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.He cradled it to his cheek, crooning.' I can maim and I can kill With my zen gun."So ran the refrain that passed through his mind whenever he took the gun in his hand.He had learned many tricks with it by now.It did not have to kill every time it fired.Its power was variable.It could just cripple—or simply hurt.Pout liked it when it hurt.He had set the studs for pain.He pointed the gun.He squeezed the trigger stud.He did not have to aim with any accuracy.His thoughts did the targeting; he had learned that long ago.The pink stitching wavered leisurely through the air.It entered the window, sparked on the girl's breasts.First the left breast, then the right breast, then the left breast.prodding at the nipples.The girl doubled up, her mouth agape in a soundless grimace of agony, clutching at herself, hitting at her breasts as if she could strike off the pain.But she could not strike it off.Pout kept pointing the gun, directing the stitches with his mind.Left breast, right breast.His sparse pelt became damp.Unlike other primates, Nascimento's chimera had both sweat glands and fur.At last she managed to get her breath long enough to scream, and in a minute other people rushed into the room.Pout slid back down the bank, put away his gun, and began to lope towards the horizon, keeping low and hiding himself behind the tall tufts of coarse grass.Once he paused.He thought he saw the glimmerings of a falling star in the sky overhead, but then it turned into a white dot which drifted down and finally disappeared.When he was out of sight of the village he slowed his pace.It was an hour before he returned to his group of followers.Apart from the kosho, who as usual sat cross-legged off by himself, they were gathered round a wood fire.It was not yet dark, and Pout saw straight away that a stranger sat among his half dozen slaves.He bared his teeth briefly, a reflex of uncertainty, and put his hand to his bib to feel the comforting stock of his gun.At his approach, they rose.The stranger was staring at him.It was a female, a young woman with a pale, blunt face and black cropped hair.She had a restless, energetic way of moving, a way of looking at one directly, that disconcerted him a little.She wore a form-hugging body garment of sheened black and silver, calf-high black boots, and a wide waist belt that held, among other things, what looked like a scangun.Although bare-headed, she carried a transparent globe helmet in one hand."You're Pout," she said at once, not waiting for him to speak.Lacey, the prairie bum who, after the kosho and the boy had been Pout's first convert, sidled close to Pout and spoke softly in his humble, apologetic way."She just came in," he mumbled."Some kinda shipwreck.dropped outa the sky in an escape capsule.She gave us some grub." He held out his hand, offering a stick of emergency rations.Pout took it, sniffed, then bit.It was chewy, if not too appetising.He gulped it down, then licked his fingers.The girl, Hesper Positana, gazed at him with distaste.Her survival egg had come down a couple of miles away.She had been trying to make for what looked like some inhabited structures on a plain to the west, but hadn't quite made it—the rotors had no power of their own but came down sycamore-seed style, using the early part of the drop to store energy in a flywheel.You were supposed to use this for a few miles of powered flight at a few thousand feet high.In the end, when she started to lose height, she had spotted the smoke from the campfire.She was almost beginning to wish she hadn't, because she had landed among a bunch of very odd people.First there was Lacey, some sort of psychological inadequate who she gathered was in the habit of wandering the grasslands that dominated this part of the planet, living off any small animals he could trap.Of the others, four seemed to be brothers who had been thrown out of their community for unspecified crimes, and were now looking for somewhere else to live.Only the boy, Sinbiane, appeared to be normal.Most peculiar of all was the one who sat by himself in the gathering dark.He was a kosho.Very vaguely, she had heard something about koshos, but had never expected to see one.Lacey had told her their leader was a chimeric ape called Pout.They had spoken of him with a sort of grumbling admiration, all except Sinbiane, who had said openly to her: "Pout is a bad creature, lady.You should go away.He holds these people under subjection with his gun [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]