Jack Chalker - Priam's Lens

They all heard Mogutu scream, and this was taken by the others in the bush as an attack imperative. They launched themselves out into the open, toward the pair on the riverbank, and so agile and catlike were the moves and so terrible the visage the two Hunters presented to them that Kat Socolov screamed and Father Chicanis uttered a cry of dismay.

With the bodies of young girls, the faces were a mixture of human and animal. The mouths were wide, somewhat extended, and seemed full of sharp pointed teeth, while the eyes glowed with a feline fire in the reflection of the setting sun on the river. Most awful were the hands, whose fingers were not of flesh but of long spikelike claws twenty or more centimeters long, and not only pointed but barbed as well.

One bounded for the anthropologist as she turned and ran in panic back toward the ruins of the old road. Clearly Socolov was going to lose the race, but suddenly, from out of the grass, a large, long, rounded shape hurled itself with the same force as the Hunters and aimed right at the Hunter as she was within centimeters of driving her claws into Kat Socolov’s back.

The Hunter was taken aback, barely realizing that she was being attacked until the Pooka struck her directly in the belly—and kept on going, literally drilling a bloody hole straight through the attacker with a whirling motion and a very different kind of toothed action.

The Hunter still made no sound although she was now thrashing about in agony and striking at the alien form that penetrated her. She was dying, yet she flailed away at the back end of the creature and even tried to get to her feet with the thing still in her while staring, with hate-filled eyes, at Kat Socolov.

The anthropologist saw that the Pooka that had saved her was now in need of saving itself, and although almost transfixed by the single-minded violence in the Hunter, she ran toward her attacker, steel gun barrel in hand, and lashed out, striking first one of the clawed arms, then reaching the head. The thing kept trying to get at her, which so terrified Socolov that she continued swinging at the head until finally the only motion coming from the Hunter was from Hamille trying to get all the way through.

Father Chicanis hadn’t had as good a rescuer, and the Hunter had actually reached him and dug her claws into his left ann. With his right arm, he brought up his gold-plated cross and used it as a club. It wasn’t very effective, but it slowed her just enough for Gene Harker to swing another gun barrel at full strength right into the back of her head. So great was the force he used that part of the Hunter’s skull caved in, yet, stunned and badly wounded, she nonetheless turned on him and attempted to claw and bite him with fanatical fury. Only, his own hand-to-hand combat training and reflexes had saved him from also being badly slashed, and once the Hunter was down he brought the barrel down again and again and again until she finally twitched in the mud and lay still.

“Father? You all right?”

“Hurts like the very devil!” Chicanis responded. “My God! She’s peeled some of the flesh away from my arm! Oh, Lord! How it hurts!”

“Let me check on Kat and then I’ll tend to it,” he said, running a few meters farther on, where Hamille had finally managed to get out of the Hunter’s middle from the other side and now lay there, its whole center length undulating up and down as if breathing hard.

Kat Socolov knelt in the mud and just stared at the figure of the Hunter lying dead in the mud, and she was crying uncontrollably. Harker went to her, knelt down, and asked, “Are you hurt? Kat! Were you wounded?”

She was simply too far gone to respond, but his quick examination showed only some scratches and what was going to be a whale of a bruise in a day or so.

Satisfied that she was all right, at least physically, and unable to tell if the Pooka was or not, he returned to Father Chicanis, removed the vine belt from his waist, and began using it as a tourniquet on the arm. It looked ugly, but it could have been worse.

“Come on, Father! We’ve got to get back to the road!

It’s almost dark! We’ve still got some basic medicinals, I think. Come! Can you walk?”

“I—I think so. Please—help me to my feet.”

The priest was unsteady, but he managed, and they walked back to Kat Socolov, who was just staring now, apparently all cried out.

“Kat—you have to come with us,” Harker said as gently as possible.

She trembled a bit, then looked up at him. “They’re just children, Gene! Little girls! What have these bastards done to our children?”

“Come on! From the sound of things, we have at least one more wounded. Hamille, thank you. Are you all right?”

“Some punctures. They will heal,” the creature responded. “Tasted terrible, too.”

Back at the old roadbed, they found Colonel N’Gana tending to his sergeant. Mogutu did not look very good. He didn’t look good at all.

Socolov kept trying to get control with deep breaths and finally managed it. “The larger wounds need cover,” she managed. “We don’t have major bandages, or a portable surgical kit that works, so we’ll have to make do with what’s here.”

“The skin’s almost flayed in areas,” N’Gana noted. “What can we use that could cover them all and allow healing without infection or bleeding?”

“Mud,” she answered. “We have plenty of it. Gene, come on—you can be both bodyguard and mud carrier. We have to get a lot of it from the river, preferably just inside the waterline. We want it thick, goopy, and organic. Come on! I’ll show you how!”

It probably looked awful, but they could barely see. Both the wounded men were placed in a sheltered area underneath the remains of the roadworks. If they were lucky, the night’s storms wouldn’t wash away the mud packs.

“You really think that’s going to work?” Harker asked her.

“No, but it’s all we have and it’s a traditional treatment. We have no idea how much damage was done internally or how much blood was lost or whether or not those things were also poisonous, but if we’re lucky it can work. It’s an ancient remedy.” She sighed. “Now you know why I’m along!”

“I doubt if this was anticipated, but I’m still glad you’re here,” he told her.

It was pitch dark, and there was the rumbling of thunder and the flash of lightning not far away.

He sat there next to her and for the first time put his arm around her and gave her a hug. “You did good, kid. From the very start.”

“I brought them on us,” she retorted.

“No, they were stalking us from the start, I think. We forced their hand. I think they were going to wait until dark, or maybe even until the storm, and then jump us. When you consider their single-minded homicidal maniac approach and if you saw the eyes you’d know they can probably see okay in the dark, at least in starlight or moonlight. No, I think you saved all our lives.”

“But not deliberately,” she replied, unwilling to grant him a point.

“That’s the way it is in a war or any operation. What’s intended isn’t the point. The only things that count are success and the objective. At least we know one thing now that the whole Confederacy didn’t know before.”

“Huh? What?”

“The Titans know we’re here. They know us, maybe all too well. You don’t evolve like that in under a hundred years, and you sure don’t see that kind of consistency in mutation. I didn’t really have much time to study them, but I swear those two were twins. Identical twins. There’s only one way you can get that kind of change in a short time—they were bred. Bred to be just what we saw. Genetically reengineered and, when they had what they wanted, probably cloned.”