Star quest

this time. In his ear, really. For a moment the world opened up again. The white-eyed boy was kneeling on the ground, the sled upset beside him. Hunk's tentacles were throbbing, wiggling. Hunk was screaming!
    A lightningbolt smashed!
    And another!
    Out of the mists she came
…
    He wanted to violate—
    Hunk's screams had been but a prelude to the latest from the boy. It covered all ranges of a scream. It vibrated on every decibel. It was a million-billion screams careening out of the void, smashing upon the rocks of his ears…
    A lightningbolt smashed!
    Naked, she—
    But the dreams were not holding. They receded like the tide, weaker each time, coming in less and less. He wished Hunk would stop screaming.
    A lightning—
    And out of the mist-Naked, she turned and—
    And yet anoth—
    The scream of all voices ceased and with it ceased every scrap of nightmare, every vestige of dream. Groggily, he looked about. The others were just coming to their senses too. Half a dozen tanks were rumbling across the sand, moving in under the screen they thought the boy was still putting up.
    "Shell them!" he cried at the Jumbo.
    Raising its barrels and launch tubes, the robot rapid-fired grenades and gas shells into the tankers, puffing them to ashes, smashing down the wall of the city and driving the other guards back into the heart of the capital, away from the walls.
    He felt Hunk's tentacles begin to loosen. For the first time since the boy had attacked, he twisted his head to look at the Mutie. There was blood dribbling from his lips. Tohm dropped to his knees and lifted Hunk off, laid him gently on the ground. The others were gathering around. Hunk's lids were heavy, blotting out half of his eyes. Blood seeped from his mouth, out both ears. He was pale. He was dying.
    Tohm felt the tears coming now. Fish had been nothing to him. Fish was withdrawn, a loner. It had been a blessing for Seer—this thing called death. But Hunk… He wanted to wade through the rubble of the city and slit the throat of every guard he saw. Rage boiled within him, fired his basest fires. And still he cried; with all the rage at hatred, the tenderness still surged to the surface.
    Blood gurgled in a steadier stream from the lips.
    "Hunk, my God, who was he?"
    "He wasn't the same boy," Hunk said thickly.
    "Who?"
    "A… Mutie."
    "But he was working against us!"
    Hunk coughed clots of red, wheezed. "Tohm, can you imagine a Mutie born without a body? No, I'm not delirous. The others will back me up. Born without a body, as a mind, as a pure entity with no flesh shell"
    "I don't understand."
    "The White Eyes always look like one another, always the same. He is a living dream maker, a psychedelic drug. He creates his pseudo-flesh, the body that we see, from the raw force of men's desires. Lust is the strongest of man's basic emotions, it seems. So strong in some men that the White Eyes can spin it into a body, take the energy of those thoughts and create a shell of substance. Men once had a drive for food that was their strongest thought pattern, but now no one is hungry. Once it was self-preservation, but that is not so strong anymore. A dead man can often be rebuilt. Death is not always permanent. Once it was family love.
    But that died long ago in most people as our modem world encouraged love of self. So now it is lust. The White Eyes are tangible lust creatures. When one is born, the men flock to the womb to give him flesh in return for his realistic dreams."
    He coughed more blood. He closed his eyes and breathed easily for a while. The Jumbo was still shelling the walls. "The boy clothes itself in their desires. But the form is always—always the same."
    Tohm looked up to the others. Mayna was crying. Corgi may have been: the yellow was a very different shade from what Tohm had ever seen in the radar patches. It may have constituted tears.
    "Too bad… about… Tamilee," Hunk said. Too bad, Tohm." And then he was gone:
no less a man in death than ever took a breath
. Tohm recognized that as a line from some poem he had picked out of the books in Triggy Gop's bowels. He removed his hand from the blood-covered chin and stood.
    "We had better go," Corgi said suddenly, turning away from the remains of Hunk. "They'll be calling in heavy artillery."
    Tohm ordered the Jumbo to follow.
    They trudged across the desert, suddenly very weary in all their well-shaped and misshapen bones.
    "He's here," Corgi said at last, brightening a bit.
    "The Old Man,"