The Men in the Jungle Read online

  The betrayed ones reached for their buttons, as much in hate as in agony. And a few of those plunged back into pain released their buttons, hoping for another moment of future mercy. Others only gritted their teeth harder, held the buttons down in spasms of hate…

  On and on it went, endlessly, a thousand variations on the same gruesome contest of pain and pleading, hate and hope.

  Every bit of that mass agony, every amp of current, seemed to channel itself into Fraden’s mind, his guts, his being. He was responsible for this, personally, immediately, inescapably, ultimately responsible. He couldn’t bear it. He wanted to disembowel himself on the spot, scream his dreadful guilt for the world to hear, tear himself to bloody fragments.

  He whirled in his seat, unable to bear the sight a moment longer. And then he saw the Brothers tiered like a pyramid of obscene, writhing flesh behind him.

  They were laughing, the hideous, raucous laughter of feeding hyenas. Fragments of human flesh dribbled from their mouths onto their black robes. Most were kneading the bodies of female slaves as if they were inanimate objects, so many beanbags, drawing blood with their fingernails, inflicting cruel purple bruises in their sadistic frenzy. Some were being kneaded themselves beneath their robes as they rolled their eyes, devoured human meat, laughed merrily at the agony in the arena.

  Fraden felt acid vomit sear the back of his throat, felt soul-deep spasms roil his guts. He had to get out, if they killed him for it, if they tore him apart, he had to get out!

  He bolted from the couch, holding his hand to his mouth, holding back the vomit with a mighty effort of will, and throat muscles.

  Moro, his face purpled with pleasure, a gobbet of meat clinging crazily to a yellow tooth, glanced at him as he bolted for the aisle, grunted, “Brother Bart… you’ll miss the best part. Where are you—?”

  “John…” Fraden grunted through his fingers, his back to the Prophet of Pain. “Gotta go to the john.”

  Moro was about to say something, but Fraden was already halfway down the aisle, breaking into a run. The Prophet shrugged, returned to his pleasures, all but the spectacle before him forgotten.

  Fraden ran crazily down the aisle, out of the Pavilion, through an exit, down a dank passageway, and finally found himself outside the Stadium.

  The aloneness, the muffled sounds still coming from the Stadium, hit his gut like a pile driver. He leaned against the Stadium wall, retched, vomited, retched again, vomited once more, retched and retched and retched till his stomach was a pounding pain against his ribs, till after-images flashed across his retinas, till he felt as if he were puking up the whole foul planet.

  And the sounds from the Stadium went on and on and on, burning away the abysmal nausea, finally, and filling him with a merciful, fiery hate.

  It was a measure of how routine horror had become ten days after the madness-pogrom had begun: Bart Fraden could watch the line of trucks rumbling through the main gate of the Palace compound, across the courtyard, behind the Palace itself to the ever-full mass cells beneath the Stadium with little more than perfunctory twinges of regret, one quick spasm of self-loathing as the men huddled, naked and terrified, in one of the trucks happened to stare at him, long and hard, as the truck passed close by.

  Fraden glanced about the great courtyard. Killers were herding women, slaves, Meatanimals about. A squad of the Killer cadets was being drilled near the wall. There were muffled cries from the slaughterhouse. Here and there a Brother surrounded by his retinue lurched by, heavily loaded on Omnidrene. No one seemed to pay much attention to the long line of trucks hauling their human cargo to the Stadium; it was already merely business as usual. A few hundred Brothers usually showed up to watch the day’s proceedings in the Stadium, but the insane, carefully bloodless tortures were no longer being carried out in a grotesque carnival atmosphere. There was a weird, assembly-line feeling about it all, as victims were trucked into the Stadium in a steady stream, tortured, herded across the courtyard into the vast system of dungeons in the bowels of the Stadium. An assembly line for the production of madmen…

  Fraden had been able to avoid seeing the tortures for the most part, now that they were established routine. He had also been able to avoid the dungeons below the Stadium, the mass madness they contained. When Moro pressed him to supervise the beginnings of the bleeding of the madmen, the extraction of the Omnidrene from their blood, he had been able to put him off by telling him that there was no point in beginning until a pool of at least three thousand schizophrenics existed.

  And by that time, Brother Bart would be long gone. For Fraden’s work in the Palace was done; The madness-pogrom was established routine. The Brotherhood was hooked on Omnidrene. When Brother Bart—and the Omnidrene supply—disappeared, one would feed the other. In their desperation for a new supply of Omnidrene, they would continue and intensify the tortures, feeding the fires of Revolution. And at the moment, the pogrom was producing an unexpected dividend: obsessed with the tortures, Moro seemed to be virtually ignoring the stories of an estate attacked here, a squad of Killers ambushed there as so many isolated and probably exaggerated incidents.

  Yes, it was finally time to leave this pit of horror. The groundwork of Revolution had been laid. He had already informed Moro that it was time to make a trip to the ship to get more Omnidrene, Sophia was packing, and in an hour or so…

  “Brother Bart, the Prophet requires your presence immediately,” a flat, laconic Voice said behind him.

  Fraden turned, saw the inevitable lean, sharp-toothed Killer. “You will come with me,” the Killer said. “Your presence is required in the dungeons.”

  Fraden tensed, then relaxed somewhat as he saw that the Killer’s rifle was slung over his shoulder, his morningstar clipped to his belt.

  The Killer led Fraden to a small door in the side of the Palace, through it, along a short passageway, down a long flight of ill-lit stairs which ended in a small anteroom.

  Three halls led off the anteroom, and in the harsh light of naked incandescent bulbs, Fraden saw that they were vast cell-blocks. The Killer led him down the center cell-block corridor.

  A passage through bedlam. On either side of the stone-floored hallway were iron-barred cells. About half the cells were filled—five or ten men and women to a single small cubicle, Some sat catatonic in their own offal on the cold stone floors. Others screeched mindlessly at him as he scuttled hurriedly by with downcast eyes. Men clawed at their own scarred bodies. Woman sat mumbling the same syllable over and over again like an incantation. Killers paced the corridor, eyes cold and watching, breaking up fights here and there by sticking the muzzles of their rifles through the bars, barking irresistible, laconic orders.

  Numbly, holding himself under tight control, willing himself to ignore the madness around him, Fraden followed the Killer through the cell-block, down an empty corridor, past a cross-corridor where he heard moans echoing in the far distance and finally into a small chamber, lit by a single light bulb dangling naked from the ceiling.

  A man was chained to the wall by bis ankles and wrists. His body was a mass of ugly, small burns—and a Killer inflicted another with an electric branding iron as Moro stood off to one side nodding in approval as the man screamed.

  Fraden went tense, his mind working furiously as he heard the scream, for it was not so much a scream of pain as of mindless hate and rage. The man’s eyes were hollow red pits. He tore madly at his steel bonds with splintered and bloody fingernails. As the Killer removed the electric brand, the scream became a barely intelligible moaning: “Kkkkill…”

  The man was in acute herogyn withdrawal. His loincloth was green. It was one of Willem’s guerrillas!

  Moro turned, opened his mouth to speak, but Fraden spoke first. “I hope this won’t take too long, whatever it is,” he said. “There’s no Omnidrene left, and I’ve got to get to the ship as soon as—”

  “Yes, yes, to be sure, you must see to it at once as soon as we are through here,” Moro said distractedly
, “But since you are the… er, most widely experienced of the Brothers, I want your opinion on this peculiar creature. Strange things have been happening in the countryside lately… Killers attacked, two estates burned. Once in a while, a village of Animals runs amok when their Brain dies and they lose control of their Bugs and we haven’t trucked a new Brain in quickly enough. It appeared that this is what had happened. But out of curiosity, I ordered that the next time any Killers were attacked, they take a prisoner and retreat—something, of course, that they are quite loath to do. Yesterday, a squad of Killers was attacked by nearly thirty armed men; they killed many, of course, but since there were only six of them they were wiped out—except for one Killer who managed to follow orders and escape with this most peculiar prisoner. Observe.”

  Moro waved the Killer with the electric brand aside with one fat hand, stepped close to the prisoner, who writhed, snapped his teeth furiously at the Prophet of Pain, screamed “Kill… kill… kill…” weakly.

  “I am the Prophet of Pain!” Moro bellowed. “Hear and obey, Animal! You will tell me who you are and why you commit blasphemy and murder. In the name of the Brotherhood of Pain and the Natural Order, speak!”

  The guerrilla’s eyes became burning coals of hate. He lunged against his bonds. Foam flecked his mouth, turned red as he tore at his own lips with his teeth. “Kill!” he screamed, seeming to draw strength from a reservoir of rage, “Kill! Destroy! Death t’y’Brotherhood! Death t’y’Killers! Kill y’Prophet! Death t’Moro! Kill! Kill!” The words trailed off into a howl of animal rage.

  Moro slapped the man’s head with the back of his heavy hand, slamming his head against the stone wall. The guerrilla went limp, but Fraden saw that he was still breathing easily. Moro had not done him the favor of killing him.

  “You see…?” Moro said conversationally. “No Animal could possibly react like that, so totally against the Natural Order. Animals obey.” Moro frowned heavily. “It’s almost as if…”

  “Almost as if he were a Killer,” Fraden said quickly, off the top of his head. It was as good a red herring as any. He only needed time enough to get out of this room, get Sophia and get to the lifeboat in the courtyard. Maybe twenty minutes or so. As long as the guerrilla was still in this stage of withdrawal from the herogyn, they could eat him alive and not be able to get anything intelligible out of him. But it looked as if he was about burnt out, at that stage where the rage subsided into a kind of pliant torpor, and then… It wouldn’t take them very long to find out that he was a member of a guerrilla band led by an off-worlder; And only one off-worlder ship had come to Sangre in centuries, Moro would be able to put one and one together in no time at all…

  “As if he were a Killer…?” Moro parroted pensively.

  “Look at him!” Fraden said. “He certainly acts the way only a born and bred Killer should…”

  “Impossible!” Moro snapped. “A Killer is trained to obey from boyhood. A Killer’s obedience is absolute.”

  “Well, what if… uh… somehow a group of young Killers ended up on their own in the outback, somehow? Boys, very young ones, bred as Killers but not fully trained. Say they were being trucked from one place to another, and the truck was wrecked and all the adult Killers killed and they were left to fend for themselves. Ten years or so in the jungle, living off the land, with incomplete conditioning, and…”

  “It sounds most improbable,” Moro said dubiously. “I know of no such loss. Still… I must admit that it’s hard to think of a more plausible explanation, No Animal would—”

  “Can’t hurt to check,” Fraden said. “How long could it take to go through the records, an hour or so…?”

  Moro laughed, eyed Fraden narrowly. “That would be unsporting,” he said. “It will be much more aesthetic to go on to more advanced methods of torture immediately, tortures that even a Killer can’t resist. We shall know soon enough. But no sense in wasting our time with halfway measures, eh?” he said, his pig-eyes gleaming. “No sense at all…”

  “Er… I think I had better go see to the Omnidrene now,” Fraden said, starting for the door. “I’ve done what I can here…”

  “Uh… to be sure…” Moro muttered, turning to the Killer holding the electric brand, Fraden already all but forgotten. “Bring him to!” he ordered as Fraden slipped out of the room and into the corridor.

  And as he rushed through the bowels of the Palace of Pain counting every minute, Fraden heard a series of terrible, agonized screams echoing behind him. This was going to be close! Too damned close!

  “Come on, Soph, move it, will you!” Bart Fraden said, as he half-dragged Sophia O’Hara at a near trot across the open courtyard toward the lifeboat waiting near the wall. “If they break that guerrilla before we get off the ground, we’ve had it!” It had taken him nearly fifteen minutes to make his way back to their quarters through the labyrinth of the dungeons—he had not wanted a Killer as a guide—and nearly another five to get Sophia moving. By now, Moro could very well have cracked the prisoner…

  “I’m coming, I’m coming!” Sophia grunted as they passed close by a squad of Killers trooping in the general direction of the Palace. “But let’s keep this a strategic retreat, not a rout! If they see us running like burglars caught in the act, it may give !em unpleasant ideas. Besides, track simply is not my sport.”

  She’s right of course, Fraden thought forcing himself to keep to a less suspicious pace. They walked briskly but calmly toward the lifeboat past another squad of Killers, who saluted in passing at Fraden’s Brother’s robe.

  They were only about twenty yards from the ’boat when Fraden heard a shout from the general direction of the Palace. He paused, turned, saw maybe ten or fifteen Killers coming at them at a dead run, maybe fifty yards behind and closing fast.

  “Come on, Soph, the shit has hit the fan!” he shouted, pulling her forward and breaking into a run. “Move it!”

  As they ran toward the ’boat, the Killers behind them began to fire their rifles. Had they simply stood their ground and taken careful aim, they could have cut them down like clay pigeons at that range, but calm, cool thinking was not the Killers’ forte, and so they kept running as they fired, the bullets whining high over Fraden and Sophia’s heads, kicking little dust-devils up behind them or pinging harmlessly off the lifeboat hull.

  Panting, dragging the stumbling Sophia by the arm, Fraden reached the lifeboat with the Killers less than thirty yards behind.

  He pressed the stud unlocking the outer airlock door, and there was an agonizing few seconds’ wait as the door’s servomotor slid it smoothly, silently and calmly upward while the Killers, who by now had flung aside their rifles and unshipped their morningstars, bore down on them, eyes blazing, lips flecked with foam, waving their weapons above their heads, shrieking their ululating battle chant: “KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL!”

  The foremost Killer was scant yards away when the airlock door finally slid upward, the gangway down. Fraden leaped up the gangway, dragging Sophia behind, ducked inside the airlock, let go her hand.

  “Hit the stud!” he shouted, burst by her through the open inner airlock door and into the tiny cabin, sat down on the edge of the pilot’s seat, activated the computopilot’s simplified automatic lift-off cycle.

  As the lights on the display panel began to go green, one by one, he turned in the seat, looked through the inner airlock door and saw…

  Sophia had hit the airlock door button. The gangway had already slid inside, the outer airlock door was in the process of sliding shut. But it wasn’t coming down fast enough. A Killer had managed to get one leg up over the inside of the sill and was pulling himself up into the airlock with one hand, brandishing his wicked-looking morningstar in the other. He saw that the Killer would be able to jam the airlock door open with his shoulders, thus causing the computopilot to automatically abort the lift-off. And there was nothing he could do about it in less than a second…

  Suddenly, Sophia braced herself with spread-eagled arms aga
inst the frame of the airlock door and raised herself up on the toes of her left foot. The Killer got both arms through, braced himself upright, prepared to vault into the airlock.

  Sophia grimaced, drew back her right foot, and kicked, a perfectly aimed, graceful kick with all her weight behind it.

  The point of her shoe caught the Killer squarely on the jaw; he screamed, flopped backward over the sill and the airlock door slid shut behind him. Bullets began to whine off the hull. The last light on the display panel went green.

  Sophia lurched into the cabin, dropped down into the seat beside him just as the ’boat lifted off.

  As the ’boat accelerated sharply upward, Fraden grinned at her. She grimaced, then grinned wryly back.

  “Well I told you track wasn’t my sport, didn’t I?” she said. “Football, anyone?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  As he broke out of the jungle undergrowth at the crest of a small hill overlooking the next village, which nestled in the bottom of a narrow, grassy valley, Bart Fraden once again swabbed oily sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

  The four green-sweatbanded guerrillas marching in double-file before him pushed aside the tall grass with their rifle butts, and it lashed back at him in rebound as he followed them down the slope of the hill into the valley. It was hot; his head felt like it was filled with warm rice pudding. He glanced at the four guerrillas bringing up the rear: green loincloths, green sweatbands, captured rifles and hollow bloodshot eyes, trigger-tense muscles. Herogyn-heads all, with their primary loyalty to the drag itself, their secondary loyalty to Willem, who dispensed it, and not much left over for the newly self-appointed President of the as-yet-gestating Free Republic of Sangre. Still, they were under better control than when he had first joined Willem in the jungle, a week ago. The trick was to give ’em tiny, sub-critical doses of the stuff throughout the day, and get ’em high enough for a really big bring-down only before a battle. It was a king-sized pain in the ass, but at least it kept them reasonably alert and under control most of the time. But it won’t be like this for long, he told himself.