Docanil the Hunter stood along the highway at the pass out of the desert valley. He had changed clothes to match the weather. Here was no place for a greatcoat He wore a light, porous suit of a fabric that resembled vinyl in appearance and cotton in comfort and to the touch. Between his shoulder blades was the clawed fist ringed with nails. He still wore gloves and boots, for the hands and feet of a Hunter are very sensitive.
"See anything?" Banalog asked from behind.
The Hunter did not respond.
"Perhaps they are already dead," Banalog suggested.
"We will soon go in," the Hunter said.
Banalog looked into the long desert beyond the rock pillars that flanked the highway at the end of the valley. He was almost selfish enough to hope that they were already dead. Alive, they might be forced to talk, to inform on him. And then the Hunter-Docanil or another, it hardly mattered-would be coming for him.
The tableau was broken as the lowering skies began to rip open and dump a fine sheet of rain on the thirsting land beneath. Docanil turned and hurried for the copter and the dryness inside. The rain was cold-and a Hunter is a sensitive creature.
High above the Earth, clouds of dust and debris, hurtled into the stratosphere by the nuclear blasts men had touched off in the last hours of the war, shifted and stretched into bands. The long streams of stones, dust, paper, wood chips, pottery shards, and other rubbish would circle the globe for weeks and possibly even months before finally settling onto the scorched surface of the planet from which they had come.
There were pieces of bone, too.
Circling above the earth.
Orbiting.
Slowly coming down again.
Chapter Sixteen
In the pulsing mass of amber flesh pressed against the plastiglass windscreen of the shuttlecraft, the Isolator formed an eye, one of the blue-white frosted orbs that had adorned its bat form only minutes earlier. It stared through the glass at Hulann and the boy where they hung in their straps, watching as its own flesh oozed inside where it could reach them at its leisure. It was as if they were suspended at the moment of Judgment on the final day of the world, hanging by a thread of time, knowing full well that the decision could only go against them.
"Can you start the shuttle?" Leo asked, cringing against his door as the yellowish jelly pressed more insistently into Hulann's side of the cabin, advancing quietly but steadily.
"It won't do any good. We can't go anywhere. It's got us trapped. For one thing, we're on our side against the cliff. Secondly, even if we were upright, its weight is enough to press us into immobility."
The glob of the Isolator already in the cabin was as large as Hulann's arm. It weaved in the air, before his face, like a snake rising from a charmer's basket. It did not, however, attack him. It seemed, instead, intent on going for Leo.
"Of course!" Hulann said, his voice suddenly miserable.
"What is it?"
"We couldn't understand why it didn't demolish the shuttle in its bat form. It couldn't. It's programmed never to hurt a naoli. If it had destroyed the car, I would have died as surely as you. The only way it could get to us was to get inside the cabin. It will kill you and leave me alone."
Suddenly, the Isolator began pouring through the metal and glass itself, threading its bulk through the molecules of the car and dripping inside from a hundred different places. In seconds, it would have enough of itself within the car to destroy the boy.
Frantically, Hulann considered starting the engines and hoping the abruptness of the action would cause the Isolator to draw back long enough for them to rock the car right-side-up and get out of there. But he knew such a strategem was pointless, for an Isolator could never be surprised. It was far too clever for that. The only way to beat the Isolator was to divide it into so many parts that none of them could carry enough group consciousness to move efficiently
And he had the answer. In its wild rambling from one point to another, his overmind had discovered the only thing that might work. Hulann reached down, primed the engines, and reached for the switch.
"I thought you said that was useless," Leo said.
"It may be. But I've just realized that, since we're on our side, the Isolator is pressed up against the blades, perhaps meshed right in there with them."
Leo grinned. Hulann was amazed at the human's capacity for humor in such a dire circumstance.
He turned to the switch, twisted it, felt the engines cough. They did not catch.
The mass of amoeboid flesh within the car was half as large as Leo now and growing larger every second. It drew toward him, slopping over the seat, an amber pseu-dopod tentatively feeling in his direction.
Hulann hit the starter again.
The shuttlecraft groaned and shuddered. Then the blades stuttered, whirred, and burst into life, chopping through the huge mass of the Isolator's weapon, shredding it into thousands of minute pieces and scattering those across the sand in every direction.
The mass within the car jerked and twitched like an epileptic. It surged back toward the glass and the metal through which it had come. The Isolator was confused, perhaps even momentarily panicked. It pulled away from the glass, trying to heave itself free of the car. It merely succeeded in getting more of its bulk sucked into the whirling rotors where it was hacked into useless segments and tossed messily into the hot air.
"Rock the car!" Hulann shouted above the whine of the blades. "In time with me." He started swaying heavily back and forth, putting most of his force into the surges to his left.
Leo joined in, happier than ever.
The car leaned too far, at last, and crashed upright again, bouncing on its rubber rim, then leaping two feet above the sand as the air cushion buoyed it. Hulann leaned over the wheel, thrust his splayed foot into the wide band of the accelerator, and sent them slipping swiftly across the desert toward the road the bat thing had driven them from only a short time ago.
"What now?" Leo asked.
"We move fast," Hulann said. "With luck, we'll escape from this area before the Isolator can get another weapon after us."
"What about that?" Leo asked, pointing at a mound of quivering amber flesh on the floor between them.
"It's too small for the Isolator to control," Hulann said. "It's on its own now-brainless. We'll just endure it until we're out of the danger area. I don't want to waste time stopping and getting rid of it."
Leo pulled close to his door and watched the glob of flesh carefully, though it seemed quite as harmless as Hulann said it was.
Thirty minutes later, Hulann's spirits were tremendously revived. He was fairly certain the Isolator was not going to reach them now. It had more than likely suffered physical shock when such a large portion of itself had been chopped into separate, uncontrollable entities by the blades of the shuttlecraft. If it had recovered from that by now, it would find it too late to manufacture a new weapon, he hoped. Ahead, a mile or two, laid the opening in the valley wall that, he imagined, was the end of the Isolator's domain. Beyond that, freedom
Rising over the top of the rock wall was Docanil's copter, the blades like the wings of a dragonfly, mere blurs of gray against the lighter gray of the sky.
Hulann's foot strayed toward the brake, then slammed back into the accelerator once more. There was nothing to be gained by stopping. There might be equally little to gain by going on with the Hunter so near, but it was the only reasonable choice they had.
He looked at the boy. Leo looked back, shrugged his shoulders.
Hulann turned his attention back to the road, steering for the pillars of rock and what had once been freedom but was now only more fear, uncertainty, and anguish.