Филип Фармер - The Lovers

'Yarrow!' shrilled the gapt, truimphantly. 'No use running! I saw you in that tavern. You won't be able to save yourself now!'

He click-clacked up to his ward's tall rigid form. 'Drinking! I know you were drinking!'

'Yeah?' Hal croaked. 'What else?'

'Isn't that enough?' screamed the gapt. 'Or are you hiding something in your apartment? Maybe you are! Maybe you've got the place filled with bottles. Come on! Let's get back to your apartment. We'll go over it and see what we see. I wouldn't be surprised to find all sorts of evidence of your unreal thinking.'

Hal hunched his shoulders and clenched his fists, but he said nothing. When he was told by the gapt to precede him back to Fobo's building, he walked without a sign of resistance. Like conqueror and conquered, they marched from the alley into the street. Yarrow, however, spoiled the picture by reeling a little and having to put his hand to the wall to steady himself.

Pornsen sneered. 'You drunken joat! You make me sick to my stomach!'

Hal pointed ahead. 'I'm not the only one who's sick. Look at that fellow.'

He was not really interested, but he had a wild hope that anything he said or did, however trivial, might put off the final and fatal moment when they would return to his apartment. He was pointing at a large and evidently intoxicated wogglebug hanging onto a lamppost to keep from falling on his needle-shaped nose. He might have been a nineteenth- or twentieth-century drunk, complete to top hat, cloak, and lamppost. Now and then, the creature groaned as if he were deeply disturbed.

'Perhaps we'd better stop to see if he's hurt,' said Hal.

He had to say something, anything to delay Pornsen. Before his captor could protest, he went up to the wog. He put his hand on the free arm – the other was wrapped around the post – and spoke in Siddo.

'Can we help you?'

The big wog looked as if he, too, had been in a brawl. His cloak, besides being ripped down the back, was spotted with dried green blood. He kept his face away from Hal, so that the Earthman had a hard time understanding his muttering.

Pornsen jerked at his arm. 'Come on, Yarrow. He'll get by all right. What's one sick bug more or less?'

'Shib,' agreed Hal tonelessly. He let his hand drop and started to walk on. Pornsen, behind, took one step and then bumped into Hal as Hal stopped.

'What are you stopping for, Yarrow?' The gapt's voice was suddenly apprehensive.

And then the voice was screaming in agony.

Hal whirled – to see in grim actuality what had flashed across his mind and caused him to stop in his tracks. When he had put his hand on the wog's arm, he had felt, not warm skin, but hard and cool chitin. For a few seconds, the meaning of that had not cleared the brain's switchboard. Then it had come through, and he had remembered the talk he and Fobo had had on the way to the tavern, and why Fobo wore a sword. Too late, he had wheeled to warn Pornsen.

Now the gapt was holding both hands to his eyes and shrieking. The big thing that had been leaning against the lamppost was advancing toward Hal. Its body seemed to grow huger with every step. A sac across its chest swelled until it looked like a palpitating gray balloon and a wheezing sound accompanied its deflation. The hideous insectal face, with two vestigial arms waving on each side of its mouth and the funnel-shaped proboscis below the mouth, was pointed at him. It was that proboscis which Hal had mistakenly thought was a wog's nose. In reality, the thing must have breathed through tracheae and two slits below the enormous eyes. Normally, its breath must saw loudly through the slits, but it must have suppressed the sound in order not to warn its victims.

Hal yelled with fright. At the same time he grabbed his cloak and threw it up before his face. His mask might have saved him, but he did not care to take the chance.

Something burned the back of his hand. He yelped with pain but leaped forward. Before the thing could breathe in air to bloat the sac again and expel the acid through the funnel, Hal rammed his head against its paunch.

The thing said, 'Oof!' and fell backward where it lay on its back and thrashed its legs and arms like a giant poisonous bug – which it was. Then, as it recovered from the shock and rolled over and tried to get back on its feet, Hal kicked hard. His leather toe drove with a crunching sound through the thin chitin.

The toe withdrew; blood, dark in the lamplight, oozed out; Hal kicked again in the open place. The thing screamed and tried to crawl away on all fours. The Terran leaped upon it with both feet and drove it sprawling to the cement. He pressed his heel against its thin neck and shoved with all the strength of his leg. The neck cracked, and the thing lay still. Its lower jaw dropped open and exposed two rows of tiny needle teeth. The mouth's rudimentary arms wigwagged feebly for a while and then drooped.

Hal's chest heaved in agony. He couldn't get enough air. His guts quivered and threatened to force their way through his throat. Then they did, and Hal bent over, retching.

All at once, he was sober. By that time Pornsen had quit screaming. He was lying huddled on his side in the gutter. Hal turned him over and shuddered at what he saw. The eyes were partly burned out, and the lips were gray with large blisters. The tongue, sticking from the mouth, was swollen and lumpy. Evidently, Pornsen had swallowed some of the venom.

Hal straightened up and walked away. A wog patrol would find the gapt's body and turn it over to the Earthmen. Let the hierarchy figure out what had happened. Pornsen was dead, and now that he was, Yarrow admitted to himself what he had never allowed himself to admit before this time. He had hated Pornsen. And he was glad that he was dead. If Pornsen had suffered horribly, so what? His pains were brief, but the pain and grief he had caused Hal had lasted for almost thirty years.

A sound behind him made him whirl around.

'Fobo?'

There was a moan, followed by pain-garbled words.

'Pornsen? You can't be... you're... dead.'

But Pornsen was alive. He was standing up, swaying.

He held his hands out before him to feel his way and took a few weak, exploratory steps.

For a moment, Hal was so panicked he thought of running away. But he forced himself to remain rooted and to think rationally.

If the wogs did find Pornsen, they'd turn him over to the doctors of the Gabriel. And the doctors would give Pornsen new eyes from the meat bank and would inject regeneratives into him. In two weeks, Pornsen's tongue would grow out again. And he'd talk. Forerunner, how he'd talk!

Two weeks? Now! There was nothing to prevent Pornsen from writing.

Pornsen groaned with physical pain; Hal, with mental.

There was only one thing to do.

He went up to Pornsen and seized his hand. The gapt flinched and said something unintelligible.

'It's Hal,' said Yarrow.

Pornsen reached out his free hand and pulled a notebook and pen from his pocket. Hal released the other hand. Pornsen wrote on the paper and then handed the notebook to Hal.

The moonlight was bright enough to read by. The handwriting was a scrawl, but, even blind, Pornsen could write legibly.

Take me to the Gabriel, son. I swear by the Forerunner I won't say a word about the liquor to anybody. I'll be eternally grateful. But don't leave me here in my pain at the mercy of monsters. I love you.

Hal patted Pornsen on the shoulder and said, 'Take my hand. I'll lead you.'

At the same time, he heard a noise from down the street. A group of noisy wogs was heading his way.

He pulled Pornsen into the nearby park, guiding the stumbling man around the trees and bushes. After they'd walked a hundred yards, they came to an especially thick grouping of trees. Hal halted. Unfamiliar sounds were coming from the center of the grove – clicking and wheezing sounds.