Daughter of Regals (34 page)

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 the 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.

Furthermore it probably
had a characteristic smell the animals had been taught to associate with food
and friends.

So the man was pretty
much safe. The animals weren’t going to turn on him.

Finally he started
heaving sacks and bales out onto the ground: hay and grain for the deer, chow
for the dogs, fruit for the monkeys—things like that. When he was finished
emptying his cockpit, he jumped out of the ‘craft to put the food in the
troughs.

I still waited. I waited
until the dogs ran out into the clearing. I waited until the hawk snatched a
piece of and flew away. I waited until the handler picked up a sack of grain
and carried it off toward some of the troughs farthest away from the ‘craft
(and me).

Then I ran.

The buck saw me right
away and jumped back. But the dogs didn’t. The man didn’t. He was looking at
the buck I was halfway to the ‘craft before the dogs spotted me.

After that, it was a
race. I had momentum and a headstart; the boxers had speed. They didn’t even
waste time barking; they just came right for me.

They were too fast. They
were going to beat me.

In the last three
meters, they were between me and the ‘craft. The closest one sprang at me, and
the other was right behind.

I ducked to the side,
slipped the first dog past my shoulder. I could hear his jaws snap as he went
by, but he missed.

The second dog I chopped
as hard as I could across the side of the head with the edge of my left fist.
The weight of my blaster gave that hand a little extra clout. I must have
stunned him, because he fell and was slow getting up.

I saw that out of the
corner of my eye. By the time I finished my swing, I was already sprinting
toward the ‘craft again. It wasn’t more than three running steps away. But I
could hear the first dog coming at me again. I took one of those steps, then
hit the dirt.

The boxer went over and
cracked into the bulging side of the ‘craft.

Two seconds later, I was
in the cockpit.

The handler had a late
start, but once he got going, he didn’t waste any time. When I landed In the cockpit,
he was barely five meters away. knew how to fly a hovercraft, and he’d made it
easy for me—he’d left it idling. All I had to do was rev up the fan and tighten
the wind convector until I lifted off. But he was jumping at me by the time I
started to rise. He got his hands on the edge of the cockpit. Then I yanked him
up into the air.

The jerk took his feet
out from under him, so he was just hanging there by his hands.

Just to be sure he’d be safe,
I rubbed a hand along the arm of his jumpsuit, then smelled my hand. It smelled
like creosote.

I leveled off at about
three meters. Before he could heave himself up into the cockpit, I banged his
hands a couple times with my heavy left fist . He fell and hit the ground
pretty hard.

But a second later he
was on his feet and yelling at me. “Stop!” he shouted. “Come back!” He sounded
desperate. “You don’t know what you’re doing!”

“You’ll be all right,” I
shouted back. “You can walk out of here by tomorrow morning. Just don’t step on
any mines.”

“No!” he cried, and for
a second he sounded so terrified I almost went back for him. “You don’t know
Ushre! You don’t know what he’ll do! He’s crazy!”

But I thought I had a
pretty good idea what Fritz Ushre was capable of. It didn’t surprise me at all
to hear someone say he was crazy—even someone who worked for him. And I didn’t
want the handler along with me. He’d get in my way.

I left him. I gunned the
‘craft up over the trees and sent it skimming in the direction of the front
gate. Going to give Ushre and Paracels what I owed them.

6

But I didn’t let myself think about that. I
was mad enough already. I didn’t want to get all livid and careless. I wanted
to be calm and quick and precise. More dangerous than anything Paracels ever
made—or ever even dreamed about making. Because I was doing something that was
too important to have room for miscalculations.

Well, important to me,
anyway. Probably nobody n the world but me (and Morganstark) gave a nasty damn
what was happening at Sharon’s Point—just as long as the animals didn’t get
loose. But that’s what Special Agents are for. To care about things like this,
so other people don’t have to.

But I didn’t have to
talk myself into anything; I knew what I was going to do. The big thing I had
to worry about was the lousy shape I was in. I was giddy with hunger and woozy
with fatigue and queasy with pain, and I kept having bad patches where I couldn’t
seem to make the ‘craft fly straight, or even level.

The darkness didn’t
improve my flying any. The sun went down right after I left the clearing, and
by the time I was halfway to the front gate evening had turned into night. I
suppose I should’ve been grateful for the cover: when I finally got to the
gate, my bad flying probably wouldn’t attract any attention. But I wasn’t
feeling grateful about much of anything right then. In the dark I had to fly
by my instruments, and I wasn’t doing a very good job of it. Direction I could
handle (sort of), and I already had enough altitude to get me over the hills.
But the little green dial that showed the artificial horizon seemed to have a
life of its own; it wouldn’t sit still long enough for me to get it into focus.
I spent the whole trip yawing back and forth like a drunk.