Jack Chalker: Priam's Lens

He froze for a moment, almost feeling them around him. It was now or never. He shut his eyes, leaned back, and gave the mental command to fire.

There was an enormous roar, as if a great and terrible wind was contained inside the cavern, and it rushed out and past and out and was away at the speed of light. He felt as if he were falling into a great abyss, and his mind burned, and he couldn’t help it. The animal part of him, the only part that could function, screamed in pain and terror, screamed so loud that it echoed horribly back and forth along the walls of the cave in an inhuman and terrifying wail.

Whoever else was moving in on him wasn’t prepared for that: four lithe forms, briefly illuminated in the blast of energy, moved swiftly back out, their survival reflex overcoming any immediate plans. Besides, where was this poor creature going to go? If, of course, something that screamed like that could possibly survive.

Once outside, they looked around in the bright, clear sunlight, trying to figure out what had happened as best their minds could. Nothing seemed to have happened; it all looked the same.

The noise, the inside light, the screeching had all stopped, too. They froze, acting as one, listening, then clicked their needlelike nails and nodded in agreement, and three of them slid back in while the fourth guarded the entrance.

Infrared, which hadn’t worked before, now did. Whatever had raised the temperature here and blinded that part of their abilities was gone, spent in that single blast and roar. Now, halfway down, they saw the quarry. It was still lying there, but it seemed to be coming around, groping for some kind of support. Whoever or whatever it was, it was now apparently blind. They didn’t mind that, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t and wouldn’t play with it before the kill.

Utilizing a type of telepathic connection and using their nails to time actions with a series of clicks, they made their way around and down toward the prey, who could now be heard breathing hard, sounding panicked and confused. Whatever he had done, it had hurt him.

A Wild One for sure. They didn’t quite think in words like that, more in a series of holographic concepts and pictures and actions. They had been specifically bred to hunt and kill Wild Ones, particularly the sick and injured. They liked it. It was their identity, their function.

Below, enough of his senses had returned that he knew they were there, knew that they were there to kill him. He couldn’t remember very much, not even who or what or where he was nor how he’d come to this, but he knew that those who hunted and killed had him trapped.

He pulled himself out and tried to stand, but he was horribly dizzy. As he put out a hand to steady himself on the rock wall, he heard the clicking. Behind him. In front of him. Above him.

Animal survival took over. If two predators were on either side and one was up where the exit clearly was, you went for the one. He couldn’t see any of them, not in this darkness, but he got the impression that they could see him. He heard a tinkling bit of cruel laughter as he tried to lash out in the direction of a close-by set of clicks. They would do their clicking at his level, but he quickly realized that they were having their sport with him, that at no time were they where the clicks led his ears to believe they were.

There was a click, and something cold, hard, and metallic drawn softly and quickly across his back. He whirled and lunged for where he thought the attacker had gone, but all he managed to do was run into the opposite wall of the cave and draw more derisive laughter, made all the worse by its echoing within the cave. They would never let him climb out, but it was narrow and he could feel the airflow toward the exit. If he moved quickly, he might catch the one above off guard or cause the bottom two to be momentarily off balance. It was better than staying here, anyway.

With all the remaining energy in his aching body he moved as fast as he could up and along the steps and rock gradations toward that airflow. He actually made it most of the way, could almost see the entrance notch, when two small forms on either side of the path rushed out, one in front and one in back, and this time the nails drawn across his chest and back bit deeply and painfully into his flesh while spinning him around. He almost lost his balance and fell, but shock from his previous ordeal and adrenaline now kept him going, ignoring the pain, rushing for that notch and the open sky.

One of them dropped from the upper area right in front of him, and he pushed on right to it, now visible as a small shadowy shape, pushing at it with all his might. Twenty centimeters times four fingers worth of thick, sharp needle nails penetrated his abdomen, and more went through his crotch, penetrating and ripping at his scrotum. The pain was nearly unbearable, but the attacker was small and light enough that his sheer size and bulk carried him on, screaming in pain, walking right over the one who’d so wounded him and up, out, into the sunlight, into the warmth!

Bleeding, in agony, he nonetheless managed to get him-self out of the crevice and onto the side of the rocky outcrop itself. He was wounded, perhaps mortally, but if he could just get down there, just get into the tall grass and lie down, at least they might not get his body!

A small naked form suddenly popped up right in front of him, a form so amazing to his sight that he stopped dead, staring, as she clicked those needles that she had for fingernails. There was a sound on either side of him, and he turned to see absolutely identical copies of this one in front of him crouched on either side, and he heard a fourth behind.

“My god!” the last part of his sanity and humanity cried out. “You—Oh! My God! Not you!”

And with that the pack, who understood not a word, tore him to shreds and fought over the tastier internal organs.

The joint’s name was, appropriately, La Cucaracha, although much of the lettering was faded or worn away and the electronic enhancements more resembled an electrician’s nightmare than anything coherent.

Most places this far down in the skids were shadows of places once great and legendary and respectable; this one had only the legends, and most of them were bad.

In a sense, the place was a reflection of what had once been the proud Confederacy, a federation of more than three hundred colonial worlds encompassing a multitude of races but dominated by those of Terra, also called Earth. It had been a marriage forged in blood and maintained by raw power, but it had held, and in its time it had been the lord of an entire galactic spiral arm.

Now The Confederacy was mostly a joke; worlds lay in ruins from rioting, panic, and raw fear, particularly among those too poor to book passage out in the way of the new invaders. The naval force that once could vaporize a planet or explode a star was reduced to an evacuation and surveillance service. What good was a military that could only blow up its own kind, that could neither inflict harm nor avoid being swatted like biting flies if they irritated?

There was still a government, of course, and a loose federation of worlds, but what good was it when you were retreating outward on a spiral arm? What happened when they ran out of worlds to evacuate to, as they pretty well already had? And who was going to put in the enormous resources and skill to create new habitable worlds when it was certain that eventually they, too, would be overrun?

Here lies The Confederacy; it wasn’t as great as we thought it was, but it was all we had…

The joint was in a once great city, now fallen into disrepair and overrun by its lowest common denominators, those who couldn’t leave and those who had already given up and lived for the moment. Only here, near the old spaceport, did any semblance of the old days exist, even if in memories.