Damon Knight - Orbit 21

He was trembling with some deep emotion. “Don’t forget. The beast is one of us.”

She touched the knife at her belt. “This will help me more.”

“Cady! Cady! Cady!” She shouted as loudly as she could. A dim, diffused sunlight filled these deep woods. Hera traveled in a circle, keeping near the camp. “Cady!” she called. “It’s me— it’s Hera!”

Would she even wish to answer? Cady’s strangeness set her apart from the others. Her father, it was said, had belonged to a longship race glimpsed only once. The scouts landed, found the people, and hurried home again with the news. When a second party followed later via scansystem, they found only an empty world. Cady’s mother, part of the original scout team, gave birth soon afterward to a daughter. If Hera had for a moment seriously considered Ares’ theory concerning the beast, she would have guessed it was Cady. Her personality was no more than a fragile wisp; her unconscious mind dominated her physical and mental being.

“Hera.”

She spun. “Cady?”

“Yes. Yes, here.”

“Where?” She turned and turned; had the light entirely vanished now?

“Here, Hera—here.”

She ran toward the sound of the voice, plunging through a thick, unseen clutter of foliage. Fallen limbs and tangled vines blocked her path. She stumbled, never quite fell. “Cady, I’m coming—hold on.” All at once she saw the girl kneeling beside a tree.

“Hera, here I am—right here.”

“I know. I see you. Wait.” Hera threw herself down, wrapped her arms around the girl, and kissed her lips violently.

Cady drew away, out of breath. “Hera, are you frightened?”

“Yes, yes. The beast. Come. Come, we must hurry.”

Cady stood as if frozen. “But the beast won’t harm me, will it?”

“I don’t know.” The girl was so ugly, with that distended lip. “I know nothing about it.”

“But it likes you.”

“No.” She shook Cady. “Don’t you ever say anything so silly. It’s evil, black. It can’t like me—it only hates.” She tried to gauge the fastest way of reaching the camp. Finally she pointed. “We’ll just have to go in this direction.”

“Back to them?”

“To the camp, the other children—yes, of course.”

“But they hate me.”

“Cady, don’t ever say that.”

“But they do. All except Patria. And you. I don’t ever want to go back to them. I like it better here.”

“Cady, you’ll die here.”

The beast walked with them—near—very near. Hera felt its evil presence like a foul, trailing stench. She wanted so desperately to run, but it was too dark now. If she tried, she would fall, and then the beast would surely be upon them.

Cady said, “It’s back there behind us, isn’t it?”

“No. What?”

“The beast.”

“No, it’s not there.”

“But it won’t harm us, will it? It’s just watching us, isn’t it?”

“Yes, just watching.”

“Will it follow us to the camp?”

“I don’t know what it will do.”

“Because I don’t want the others to be hurt. I hate them but I don’t want them to die. They hate you, too, Hera. Even Patria says she does. They think you want them dead because they’re freaks.”

If only they could reach an open meadow, she thought, any place where they could really run. She felt certain the beast would never catch them there. “Cady, I want you to take this.”

“What?” The girl held out her hand.

“My knife.”

“Oh, I won’t need that.”

“No, take it.” She tried to force the weapon into the girl’s hand, but she still refused. “It’s as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel. It’ll protect you.”

“But I’m not afraid, Hera.”

She stopped.

“What—what is it?” For the first time, fear entered Cady’s voice. “Hera, what’s wrong?”

“Listen. Can’t you hear it? It’s the beast. It’s coming. Cady, run!” she cried. “Hurry—run!”

“Not without you, Hera.”

“I said run!” Hera hurled herself forward, dragging Cady’s hand, but the girl dug in her heels, and both of them went sprawling.

Stunned, Hera looked up.

The wind suddenly howled with the rush of the approaching beast. Hera stared into the sky. She screamed, “Cady, get up and run! I love you! I do—I do!”

But it was late—too late.

The beast came thundering out of the tall forest behind. Hera thought at first it was just a great featureless shadow—a black blot on the sky. The beast swept down upon them. Hera wanted to hide her eyes but could not. The beast rose, then fell. At last Cady screamed. The beast had her.

Hera felt the violent sweep of displaced air as the great beast rose to seek its lair once again.

Hera bore Cady’s body into the camp, where a fire burned, jagged flames reaching toward the midnight sky. A hard, swirling wind sent the smoke huffing through the air. The stink of the beast went with her. Ares, running frantically, darted forward to meet her. His eyes filled with tears, he said, “We knew it had to happen. We could feel it prowling out there all the time.”

“I loved Cady. If she had been my own daughter, I could not have loved her more.”

“I believe you, Hera.”

“They all think I hate them, but it’s not true.”

“No, you don’t hate them.”

“I wish we’d never come to this dreadful planet.”

“Isn’t it too late for that now?”

“Well, what else can I do?” She lowered Cady’s body to the ground. The survivors gathered around. Hera counted eight: Dangal, Jambal, Ulan, Patria, Jace, Bruto, Germania, Mendalio. But he was right. It was not they whom she hated.

“Now look here, Hera,” Ares said, “it’s just no use now. If we stay here and try to fight this thing, we’ll die, one after another. We’ve got to run and try to hide. Separate—every man for himself.”

“But we can’t go back. The scansystem has to be worked from outside. It’s not set to bring us back for days yet.”

“I said hide.”

“From the beast?” She could not help smiling. “I thought you said you thought it was one of us.”

“I said that was a possibility.”

“You said you thought it was Cady.”

“I never said anything of the kind. It could—” His voice grew very hushed. “It could be you, Hera.”

“Or you,” she said.

“But don’t you know?” he asked plaintively.

She shook her head. “No, not yet.”

Hating these children as she did, she would not have hesitated to wish almost any of them dead. The feeling was one she attempted to conceal. The outsiders—the agents in charge of the school, for instance—were not aware of her real feelings. They loathed the children, too, but assumed she was different. Latone had made them think that. When she came and confessed he had raped her, they had been willing at first to accept her statement, but when she refused an abortion and bore him a son, they had changed their minds. They believed she had opened her thighs and allowed him to penetrate her. If Latone had been a cross between Satan and Zeus—perverse mating of devil and god— then these others were simply wrong. Sometimes, seeing their extra fingers, sagging lips, colored fur, distended organs, beaks, horns, and fangs, she felt a physical revulsion, a symptom of spiritual disorder. The agents at the school had ordered Latone put to death for a crime of which they believed him innocent. Yet they carefully fostered these bastard children born of ungodly unions. Why? Was it merely human sympathy? She knew it was not. The true human race, bound in its purity to the Earth and a few sister worlds, feared those longship pioneers scattered on a hundred worlds. Who were they? What fantastic powers might they possess? To find out, the agents studied their halfbreed children. Hera knew them better than anyone. They were different—they were not superior.