Daughter of Regals (33 page)

A minute later, they
went gamboling away through the brush. They were actually playing with each
other, jumping and rolling together as they made their way toward the far line
of trees.

Fifteen minutes ago they’d
tried to kill me. They’d just finished setting a trap to kill someone else. Now
they were playing.

Which didn’t have
anything to do with them, of course. They were just dogs. They had new shoulders
and new hands—and probably new brains (setting mines seemed a little bit much
for ordinary boxers to me)—but they were just dogs. They didn’t know what they
were doing.

Ushre and Paracels knew.

All of a sudden, I was
tired of being cautious. I was mad, and I didn’t want to do any more waiting
around. My sense of direction told me those dogs were going the same way I
wanted to go: toward the front gate of the preserve. When they were out of
sight, I got up into a crouch. I scanned the field to make sure there was
nothing around me. Then I dove over the path, somersaulted to my feet, and
started to run. Covering the same ground the dogs did. They hadn’t been blown
up, so I figured I wouldn’t be either. Everything ahead of me was upwind, so
except for the noise nothing in those trees would know I was coming. I didn’t
make much noise.

In two minutes, I was
into the trees and hiding under a rotten old log.

The air was a lot cooler
in the shade, and I spent a little while just recovering from the heat of the sun
and letting my eyes get used to the dimmer light. And listening. I couldn’t
tell much at first because I was breathing so hard, but before long I was able
to get my hearing adjusted to the breeze and the woods. After that, I relaxed
enough to figure out exactly what I meant to do.

I meant to get at Ushre
and Paracels.

Fine. I wanted to do
that. There was only one problem. First I had to stay alive.

If I wanted to stay
alive, I had to have water. Wash the blood off. If I could smell me this
easily, it was a sure bet every animal within fifty meters could, too.

I started hunting for a
tree I could climb—a tree tall enough to give me a view out over these woods.

It took me half an hour
because I was being so cautious, but finally I found what I needed. A tall
straight ash. It didn’t have any branches for the first six meters or so, but a
tree nearby had fallen into it and stuck there, caught leaning in the lowest
branches. By risking my neck, and not thinking too hard about what I was doing,
I was able to shinny up that leaning trunk and climb into the ash.

With my left hand the
way it was, I didn’t have much of a grip, and I learned quickly enough that I
wasn’t going to be able to climb as high as I wanted. But just when I figured I’d
gone about as far as I could go, I got lucky.

I spotted a stream. It
was a couple of km. away past a meadow and another line of trees, cutting
across between me and the front gate. Looked like exactly what I needed. If I
could just get to it.

I didn’t waste time
worrying. I took a minute to fix the territory in my mind. Then I started back
down the trunk.

My ears must’ve been
improving. Before I was halfway to the ground (which I couldn’t see because the
leaves and branches were so thick), I heard something heading toward me through
the trees.

Judging by the sound,
whatever it was wasn’t in any hurry, just moving across the branches in a
leisurely way. But it was coming close. Too close.

I straddled a branch
with my back to the trunk and braced my hands on the wood in front of me and
froze. I couldn’t reach my knife that way, but I didn’t want to. I couldn’t
picture myself doing any knife-fighting in a tree.

I barely got set in
time. Three seconds later, there was a thrashing above me in the next tree
over, and then a monkey landed maybe four meters away from me on the same
branch.

He was a normal howler
monkey—normal for Sharon’s Point. Sturdy gray body, pitch-black face with deep
gleaming eyes; a good bit bigger and stronger than a chimp. But he had those
wide square shoulders and hands that were too broad. He had a knapsack on his
back.

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.