'But there are other jobs-easier jobs,' she protested.

'We've shed our blood over this one,' Crazy said. 'When you spill your blood for a hunt, you're bound to get the Beast no matter what. It goes above revenge.'

She fluttered her downy blue wings, looked right through me like only she can. 'It's more than that to you, isn't it, Andy?'

'Yes,' I croaked. No use hiding anything from Lotus-not with eyes that enter the soul like hers do. 'Yes, I suppose it is. Though I don't know what.' Then I pa.s.sed out again.

Two days later.

All my wounds had healed under the speedheals. We had not seen the Beast since, though we were not inexperienced enough to think it had crawled away to die. That is a dangerous a.s.sumption in this profession; turn your back for even a second and bang! bang! We decided, instead, that it had returned to its lair, somewhere in the forest, to lick its wounds and heal itself. We had ceased to speculate about why I had been unable to kill it when I had the chance, for that was not a happy thing to speculate about. Too many bad dreams in something like that. We decided, instead, that it had returned to its lair, somewhere in the forest, to lick its wounds and heal itself. We had ceased to speculate about why I had been unable to kill it when I had the chance, for that was not a happy thing to speculate about. Too many bad dreams in something like that.

Leaving everything that could not be carried with relative ease, we struck out with inflatable mattresses, food, water, and guns. Most of all, guns. After establishing what our quarry's footprints were like (humanish, four-toed, long and wicked claws tipping each toe) from a set that led away from the clover patch fight scene in a limp pattern, we moved deeper into the woods. On the second day of the trek, we found where it had fallen and had lain for some time until it found the strength to go on. On the third day, we tracked it to the lip of the Harrisburg Crater-where the footprints ceased.

We stood there on the rim of the vast depression, staring across the table of nuclear gla.s.s that the triple-headed super-nuclear rocket had made. The crater, I knew from the maps, was two and a quarter miles in diameter. There was a lot of s.p.a.ce. Dotting it were thousands of bubbles in the gla.s.s. A great number of them were broken and led to the maze of uncharted tunnels and caves that lay under the floor of the crater. Apparently, in one of these caves, the Beast was licking its wounds-and waiting.

'How can we cover all that?' Crazy asked. 'It's big! And slippery!'

'We'll do it,' I said. I didn't want want to do it. I didn't know why I didn't order everyone to backtrack, to get the h.e.l.l out of there chop-chop, on the double. Lotus was right, of course: the reason was more than revenge against a dumb animal. For a moment, I felt like Hamlet on the castle ramparts, talking to a ghost. But that feeling pa.s.sed. My determination had something to do with that night when I could have killed it but did not. That night when I almost let it kill me. And why? And what about the other twenty-two? to do it. I didn't know why I didn't order everyone to backtrack, to get the h.e.l.l out of there chop-chop, on the double. Lotus was right, of course: the reason was more than revenge against a dumb animal. For a moment, I felt like Hamlet on the castle ramparts, talking to a ghost. But that feeling pa.s.sed. My determination had something to do with that night when I could have killed it but did not. That night when I almost let it kill me. And why? And what about the other twenty-two?

'I guess here is as good a place as any,' Lotus said. 'Let's make camp here.' She swung a hand around, indicating the thirty feet of hard-packed earth that separated the forest from the crater edge. Here and there, a few spa.r.s.e pieces of vegetation were trying to grow on the no-plant's-land between woods and gla.s.s. They weren't doing very well, but they made the bleakness a little less bleak.

'Here it will be,' I said, dropping my own gear. 'We'll search the caves tomorrow.'

Nightfall stole in, a black fog.

There were stars in the sky, but the greatest light show of all lay at our feet. For two and one quarter miles ahead, the nuclear gla.s.s shimmered with vibrant colors as it gave off the heat of the day. Blues chased reds across its surface while ambers danced with ebonies, locked arms with streaks of green.

I was sitting on the crater wall, dangling my legs, a hundred yards from the main camp. Crazy was back there still eating supper. His suppers lasted two hours, with no time wasted in those hundred and twenty minutes either. Lotus drifted down next to me, folded her tiny legs under her, and put her head on my shoulder. Her hair was cool and sweet-smelling. Also nice: it was black as the night and blew around my ears and chin and made me feel good.

'Beautiful, isn't it,' I said. There was a burst of orange rimmed with silver.

'Very,' she said as she tried to crawl even closer. She was our consolation. She held the team together. Crazy and I could not last a month without her. Briefly, I wondered how, when she consoled Crazy, they managed, what with his being so big and clumsy and her being so tiny, so fragile. But she never came back chipped or cracked, so maybe the lummox was gentler than he seemed.

'You scared?' I asked. She was trembling, and it was not cold.

'You know me.'

'We'll win.'

'You sound so sure.'

'We have to. We're the good guys.'

I felt something wet on my neck, and I knew it was a tear. I shifted a little and cuddled her and said now-now and other things. Mainly, I just sat there being uncomfortable and d.a.m.ned happy all at once. Lotus almost never cries. When she does, she is worried about one of us-really worried. Then you can't stop her until she's dried out. You can only sit and hold her. And when she's finished, she never mentions the fact that she was crying; you better never mention it either, if you know what's good for you. worried. Then you can't stop her until she's dried out. You can only sit and hold her. And when she's finished, she never mentions the fact that she was crying; you better never mention it either, if you know what's good for you.

So, she was crying. And I was cuddling.

And Crazy was suddenly screaming-

V.

A very long time ago, as I had sat at the upstairs window before my mother made me leave our house, there had come two giant red eyes out of the night mists. They had been as large as saucers, casting scarlet light ahead of them, focusing on the house. It was a jeep covered with sheets and red cellophane and painted to look like a dragon by the Knights of the Dragon to Preserve Humanity. I thought it very funny that grown people should play at such ridiculous games.

Below me now, in the pit that had suddenly opened and gulped down Crazy, a spider, spindly legs bracing it a hundred feet down, was looking up with crimson headlamp eyes. Only there was something worse than a jeep behind these lamps. Much worse.

'Crazy!' I shouted.

'Here. To the left!'

I took the lantern Lotus brought from the camp, lowered it into the steeply sloping tunnel. The spider backed off another fifty feet but no more. Probably a female. Females are more fearless than their mates. Branching off from the main fall were several side tunnels, all filled with sticky eggs and webbing.

'It must have burrowed close to the surface,' Crazy shouted. 'I just stepped on the ground. It wiggled, gave, and fell through.'

He had rolled into one of the side tunnels, was caught up in the stickiness and eggs. The web was probably a different variety than the one the other spider had used to entrap us earlier. This one was for protecting eggs and would be even more thick and gummy. The mother spider fidgeted below, wanting to come charging up to protect her eggs, frightened only for a moment. 'Lotus!' I shouted. 'Climbing cleats and your knife. Hurry!'

She lifted away, was back almost instantly. I slipped the cleat attachments onto my boots, took her knife to cut steps into the tunnel wall. 'I'm coming down, Crazy.'

'What about the b.i.t.c.h below?'

'She looks scared.'

'She'll get over that. Stay out.'

'Crazy, you're crazy.' I crawled into the sloping cave, hating to turn my back on the spider but unable to negotiate the steep pa.s.sage headfirst. Every moment I felt as if she were rushing up the tunnel, mouth silently open and ready to kill. Painstakingly, I moved down.

Looking over my shoulder for brief moments, I could see the red eye watching. They never blinked. No lids.

I reached the side cave where Crazy was trapped, dirt packed so tightly under my fingernails that they ached. I hacked away the web, balled it up, and stuffed it behind him. I didn't want to drop it down the main shaft for fear the jolt would bring the spider plunging upward, stomach open. When I had his head free and his arms loose, he was able to help himself. In short time, he had stripped away the remainder of the sticky thread.

'You first,' I said. 'Can you make it up?'

'These hooves give perfect balance.' He kicked out of the egg pocket and started up the incline as if it were just another walkway through some charming garden. I waited until he was almost out, then launched myself on the climb. But all this action had shaken the mother spider to action. I could hear the scuttling of her feet coming up fast.

'I can't shoot, Andy!' Lotus shouted. 'You're in the way!'

I started to say something (something probably better left unsaid) when the furry legs touched me around the waist, pulled me loose. It was hardly any use fighting the tremendous power behind her grasp. But she wasn't prepared for all of my weight. She wobbled under me, collapsed, and we both crashed down the slope, twisted around a bend-all her legs kicking furiously-and dropped twenty feet onto a cavern floor.

I was on top of the spider.

She was screaming. G.o.d, the screams. They boomed from the walls. Even the echoes threw themselves back and reechoed. Then, despite the pounding of my heart, I saw that this place seemed to be a nest and that more than one spider, judging from excretion, inhabited it. We were alone now, but her screams would soon draw others.

I felt something wet, scrambled for a handhold on the flailing Beast, looked down. My foot was dangling inside her gut! She had rolled onto her back in the fall, and I was mounted on her deadly underside. The mandibles quivered. I jerked my foot back, discovered the knife still clutched in my hand. I was shaking violently-so violently that I feared I might drop my only weapon.

The head reared up as she tried to throw me off. I struck for the eye as Lotus had done earlier, pulled back the blade, was rewarded with gushing blood. She screamed even louder than the impossibly loud screams already filling the cavern, rolled about in fury. I was tossed free, thrown against the wall where I found a large boulder to crawl behind.

The spider did her death dance, flashing legs awkwardly akimbo.

I remained hidden in the rocks, holding tight to an aching arm as if the pressure of my hold would drive the pain off, afraid to look at my wound until I saw the Beast was dead and would never again be rushing me. It took her some time to die, but when she did expire it was with a great deal of thrashing and frothing. When I finally looked at my arm, I could see the reason for the pain: a small piece of white bone sticking through the flesh, white and spotted with blood. Head spinning roller-coaster mad, I felt more than a thousand years old-older, indeed, than the universe itself.

Above, from the tunnel that the spider and I had fallen through, came a noisy scuffling. My head spun even faster, my flesh burned with fever, and visions of the Beast's mate swam through my head to magnify my fears. I got to my feet with a bit of difficulty and felt as if I were walking on a thin cushion of air instead of the rock floor. My eyes were flaming coals someone had dropped into raw sockets, while my head was made of ice-and melting. I staggered out of the large cavern, moving to a tunnel that glittered with light at its end, hoping that this-in some way-would lead me out. Light meant goodness, did it not? Light meant freedom-or is there a brilliant light at the end of death?

The stones seemed to melt and re-form around me. My teeth chattered in my ice head; I perspired.

The end of the tunnel was a branching-off place where the walls became gla.s.s and wound erratically under the floor of the vast Harrisburg Crater. Turquoise and crimson ceilings flashed over me, reflecting me as colored mirrors might. The walls threw my image back at me in various shades and sizes, shapes and textures. It was much like a mirror hall at a carnival. Reality was pushed even further from my mind, and delusion and fever grew stronger. I moved to the right with a thousand copies of myself, a shabby army in the corridors of eternity.

My arm had become a flaming tree, its roots grown deep into my chest, constricting my lungs. Panting, I moved on through the winding gla.s.s hallways, sane enough to know who I was and that I must get out, but just delirious enough not to think of turning back and retracing my steps. In this manner, I came across the Beast in its lair. The The Beast. Beast.

The tunnel ended in a room where gra.s.ses had been dragged in, where bits of rotting flesh from past meals littered the floor grotesquely. There was a natural stairway, uneven, sharply edged, but usable, breaking one wall. It led to the ceiling where a half-moon aperture offered escape to the crater floor overhead. I felt like a man trapped beneath an ice-covered river who finally sees a thin patch overhead. But lying between that escape route and me was the Beast. And, though dying, it was not yet dead.

I stopped, swayed crazily. For a moment, I thought I would fall over onto the mutant and lay immovable while he mauled me. With a great deal of effort, I forced away an almost imperceptible fraction of the fogginess, just enough to keep tenuous control of my body. The Beast watched me from where it lay, its ma.s.sive head raised from the floor, its single red eye a hideous lantern, bright even in this sparkling room of fantasy walls. It grunted, tried to move, howled. Its leg was a mess. That was the work of my vibra-pistol. It shoved its other leg under itself, pulled to a sitting position, all its weight on the good arm and good leg. It snarled. I saw that, even in its weakness, the Beast was going to attempt to leap.

I looked about for a chunk of loose gla.s.s, found one the size of my fist. I bent, growing dangerously dizzy with the effort, picked it up, weighed it in my palm. I brought my healthy arm back, heaved the gla.s.s at the Beast's head. It struck its chest instead, knocking it onto its behind. The Beast struggled to a sitting position while I searched for another chunk of gla.s.s: the battle of the invalids, nonetheless deadly for its absurdity.

The walls shone, seemed to quickly approach and recede when I moved too much*

I found a sharp-edged piece, brought it back to throw.

And the Beast spoke. 'Make Caesar shut up!' it said. 'Make him shut up!'

I almost dropped the rock. The walls wiggled crazily. The Beast kept repeating the blasphemy over and over. Then it leaped.

The force of its impact was not as great as it would have been had the Beast been able to use both feet to propel itself. Still, it bowled me over, raked claws down the side of my face as we rolled. I kicked free, rolled across the floor to the far wall. Above was the exit.

'Andy!' Lotus and Crazy appeared at the entrance to the room. It had been they, not the spider's mate, who had been scrambling down that inclined tunnel!

'Make Caesar shut up!' the Beast recited. 'Make him shut up!'

The two of them froze. Crazy had his gun drawn and was about to fire. Now he left the weapon dangling from his fingers, unable to fire upon something that seemed human.

'Kill it!' I shouted.

'It's intelligent,' Lotus said, rubbing her tiny hands together.

'It is like h.e.l.l!'

'It's more than an animal,' Crazy said, the gun useless in his hand.

'It got that phrase from me!' I shouted hoa.r.s.ely, and I suppose a little insanely. 'I said that when I shot it in the woods. It must have been speaking then-something it picked up from a previous bounty hunter-and I thought it was intelligent. That's why I couldn't shoot it again. Man does not kill man. But this isn't a man in any way! This is a myna bird!'

'It got that phrase from me!' the Beast shouted, struggling across the floor toward me, throwing a few cautious glances behind it at Crazy and Lotus. But its old trick was working. It was immobilizing the enemy. Crazy and Lotus couldn't wipe out all those centuries of pacifism against other humans in one short moment. It talked; that might make it human. And they could not shoot it. 'It got that phrase from me!' it said again.

'See!'

'See!' it echoed.

Lotus grabbed the gun from Crazy, aimed. But she could not fire. 'Here, Andy!' And she tossed it over the Beast. It clattered against the wall five feet away. Wearily, I started after it, every inch a mile to me.

And the Beast was on me.

I kicked out with a last ounce of strength, caught it on the chin, stunned it. But it recovered and lunged again, thrusting claws deep into my hips and twisting them. I howled and found another ounce of strength despite what my body told me about this being the end. I kicked it again, pushed myself ahead a few more inches. My fingers slipped over the gun. It was a hard and rea.s.suring feeling. I seemed to draw strength from the cold metal. Bringing it around, the barrel centered on the brutish face, I choked as my finger wrapped the trigger.

'See!' he shouted, reaching a long, hairy arm out for me.

Myna bird? Could I be certain?

The arm brushed my chest.

Strange scenes of a house afire, of a woman burning, of people turning into animals flashed through my mind. Noses became snouts everywhere I looked* I pulled the trigger, saw his face go up in a red fountain, and collapsed backward into darkness.

When I came to, it was to see a blue sky overhead, trees flashing by on both banks, and blue water underneath. Crazy had broken the top from one of the gla.s.s bubbles, had used it as a boat, placing it in the small river that drifted through Congressman Horner's ranch. This would be a much swifter route than the one by which we had come.

'How are you feeling?' Lotus asked, rubbing my forehead.

'Relieved,' I croaked.

'I know,' she said, running a tiny hand over my cheeks.

'No. No, you don't,' I said, turning my face to the gla.s.s bottom where the water was revealed in depth.

THREE: DIMENSIONAL LADDER.

Ye shall know antiquity floating dragon-head on new waters*

I.