Dean R. Koontz - Beastchild

original edition)(Revised and reissued 1992)[Version 2.0 by Bbat – august 4

2003][Easy read, easy print][Completely new scan]The Hunter was born to

hunt,as his prey was born to bebrought down at his desire . . .Sara Laramie

moved through the iron castings in the foundry yard, keeping low so that she

was at all times concealed from view. The Hunter Relemar was in pursuit of

her. She did not know that he was a Hunter; it was obvious, however, that he

was differ-ent from other naoli.Deep scream, lovely scream, wanting out . . .

She reached the thousand gallon storage tank in which she now made her home.

She pulled open the entry plate (it squeaked; Relemar listened for squeaks)

and went inside. Behind her, there was a scraping noise . . . Rats, she

thought, lighting the glow lamp. The tank brightened to a warm yellow.“Hello,”

said Relemar the Hunter. He was trying to smile.This time, she did not

suppress the scream . . .

BEASTCHILD IS FORLISA TUTTLEAND DANNY JENNINGSAND JACK CORDESAND FOR THE

USPOWHICH INTRODUCED USscience fiction by Dean R. Koontzavailable in Lancer

editionsTHE DARK SYMPHONY, 74-621HELL'S GATE, 74-656

BeastchildDean R. KoontzLANCER BOOKS NEW YORK

A LANCER BOOKBEASTCHILDThe characters in this book are entirely imaginary and

substantially shorter version of this novel appeared in Venture Science

BROADWAYNEW YORK, N.Y. 10036

Chapter OneIn his onyx-walled room in the occupation tower, Hu-lann, a naoli,

had disassociated his overmind from his or-ganic regulating brain. He removed

it from all stimuli, in-cluding the cells of his memory banks, where it could

not even dream. He slept the perfect death-like sleep that only his kind, in

all the myriad worlds of the galaxy, seemed to be able to achieve.The naoli?

The lizard men? They're the ones who die every night, aren't they?To Hulann in

his sleeping state, there was no sound whatsoever. No light. No images of

color, no heat or cold. If there was a taste upon his long, thin tongue, his

overmind could not know. Indeed all the stimuli were so censored that there

was not even darkness. Darkness, after all, represented only nothingness.He

could return to wakefulness in any one of three ways, though there was a

decided order of preference among these methods. First, and most unpleasant,

was his body's built-in danger alarm. If his regulating brain, the heavily

convoluted organic portion of his mind, should discover something seriously

amiss with his temporal shell, it would be able to contact and wake his

overmind through a fail-safe system of seldom-used third-order nerve clusters.

Such a contact would shock its own gray cortex opening the nether-world pocket

in which the ethereal overmind sleeps.(Pause here for an anecdote or two. In a

thousand places across the stars, stories are told which concern the naoli and

the seriousness with which alcoholic beverages affect their “danger alarm”

waking system. These stories are told in barrooms in port cities, down in the

basements of questionable buildings that lease their rooms to even more

questionable businessmen, or in sweet-drug centers on better looking but no

more honest streets. It seems that while sweet-drugs bring only euphoria to

the naoli, alcohol transforms them into bobbling, bouncing, scaly-tailed

clowns who—after half an hour of making total fools of themselves—collapse

into their death-sleep. They stretch out stiff as ice right on the floor. In

some less rep-utable establishments (which is to say most of these places) the

other patrons make great sport out of carry-ing the unconscious lizard men to

odd places like garbage bins and ladies' washrooms and letting them there to

wake. This damages nothing but the naoli's ego. A far more nasty pastime among

these same drunken buffoons is to see how far they must go to trigger the

naoli's “dan-ger alarm” system. But the alarm is stupefied by alcohol and does

not work well. The stories you hear later are about naoli lying there with

their webs sizzling, not even twitching in response. Or of a naoli with fifty

pins stuck in its legs, sleeping peacefully while its heavy blood seeped out

through its tough gray skin. Naoli's do not often drink liquor. When they do,

it is usually alone. They are not a stupid race.)Much less unpleasant but

still not desirable, a naoli could come awake if the Phasersystem had

something to tell him. That could, of course, be anything from urgent news to

another spate of propaganda from the central committee. More often than not,

it was the latter.Finally, and best of all, the overmind could awake of its

own accord. Before retiring into the nether-world, the overmind could plant a

suggestion with a time-trigger. Then, ten or eight, or fifteen or twenty hours

later, it would click into consciousness with the clarity of a tri-dimensional

screen being turned on.This morning, Hulann, a naoli archaeologist among the

thousands in the occupation forces, was tuned into the real world by the

second of these three methods, the Phasersystem.One moment: Nothingness.Then:

Color. Crimson to bring total wakefulness. Rouge to indicate psychological

conditioning period (i.e.—propaganda). Then amber to soothe jangled

nerves.Finally: Three-dimensional, total-sensory visions of the Phasersystem,

fed directly into the organic brain and translated by the now functioning

overmind.In the Phaserdream, Hulann was in a thick forest of strange, dark

trees whose criss-crossing arms and broad, black-veined leaves thatched a roof

that thrust back the sun. Only fine rays of peach light filtered through to

the wet, rustling, musty floor of the place. These were soon dissipated, for

there was nothing here from which they might be reflected. The surface of each

growth was dull, filmed with a mucous-like substance of a uniform gray-, brown

color.He was on a narrow, winding path. Each step he took down this trail only

isolated him farther from whatever place he had begun his journey, for the

tangled mass of vegetation flourishing on the forest bottom closed in be-hind

him as swiftly as he advanced. There was no going back.There seemed to be

things hiding in the trees,He moved on.Eventually, the trail began to narrow.

Vines, stalks, and ropy roots, pressed closer, closer, until he could no

longer walk without the chilling touch of the cold, slimy life forms.He tucked

his tail between his legs, wrapping it around his left thigh in the age-old

reaction to danger, to the un-known, to that which made the scales of the

scalp tighten and ache.To the naoli, a voice chanted monotonously from

no-where, the human mind was unfathomable . . .Still, the forest closed in on

him. He could almost see it moving.The things in the swaying trees whispered

to one an-other.They were whispering about him.To the human, the same voice

said, the naoli mind was equally mysterious . . .Yes, definitely, something

was moving in the trees. In several places, simultaneously, he caught a

shivering, shimmering, rippling action. He was not certain whether he was

seeing the movements of a dozen creatures spread along his flank—or whether

one was being hidden be-hind the trunks and the leaves, watching.The

confrontation, the chanter chanted, was an inevi-tability. It was clear that

the naoli had to move first in order to protect its very future . . .Now, the

trail had ceased to exist. Ahead, there was only dark vegetation. It seemed to

writhe.He looked behind. The trail had closed.The naoli met the aliens . .

.Hulann saw that the small, bare circle where he stood was rapidly being

encroached upon by the eerie fungus-like vines. A tentacle of green slithered

over his foot, making him leap in surprise.The naoli saw the danger . . .The

forest reared up, snaring him with its chlorophyl ropes. He found his arms

pinned at his sides by clutching leaves. Roots had grown up one side of his

feet, across them, down the other side and into the earth again. He could not

move.The movement of the things in the trees came closer.He tried to scream.If

the naoli had not acted, the voices said—The things in the trees sprang, great

dark shapes leap-ing onto him, engulfing him, chilly, wet things with fog for

eyes and fingers that touched the insides of his over-mind, squeezing the

warmth out of it . . .—the naoli would have died! The voice finished.And

Hulann died. The dark beasts sucked away his warmth, and he slipped out of his

body forever.There was a moment of intense blackness. Then the Phasersystem

began to feed colors to him again, as it was feeding to nearly all the naoli

on the occupation force. Amber to soothe the nerves again. Then blue to

engen-der a sense of pride and fulfillment.Then the last stage of the

psychological conditioning/ propaganda began. The questioning to determine

fitness:Why did the naoli strike first?Hulann's overmind replied and was

monitored by the main computer behind the Phasersystem. “For survival of our

race.”Why did the naoli strike so completely?“The human race was tenacious,

ingenius. If the naoli had not been thorough, the human race would have grown,

regrouped, and destroyed the naoli forever.”Should any naoli feel guilt over

this extinction of the human race?“Guilt has no role in it. One cannot feel

guilt over something on so cosmic a scale. Nature ordained the meeting of our

races. Since we have met with the other eleven races without trouble, it must

have been intended as a test to match us against the humans. We did not wish

to war. It was a natural necessity. I feel no guilt.”There was a pause in the

Phasersystem's interrogation. A moment later, the voice continued, but on a

slightly different tonal level. Hulann knew that he had been taken off the

general program of questions and was re-ceiving individual attention from a

more refined portion of the computer's “brain.”You have registered eighteen

points on a scale of one hundred in relation to your sense of guilt.Hulann was

surprised.Is this a conscious guilt? the computer asked. Please be truthful.

You will be under observation of a multi-systems polygraph.“It is not a

conscious guilt,” Hulann's overmind re-plied.There was another pause as the

Phasersystem consid-ered the sincerity of his answer. You are honest, it said

at last. But if this guilt index should rise—even if it remains subconscious,

you understand—beyond thirty points on a scale of one hundred, you will have

to be replaced in your position with the occupation forces and returned to the

home system for recuperation and therapy.“Of course,” his overmind replied,

though he felt de-pressed with such a prospect He liked his work and

con-sidered it valuable. He was trying to save the fragments of a race none of

them would see again.The Phasersystem continued to probe his psyche, looking

for faults that could open and swallow him.Somewhere, Hulann, a group of these

humans is still holding out. Now and then, a representative of them is

reported to have contacted members of the other eleven races in search of

support for a counter-attack. We have thus far been unable to find the place

they hide, the place they call the Haven. What do you feel when you con-sider

the existence of this small but alien group?“Fear,” he said. And he was

telling the truth.If you discovered the whereabouts of these last crea-tures,

would you report it to the central committee?“Yes,” Hulann said.And if you

were chosen to be in the expedition charged with the destruction of these last

humans, could you kill them?“Yes.”The Phasersystem. was silent.Then:

Consciously, you are telling the truth. But your guilt index jumped to

twenty-three on both questions. You will request an appointment with the

traumatist at his earliest convenience.Then the colors came in, orange at

first, then fading through various shades of yellow. Lighter and lighter until

there were no colors and the Phasersystem had re-leased control of him.Hulann

remained in the force webbing that held him suspended four feet above the blue

floor. It seemed as if he floated above the sky, a bird or a cloud, not an

earthbound creature. He probed his own mind, looking for the guilt the

computer told him was present. He could see nothing. Yet the computer could

not err. When he thought of the Haven, his scalp tightened and hurt. He was

afraid. Afraid not only for himself, but for his race and history.For a short

moment, he had a vision of dark, fog-eyed things hiding behind a shield of

trees, watching.He snorted, opening his second set of nostrils now that he

would need a full air supply for movement. When his lungs swelled and adjusted

to the new air flow, he got out of bed.For some reason, he was sore this

morning, as if he had done a great deal of work the day before (when, in fact,

he had not)—or as if he had tossed and turned in his sleep. Which was

impossible for a naoli who slept the graveyard slumber. He very much wanted to

cleanse himself, but he would soon have to be at the diggings to direct the

day's operation.He dialed breakfast, devoured it within minutes (a delicious

paste of fish eggs and larva, something a remote force of naoli would surely

have had to do without even a mere fifty years ago. Progress was truly

wonderful.) and looked at the clock. If he left now, he would arrive at the

diggings before the others. He did not want to do that.Well, after all, he was

the director of the team. If he were late, that was merely his prerogative.He

went into the cleansing room and cycled the wat-ertight door behind. He set

the dials where he liked them, and the thick, creamy fluid began to bubble

up-. ward through the holes in the floor.He scrunched his toes in it, feeling

good.When it was up to his knees, he bent and splashed it over himself. It was

warm and viscuous. He felt it sluic-ing at his thousands of overlapping

scales, drawing out the dust that had accumulated between them.When it was

four feet deep in the cubicle, he stretched in it like a swimmer, letting the

stuff buoy him. He was tempted to return to the dials and set the room for

longer cycles, but he wasn't that irresponsible. Soon, the mud-cream began to

grow less heavy, thinning, thinning, until it seemed only as thick as water

(though it still buoyed him with the same efficiency of the mud-cream). This

new form washed off the cleansing cream, dissipated it. Then the clear fluid

began draining out of holes in the floor.He stood, waited until it was gone.

His scales were al-ready dry. He opened the door and went into the living

room, gathered up his note tapes and stuffed them into the recorder case. He

slung the recorder over one arm, the camera over the other, and set out for

the diggings.The others were busy with their individual projects. They toiled

through the half-demolished structures, prying with their tools, x-raying

partitions and mounds of fallen stones and steel. They had been assigned the

ru-ined sections of the city which the humans had destroyed with their own

weapons trying to fend off the naoli forces. Hulann did not care that their

site was a difficult one. If he had been assigned to the group tilling the

un-destroyed sectors of the city, he would have been bored to tears. Naoli

could cry. There was no adventure in gathering things that were sitting in the

open. The plea-sure came from unearthing a treasure, from the painstak-ing

work of separating a find from the rubble around it.Hulann nodded to the

others, stepped by Fiala, then turned to look at her collection of statsheets

which she had uncovered only yesterday. They had been water-logged but

readable. She was translating.“Any luck?” he asked.“Nothing much that's

new.”She licked her lips with her tongue, then stuck more of it out and

flicked at her chin. She was pretty. He did not understand how he had almost

walked by without stop-ping.“Can't expect a treasure every day,” he said.“But

they have a mania for repetition. I've found that.”“How so?”“Day after day,

the same stories appear in the stat sheets. Oh, new ones come along. But once

they printed a story, they didn't let up on it. Here. Look. For seven days in

succession, this stat sheet gave frontpage cover-age to the destruction of

their Saturn moon bases and the pulling back of their defense ring.”“It was a

major story.”“No story is that major. After two or three days, they were only

repeating themselves.”“Research it,” he said. “It may prove interesting.”She

went back to her papers, forgetting his intrusion.He watched her a moment

longer, reluctant to leave. More than any other female he had seen in the last

two hundred years, she made him want to make a verbal commitment. It would be

a delight to go away with her, into the warren of his own house back on the

home world, and fuse for sixteen days, living off the fat of their bodies and

the ceremonial waters they would take with them.He could envision her in

ecstasy.And when she came out of the warren, she would have the gaunt,

fleshless look of a desirable woman who has mated for a standard fusing

period.She would be gorgeous in the aura of her femininity.But Fiala was not

concerned with the things in his re-productive pouch. Indeed, he often

wondered if she had a sex drive. Perhaps she was not a male or a female at

all. Perhaps she was a third sex: an archaeologist.He continued along the

diggings until he reached the end, walked a hundred yards through a narrow

street where the substantially damaged buildings still stood. He had saved the

best spot for himself. Others might con-sider that reprehensible, but he

viewed it as a simple per-ogative of his position.He went through the doorway

of a large, marble and concrete structure. The door had been of glass,

shattered during the final battles. Inside, he crossed the littered floor and

went down the dark stairs, feeling a delicious thrill at entering the

catacombs of the mysterious crea-tures whose planet this had once been. At the

bottom of the steps, he flicked on the lights he had rigged three days

ago.Light sprung up for a great distance. Today, he would extend the bulbs

another few blocks. The cellars and the sub-cellars of this entire section of

the city had been con-nected and turned into a repository for what the human's

considered precious. Hulann meant to open all of it and see everything

first-hand before pulling the other mem-bers of the team from their present

tasks to sift through what he had found.He walked to the end of the lights and

took his camera and recorder off his shoulders, piled them next to the cases

of tools left since yesterday. Taking a handlamp, he went to the wall of

rubble, where a ceiling had partially caved in. There was a gap between the

ruins and the walls that he just might be able to push through to reach the

cellars beyond and string his lights.He clambered up the stones, sliding back

a bit for, every piece of progress he made. Dust rose around him.At the top,

he stretched on his belly and went through the gap into darkness. He turned up

the power of his lamp and illuminated most of the chamber in which he found

himself. The place was a library of sorts, full of booktapes. For the humans

to have buried it this deep must mean that the tomes here contained were

consid-ered by them as most valuable.He advanced to a rack of spools and began

to read the titles. He did, not recognize most of them. What ones he knew were

fiction. This, of course, was quite a surprise. The humans he had met—that his

race had met—in the stars some hundred and seventy years ago had not been the

type to enjoy fiction. They had been cold, precise men with little time to

smile and only a slight imagina-tion.Yet here, apparently, was a room full of

novels.And they had thought highly enough of them to bury them against

destruction.He was still fumbling through the racks, amazed, when the light,

airy voice called to him in pure, unaccented Terran: “Above you! A rat!”He

whirled, looked up.The rat hung almost upside down from a beam. It's red eyes

glared with reflected light.Foolishly, he had come without a weapon.He held

the beam of the handlamp on it, paralyzing it, blinding it. He could see it

plainly, and he was not happy with what he could see. It weighed a good twenty

pounds; it had the wide mouth of a mutant, and the extra long teeth. He could

hear them gnashing. Its claws, now hooked around the overhead beam, were more

wicked than those of a normal ratIt was ironic that one of the naoli's own

weapons might kill a naoli. Ironic, not amusing.The naoli had introduced

mutated rats into the hu-mans' home planet some sixty years ago, one of the

pre-liminary weapons for the five-plus decades of the final as-sault. They had

bred true in the sewers and cellars and had done their damage.Bright teeth:

gnashing.Hulann held the light on the rat, keeping it hypnotized. He looked

around for a weapon, something, anything. It was not his time to be

particular. To his right was a length of steel pipe that had twisted loose,

fallen to the floor. The end had twisted away in some bomb blast and was

pointed, deadly. He inched to it, stooped, and picked it up with his free

hand.The rat hissed at him.He advanced on it, clutching the pipe so firmly

that the muscles of his six-fingered hand ached.Perhaps the growing brightness

of the light warned the rat. It stiffened, then scurried along the beam,

almost escaping the blinding radiance.Hulann shifted the lamp, leaped, jabbed

the sharp end of the pipe up at the low beam, caught the mutant on its flank.

Blood appeared.The rat screeched, scurried further along, confused and angry.

Froth tipped its brown lips and flecked its dung-colored fur. When he followed

it with the light, it scrambled about on its perch and tried to go back the

way it had come.He jabbed at it again.It fell onto the floor, momentarily

escaping his light. When it came to its feet, almost instantly, it saw him and

came for him, chittering insanely. It was more than likely rabid; the mutated

rats had been built with a low tolerance for diseases which they might catch

and later trans-fer to humans.He stepped back. But that was not a good move,

and he knew it.The rat's feet chattered on the cement floor. Pieces of cement,

shards of glass, and other small debris rattled out from under it.There was no

time to open a link with the Phasersystem and send for help. He would be dead

by the time they got there. He had to rely on his own agility. He

side-stepped, swung out at the beast with the pipe and connected, locking it

end for end.The rat's squeal echoed from wall to wall. For a moment, there

were a hundred rats in the room. It came up, staggering, and scampered back at

him, completely mad now.He swung again, missed the rat, and slammed the pipe

into a steel support beam. There was an explosion of sound in the room, and

the concussion surged back into his arm, making it numb. The pipe fell out of

his fingers, clattered on the floor.The noise made the rat leap aside and fall

back. But now that the echo had died, it came at him once more.His hand was

still too weak to grasp anything.The rat was close enough to leap. It had

almost launched itself—when a chunk of concrete smashed into it, crushing its

hindquarters. Another chunk rained down, missing it. A third connected. And a

fourth. It stopped squirming then—absolutely dead.In his excitement, Hulann

had all but forgotten the voice that had first called out a warning to him.

The warning that had been in pure Terran.——Unaccented Terran. Massaging his

numbed arm, he looked around until he saw the human.It was a young one, about

eleven years old, crouched on a shelf of rubble to his left. It looked down on

him with a curious expression, then eyed the rat.“Is it dead?”“Yes,” Hulann

said.“Are you all right?”“Yes.”“It was a mutant.”“I know. Yes. A mutant.”The

boy looked at the naoli, then back the way the alien had come. “You're

alone?”Hulann nodded.“I guess you'll turn me over to the rest of

them.”Hulann's chest was afire. He was waging a constant battle between his

mind and overmind, trying desper-ately to stifle at least a little of the fear

his organic brain was feeding the higher levels of his thinking apparatus. He

had seen humans before. But never when he was alone. And never when they would

have so much to hate him for.“Will you turn me in?” the boy asked.Hulann was

afraid. Desperately. Painfully. But there was something else stirring in him

as well. It took some moments before he realized that this other thing was

guilt.Though surely there must have been things the boy wished to say to

Hulann (curses and damnations should fill at least an hour; a naoli rarely

engaged in physical vio-lence with one of his own kind, resorting to sustained

verbal denunciations to work off accumulated frustra-tions), he merely sat

upon the rubble, the concrete, wood and steel, the plastic and aluminum,

watching the alien. He did not seem frightened nor particularly angry.

Curi-ous, more than anything else.It was quite an uncomfortable situation as

far as Hu-lann was concerned. To be spat upon and reviled would have raised

his own hatred. Hating the boy, he could have acted. But the lengthening

silence was a wall he could not breach.Hulann went to the rat, kicked the

chunks of stone away and looked at the corpse. He prodded it with a tentative

foot. The fleshy body quivered with a post mortem muscle spasm and was still

again. He walked back to the boy and looked up at him where he sat just

slightly above eye level.The boy looked back, his head tilted to one side. He

was, Hulann supposed, a pretty specimen by human standards. His head seemed

somewhat too large, but its features were well placed for his species. He had

a thick mass of golden hair. Hair alone astounded the scaled naoli; golden

hair was nearly too much to comprehend. Blue eyes beneath yellow brows, a

small nose, and thin lips. His smooth skin was dotted here and there with what

the humans called “freckles” and strangely consid-ered an attribute—but which

the naoli chose to regard as imperfections in coloration and possibly the

marks of dis-ease (although they never had been able to study a freck-led

human at close quarters).“What are you doing here?” Hulann asked.The boy

shrugged his shoulders.Hulann interpreted this as indecision, though he was

not certain that some more subtle, complex answer was being given.“You must

have some reason for being down here in the cellars!”“Hiding,” the boy said

simply.Hulann felt the guilt again. He was doubly frightened. To be in the

presence of a human after all that had hap-pened was terrifying enough. But he

was also afraid of his own guilt—and his lack of concern for that guilt. A

good naoli would immediately call for help on the Phas-ersystem, then turn

himself into the traumatist and get himself sent home for therapy. Somehow,

though, the guilt feeling seemed fitting. Deep in his overmind, he had a

desire to know penance.He repeated the arguments fed to all the naoli by the

Phasersystem during the psychological conditioning pe-riods every morning. He

attempted to recall that cold, eerie forest where the plants had been sentient

and mon-sters had lurked in the trees. But that seemed silly now.“Are you

turning me in?” the boy asked.“That is my duty.”“Of course. Your duty.” It was

said without malice.“I would be severely punished.”The boy said

nothing.“Unless, of course, you were to escape before I could apprehend you,”

Hulann said.Even as he spoke, he could not believe his vocal appa-ratus had

formed the words. He had always been an indi-vidual of great common sense, of

cool thought and rea-soned action. Now, he was engaging in sheer

madness.“That's no good,” the boy said, shaking his head so his yellow hair

bounced and sprayed about. To Hulann, the sight was breathtaking. “I can't get

away. I crawled in here because I thought it was safe. I thought I'd come out

when you'd all gone.”“Ten years,” Hulann said. “That would be ten years.” The

boy looked surprised. “That's how long our re-searches will take—the

reconstruction of daily human life alone.”“Anyway,” the boy interrupted, “I'm

stuck here. There's food and water. I thought I could hole up. Then you came

along. See, it's my leg.”Hulann moved closer, raising the double lids

com-pletely free of his huge, oval eyes. “What's wrong with it?”“I was hurt,”

the boy said, “in the final stand.”“You participated in the battle?”“I was on

a grenade lobbing station. Loader, not marksman. We were struck with

something. Don't know what. See? Here. It's kind of dirty, but you can

see.”Hulann was within a foot of the boy now. He saw a tear in the lad's

thigh, perhaps five inches in length. It was crusted with dirt and blood, very

ugly looking. His trouser leg had been torn off, and there was nothing to

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