A Jungle of Stars Read online

  He looked down and stared at it.

  It was a jagged, spent M-16 bullet.

  Reaching out with his right hand, he was intending to pick it up and for the first time became fully conscious that all was not the same.

  Like his arm and backside, the skin had grown over the area where his right hand had been. Only it wasn't there--his hand. Merely an ugly-looking stump, ending almost exactly at the wrist.

  He exhaled, his breath causing tiny crystals to form in the air. The Hunter had said he could be taken to a place where he might get a new hand--no, grow a new hand, he'd said. Until then, it was something that could be lived with.

  He got up and threaded his way through the stacks of bodies on their metal shelves until he reached the door. A thermometer at its side read 25 degrees Fahrenheit. He felt the bitter cold, but it didn't seem to be lethal, just uncomfortable. His internal body heat, he realized suddenly, was being kept at a high level. Where did the energy come from? If from himself, it would be bound to do damage at some later time--or run out.

  This was Power. For the first time, he realized the enormity of the forces with which he had allied himself.

  He found the edge of a wheeled cart and sat down to think for a minute.

  The word "alien" came to mind--not the green-scaled monsters of the science-fiction covers, but "alien" in its purest form. As rational, conversational, and human as the Voice had sounded, it was none of these.

  "You can think of me as God... an angel... or the Devil," this thing called The Hunter had said. But it had admitted to having far less than God's powers or omnipotence, and angels were surrogate humans. The Devil had always been the most human of all.

  And God created Man in His own image...

  Alien.

  He must remember that, always.

  He decided to get out from among the corpses, if he could. He got up and examined the door, not even noticing the same flesh-tearing sensation when he rose. He knew now that it would go away.

  The door had a bright red handle and there had at one time been a decal superscription next to it in typical military fashion, but the wording had long since worn away. He pulled down on the handle. The door swung open and he fell out into the hallway, a blast of warmth bathing him.

  A young soldier was walking up the hallway with a sheaf of papers in his hand as Savage plunged out the door and collapsed, half in and half out of the locker.

  The soldier suddenly stiffened as if shot. He stared at the apparition that had just come plunging out of the dead locker at him. His eyes were wide, staring.

  "Oh my God!" he said, and screamed for help.

  Men poured out of nearby labs and offices and ran down toward Savage and the still-immobile soldier.

  Savage felt suddenly sick, dizzy, cold, in pain--miserable. He groaned and passed out, oblivious to the hands turning him over, lifting him up, and carrying him to the examining table of a nearby autopsy room.

  He passed into a deep, dreamless, almost coma-like sleep.

  ***

  He heard the sound of a radio playing acid rock. The electric guitars seemed to be keeping time with the pounding in his head. He turned and moaned in agony.

  "Hey! Doc! I think he's coming around!" someone yelled, and there was the sound of feet running up a tiled hallway toward his room.

  For a few seconds, he thought he'd had the damnedest nightmare in all creation.

  He opened his eyes to a typical gray-and-white military hospital room. Quickly, he lifted his right arm up and out in front of him.

  The hand was still gone.

  A young man in medical whites entered, followed by a similar man with sergeant's stripes on his white sleeves. The first man came over and stood by Savage's bed, looking at him. The sterile hospital smell, ever-present, was suddenly permeated with the odor of foul sweat and bad tobacco. The doctor had obviously had a bad night.

  "Are you awake?" the doctor asked pleasantly. "Can you hear me?" He was almost drowned out by the radio playing in the next room. Realizing this, he turned to the medic and said, "Get them to shut that damned thing off, will you?"

  The medic disappeared and soon they heard loud talking in an angry, argumentative tone, muffled by the walls and the radio. Then all was peace and quiet, except for some loud cursing from next door.

  The doctor had not taken his eyes off Savage since he'd entered the room. Savage almost managed to focus on the doctor; he still felt lousy, which, if memory served, wasn't supposed to be in the script.

  "Shee-it," he managed, more to himself than to the doctor, who smiled brightly at the comment. Savage noted that the two of him were merging more and more into one distinct figure.

  "Can you hear me?" the doctor repeated softly.

  Savage felt as if his mouth was full of cotton. He exercised his jaws and tongue, trying to get some moisture going.

  "Yeah, I hear you, Doc," he croaked at last.

  "Do you remember your name?" the doctor prodded. "Can you recall things about yourself?"

  "Yeah... sure. Paul Carleton Savage, Second Lieutenant, U.S. Army, et cetera, et cetera. What the hell happened, Doc?"

  The other man shook his head.

  "I wish we knew. You are a medical impossibility, shot in the back and hand. The hand isn't serious, but the back--Jesus, man, you got scars a million miles long back there! I wasn't here when they brought you in last week, but I know all the reports said 'dead and gone.' "

  "Well I--Did you say last week?"

  The doctor nodded. "Oh, you were only in the meat locker for a few hours--fortunately, or the cold would've finished you. But you've been in a coma for over eight days. I wasn't sure if you were ever going to come out of it."

  Something in the back of Savage's mind nagged at him. Only a few hours to bargain for a man's soul and accomplish a complete resurrection, yet eight days out cold afterward. Why? Instant healing, but eight days out and feeling lousy.

  What might Hunter have done to him that took eight days?

  "Savage? You O.K.?" the doctor asked, concerned about his patient's sudden lapse into silence and inattention.

  Savage shook himself free of such thinking--at least for the time being.

  "Oh, yeah, sure... Doc. Just thinking. It's not every day you come back from the dead..."

  "That's an understatement. While you were out, I took every X-ray and did every test imagined--and a few I thought up. The bullet seems to have missed just about everything--except for one of only two or three spots in the whole torso where an AK-47 can hit and do so little internal damage. One chance in a billion. Almost no serious internal disruption--and the few that were there we cleared up in a three-hour operation. No complications. And that nice scar, of course."

  Nice touch, that, Savage reflected. Just enough crumbs for them to make up their own explanation of how he survived. Plant a few clues and let the ignorant write their own script.

  "One thing bothers me, though," the doctor continued. "I couldn't find that damned bullet! It's as if it dissolved in the body!"

  Savage managed a shrug. "Well, I can't explain things if you can't, Doc. I'm just glad to be alive. Any other problems?"

  "Nothing much--except the hand, of course. And some lingering effects of the cold you took for those hours. I'll keep you for a few weeks for tests and observations. Then we'll get you out of here and back home with an artificial hand."

  He turned to go.

  "Hey, Doc!" Savage called after him. "Where's 'here'?"

  "Oh, yeah, that's right. You're in Markland Hospital in the Philippines."

  The sergeant came back in and sat back down in his chair.

  "You my watchdog?" Savage asked him.

  The medic shrugged and looked sheepish. "Just part of the job," he replied.

  "What's your name?" Savage asked conversationally.

  "Cohen, sir."

  "Well, Sergeant Cohen, relax and don't worry about me. Do you play gin?"

  "I think I've played it once o
r twice," the sergeant replied playfully. "Maybe I can dig up some cards in a day or so."

  "You do that, Sergeant, and I'll see if I can beat you left-handed."

  He realized with a start that he felt really good. All of the dismal miseries were gone.

  He had never felt better in his life. Somehow he suspected that the reappearance of a doctor would bring back just enough of them.

  Who or whatever was looking over him was making certain that this medical marvel was convincing.

  ***

  It had been almost four weeks since Paul Savage was murdered and the dead man was feeling fine. The tests had gone predictably; he'd had little trouble walking after the first time or two; and he was getting used to doing things with his left hand, although writing still came hard.

  In fact, his progress had been so good that they had sent a man around during the second week to measure his stump and check his muscle placement and development. A day or two after that, they'd fitted him with a mechanical claw-like appendage and given him various exercises to increase his proficiency in its use and build up the necessary muscle coordination to use it. As he'd already read seven novels and now owed Cohen $1,428.63 from playing gin, he was ripe for something else and spent almost every waking moment practicing. The therapists were amazed at his progress. By the start of the fourth week, he was using the metal claw almost as if he had been born with it.

  His progress amazed him, too. Never in his life had he been able to concentrate so well, think so clearly, be so much in command of his entire body. He had always been far above most other people in intelligence, but now he found that he was able to put his potential to its fullest use.

  Slowly, he began to think of himself as no longer quite human. Oh, same form, same memories. But subtly altered, a fine machine that was of the man but not the man himself.

  Hunter had said something about being able to play games with his molecular structure. It was becoming apparent that there was more to it than that. He had been taken apart and redesigned--engineered.

  For whom?

  For what?

  He began to wonder when he would be drafted. They seemed in no hurry.

  On his thirty-fourth day after the resurrection, they pronounced him fit enough to go home. It was only when he went down to the out-processing section at the airport that it occurred to him that McNally and the rest of the squad were short-timers. A couple of bottles of booze and a session with a couple of personnel men he knew got him access to the files, and a little "officious" act scared the private in Records into punching the two names he'd pulled into the computer.

  The clerk was a nervous little man who obviously hadn't been out of his air-conditioned office since reaching the Far East. Savage presented an imposing figure looming over the little private at his big console, the lieutenant's reflection in the CRT glass an intimidating reminder of himself.

  Savage was over six feet tall, and powerfully built. His face resembled the idealized gangster of the 1920s: rough, pock-marked from a severe adolescent bout with acne, and a long scar down his right cheek. His lips formed an almost permanent sneer due to a corrective hairlip operation when he was a baby, and his crooked boxer's nose added a further sinister touch. His bushy eyebrows were gray in color, like his hair, although he was barely thirty; and they met at the bridge of his nose. He looked more like a Neanderthal than anything else, and the extreme hairiness of his body had always made him the object of derision by his peers as a youth.

  "Yaa! Yaa! Ape man!"

  His cold, steely-blue eyes glared as the clerk punched in the names:

  MC NALLY, JON OR JOHN F X

  SANTORI, JOSEPH ANTONIO

  The typewriter clattered on the output console and the clerk reached over and tore off the sheet, handing it to Savage.

  SANTORI, JOSEPH ANTONIO, SP4, ASSIGNED FT ORD CA EFF 19 OCT 69

  MC NALLY, JON OR JOHN, NO RECORD THIS THEATRE

  "What the hell does it mean, 'No Record'?" snarled Savage. "I thought you had everybody in 'Nam in this thing!"

  The computer operator looked apologetic and apoplexic at the same time. "I dunno, sir. Only thing I can figure is that you have something wrong in the input--name, serial number, or whatever."

  "No, nothing's wrong," Savage growled. "I got my squad assignment sheet and I gave you McNally."

  The little computer operator just sighed. He was always more comfortable with his machines than with people, and this was a perfect example of why.

  "Look, sir, I can give you a printout on every McNally that's ever been to 'Nam, even on temporary duty. Also MacNally and any other variations you like. But the computer says that the person you're looking for just doesn't exist."

  "All right, do that, then. I'm due to go home on Wednesday, and I'll be discharged soon after that. I want to know where that guy is before I leave."

  The little man sighed and turned back to his console. In a few seconds, the printer typed out the information requested. Savage tore it off eagerly and scanned the sheet. About forty names were on the sheet, which also included their serial numbers, military specialty codes, assignments, and date of out-processing if they were gone.

  None of them came close to McNally in the particulars. He simply wasn't in that computer.

  Savage whirled angrily around and stalked out of the records center.

  By the time he had hit the street and the hot, garbage-odored air of the Orient hit him, he'd calmed down enough to think it out.

  The pincers at the end of his right arm took a cigarette pack out of his breast pocket. Almost as if he had always had the claw, he removed a cigarette and, with the lighter in his left hand, lit up and inhaled deeply. Oblivious to the heat, odors, and sounds all around him, he reviewed what he knew.

  (1) McNally was real.

  (2) McNally had been assigned to the mission and had gone on it.

  (3) McNally had gotten out alive and had gotten back to the firebase.

  (4) The Army said he didn't exist.

  All of which meant that either the Army was lying or, for some reason, McNally was actually unknown to them. The former seemed the more likely, but--for what reason?

  A strange thought hit him--and was gone, dismissed from his mind as too ridiculous to dwell on. And yet it sat in a dark corner and would not quite go away.

  Did Hunter pick his recruits first, then murder them?

  It seemed impossible. Incredible.

  And yet Hunter had known Savage was dead, known to the split second when to come in, when to shield, when to make the offer...

  Was Hunter that powerful? That devious? It implied an enormous temporal power on Earth as well. Things would have had to be arranged.

  There were other possibilities. There had to be other possibilities.

  Santori might know.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Joe Santori had had a good night. Tomorrow he was to be discharged from the Army, still whole and with nothing but three bitter years to show for it. Out, man! The barracks had thrown one hell of a party for him, and Christina hadn't just been a good screw, she was a superb Italian screw that almost made him wish he had a couple more weeks in the area. He was also, at this point, quite high, as he returned to the barracks from her apartment.

  As he walked across the quad, he was whistling an inane little song and his mind was a million miles from armies, barracks, and anything else less pleasant.

  A man was leaning against the lamp post next to the barracks door but Santori paid little attention to him, taking him for one of the boys. As he drew closer, however, the figure took on a ghostly, shadowy shape and flicked a cigarette into the darkness, showering sparks. There was something grotesque about the man, Santori thought--sort of gorilla-like, yet oddly familiar...

  As he approached to within a few yards of the figure, it spoke to him.

  "Hello, Joe," came an oddly familiar yet unplaceable voice, a deep, rich, distinctive bass that, once heard, was never forgotten. "Celebrating?"
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  "Yeah, man," Santori replied. "It's all over now."

  "I agree, Joe, but not for the reasons you think. Remember me, Joe?"

  With that, the figure stepped full into the baleful half-light of the quad lamp posts.

  Santori could never have forgotten the scarred face and huge, animal-like body that he saw. His mouth flew open and he stepped back involuntarily and almost automatically made the sign of the cross. He continued to back away as the figure advanced.

  "Don't run, Joe. It won't do you any good to run," said Paul Carleton Savage icily. "There's no hole deep enough for you to crawl into."

  "But--but--you're dead! I saw--" Santori stammered.

  "Yeah, Joe, I'm dead. You saw it. You saw McNally kill me, didn't you?"

  "I--I never planned on killin' you, Savage," he protested. "I never thought the sonovabitch would kill you!"

  "But I was murdered, Joe," commented the other, matter-of-factly, "and you are what the law calls an accessory."

  Images of the quad, of places to run, of people to run to, sped through Santori's brain. But where can you run from the dead? he asked himself. Now, deep in the back of his brain, Joe Santori's survival self tried to shout out a fact, a very important fact. His right arm! He's got a claw hand! his mind exulted. And that meant--

  All the terror suddenly lifted, leaving him drained and angry. "You ain't dead, Savage," he accused the looming figure. "Ghosts don't have no machine parts. McNally only got your hand!"

  Savage shook his head slowly from side to side. "You're right--and wrong, too. I'm no ghost, Joe--but McNally got me square in the back with that shot. And I want him for that."

  "Well, go and find him, then. You know I didn't have nothin' to do with shootin' you."

  "That's what I have to ask you about, Joe. You see, the Army says McNally never existed."

  "The hell he didn't!"

  "Right. Tell me what you know about McNally, Joe, and our business--yours and mine--will be finished," Savage coaxed soothingly.

  "You ain't gonna press charges?"

  "No way, Joe. I'm not even in anymore. Tell me about McNally, Joe, and I promise you no one will ever know what happened--then or now."