THE KINDLY KILLERS
"Sometimes you just don't know." Celeste's voice was strangely flat
and lifeless in the black. "Sometimes there's nothing you can do but
hope and try."
I didn't answer.
Celeste again: "What would you have had me do, Mark? Let them kill you?
That was their first thought, you know; you really did upset them with
those things you said about me on the voco. They were afraid you knew
so much more than you do."
"Forget it," I muttered. "There's no point to going back over it now."
"But there is! For me, there is!" For the first time, in this place,
my companion's voice showed a flash of animation. "You were the only
one who'd pushed them even a little bit off balance. I wanted to know
you--to find out what you had that the rest of mankind lacked. If I
could do that and save you too, what was the harm in it?"
"The harm?" In spite of myself, I roused and glowered through
the blackness. "What was the harm, when you urged me to tell
you--things--not knowing Kel were there?"
"But Mark, I wouldn't have done it if it had mattered! The things you
said--those were for me, not them. I knew they couldn't understand
them. They haven't any insight into human feelings, human thoughts."
"After the thrill-mills, you'd try to make me believe that?" I choked.
"They know more about the human mind than man himself!"
"No, Mark; they don't!"
"The thrill-mills--"
"I don't care about the thrill-mills! Maybe someone else developed
them. To the Kel, we're only a lower life-form, not worth the bother of
that much study. We're laboratory animals, adaptable organisms to use
as we'd use rabbits or guinea pigs or hamsters. I know; I've been four
years with them, ever since that day on Bejak...."
She began to sob, then; a soft yet somehow desperate sobbing. Bleakly,
I stared down at the hands I couldn't see for the blackness of this
dungeon ... the self-same dungeon in which I'd lain alone such a short
time earlier, except that in the interim our captors had stripped it
bare of sacks and thrill-mills.
It wasn't the kind of ending I'd planned. Not here; not locked away,
waiting out the hours till the Kel should strike, and win, and end the
game.
And me not even on the field.
I cursed under my breath; hammered one clenched fist into the other
palm.
"Mark--" It was Celeste again. "Mark, give up. Don't fight it so."
"I won't give up! I can't!" Choking on my own words, I lurched up and
stumbled blindly along our prison's walls. "If I knew anything--even
where we were--"
"I don't know myself, Mark. These weeks, I've been a prisoner here--a
prisoner talking on a voco. They've never let me come or go."
On once more. On about the walls, and on, turn after turn.
On, while mankind's life-span ticked away.
The door came under my groping fingers. I clutched the knob; shook it.
It didn't give.
Something snapped inside me. Wildly, I flung myself at the heavy
portal--kicking it, clawing it, beating on it with my fists.
No answer.
I yelled--a fierce, shrill cry to wake the dead. Again, again,
again ... hammering and screaming, screaming and hammering.
Celeste: "Mark, stop it, stop it! stop it! They won't come. You'll only
hurt yourself!"
Panting, I drew back, crouched, and then lunged for the slab that
blocked our way, hurling myself against it with all my weight and
strength.
"Mark, Mark--!"
Again I lunged. Again--again--again....
My shoulders were bruised now, my whole body aching. It was all I could
do to stumble back for still another try.
Only then, suddenly, light spilled in upon us as the door swung open.
Unbelieving, I rocked back. Celeste Stelpa gave a choked, incoherent
cry.
Wider the door swung, and still wider.
I held my breath and tensed my belly, waiting to see what form our foe
would take.
Nothing happened.
I looked round at Celeste, and she at me.
Still nothing.
For an instant I stood rigid. Then, tight-lipped, I took a quick,
cat-footed step in the direction of the open door.
* * * * *
In one lithe motion, Celeste was beside me. She caught my hand; clung
to my arm. "No, Mark, no! Don't try it! It's a trick, a trick--"
Wordless, not shifting my eyes from the entry, I twisted free of her
grasp ... advanced another step.
I could see out now, in both directions. No one was there ... only the
black, echoing emptiness of an unused warehouse.
I said, "Stay here, Celeste. I'm going to look around."
Instead of answering, she darted past me, out through the doorway into
the open area beyond.
"Celeste--!"
She turned swiftly, well beyond my reach. "I'm not going back in there,
Mark. Not if you're coming out."
"But--"
"No, Mark. This is a trick. You and I both know it. That door didn't
open by itself. But if you go on in spite of it, then I go with you."
I stared at her for a long moment. Then, slowly, I nodded. "All right.
Let's go."
"Mark--"
I said, "There's no other way, Celeste. I'm human; this is my race the
Kel are out to kill. To me, that means I fight them. I fight them all
the way, till I drop, no matter what."
Her eyes were wide as she stared at me. "But what will you do?" She
gestured helplessly. "What can you?"
I shook my head. "I'm not sure. But Kruze is here on Rizal. I'll see
him, talk to him. He's got power. He can order action."
"But Mark, can you reach him? After that fight--the way you broke
away--"
"I'll reach him," I said. "I'll reach him. And he'll listen, too, even
if it has to be at gunpoint."
I couldn't tell whether the wordless look she gave me was of despair,
or resignation.
Down the dark aisles, then; and that in itself was a strange
experience. For somehow, incredibly, and in spite of the surrounding,
all-pervasive black, there was always just light enough for us to see
our way. Yet where it came from, or how, remained a mystery to the end.
We reached the second room, the misshapen, distorted room in which
Celeste and I had sat and talked. It was empty now, all traces of the
living sculpture gone.
On again, down yet another of the echoing aisles.
I waited till we reached the first cross-track leading off between
stacked battens, then turned aside.
Instantly, we stood in utter darkness. All trace of the guiding
radiance disappeared.
Pressed to me, Celeste shivered. I gripped her tight and wiped sudden,
icy beads of sweat from my forehead as, hastily, I groped my way back
to our original route.
Like magic, light was with us once again.
More shadows, more echoing stillness, more stacked battens. Then
another door. A heavy door, barred on the inside.
Sliding back the bolts, I swung it open.
A street.
Not speaking, hardly daring to breathe, we crossed the threshold. I
wondered if it were only my imagination that made the stars so bright,
the night so still.
The base-block at the first crossing oriented me: We were less than ten
minutes' walk from Rizal Security headquarters.
Still wordless, as if by mutual agreement we turned that way.
As we did so, my belly knotted with a new and different type of tension.
Before, there'd been the awful, taut frustration of blocked action.
Now, I faced more subtle torments: the battle of the self, the gnawing
problem of decision.
* * * * *
There was a voco station a block from the headquarters. Stepping
inside, I punched out Security's number.
"Rizal Security." It was a sleepy voice.
I said, "Let me talk to Controller Gaylord, please."
A pause, a buzzing. Then, "Controller Gaylord speaking."
"You're up late, aren't you, Gaylord?" Intentionally, I made it mocking.
"What--?" The controller's voice rose, sharp with anger; then fell
again, as quickly crafty. "Who is this, anyhow?"
"Who would you think?" I countered, chuckling. "It's me, of course,
Gaylord--me, your dearest friend, Mark Traynor."
"Traynor!"
"That's right." Again, I chuckled. "Does it surprise you so much?"
"Listen, Traynor--"
"I know. You want to get together with me." I paused a moment, letting
the tension hang and build. "You know, it could be I'd like to get
together with you, too."
"Of course, Traynor." Gaylord was getting smoother, silkier, by the
second. "Look, I'm up in my office--"
"--And if I'll just join you there, you'll be happy beyond words to
turn me over to Kruze for trial and disciplinary action. Is that it?" I
snorted. "No, thanks, Gaylord. I'm not about to play it that way."
"But Traynor, listen--"
"You listen!" I let him have it flat and hard and driving. "If you want
to see me, you're coming where I am, alone. Play it any other way, and
I'll fade so fast you'll never find me."
"But--"
"Also, I'll figure a way to let Kruze know about you. _All_ about you,
thrill-mills included."
"Traynor, for heaven's sakes--"
"Is it my way, then? My way, all the way?"
"Yes, Traynor, yes!"
"Good enough, then." I hesitated. "Look: Do you know a thil-shop over
on MR2, about three squares from your place?"
"Yes."
"All right, then. Go there. If the lay of the land looks right, I'll
join you."
"But--but--"
"Goodbye," I said, thumbed down the contact, and stepped back out of
the voco station.
Celeste turned to me--wordless, watchful.
I said, "There's a place on MQ3 where you can get some Ronhnei coffee.
Just go straight over. I'll see you there in half an hour."
Still wordless, not even nodding, she turned and moved off in the
direction I had gestured.
Pivoting, I took the opposite tack, heading straight for Rizal Security
headquarters.
The building loomed dark and forbidding as a mausoleum in the dim green
of the night. There was no sign of life.
Still, for a moment, I hesitated in the shadows across the street
before crossing swiftly to the entrance.
A lone light glowed in the inner lobby. Passing through the outer
doorway, I drew back into the gloom between it and the inner portals.
A minute passed; then two. Nervously, I ran my tongue along my lips.
Simultaneously, inside the lobby, a shaft-lift's double panels slid
back. Controller Benjamin Gaylord got out, looking tense and unhappy,
and came towards the street doors.
I pressed even further back from view, flat against the wall of
the small offset area just beyond the inner doors. Whipping off my
tunic-sash, I looped an end about either hand, leaving the rest of its
length to dangle, noose-like, between.
Gaylord reached the inside door. Silently, its eye-beam opened it
before him.
I raised the sash ... poised ... held my breath....
Now Gaylord came through the doorway, intent and striding. Looking
neither to right nor left, he crossed the narrow strip between inner
door and outer. Ahead of him, the heavy portal to the street swung wide.
Swiftly, I darted in behind him; flipped my tunic-sash up and then down
in a wide loop that snapped it tight around his neck.
Gaylord jerked back in mid-stride. He started to cry out.
Savagely, I wrenched the sash-noose tighter. The cry cut off unuttered.
When my victim would have struggled, I dragged him back off balance
and rammed a knee into his spine.
Rizal's controller made small, choking sounds. His eyes began to bulge,
his face to darken.
Jerking him back into the offset niche between the double doors, out of
view, I spoke into his ear: "Calm down, you fool! I don't want to kill
you."
His eyes rolled wildly, trying to glimpse me. He stopped struggling.
Warily, I loosened the noose ... waited while he sucked in air in
great, chest-filling gulps.
But not for too long. Before he could stop shaking or have time really
to think, I said, "Gaylord, we're going upstairs. If anyone tries to
stop us, you're the one who'll get it."
* * * * *
I shoved him forward as I finished, and the inner doors opened. The
sash a deadly bond between us, we crossed the lobby.
Into the shaft-lift, then. My prisoner shot me an uncertain glance,
half hate and half fear. "I don't see why you had to do it this way.
I'd have met you at that thil-shop like you said."
"Maybe." I shrugged. "That's not the question."
"Not the question--?"
"We're getting out on whichever floor Kruze has taken over."
A panicky stiffening. "Oh!"
"Come on, come on! Which floor is it?"
"Seven."
"Good enough." I punched the button and we zoomed upward. "There'll be
a guard on duty, of course. You might think about how you're going to
get us past him."
Gaylord looked a little green.
The lift slowed. Jerking my sash from Gaylord's throat, I snapped it
back in place about my waist and, as we halted, shoved my unwilling
accomplice out of the cage ahead of me.
There were two guards in the anteroom instead of one. The first,
beetle-browed and heavy-jawed, slumped dozing in a chair. His
companion, slimmer and trimmer, sat straighter than was necessary but
without a coat, playing a miniature sokkol wheel against himself.
"Visitor for Controller Kruze," Gaylord croaked as the non-sleeping
guard looked up. He made as if to stride past the pair to the door
beyond.
But as he did so, his head went forward just a fraction, and his left
shoulder dropped.
The next item on the agenda would be a simultaneous yell of warning and
spin to one side, out of my reach. He might as well have put it on a
placard.
I leaped first, by a split second. When the yell came, and the spin, I
was already in position to catch Gaylord's arm as he whirled by.
It changed his course a bit. He crashed bodily into the dozing,
bull-necked guard, and they went down together.
But the other guard was rising. Ducking, I snatched up his fallen
comrade's chair and hurled it at him.
The man threw up his arms to ward it off. Lunging at him full-tilt,
head lowered, I butted him in the stomach.
The wind went out of him in a gust. He tottered backward, his mouth
opening and closing in agonized, fish-like contortions as he fought to
catch his breath.
I stomped on his foot and gave him a violent reverse shove past me.
Lurching wildly, he tumbled into the heavy-set guard--now arising--just
as had Gaylord. Together, they went down atop the controller in a
comic-opera slap-stick tangle.
Then a hand came clear of the threshing clutter of arms and legs. It
held a paragun.
I kicked for--connected with--the wrist. The weapon flew wide. I dived
after it, arm outstretched.
But before I could claw it up, a voice lashed out, harsh and heavy,
from the doorway to Kruze's quarters:
"Don't touch it, Traynor!"
Kruze's voice.
The back of my neck prickled. Carefully, I drew my hand away from the
paragun, then turned.
The controller of all FedGov Security's far-flung interplanetary
operations stood staring down at me out of heavy-lidded eyes that in
this moment sparked cold malice. One slab-like hand gripped a paragun,
twin to the one I'd tried to snatch.
"So, Traynor...."
"So?" I flung the word back at him with a belligerence to match his
gloating. A sudden, swift recklessness surged through me. "I've got
some things to say to you, Controller. That's why I came here."
* * * * *
The heavy-lidded eyes didn't even flicker. The thick body stood
granite-like, immobile. "What things?"
"Things about the Kel." I got up from the floor; stepped towards him.
Sheer urgency drained the anger from me. "Kruze, they're infiltrating.
Tonight--right now, maybe--"
"Shall we shut him up, chief? You want us to stop him?"
It was the heavy-set guard, on his feet again now. Beside him, his
thinner companion threw me a look of smoldering hate. A sullen-looking
Gaylord was dusting himself off behind them.
I said desperately, "Kruze, you've got to listen! I found that
girl--the one who called about the thrill-mills on the voco. She's been
a Kel prisoner ever since Bejak II. She knows their plan, the details--"
"And just how does she know it?"
"What--?"
"I said, how does she know it?" Never had the controller's heavy-lidded
eyes seemed colder, the bulky body less yielding. And then, as I
groped: "To the best of my knowledge, no human has ever communicated
with the Kel. We don't even know what they look like. Consequently,
I find it difficult to accept the concept of alien infiltration as a
practical threat, in the face of our warning net and proved defensive
measures."
"But they're shape-changers!" Involuntarily, my hands moved in frantic,
pleading gestures. "They can simulate men. It's only the conditioned
consistency of human behavior that's baffled them--"
Kruze's great head moved. "Guards, I'm tired of listening to this
nonsense."
"Yes, Controller."--This from the thin man. As one, he and his
companion closed in.
"Kruze, for the sake of all of us, the whole human race! What does it
matter what the Kel look like? We've seen their globeships. We know
what happened at Bejak II, at Corrigar, at Astole--"
Hands seized my arms; wrestled me backward.
"Please, Kruze! You've got to listen!"
Nerveless and unrelenting as a granite monolith, Controller Alfred
Kruze turned on his heel, stepped back into the room from which he'd
come, and closed the door behind him.
The bottom seemed to fall out of my stomach. For an instant I thought I
was going to faint.
Gaylord speaking: "Take him down to the detention room. I'll file
charges in the morning."
Spasmodically, I twisted towards him. "You, Gaylord! Do you know what
it's going to mean if the Kel break through and take Rizal? Lock me up
if you want to, yes. Or let these two thugs kick me to death, for that
matter. But get to Kruze! Make him listen--"
"I doubt if there's time for him to do much listening." Gaylord glanced
at his chrono, spoke with relish. "You see, he's already scheduled
to warp back to headquarters in less than an hour. And of course I
wouldn't think of disturbing him in the meantime."
For a moment I stared at him in the shock of utter panic.
Then--cursing, convulsing--I hurled myself forward.
Just as violently, the guards slammed me back. Ignoring my shouts
and struggles, Gaylord pivoted and strode to the shaft-lift, pausing
there just long enough to fling me one quick, mocking glance over his
shoulder.
The lift's double panels slid aside. Still smirking, Gaylord started to
enter.
Only then, inside the cage, movement suddenly flickered.
Gaylord jerked back. His voice rose in a wild, shrill scream of terror.
He tried to whirl, to flee.
But a paragun's purple beam flashed like a visual echo to the cry of
panic. With an awful, anguished intake of air, Rizal's controller
tottered backward ... crumpled to the floor.
Simultaneously, three men leaped from the lift.
They were unique in their way: Each had two heads.
Beside me, the thin guard choked; snatched for the paragun he carried
in a hip holster.
He died before he could even get it clear.
The other guard, the heavy-set one, backed up against Controller
Kruze's door, hands already raised. His breath rasped in his throat.
His face was dough-grey.
For my part, I couldn't even speak.
And now, within the shaft-lift's cage, more movement ... another
figure darting forward. A woman's figure.
I choked "Celeste--!"
"Oh, Mark, Mark...." She ran to me; flung her arms about me. "I was so
afraid!"
My throat drew tight. I held her close, smoothing the soft golden halo
that was her hair.
Only something was wrong. The hair--it didn't feel right....
I straightened, stiffened; stared down at the woman in my arms more
intently.
Something was wrong with the eyes, too. They weren't the cool, clear
grey that I remembered.
Celeste laughed softly.
But even as she did so, her face began to twist, to change. The
features seemed to run together in an incredible distortion.
I tried to thrust her away from me, then.
Like magic, the warm arms twined about my neck reshaped and elongated.
Before my eyes, the fleshtones were transformed to grey-green mottling.
Woman into Kel; Kel into woman. The end of an idyll.
I began to laugh ... louder and louder; more and more wildly. When one
of the two-headed men tried to shake me, I spat in his face.
Furiously, he lashed out at me with the barrel of his paragun.
I didn't even try to dodge the blow....