And then, when the Chee had destroyed the Howlers, what would they do next? What do you do with a species devoted to war? What do you do, once you've created an awesome weapon and turned it loose?

  The Pemalites would have had to be sure they could rein in the Chee. They would have had to be sure they could control them. Turn them off.

  Just as Crayak would need a way to control the Howlers.

  The Howlers weren't androids, so how did Crayak ensure that they would never get out of control? And since their job was to murder and murder and murder without pity, what would Crayak even think "out of control" would mean?

  Out of control for a Howler would be not killing.

  An out-of-control Howler would be a Howler who felt remorse. Pity. Kindness. That would be intolerable to Crayak.

  I laughed bitterly. Nice speculation. But my friends were probably all dead. And I was alone. And all I could hope for now was to live long enough to get home again.

 

 

 

 

  he said with a laugh.

 

  Tobias sounded less ebullient.

  I pressed, unable to fully believe it.

  Tobias laughed.
  hologram and the Howlers seemed stumped. But I guess they figured out we weren't really Iskoort, so it was okay to attack. By then we were assorted bugs crawling around the trees. Guide found us another place. Wait till you see. How about your Howler?>

  I said.

  Fortunately, Tobias had kept track of where he was. He easily led the way back to a level three stories down from where we'd been.

  This level was different than any we'd seen thus far. It seemed to be an industrial district. The separation from the floor above was several hundred feet. The predominating colors were gray and brown. And the factories, if that's what they were, looked as drab and windowless and shabby as any factories on Earth.

  Here, as we flew above them, we met a new variation on the Iskoort. These had longer, stronger arms, more massive shoulders, and their eyes were hooded with thick, retractable lids.

  There were very few out and about. Those I saw, though, seemed boisterously happy and oblivious to the grimness around them. But their whining diaphragms were so loud that a small group of them whining together could make you long for earplugs.

  We circled around a few times, looking for

  Howlers. But they were not in sight. We landed. I demorphed and went inside.

  I thought I was past the emotion. I thought I was over that feeling of hollowness I'd felt, imagining them all gone. But then there they were.

  Rachel scowling. Marco looking down at the floor, withdrawn. Ax off by himself, still no doubt blaming himself. Erek with his hologram turned off, an unemotional android face.

  And Cassie.

  Ax cried, the first to see me.

  Cassie was on her feet and running toward me, and I was running to her, and I wasn't past any emotion, I was exploding with emotion.

  Cassie jumped into my arms and I wrapped her up tight and before I knew it I was kissing her on her lips and she was kissing me back.

  "It's about time," Rachel grumbled.

  At least Cassie and I provided Marco with material. It took him precisely three seconds after I parted from Cassie, embarrassed and amazed.

  He held out his arms to me and said, "What, no kiss for me?"

  I would not have believed I could feel like a dork in the middle of all the other feelings I was dealing with, and in the middle of an abject disaster of a battle, but I guess embarrassment and awkwardness are always with us.

  "No?" Marco said, looking puzzled. "I guess I'll have to turn to Rachel." He went for her, arms out, lips puckered.

  "Gee, Marco, what do you think the odds are

  I'll kiss you? Slim, none, or I'll-break-both-your-arms?"

  I looked around at our latest home. It was a large open space, maybe three stories high, about the size of a basketball court. Crammed into that gloomy cube were an amazing array of machines. Some like giant jackhammers, some like steel octopi, others weirdly like merry-go-rounds with elaborate, sharp-edged tools instead of brightly colored horses.

  Nothing was working. There was dust everywhere.

  "Abandoned factory?" I asked Guide.

 

  I sighed. I hesitated. I shot a look at Marco.

  "Oh, you'll want to hear this," he said.

  "What are the spirits of fictional characters?"

  Guide whined in what I took to be a humorous way.

  "Fictional characters," I said. "Okay."

 
  But the Worker Guild cannot agree on a fair price, so . . .>

  "Makes perfect sense," I said.

  "In a loony bin," Rachel said.

  We all fell silent for a while. The rush of being reunited was wearing off. We were remembering reality.

  Tobias said.

  "Swell," Marco muttered. "Make it seven to two and I'd still bet on them."

  There was muttered agreement.

  "I have a new morph," I said.

  Tobias asked.

  "Yeah. On the way ... on the way down, I acquired the Howler. It's not enough, but it may give us an edge. If we have an overall plan."

  "Do you have a plan?" Erek asked.

  I considered. Did I? I had bits and pieces. Guesses. Speculation. Intuitions.

  I shrugged. "Yeah. I guess I do."

  Marco grinned. "Kiss him again, Cassie. It seems to help."

  They all waited expectantly. I bowed my head and tried to bring together all that I had learned about the Howlers. I felt like I had a bunch of jigsaw pieces and no picture to work from.

  "Okay, jump in if you have anything to add. I could be totally wrong. One: The Howlers must have some kind of collective memory. The memories

  Erek absorbed were of events going back thousands of years and covering dozens of invasions. No biological creature lives that long. And we know the Howlers are biological because I acquired one. So somehow, the Howlers are designed to share a single memory. What these seven Howlers ... six ... learn here will be conveyed to all the rest of the species. That way all battle experience is available to all warriors."

  Rachel nodded. "No wonder they never lose."

  "Yeah, but that brings up something else. See, no one wins all the time. Not for thousands of years. It's not possible. Muhammad AN lost. Michael Jordan lost. No one wins every time."

  "But the Howler memories I absorbed show no memory of defeat," Erek pointed out.

  "Yeah. Exactly," I said. "Exactly. Guide?"

 

  "When you view memories - I mean in the normal way, not like Erek did for us, turning it into a hologram - how is it done?"

  Guide emitted a low diaphragm whine and said,

  "And these memory headsets work on all species?"

  Guide

  said.
  "I'm guessing the Howlers don't indulge," Cassie said.

  Guide spread his hands and increased the grating noise from his diaphragm.
  I nodded. "Good. Good. Okay. Now we need a volunteer for an extremely dangerous mission. We're going to need a rabbit to draw the hounds to us." I shot a look at Rachel and slowly shook my head no. Her mouth was already open to volunteer. She closed it and looked puzzled.

  Ax said from across the room.

  Rachel made a little half-smile and nodded imperceptibly.

  "Swell," Marco said impatiently. "So Ax is going to get himself killed and we all agree the Howlers don't like to buy memories to watch on their VCRs. How does any of this let us take out these six Howlers?"

  "We don't take out the six Howlers," I said. "Crayak does."

  The place we were in was all wrong for the trap. We needed Iskoort around us. We had to make the rules of engagement work for us. I explained it to Guide. He wanted to get paid more. We were running up a big bill, and we might well get killed before we could sell him our valuable memories.

  "Don't worry," I said. "That's the next thing we do: make a complete copy of our memories."

 
  "Not more hair?"

  he said.
  possess what is absolutely unique. No one has a human body part or organ.>

  "Yeah, and it's going to stay that way," I said. "You can have Marco's hair."

  "Say what?"

 

  "No. No body parts. We had a deal."

  Guide asked, lowering his whine to an annoying whimper.

  "You want our bodies?" I demanded, shocked, despite the fact that I had bigger problems to worry about. "If you were doing organ transplants to save lives, yeah, but just so you can stick us in big pickle jars and charge admission to see the human freaks? I don't think so."

  "I have something to sell," Erek said. "I will create a schematic of my holographic technology. You can build your own emitters."

  This was apparently such a bonanza that Guide stopped whining for several seconds. He barely managed to say,

  Marco rolled his eyes. "You know, Guide is going to own this planet by the time he's done."

  Guide led us to a different level. This time we went up. And this time we took an elevator.

  "Elevators! You have elevators?" Marco raged. "We're traipsing up and down stairs and you have elevators?"

  Guide

  said.

  We emerged several floors above the one where we'd first appeared. It was just what I needed: narrow walkways between tall residential buildings with shops on the ground level. Iskoort crammed everywhere. Iskoort mostly of a new type: Shopper Iskoort.

  "My people!" Rachel cried in delight. "At last I have a true homeland!"

  "They shop?" I asked Guide. "That's it? They shop?"

  Guide said.

  "Exactly," Rachel agreed.

 

  "Guide, you are finally making sense," Rachel said with great satisfaction.

  We went to an empty store at the end of a long, narrow street. The previous business had moved out, leaving nothing but empty shelves behind.

  "Okay. This will do," I said. "Now. How do we get the word to the Howlers that we're here?"

  Guide said.

  Tobias said.

  "Hey, don't diss my brothers and sisters of the Shopper Guild," Rachel said with mock ferocity.

  "Okay, let's get this in gear," I said. "Guide? We have the memory players?"

 

  "Ax? You ready?"

  he said.

  "Don't call me Prince. And come here for a minute." I went into an empty corner with him. "Ax, maybe I'm wrong, but you still seem to be chafing over that first battle."

  he said simply.

  "You came back."

  he repeated harshly.

  "You were the only one not in morph. You and Tobias. And he was in the air, not close to that howling noise. Does it occur to you that maybe the Howler's howl is specially designed to affect the brains of sentient creatures? I mean, the physical brain, the gray matter - or whatever color yours is?"

  He shrugged impatiently, a gesture he'd picked up from humans.

  "Listen, Ax, the Howlers are a biological weapon designed to kill sentient species. When they were designed, when Crayak was coming up with that howl, he'd have fine-tuned it to have an especially terrifying effect on complex, sentient brains. I had a tiger brain and it nearly destroyed me. You had your own, very smart, very aware, very complex brain. Exactly what the howl was designed to attack."

  Ax didn't accept what I was saying. But he didn't dismiss it totally, either. He seemed to fidget, like he wished the conversation was over.

  I sighed. I'd said all I could say. Ax needed to do something to wipe away what he saw as a terrible stain.

  "Okay, Ax. It's time to get set. But you better remember one thing: Your job is to get out of this alive. If I'm really your prince, I'll give you an order: You do not have permission to get yourself killed. No matter how heroic you think it would be."

  It took less than an hour.

  Tobias, floating high above the narrow streets, saw them burst at a run from the stairs. They looked around, knowing the floor we were on, but not the building.

  We didn't want them having time to plan. We wanted to use their blood-lust and rage.

  Down the street, seemingly oblivious, walked Ax. Tobias reported the scene by thought-speak.

 

  Then,
  him. Too many Iskoort in the way. Oh, man! He's too ... They see him! Ax-man, run! Run!>

  I looked at Cassie and the others. "It's time. I have to do this."

  I blocked images of Ax from my mind. Images of him racing, dodging, weaving through the Iskoort crowds. Images of the Howlers bounding after him.

  Instead, I focused on a different image: the Howler I had acquired. I formed the image in my mind and I felt the changes begin.

  "Rachel," I said, while I was still human, "you know what to do. If I get out of control, can't control the morph. If I start that howl . . . you'll have to do it."

  Rachel had morphed to grizzly bear. She stood directly behind me. Her two massive front paws, with claws that could flay the bark off a tree, lay on my shoulders.

  If I lost control of the morph, Rachel would . . . would do what she had to do. Quickly. Before I could hurt anyone.

  As backup, Marco was in gorilla morph. His fist, as big as my head, and powered by enough muscle to knock a hole in a wall, was cocked a foot from my face.

  Tobias yelled.

  The Howlers could not shoot, not in a crowd of Iskoort. Rules of engagement. Nor could they use their howls, not without possibly killing Iskoort.

 

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