The Men in the Jungle Read online

  “Welcome, Brother,” the hooded men chanted. “Welcome to the Brotherhood of Pain!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Brother or animal? Pleasure or Pain? Life or death? Kill or be killed? Choose! Choose!” The words filled the small cabin of the starship, loud, resonant, but somewhat tinny, filtered, remote as Willem Vanderling sat in the pilot’s seat, his face blank, his eyes unfocused, all his attention channeled through his ears as he listened, fascinated, to the event taking place on the planet far below him.

  “… Into this room, Brothers and Animals come, those who have chosen and those who are to choose…”

  Mo-ther! Vanderling thought. What land of a planet has Bart picked out for us anyway? These yokums are out of their skulls!

  He wished that it had somehow been possible to install a video pickup in Fraden’s tooth-transmitter. It was pretty obvious that they were putting Bart through some kind of mumbo-jumbo ceremony, some kind of religion jazz. Great Choice… Pleasure… Pain… It sounded pretty screwy. Wonder how Bart’s managing to keep from laughing his head off? Vanderling thought.

  The voice on the radio became a shrill, threatening cry: “… Kill or be killed! The moment of decision is now! Bring forth the human animal!”

  “Human animal!” Vanderling granted aloud “Christ—”

  “… By the death of this Animal, become a Brother, or by sparing it, die…”

  It was! It was! A sacrifice, a human sacrifice! There goes the whole Revolution up the flue! Bart’s never killed a thing in his life. He wouldn’t have the guts. Of all the…

  “… Choose or die now! Kill or be killed… Now!”

  “Jeez, they’ll kill him!” Vanderling muttered. “Where in hell does that leave me?” Damn you, Bart! he thought. Damn your chicken liver! You can’t go and get yourself killed.

  There was a long, ominous silence… Then a thunk! and a shrill scream all at once.

  “Bart!” Vanderling cried. Christ, they’ve killed him! They’ve—

  Then Vanderling heard the deep, wild chanting: “Welcome, Brother. Welcome to the Brotherhood of Pain!”

  Vanderling’s jaw fell for a moment Then a strange smite came to his lips, a wry smile, a knowing smile, a smile of sardonic satisfaction.

  He did it! Vanderling thought. Son of a bitch, he did it! Bart killed. All by himself! These Sangrans must have something on the ball, after all. Kill or be killed, yeah, that was where it was at, all right. And now Bart’s finally found out. Kill or be killed—no room, for a cop-out there!

  Vanderling laughed, a harsh, staccato laugh like the sound of an automatic weapon. Let’s see Bart dish out some of his sanctimonious holier-than-thou crap now! he thought. Bart Fraden, killer. Now ain’t that a kick in the head!

  Vanderling felt a peculiar glow of satisfaction. He had gained something, some kind of edge, somehow. Welcome to the club, Bart, he thought. Welcome to where it’s at.

  Vanderling stood by the airlock door, his face a carefully composed blank, as the door slid open and Bart Fraden, trailed by Sophia O’Hara, stepped through into the ship proper. Fraden stepped briskly, shoulders squared jauntily. He smiled, nodded confidently. Christ, Vanderling thought disappointedly, it’s the same damned old Bart!

  “Well, we’ve got our big feet inside the door,” Fraden said. “You’re looking at a bona fide member of the Brotherhood of Pain, the local government, priesthood, mafia, and tammany all gift-wrapped in the same neat little bundle.”

  “No… ah… trouble, Bart?” Vanderling asked, hoping rather wanly to get at least some small rise out of Fraden, at least a momentary acknowledgment of what had really happened.

  “Piece of cake,” Fraden said with infuriating cavalierness. “If it had been a poker game, our mark Moro would’ve gone home in a barrel.”

  Fraden walked toward the ship’s mess as he spoke, and Vanderling trailed sourly behind him. Goddamn phony! Vanderling thought to himself. But he could not help feeling a certain grudging admiration. He noted that at least Sophia was keeping her big mouth shut for the moment. In fact, it seemed that she was studying Bart land of peculiarly behind his back. Had he told her?

  When they reached the ship’s mess, Fraden plopped himself down in a chair, took a cigar from the box on the table, lit it as Vanderling and Sophia sat down flanking him.

  Fraden blew a cloud of smoke into the air and sighed. “Last box,” he said, “and it’s half-empty. Have to check and see if we can grow tobacco on this mudball.”

  Damn him! Vanderling thought. Him and his cigars and food and big-mouthed chick. “You think you can stop worrying about your taste buds long enough to tell me what’s coming off?” he said. “I’m tired of being cooped up in this tin can. When do I get some action? After three weeks in this damned thing, even a hick planet like Sangre’ll look good.”

  “You haven’t seen our little Garden of Eden yet, Chrome-dome,” Sophia said, “When you do, you just may opt for the ship for the duration.”

  “When I want your opinion,” Vanderling snapped, “I’ll send you a special-delivery lasergram—collect. What’s happening, Bart? When do we start to move?”

  “We’re off and running already,” Fraden said. “We’ll play Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside for openers, and I’m already set up as Mr. Inside: Brother Bart, member in good standing of the Brotherhood of Pain as long as I keep the Omnidrene coining. Supposedly, I came up here for the first month’s shipment I’ll take lifeboat number one back to Sade—that’s the name of the big burg, by the way, after the Marquis of the same name, which will give you a rough idea of where this Brotherhood is at. I’ll work within the Brotherhood for the time being, hook ’em on Omnidrene and otherwise stir up the pot. You take number two and start playing Mr. Outside in the outback. Build up a guerrilla force—I think I can leave the details of that up to you. The revolutionary potential’s sky-high here, highest I’ve ever seen. The Brotherhood owns the whole planet and everyone else has all the legal rights of an animal, so they should fall all over themselves to join up.”

  “And what about weapons?” Vanderling grunted sourly, “With a setup like that, you can’t expect the yokums to have a single popgun.”

  Fraden smiled. “The best the opposition has is old-fashioned projectile stuff. Not so much as a lasegun. You should have no trouble making do with captured weapons once you get started.”

  “And just how do I go about capturing all these weapons without some weapons to begin with? With my bare hands?”

  “Trust your good old Uncle Bart,” Fraden said. “In ’boat number two, you’ll find, among other goodies, a couple cases of snipguns. How’s that for an opening wedge?”

  Vanderling shook his head in grudging admiration. Bart was one step ahead of the game again, damn him. The snipgun, the Sub-Nuclear Interference Projector, also known as the Edgeless Knife and the Big Slice was the perfect guerrilla weapon. By means of some gadgetry that about a hundred men in the Galaxy really understood, it projected an angstrom-thin beam of tortured energy that interfered with the interatomic bonds of any matter within fifty yards of the muzzle. The effect was that of a huge, infinitely sharp, infinitely strong and invisible bladeless knife, a “knife” that cut through rock, steel, flesh, or anything else as if it were so much warm cream cheese. It was totally silent, had no muzzle-flash to betray its position, and as such was the ideal ambush weapon. Fifteen points for Bard Fraden, Vanderling thought.

  “What else did you bring me for Christmas, Santa Claus?” Vanderling said, “When do we start?”

  “No time like the present,” Fraden said “I’ll head for the city and you for the jungle. We can keep tabs on each other by using the direction-finders in the ’boats.”

  “Good hunting, Chrome-dome,” Sophia said. “I’ve got a feeling that Sangre is going to turn out to be just your kind of playpen. Fun and games, old bulletheaded buddy, fun and games!”

  Sweat pouring down his bald skull, soaking his eyebrows, Willem Vanderling pushed his way through the
heavy, tangled underbrush, past the gnarled ringed boles of the thickly clustered trees that covered the small near slope of the little hill.

  He crested the hill, emerged from the jungle, and stared down at a rolling stretch of empty plain,, covered with neck-high, long-bladed blue-green grass. A narrow concrete-paved road wound across the plain, passed close by the foot of the hill on which he stood The high grass provided good cover clear up to the shoulder of the road.

  This looked like the place.

  Vanderling closed his eyes against the hot red Sangran sun, called to mind the view of the general area he had gotten from the ’boat. To the west was the big range of mountains that divided the inhabited area, of the continent from the wild, useless western portion. To the east by a couple hundred miles or more was the city of Sade, sitting in the middle of a level, grassy plain. The bulk of the inhabited section of Sangre which lay between was a checkerboard country of rolling hills, small valleys, here jungle, there open plain. Scattered throughout this fertile country were hundreds of walled compounds, the centers of scattered groups of small hamlets, connected to the capital by a more or less radial system of roads.

  Vanderling had put the ’boat down in a small clearing in the heavy jungle that backed up against the foot of the mountains—a likely place for a guerrilla camp. From there, it was a long, hot trek on foot, through jungle, across the tall-grass-covered open areas, in the sweltering heat of the reddish Sangran sun.

  But this looked like the end of the line. There was a compound maybe twenty or thirty miles up the road, the road led toward Sade, so he could reasonably expect something to come along in a few hours. And when it did…

  Vanderling fondled the weapon that hung loosely from a shoulderstrap, unshipped it. It was small—less than two feet from the pistolgrip at one end to the small lens opening that was its muzzle. Altogether it weighed a mere three pounds and had no recoil at all, the snipgun was provided with an auxiliary grip like that of an ancient Tommy gun down near the muzzle end for precision’s sake.

  Vanderling grinned, brought the dull black plastic snipgun up into firing position, turned to face the jungle behind him. He pressed the trigger, swiveled the gun minutely, using the auxiliary grip as a pivot-point.

  There was no sound. There was no kick, no muzzle-flash. For an instant, nothing seemed to happen. Then cracks and creaks and thumps as a rain of branches and leaves fell to the forest floor. Vanderling stared along a thin crack of emptiness that sliced arrow-straight through the heavy foliage. Along the line of the cut he could see branch stubs sliced through clean and even, leaves cut neatly in half. It was as if he had token a swipe with a huge, sharp, irresistible machete. The snipgun would do the same to rock or steel… or flesh.

  Vanderling scrambled about three quarters of the way down the hill, took up a seated position about thirty yards off the shoulder of the road, the snipgun cradled across his knees, and prepared to wait.

  The tall grass that hid him from sight was alive with insects, tiny mites, beetles, things nearly nine inches long with eight hairy legs and two staring, noncompound eyes. He wiped sweat from his brow and grunted. The whole damn planet was swarming with bugs! In fact, on the whole long hike, he hadn’t seen a moving thing that wasn’t some kind of lousy insect, one or two of ’em had been nearly the size of dogs. Evolution, or whoever makes planets, must’ve had bugs on the brain when it cooked up this mudball.

  And the damned heat—it was near sunset and it still must be over a hundred… Vanderling checked himself. It had been a long hot walk, but not that long. Sunset was hours away. It was the damned reddish sun that did it; the stupid thing looked like it was perpetually setting. The grass, the trees, everything was bathed in a glaring red light, as if the whole crummy planet were bleeding… What had Little Miss Bigmouth said, Sangre was Old Spanish for blood? It figured, it sure figured.

  Vanderling waited and waited in the hot sun, working up a fine loathing for Sangre and things Sangran. About the only good thing you could say for the mudball was that the jungle and the tall grass made it an ideal battleground for a guerrilla war—from the point of view of the men in the jungle, that is. Big gnarled trees with lots of feathery, palm-type blue-green leaves, plenty of undergrowth, the tall grass in the open areas—there was good cover almost everywhere. And bugs almost everywhere too! he thought unhappily as he swiped at something small buzzing around his head.

  Vanderling waited in the heat and the boredom with his little coterie of insects. The sun had moved perceptibly in the sky before he saw a vehicle coming into sight around a bend in the road north of his position.

  Vanderling bolted to a crouching position, covered the stretch of road directly in front of him with his snipgun. The vehicle headed straight down the road toward him, making about forty miles an hour. As it got closer, he could see that it was a truck, an obsolete wheeled job with a closed cab and an open bed.

  He knew that he would have to make a snap decision in the next moment or so. The truck was only a few hundred yards away and it would be by him shortly. He shielded his eyes from the sun with his right hand and peered at the rear of the truck. He saw tanned, near-naked figures huddled together on the open truck-bed, caught glimpses of black uniforms, a red glint of the Sangran sun on naked steel.

  Well, well, well, he thought approvingly, soldiers and prisoners, looks like. Who could ask for anything more?

  Vanderling rose to one knee. He aimed the snipgun at an imaginary point about nine inches above the road and waited. As the truck approached the firing pint, he saw that there were two black-uniformed men in the cab, the crumbs that they called Killers, four more armed men in the open truck-bed guarding ten sorry-looking men clad only in loincloths who were chained together by steel collars around their necks.

  As the front wheels of the truck passed his firing point, Vanderling pressed the trigger. “Snip!” he said, grinning.

  The rubber tires on their steel rims intersected the stationary snipgun beam. With a loud bang, both front tires blew. Then there was a jarring, scraping sound as the circular rims, truncated nine inches from the road by the snipgun beam, hit the concrete in a shower of sparks. Vanderling swiveled the snipgun rearward, and the rear tires blew, the rear rims were cut through, and the back of the truck hit the road like a ton of bricks, knocking prisoners and guards alike flat on their backs. Borne by its forward momentum, the truck skidded a few yards on its belly, then ground to a halt in a pool of oil.

  The moment the truck stopped sliding, the four Killers in the back leaped over the low sides, stood on the road, waving rifles around futilely, their eyes mad with rage, their jaws working convulsively.

  Still hidden in the grass, Vanderling hesitated long enough to notice that the Killers were all tall, lean, hard-looking men with receding hairlines and outthrust jaws, and that they carried blade-studded steel balls on the ends of steel rods dipped to their Sam Browne belts. Then he raised the snipgun higher, to the Killers’ neck level, pulled the trigger, and fanned the gun back and forth like a man watering a lawn with a hose.

  Shrill screams started, ended before they had properly began, became choked liquid burbles. Four heads teetered crazily on their necks for an instant, then toppled to the pavement. The headless bodies stood ludicrously for a few moments, fountains of bright blood spurting from the cleanly severed neck arteries. Then they crumpled and fell like ruined dolls.

  By this time, the two Killers in the cab had dismounted. As they stood there staring stupidly at the headless bodies of their comrades, Vanderling cut the pair of them neatly in two at the navel. They fell to the road, their arms clutching madly at their severed torsos, screamed horribly for a few moments, then were quiet.

  Vanderling patted the barrel of the snipgun approvingly, then stood up and trotted to the truck.

  In the rear of the truck, he found ten sorry-looking specimens of humanity. They were filthy, their near-naked bodies were covered with old scars and their ribs showed through their deeply t
anned skins. Either end of the chain that connected the collars around their necks was anchored to a bolt in the truck-bed.

  Hollow-eyed, phlegmatic, they stared uncomprehendingly at him, shuffling mutely like cattle in a corral.

  Vanderling leaped easily to the truck-bed, cut the chain at both ends with the snipgun, the beam slicing through the truck-bed as well, and deep down into the concrete and the earth beneath it.

  The Sangrans stared at the gun woodenly, their eyes bugging wildly. Otherwise, they reacted not at all.

  “Come on, damn you, up and out!” Vanderling shouted. “You’re free! Comes the Revolution! Move your asses, we don’t have all day. Let’s get the hell out of here!”

  A tall, gaunt, redhead stared at him. “Free…?” he muttered slowly, rolling the word on his tongue as if it were a morsel of some unfamiliar food.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you guys?” Vanderling snarled. “You like being chained up or something? Move it! You’re free! I’m freeing you. Move!”

  “Y’say we’re free…” the redhead said. “Y’a Brother?”

  “Can’t be a Brother,” another said. “Got no robe.”

  “Sure ain’t a Killer,” a third man said. “Look at his teeth. Got to be an Animal.”

  “Got a gun, can’t be an Animal,” the redhead insisted.

  “Never heard of no gun like that…”

  “What do you think this is, a goddamned coffee klatch?” Vanderling roared. “Get out of this truck and do it now, or I’ll slice you all to dog meat!” He waved the snipgun at them menacingly.

  The Sangrans shrugged collectively and climbed slowly down from the truck, still chained together at the neck. Vanderling was about to cut the chain that held them together like a string of grimy pearls, when he thought the better of it These were ten mighty weird bozos. Maybe they were morons or something, or maybe they were just plain fruitcakes. It wouldn’t hurt to keep ’em safely chained up till they were away from the scene of the ambush and he could find out what in hell was with them.