Jack L. Chalker - A Jungle Of Stars

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A JUNGLE OF STARS Jack L. Chalker
STEP ONE
1
PAUL CARLETON SAVAGE died for the first time on July 29, 1969, in a bit
of characteristic Army brilliance.
Send eight men into unfamiliar territory, drop them by chopper into a
little clearing in the otherwise impenetrable jungle; have them walk five
miles to a second clearing, mostly in darkness, just to determine whether
there really are that many VC in that particular grid on the map -- and, by
the way, find out if there are any NVA in the neighborhood as well, won't you?
Military intelligence, Savage reflected bitterly, was a contradiction in
terms.
The bell rang and the chopper lifted into the air, the ground
disappearing under him in a billow of dust.
Savage sat in the doorway watching the world go by beneath him. Below
stretched a sea of green, broken only occasionally by large, dead areas where
defoliants had been used. A few birds were visible down there, but nothing
else seemed to be alive except trees.
He turned and looked back at the men riding with him. Most sat in their
canvas seats trying to look as if they weren't nervous. Normally, this would
be a split "A" Team -- four Americans and four ARVNs -- but there had been the
usual foul-up and the only ARVN who wound up along was Sergeant Hao, a last-
minute impressment when somebody found out he was born near the drop area.
Savage, too, was a last-minute replacement even though he led the team; the
Green Beret staff sergeant who had led the team for most of the year that it
had been in Vietnam had gotten zapped by a sniper last time out. Newly
commissioned Second Lieutenant Paul C. Savage had barely arrived at Firebase
Hector when Colonel Matuchek came up with this delight, and noted on the new
officer's record that Savage had led an "A" Team as a sergeant.
The air was cool this far up, and Savage felt a slight chill go through
him. He wondered idly if it was really the air.
Off in the distance he could see a few wisps of smoke rising from the
trees -- possibly small engagements, but more likely the smoldering remains of
recent encounters or perhaps signs that, down there in the green stew, people
continued to live in the midst of the war.
Again he surveyed the group of men in the helicopter. Shadows obscured
most of them, and he realized that he didn't even know all of their names. He
resisted an impulse to give them a thumbs-up sign; every man knew that even
the composition of the team for this trip was already so screwed up that
unmitigated disaster seemed inevitable.
The pilot made a pass over the LZ without pausing; this was just to get
an idea of what what they were getting into. The copter would continue on a
lazy path around the area until dusk, never pausing long enough for unseen
observers to guess where it might put down, if at all.
Savage pulled out his map and studied it once more, although he felt he
already knew every detail better than the cartographers who had drawn it. He
frowned. What he was looking at just didn't jibe with the scenery at all.
Somehow, that sinking feeling in his stomach told him, the Army, as usual, had
botched the map.
The chopper banked left and started losing altitude. The light was
fading fast, and all inside knew that this was it. Each man instinctively
checked his weapon. A tenseness was in each of them, and through each mind ran
the thought, Is this the time that we land in the middle of them?
Suddenly came the forward push as acceleration stopped; and they were on
the ground, grouping near the trees. The blue exhaust flame of the helicopter
shot upward until it barely cleared the trees, then was away. They had
unloaded in less than five seconds and had made it to the trees without a shot
fired. It had been a good landing. But their feet were soaked by the swampy
ground at the LZ.
Sergeant Hao checked his luminous compass and they started off after
him. Finally they were far enough from the LZ to stop. There had been no noise
except the squishing sound of their movements through the marsh.
"Lieutenant!" one of the men exclaimed in a shocked whisper. "My God --
my map! I think I lost it at the LZ!"
Suddenly that feeling was back. "Well, we can't go back and get it now,"
Savage snapped. "It's too damned dark to see anything, anyway. Let's just hope
nobody else does -- or they'll know we're here and figure out why."
"Shh!" Sergeant Hao shot at them. "Somebody there!"
They stood immediately frozen, most of them holding their breaths. Only
a few jungle sounds filtered back to them through the dense foliage. They
could hardly see each other in the gathering darkness, but each man's eyes
surveyed the area, trying to spot what Hao thought he saw, heard, or felt.
There was nothing.
After a few minutes, they began to relax. Savage spread out a plastic
ground cover and sat on it. With a disgusted sigh, he removed his boots and
socks and started wringing the water out of the latter. Unless he was lucky,
he'd have to walk them dry the next day. Pulling off the few leeches that had
attached themselves to him in the dark, damp walk, he liberally spread
mosquito repellent over every exposed area. The stuff stung when it went on
over the leech bites, but served to cleanse them and settle them down to dull
itches. Around him, the other men were doing much the same, except for Hao,
who continued his watch, rifle at the ready, but was not as tense as he'd been
a few minutes earlier.
All at once came the sound of firing from the direction of the LZ. Each
man grabbed his weapon and felt, to make certain, that he had a clip in place.
It was a nervous but instant reaction born of combat experience. The firing
was sporadic and not directed at or near them.
"What do you think they're doing, Harry?" one man whispered to another.
"Old Charley trick," Harry replied calmly. "Fire a few shots in all
directions to see if and from what direction fire is returned. They just now
found the LZ. Sloppy bastards."
After a few seconds that seemed much longer, the firing stopped.
"Think they found the map?" someone else whispered to no one in
particular.
That, thought Savage, was the big question. The odds on their finding it
were less than his own, because he knew it was there, but he was also keenly
aware that, the way things were going so far, they probably had.
That map. He had looked at it a million times and its features haunted
him. The eight-kilometer zone it illustrated showed clearly that they were in
a valley, with fairly steep and mostly defoliated hillsides around. The
exifitration LZ was near the other end, and it was the only possibility for
another ten or eleven klicks.
It was the best damned trap he had ever been in.
He took out his red-filtered flashlight and looked at his watch. 2215
hours. The contact plane would be over in less than fifteen minutes.
Suddenly a shot came out of the dark forest.
Sergeant Hao screamed and bent over double, the force of the blow
pushing him back against a willowy tree. He collapsed to the ground and lay
still.
The men were already fanning out, weapons in hand. Savage turned over
two or three times, grabbing his own rifle as he did.
Another shot.
This time he saw the flash and started to call to the others, but they
had already seen it. A withering fire produced by several M-16s all shooting
on automatic in the direction of the flash ended the shooting in their midst,
but there'd been no cry, no sound that any had found their mark. That sniper
might still be there.
Whether he was or not, their position was known and they pulled out
fast. Savage had gone about three hundred meters before he realized, by the
stinging sensation of leeches attaching themselves to his feet and legs, that
he was still barefooted.
They regrouped in a particularly dark grove and waited soundlessly.
Random firing, some very close, reverberated through the forest; but it
was clear that Charley didn't know their location. That at least was a small
stroke of luck: only one man had happened upon them, probably by accident, and
if he was alive he had no idea where his quarry had gone.
Silence descended, but they could smell the rotten odor of nuoc-mam, the
sauce made from decayed-fish oil that every Vietnamese was addicted to, all
around them. It was so penetrating that often Charley's patrols would be
betrayed over fifty meters away by the odor on their breaths. With Hao gone
and the rest of the squad American, they had little doubt about where and from
whom the smell was coming.
But from how many?
Only two or three men might be out there, or the team could have
blundered into an entire division. The inky darkness and light jungle sounds
made it impossible to tell.
Overhead they heard the sound of a plane's engines as it passed slowly
by. The contact. There would be no call tonight. The next time possible would
be at four the following morning. After that, it would be twenty-four hours at
a stretch until they were either picked up or declared missing in action.
They didn't dare move in the dark, not with Charley out there. And so,
after a tense half-hour with nothing happening, they settled down to wait out
the night.
No one slept.
About a half-hour after midnight, they heard voices whispering in
Vietnamese. Whoever they had bumped into out there was still around.
Savage grew cold and his stomach tightened -- someone was standing about
two meters from him. He could sense movement even though he could not see
clearly.
A new round of shots was fired into the air by the VC around them. None
were returned, the men of the squad freezing like statues, their fingers
poised nervously on their triggers.
The man nearest Savage now moved off, and the lieutenant was conscious
of the movement of others toward the southeast. There appeared to be only four
or five of them, but that didn't tell much about the size of the total force
that potentially lurked in every bush and tree.
They were gone as suddenly as they had appeared, and the fetid air of
the swamp somehow seemed fresher by the absence of nuoc-mam.
At about 0130, another volley was heard off to the southeast, but pretty
far away. Charley had missed them.
This time.
As they sat through the night watch, Savage became slowly aware that the
squad was whispering to one another. But he could not make out what was being
said. Once he admonished them for being so noisy, but after a short while the
whispering had begun again.
At a little before 0300, one of the men crawled over to Savage's painful
perch on a high clump of bush. The lieutenant looked at him in the gloom: a
big blond fellow, well over six feet, and seemingly in the peak of condition.
He would be ideal for a young German officer in a World War II film, Savage
reflected, although the man's name was, incongruously, McNally.
"Sir?" he queried softly. "Can I speak to you for a minute?"
"Sure. McNally, isn't it?" Savage responded softly. "What's going on?"
"Well, sir, we been wonderin', well -- uh, the contact time is coming up
and we were, uh, wonderin' just what you were gonna tell 'em."
Savage shifted uneasily, considering the question and the motive of the
man who had asked it. It was certain that he was spokesman for the rest.
"I'm going to tell them what happened," he replied carefully.
"Yeah, but -- what about gettin' us out of here?"
So that was it. He'd known it.
"Frankly, McNally, I'd love to get us out of here, right now. For one
thing, my boots are undoubtedly staked out over there somewhere, waiting for
me to get my brains splattered claiming them. I've got no desire to walk
almost five miles barefoot. I'm not sure I'd - make it."
McNally's face seemed to light up the gloom. "Does this mean you're
gonna ask for exfiltration?"
"That's what's been worrying me. I'm pretty sure they've got a couple of
men on the LZ, and that's the only way out. On the other hand, they don't know
where the exfiltration zone is."
"Goddammit, sir, they've got our map! If we take all that time to get
there, with you bootless and all, they'll have the whole goddam North
Vietnamese Army waiting for us!"
"Now, wait. We don't know that they have the map, but we do know they
know the original LZ. Playing the odds--"
"The hell with the odds, sir! Call 'em in! If we can't beat off this
little force and get to the chopper, then we can still go for the pickup
point. If we do it your way, we're dead for sure."
"Well, maybe that's what being an officer is all about, McNally. I'd say
the odds are with my way -- and we still have the mission, too."
"That's what it is!" the other spat. "You're gonna turn silver if you
get us all killed and your feet ate off."
"No matter what you think," Savage replied, his voice even but touched
with ice, "we'll play it my way. Go tell the men -- and bring the radio back
up here."
McNally turned with a snarl and returned to the others. Savage tried to
make out their conversation while appearing unconcerned; he found it
impossible to do either.
After three or four minutes he moved back to them, every move painful
from the legion of bites on his feet. The men watched him approach, looking
very much like little boys in a dentist's waiting room, knowing something very
unpleasant was coming. Knowing, too, that it was unavoidable.
"Well?" he said softly, standing in front of them, disregarding the risk
a target of his size would represent. In those few short minutes he had
resolved himself to dying, if need be, to keep the team together. He was
somewhat surprised at himself, for he'd never been a particularly brave man,
although always something of an idealistic one. But he had always had one hell
of a temper.
"Who's got the radio?" he asked.
One of the others, a mousy little fellow who looked as if he was out of
a New York street gang, reached around and pulled it out of the pack. McNally
nodded and the little man put it down.
"We talked it over, Lieutenant. You ain't gonna sand that message.
You're gonna tell 'em to come and get us."
"The hell I am. This is a pretty shitty place to have a mutiny,
McNally."
"We're all short-timers, sir. This thing's been a botch from the
beginning, and I, for one, ain't gonna get killed this close to goin' back to
the world if I got a choice."
"The rest of you feel that way?" Savage asked, glaring at each man in
turn.
None answered; most wouldn't look directly at him. As Savage stood
there, he slowly unhooked the strap and took his knife out of its scabbard. No
one seemed to have noticed.
"We're playing it my way, General McNally," be sneered, and as he said
it he reached out and grabbed the tall blond NCO by the arm and pulled him
over to his side.
The knife was at McNally's throat.
"Now what do we do, General?"
"You don't do nothin', Lieutenant," said a voice behind him.
He felt a rifle barrel in the small of his back. Turning slowly, without
losing his grip on McNally, he saw that the little man with the radio had slid
behind him, and cursed himself for paying so much attention to his own slick
moves that he'd missed the movement.
"You're not going to shoot me, boy," he said confidently. "You'd have
Charley here in a minute -- if all this hasn't brought him already."
He felt the pressure ease, but it was replaced in a second by a sharp
point. "I got a knife, too," the little man said softly. "It's my favorite
weapon. They spent fifty thousand bucks teachin' me how to kill people better
with it. Why don'tcha just let Johnny there go and drop the knife?"
Suddenly all the determination went out of him. In frustration he shoved
McNally away violently and then. tossed his blade aside. He continued to feel
the pressure of the barrel as a hand reached over to his holster and drew out
his service revolver.
"Now pick up the radio," McNally ordered him. "It's almost 0400. And any
funny business, and you're dead and I talk to them."
He felt numb, distant somehow, as he picked up the radio and turned it
on. Isn't it stupid, he thought -- these men probably just saved my life by
doing this. And for forcing me to do what I want most to do myself, I damn
near have to be killed.
"I'll make the call," he said resignedly, his voice sounding odd to his
ears.
There was a quiet drone overhead and the muted HT-1 radio came to life,
very crisply and tinnily.
"This is Artichoke," it said. "Acknowledge."
"Go ahead, Artichoke, this is Grasshopper," Savage responded
mechanically, feeling somehow foggy, as if in a dream.
"Roger, Grasshopper, we read you five-by. Go ahead with message."
"Scout map in enemy hands, one dead, heavy enemy concentration," Savage
reported. "Impossible to make objective. Request exfiltration at original LZ."
"Affirmative, Grasshopper," responded the tinny voice. "Can you do it in
eighteen?"
"Ah, roger, Artichoke, see you soon. Out."
"Artichoke out. Good luck."
The radio went dead. Everybody around it relaxed, even though the
toughest part was yet to come.
"Satisfied?" Savage asked McNally, who nodded grimly. "Well, we have
only eighteen minutes, so let's get over there. My feet are killing me."
Santori, the little man, took away the point and they started off toward
the LZ. No one moved to help Savage or to give him back his weapons. They
walked slowly, deliberately, in dead silence, eyes on what they could see of
the trees and swamp, conscious that they must make no betraying sound, no
matter how much they felt like running.
They didn't smell any nuoc-mam until they were on the edge of the LZ.
The sky had lightened considerably and they could see the perimeters of the
clearing. The smell was not very strong -- probably only one or two men left
as a long-shot rear guard.
They waited in tense silence, trying to spot the unseen watchers.
The chopper was right on time, and touched down without incident. Nobody
was kidding himself, though: the hidden eyes watching them would wait for them
to treak into the clearing, then open up.
Santori made one of them, and gestured.
"Now!" McNally shouted and they all went fullspeed for the chopper.
Santori fired just before he lept but was running too hard to see the man he
hit fall from his tree perch. An AK-47 opened on them from the opposite side
of the clearing almost simultaneously.
Savage was pushed ahead by McNally and ran for the open bay only meters
away. As he did, he felt a sharp explosion in his back and went down almost as
he reached the chopper door. Strong hands pushed him into the bay and he heard
others jump in behind him. The chopper lifted off, bullets striking its sides.
"How many hit?" McNally called over the engine noise.
"Lost Sam and Harry," Santori yelled. "And him. No big loss, though.
Bullheaded sonovabitch. Look at him lyin' there, like a big ape, bleedin' his
guts out."
"Yeah," someone else put in. "Sorta like one of them cavemen or
somethin'. Ugliest bastard I've ever seen."
The object of the comments lay facedown in an everwidening pool of
blood. He felt like a ten-ton spider was on his back, all the legs having
equal and monstrous weight. He couldn't move at all, not even groan.
"He ain't gonna make it," someone remarked, but the words were a million
miles away. He couldn't think anymore, yet he felt as if his mind were
perfectly clear. Shock dulled the pain to a mild discomfort, and something
told him that he'd be dead before he would feel the full impact of the injury.
He didn't give a damn any longer.
He was conscious of someone bending over him, but he couldn't see who,
nor did it seem to matter. Mentally and physically, he was totally paralyzed.
"Sorry, Savage," McNally's voice came softly from the fog in his ears,
"but no way was I gonna let you throw any of us in the clink -- particularly
me."
No one else heard the comment, and Savage could do nothing with it. For
Savage there were no longer sounds, or sights, or feelings, nor even the acrid
smell of the chopper. He was alone in his own private world.
The official records of the United States Army stat that Paul Carleton
Savage, Second Lieutenant, USAR, died in action aboard a rescue helicopter as
the result of hostile fire on or about 0430 on 29 July 1969.
The first time.
2
HE WAS NOT aware that he was dead. This, on the face of it, was normal,
as it meant a complete absence of sensation and he had had no previous
experience of that sort.
The terror on his back was gone, lifted slowly as vision had been
blotted out; but this brought no surprise, no shock that it was gone. It had
lifted slowly, accompanied by that slow fade of all sensation, like a candle
being gradually extinguished by carbon dioxide.
There bad come a blankness, an absence of all colors, even black and
white. He had had nothing to compare it to; such a concept could exist only in
theory in the world he had left.
Bit by bit, he became aware of subtle differences, of tangibles in the
void. As with the void itself, he had no frame of reference -- awareness that
there were other things, perhaps (or maybe "others") all around him. But it
was as if, having been struck totally blind, deaf, and dumb, vision was
returning.
Yet he could "see" only in this new, undefinable way which, lacking
words or frame of reference, he could only experience, not comprehend. What
the shit is this? he thought angrily.
He remembered. He remembered the mission, the mutiny. He remembered that
he had been murdered, not shot by an enemy.
Murdered? No, that couldn't be right. He was still-- Well, he was,
still.
The horrible thought struck him that he was in a hospital somewhere,
deaf, dumb, blind, insensitive to the world -- a living vegetable imprisoned
in the wrecked shell of his body. It terrified him. He tried to shake, to
move, to reach out, to prove it wasn't so.
Nothing happened. He had nothing to reach out with, or to.
He tried merely to lower his chin to his chest, to make certain that it
was there -- and was terribly afraid that it was.
It wasn't. He had no head to move, no chest to touch.
Absorbed in these thoughts, he failed to notice that more and more
"somethings" were filling in the void. And something else.
Now he noticed it.
Voices -- No, not quite. Thoughts -- like random thoughts collecting in
his brain. Other people's thoughts.
Gradually it was becoming apparent to him that he was not alone at all -
- that at least some of these other presences, perhaps a large number of them,
were in fact other people. Some made no sense at all, but others radiated
identifiable symbol connections. Many, most in fact, seemed to radiate the
same panic that he bad undergone only moments -- hours? -- before. A few were
calm, resigned, or even expectant. Many were hope lessly insane.
Babblebabblebabblebabblebabblebabblebabblebabblebabblebabble . . .
It rushed in at him like a living force, exploding inside his mind. He
fought furiously for control, taken off guard by the sudden attack, but the
sea of thoughts came on, like giant waves, each greater than the one before.
He tried to concentrate, tried to chive them off, stem the tide. No matter
what happened, he had to lock them out, keep them away!
I am Paul Carleton Savage, Second Lieutenant, U.S. Army, serial number
214-44-1430AR. I am Paul Carleton Savage, Second Lieutenant, U.S. Army, serial
number--
BabblebabblebabblebabblebabblebabblebabbleBABBLEBABBLEBABBLE
I am Paul Carleton Savage, Second Lieutenant, U.S. Army, serial--
BABBLEBABBLEBABBLEBABBLEBABBLEBABBLEBABBLEBABBLEBABBLEBABBLEBABBLE
A face formed dimly in his mind, laughing at him, mocking him. It said,
"BABBLEBABBLEBABBLEBABBLEBABBLEBABBLEBABBLEBABBLEBABBLEBABBLEBABBLE. . ."
It poured out with terrible force in a thousand tongues, ten thousand --
all different, all speaking at once of different things, running the entire
emotional range. It was a deadly face.
"BABBLEBABBLEBABBLEBABBLEBABBLEBABBLEBABBLEBABBLEBABBLE . . ."
It was McNally's face.
Laughing, mocking, spewing out madness, it floated, weaved, and taunted
him. An overpowering, unreasoning hatred welled up within him. Not this time!
he tried to scream at it. Not again! You will not destroy me again! Not again!
You hear? You understand? You Will Not Destroy Me! You hear me, you bastard?
BASTARD! Hear me? YOU. WILL. NOT. DESTROY. MY. MIND!
"Babblebabblebabblebabblebabblebabblebabblebabble," it continued, in its
madness; but the head had retreated as he attacked, the volume lessened
markedly.
Hatred welled up in him; a fierce blast of hate shot out like a living
thing from him and seemed to strike the bobbing figure.
It screamed and shrank.
He focused on the bobbing, weaving object. He faced it down as it
continued to babble on in a chaos of random thoughts and tongues all at once;
but it seemed to grow even more distant, hazier, so much so that even the
torrent of thought that appeared to pour out of it was dampened to a quiet
roar.
The thing bobbed and reeled. It swooped around, seeking an opening. It
came at him from each side. It came at him from all sides at the same time.
Focusing on it, he beat it back with the measure of his hate and pride,
fighting it on a plane he could not really comprehend.
And now he was alone in the void once again, as if, in the midst of a
cheering stadium, everyone but he was -- in an instant -- obliterated. One
moment the enemy was there, all around him, on the attack. Then, in a time so
sudden as to be immeasurable, everything was gone.
"That's pretty damned good," came a clear, sharp voice in his mind. "Who
the hell's McNally, anyway?"
He would have jerked around if head had anything to do it with.
"Who? What--?" he tried to vocalize.
There was a chuckle. "Don't bother trying to talk. As you've figured
out, you've got nothing left to vocalize with. Just think what you want to say
and I'll pick it up."
Some of the intense emotion with which he had fought the thing was still
in him. "Just who the hell are you?" he lashed out at the voice. "And what the
hell is going on here?"
The Voice chuckled again. "Well, to answer the seeond question first,
you're dead, of course. The enormous rush of thoughts you picked up were from
the other ... er ... souls who died at the same moment. They'll come back, you
know, when I let them."
Savage felt the lingering terror return. Somehow he could accept being
dead, but not the continual battle he had just been through. Not forever.
"No," said the Voice, apparently hearing even those thoughts not
directed to it, "not forever. You'll lose, eventually. Everybody does. Your
self will crumble into that mass, which gets denser and denser as you
naturally gravitate to those who've gone before, and are joined by those
who've come after. Eventually your energy, your identity -- your soul, if you
will -- all those thoughts and experiences that are you, will become one with
all of them: a part of a collective mentality, a synthesis of mankind -- in
fact, of all living things that have ever existed or will exist on the Earth.
That's the way things work."
"What are you, then?"
"Me? Well, you can think of me as God. . . an angel. . . or the Devil.
Actually, I'm all of them -- and none of them. For I'm not part of this
synthesis but a product of a different one entirely."
"I -- I really don't understand anything you're telling me."
As Savage said this, he was aware that, the longer he stalled, the
longer he avoided the fate spelled out for him. The isolation in which he
presently found himself was caused by the Voice, and could just as easily be
lifted. He tried to imagine the horror he had fought only ten times (a
hundred, or a billion, perhaps?) more powerful. The Voice was right. He
couldn't stand that off very long.
"What's happening to you is part of a process of nature as normal as the
birth and death of a star, or the falling of leaves," the Voice explained in a
tone reminiscent of a lecturing college professor. "It is as universal as the
laws of motion, or gravity, or thermodynamics. Ultimately, the Synthesis
produces a massive collective intelligence of enormous power -- the collective
power of God, as you might comprehend Him. Not all get to this point. Most
races die out too soon, or external factors intervene. For some reason, no two
worlds' maturity periods ever overlap."
"So what has this to do with you?"
"My race has passed to yet a higher synthesis, which even I cannot
fathom. Only two individuals of the race are left, each incomplete, each weak
in comparison with the whole. Both of us are driven to our duty, which must be
fulfilled before we can join our people."
"Which is?"
"To ensure that the next synthesis occurs in time to stop the chaos that
threatens always from without! To perpetuate, to keep the wheels of nature
moving smoothly!"
"But what has all this to do with me, now?" asked Savage, puzzled.
"My brother is a part of me. We are a product of the same synthesis.
Yet, it has been a long time, and without the greater synthesis to support us,
we have devolved. We have become parasitic, material, and, as we have
continued our separate lives, quite different personalities." The Voice became
grim. "There is a war going on, Savage, and I am looking for volunteers."
Savage's mind whirled. Had the circumstances been any less bizarre, he
would have dismissed all this as madness. Perhaps it was -- he hadn't
considered that. The Voice interrupted his thoughts.
"The world lies below you, Savage -- and above, and all around. It's
your world and your destiny, and you shouldn't make light of it. We were a
glorious people, Savage -- and well yours might be, too. To be a part of that
is the greatest glory that anyone can ever experience. We have that in common,
my brother and I; we have both been at the pinnacle, in the company of, and
part of, God -- though we have fallen and are forever denied that again. We
are both in Hell."
"So what do you offer me if I refuse that Earthly destiny?" Savage
asked, knowing he would take any offer -- and knowing the Voice knew it, too.
"You can't go to Hell, Savage, because you've never been in Paradise.
The nature of what I shall do is such that you will be denied both. You will
be forever in Limbo, never knowing any other experience, danmed but never
really knowing how much so. You would be condemned to live forever, and, as
you will someday know, that is a true form of damnation."
Savage felt excitement well up inside of him. Condemned to live forever.
But to live! To get out of this! And yet -- Faust must have felt the same, and
the Devil was the Father of Lies.
"What will I owe you in exchange?" he asked warily.
"Service, for as long as I might require it. I was attracted to you, as
to the others I have recruited and will recruit, by the strength of your mind
and of your will. By the force of the hatred that allowed you your victory,
however temporary, over those that lately sought to consume you.
"While we have talked, I have taken a readout of your mind, your past,
your personality and potential. You are certainly one of the men I need to aid
me. You are a soldier. You were once a detective, before you were activated
from your reserve unit. You are strong, far stronger than you know, and you
are dangerous. I will realize those things you did not even know you
possessed, and I will make you even stronger. And yours might -- might -- be
the mission that wins the war. There are others like you as well, many others.
But -- I deny the glory of death to no man, for I could not do so even if I
could guarantee his loyalty. The choice must be yours and freely made. Beyond
this place -- in death -- is every mind of world history, from the one who
discovered fire to the latest genius to pass on -- and Hitler, too, and
Stalin, and Genghis Khan. You can be part of them and their mission. Or of
mine. You alone must choose."
"You know."
"Say it!"
"I'll work for you. I will accept your offer and abide by it."
"Very well. Restoration is a difficult thing -- and a limited one. I
must work with what I have, and not with what once was. Your body lies now in
a morgue in Saigon. awaiting embalming and shipment to the United States. I
can rearrange the molecules properly to make yon live again, none the worse
for wear -- indeed, better than before -- but I can work only with what I
have; I do know where restoration can be done, and we'll get you there in due
time."
"What are you talking about?" Savage asked nervously.
"McNally put a single M-16 bullet into your upper back, which shattered
just about every bone in your torso. Child's play. It's a repair problem only.
But the enemy sniper got you after that. Your right hand is still in the
jungles of Area Five-C."
Savage paused for a moment. "So you can make me whole with what I've
still got, but you can't regrow the hand."
"That's about it. Although, of course, after I'm through with you,
should you lose the other one, it'll come back. Later on, I'll get you to a
place of master biologists many light-years from here, where the hand can be
replaced in a moment. . . But the injury will answer some questions, albeit
weakly, about your recovery -- and it'll get you out of the Army and home,
where I need you."
"Okay, I think I can live with it," Savage told the Voice, and somehow
the remark sounded flip and funny, which it wasn't at all.
I can live with it, he had said. Or not live without it.
"Very well. It is done. The process is already in motion, and I have
other things to attend to. I will contact you when you are ready."
"But how will I know you?" Savage asked, almost calling after the Voice.
"To whom will I go?" He almost said: "To whom do I belong?"
"I call myself The Hunter, for that's as good as any, more descriptive
of what I am and far less enigmatic than my brother's name, The Bromgrev, the
meaning for which has escaped everyone. The Savage will recognize the Hunter:
there is destiny in those linked names." The Voice paused for a second, then
concluded, "It is ended. I shall see you in time."
Savage was alone once again, but now there was a change. He sensed that
he was returning, going back, even though the term had no meaning. He also
sensed the others, rising from their incubators and going to join this new,
metamorphosed creature he knew surrounded him.
His world picture had been drastically changed. The Earth was one of
many planets, perhaps millions, circling their suns, incubating components for
the truly superior evolutionary creature of each world. Mystics through the
ages had glimpses of the truth, but they could not comprehend -- or did not
want to comprehend -- and misinterpreted what they had seen.
But there were still holes. Just what did these -- gods -- do? If the
metamorphosis occurred repeatedly in nature, it was necessary to survival. But
whose? And against what did it guard?
He would have time to ask the right questions now, he mused. All the
time in the world.
There was light, but everything was blurry. He ached like hell, his
right arm throbbing as he had never known before, his every cell screaming at
what had been done.
He blinked repeatedly, and the scene came into focus, along with the
fetid smells of the dead and its grisly contents.
He was in a human meat locker, stored with the rest of the dead until
摘要：

AJUNGLEOFSTARSJackL.ChalkerSTEPONE1PAULCARLETONSAVAGEdiedforthefirsttimeonJuly29,1969,inabitofcharacteristicArmybrilliance.Sendeightmenintounfamiliarterritory,dropthembychopperintoalittleclearingintheotherwiseimpenetrablejungle;havethemwalkfivemilestoasecondclearing,mostlyindarkness,justtodeterminew...

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