned talons?
It circled above me and poised for another dive, but I didn’t wait around for it. A rabbit with a grenade probably couldn’t hit a running target. And if I touched a mine, I was better off moving fast—or so I told myself. I ran like hell for the line of trees between me and the stream.
The hawk’s next dive was the worst. I misjudged it.
If I hadn’t tripped, the bird would have had me. But the next time I was more careful. It didn’t get within a meter of me.
Then I reached the trees. I stopped there, froze as well as I could and still gasp for breath. After a while the hawk went barking away in frustration.
When I got up the nerve to move again, I scanned the area for animals. Didn’t spot any. But on the ground I found what looked like a set of deer tracks. I didn’t even try to think about what kind of alterations Paracels might have made in a deer. I didn’t want to know. They were like the few tracks I’d seen back in the woods; they came toward me from the left and went away to the right. Downstream.
That was what I wanted to know. If I was wrong, I was dead.
I didn’t wait much longer—just long enough to choose where I was going to put my feet. Then I went down to the stream. There was a small pool nearby, and I slid into it until I was completely submerged.
I stayed there for the better part of an hour. Spent a while just soaking—lying in the pool with my face barely out of water—trying to get back my strength. Then with my knife I cut away my clothes wherever I was hurt. But I didn’t use the cloth for bandages; I had other ideas. After my wounds had bled clean and the bleeding had stopped, I eased partway out of the water and set about covering myself with mud.
I didn’t want to look like a man and smell like blood; I wanted to look and smell like mud. The mud under the banks was just right—it was thick and black, and it dried fast. When I was done, my eyes, mouth, and hands were the only parts of me that weren’t caked with mud.
The solution wasn’t perfect, but mud was the best camouflage I was likely to find. And it would keep me from bleeding some more, at least for a while. As soon as I felt up to it, I started to work my way downstream along the bank.
My luck held. Nothing was following my track out of the woods. Probably all that blood around the dead bear and monkey was enough to cover me, keep any other animals from recognizing the man-blood smell and nosing around after me. But other than that I was in as much trouble as ever. I wasn’t exactly strong on my feet. And I was running out of time. I had to find what I was looking for before evening. Before the animals came down to the stream to drink.
Before feeding time.
I didn’t know how far I had to go, or even if I was going in the right direction. And I didn’t like being out in the open. So I pushed myself pretty hard until I got out of the meadow. But when the stream ran back into some woods, I had to be more careful. I suppose I should have been grateful I didn’t have to make my way through a swamp, but I wasn’t. I was too busy trying to watch for everything and still keep going. Half the time I had to fight myself to stay alert. And half the time I had to fight myself to move at all.
But I found what I was looking for in time. For once I was right. It was just exactly where it should have been.
In a clearing in the trees. The woods around it were thick and tall, so it would be hard to spot—except from the air. Paracels and Ushre certainly didn’t want their hunters to do what I was doing. The stream ran along one edge. And the bottom had been leveled. So a hovercraft could land.
Except for the landing area, the clearing was practically crowded with feeding troughs of all kinds.
Probably there were several places like this around t
he preserve. Sharon’s Point needed them to survive. The animals were trained not to hunt each other. But that kind of training wouldn’t last very long if they got hungry.; Animals can’t be trained to just let themselves starve. So Ushre and Paracels had to feed their animals. Regularly.
At places like this.
Now the only question remaining was how soon the ‘craft would come. It had to come—most of the troughs were empty. But if it came late—if the clearing had time to fill up before it got here—I wouldn’t have a chance.
But it wasn’t going to do me any good to worry about it. I worked my way around the clearing to where the woods were closest to the landing area. Then I picked a tree with bark about the same color as my mud, sat down against it, and tried to get some rest.
What I got was lucky—one last piece of luck to save my hide. Sunset was still a good quarter of an hour away when I began to hear the big fan of the ‘craft whirring in the distance.
I didn’t move. I wasn’t all that lucky. Some animals were already in the clearing. A big whitetail buck was drinking at the stream, and a hawk was perched on one of the troughs. Out of the corner of my eye I could see two boxers (probably the same two I’d seen before) sitting and waiting, their tongues hanging out, not more than a dozen meters off to my left. Hidden where I was, I was practically invisible. But if I moved, I was finished.
At least there weren’t very many of them. Yet.
I almost sighed out loud when the ‘craft came skidding past the treetops. Gently it lined itself up and settled down onto the landing area.
Now time was all against me. Every animal in this sector of the preserve had heard the ‘craft coming, and most of them would already be on their way to supper. But I couldn’t just run down to the ‘craft and ask for a ride. If the handler didn’t shoot me himself, he’d take off, leaving me to the mercy of the animals. I gripped myself and didn’t move.
The handler was taking his own sweet time.
As he moved around in the cockpit, I saw he was wearing a heavy gray jumpsuit. Probably all the handlers—as well as Ushre and Paracels when they worked with the animals—wore the same uniform. It provided good protection, and the animals could recognize it.