Read Online A Handful of Darkness by Philip K. Dick - Free Book Online Page A

said.
    Consciousness returned with a rush. Trent pulled himself violently awake, groping for his blaster. It .was morning. Grey sunlight filtered down through the trees. Around him shapes moved.
    The blaster… gone!
    Trent sat up, fully awake. The shapes were vaguely human—but not very. Bugs.
    “Where’s my gun?” Trent demanded.
    “Take it easy.” A bug advanced, the others behind. It was chilly. Trent shivered. He got awkwardly to his feet as the bugs formed a circle around him. “We’ll give it back.”
    “Let’s have it now.” He was stiff and cold. He snapped his helmet in place and tightened his belt. He was shivering, shaking all over. The leaves and vines dripped wet slimy drops. The ground was soft underfoot.
    The bugs conferred. There were ten or twelve of them. Strange creatures, more like insects than men. They were shelled—thick shiny chitin. Multi-lensed eyes. Nervous, vibrating antennae by which they detected radiation.
    Their protection wasn’t perfect. A strong dose and they were finished. They survived by detection and avoidance and partial immunity. Their food was taken indirectly, first digested by smaller warm-blooded animals and then taken as fecal matter, minus radioactive particles.
    “You’re a human,” a bug said. Its voice was shrill and metallic. The bugs were asexual—these, at least. Two other types existed, male drones and a Mother. These were neuter warriors, armed with pistols and foliage axes.
    “That’s right,” Trent said.
    “What are you doing here? Are there more of you?”
    “Quite a few.”
    The bugs conferred again, antennae waving wildly. Trent waited. The jungle was stirring into life. He watched a gelatin-like mass flow up the side of a tree and into the branches, a half-digested mammal visible within. Some drab day moths fluttered past. The leaves stirred as underground creatures burrowed sullenly away from the light.
    “Come along with us,” a bug said. It motioned Trent forward. “Let’s get going.”
    Trent fell in reluctantly. They marched along a narrow path, cut by axes some time recently. The thick feelers and probes of the jungle were already coming back. “Where are we going?” Trent demanded.
    “To the Hill.”
    “Why?”
    “Never mind.”
    Watching the shiny bugs stride along, Trent had trouble believing they had once been human beings. Their ancestors, at least. In spite of their incredible altered physiology the bugs were mentally about the same as he. Their tribal arrangement approximated the human organic states, communism and fascism.
    “May I ask you something?” Trent said.
    “What?”
    “I’m the first human you’ve seen? There aren’t any more around here?”
    “No more.”
    “Are there reports of human settlements anywhere?”
    “Why?”
    “Just curious,” Trent said tightly.
    “You’re the only one.” The bug was pleased. “We’ll get a bonus for this—for capturing you. There’s a standing reward. Nobody’s ever claimed it before.”
    A human was wanted here too. A human brought with him valuable gnosis, odds and ends of tradition the mutants needed to incorporate into their shaky social structures. Mutant cultures were still unsteady. They needed contact with the past. A human being was a shaman, a Wise Man to teach and instruct. To teach the mutants how life had been, how their ancestors had lived and acted and looked.
    A valuable possession for any tribe—especially if no other humans existed in the region.
    Trent cursed savagely. None? No others? There had to be other humans—some place. If not north, then east. Europe, Asia, Australia. Some place, somewhere on the globe. Humans with tools and machines and equipment. The Mine couldn’t be the only settlement, the last fragment of true man. Prized curiosities—doomed when their compressors burned out and their food tanks dried up.
    If he didn’t have any luck pretty soon…
    The bugs halted, listening. Their antennae twitched suspiciously.
    “What