Stinger

by Robert McCammon

The Great Fried Empty could suck the brains out of a kid’s skull and replace it with dope smoke, could bum out the ambition and dry up the hope, and what almost killed Tom was the fact that he’d fought it for eleven years but the Great Fried Empty had always been winning.

You live your own style, not somebody else’s.” “It’s hard to do.” “I know. But that’s how you become your own man, instead of an echo.”

These creatures, she mused, must have a deep kinship with pain, because it was ever-present.

The act of feeding on this world was a repetitive labor of balance, visual acuity, and sheer willpower.

It seemed there was always some discomfort on this world; perhaps, in some strange way, discomfort was this species’ prime motivation.

there was something indescribably lonely about the human voice, like a call from darkness into darkness.

“The other creature—the one Daufin calls Stinger—uses a much more aggressive process.” Understatement of the year, he thought. “I believe it killed Dodge Creech—or stored him somewhere—and what you saw was its simulation of him, just like that flying bastard simulated our helicopter.” “Simulated? Is that like a mutant or somethin’?” “Like a … a replicant,” Rhodes explained. “An android, for want of a better word, because I think part of that weird chopper was alive. Probably the thing you saw was alive too—but just as much of a machine as a living creature. Like I say, I don’t know how it works, but I think one thing’s particularly interesting: if Stinger did create a replicant of Dodge Creech, it screwed up on the teeth and fingernails.”

Daufin and Stinger are two different forms of life, from different environments. One transfers itself in and out of a black sphere, and the other travels underground and makes replicants like this one”—he glanced distastefully at the false hand—“so it can move above ground.

The dogs were his friends, his good-luck charms, his bodyguards, his power translated into animal form. Screw humans, he thought. None of them were worth a shit. Only the dogs mattered.

“I escaped from a prison world,” she said. “I entered the body of a guard and stole a garbage scow. That’s what they construct there. Stinger’s masters want me returned to”—here she encountered another difficulty of translation—“Rock Seven,” was the best she could do. “Sounds like a radio station,” Rick said. “Rock Seven is an approximate name. It does not translate. Nothing can live there outside the prison.” A grim smile crept across her mouth, and the eyes in the child’s face looked very old. “It’s a caldron of murderers, the diseased, plunderers, and pirates—and even criminals like me.”

“What crime did you do?” “I sang. Stinger’s masters decreed that to be against the law on my world.” “You sang? Is that all? What’s so bad about that?” “It was the song.” Now Daufin’s eyes had a glint of steel in them. “The song stirred destruction. It was an old song, one almost forgotten. But I knew it, and I had to sing it. If I didn’t, all my tribe would die.” Her eyes narrowed, and the flesh seemed to tighten across the facial bones. For an instant Cody and Rick thought they could see another face behind Stevie Hammond’s; this one was leather tough, frightening in its intensity. It was the face of a warrior, not a child. “I’ll get home,” she vowed quietly. “I’m not a savior, and I never asked to be. But I’ll get home or I’ll die trying, and Rock Seven will never hold me. Never.”

“It ends here,” Daufin said. “Right here. I’ve escaped from Rock Seven twice before. Twice before they sent Stingers after me and took me back. They kept me alive because they wanted to ‘study’ me.” She smiled bitterly, and there was rage in it too. “An indignity—a needle to watch your bowels move, a chemical to malform your dreams. Nothing is sacred, nothing is private. Your life is measured in reactions to pain, freezing, and burning.” Her hands curled into fists at her sides. “You are twisted until the screams run out. And all that time of ‘studying’ you know your world is being eaten away to the heart.”

“Stinger is not only a bounty hunter of escaped criminals. Stinger hunts planets for bounty as well. When Stinger returns to Rock Seven, a report will be given on this planet’s inhabitants, technological levels, and defense systems. According to that report, Earth may be added to the list of planets scheduled for invasion by”—a translation problem—”the House of Fists. Stinger’s masters. I don’t think it will be very long before they send the first fleet.”

“All life but their own is repugnant to the House of Fists. They can’t stand knowing that somewhere a life form flourishes without their permission. They will come here, take prisoners for study, gather whatever minerals might strike their interest, and either introduce a disease into the ecosystem or conduct mass executions. That is their pleasure and purpose of existence.”

“All are Stinger,” Daufin said quietly, standing rigid while she endured whatever it was Jessie was doing. It seemed to be giving Jessie pleasure. “Stinger creates them, and they become Stinger.” Tom didn’t quite follow that. “Like robots, is that right?” “Living mechanisms. They think with Stinger’s brain, and they see with Stinger’s eyes. Stinger hears and speaks through them. And kills through them too.”

“Somethin’ mighty big’s been roaming around under the streets,” Cody said. “Is that one of Stinger’s machines too?” “No,” Daufin said. “That is Stinger itself. Stinger captures and stores bodies for duplication. Signals—you would call them blueprints—pass from Stinger to machines on the ship and there the replicants are made.”

“Stinger’s masters. A race that worships violence; their religion is the conquest of worlds, and their entrance into the afterlife is determined by the deaths of what they consider lower beings.” A faint, gritty smile surfaced. “Wild animals like me.”

“And why don’t you crawl up your ass and pull the hole in after you?”