A Jungle of Stars (1976) (2 page)

"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."