Balook

by Piers Anthony

  He thought it was a moment of triumph, but suddenly he realized that he had made a ghastly mistake. The lawyer for the defense, Twild, looked horrified. Twild might have been well on the way to winning the case, but that was over now. Both judge and jury were staring at the monstrous animals with shock, fear and revulsion. Nothing, now, would convince them that Balook was just a harmless, misunderstood animal.

  MIOCENE

  9

  THE JURY WAS out, the rhinos were in new temporary stables, and Thor was under virtual house arrest. Because there really had been a fire, and Thor had no apparent motive to have started it, he had not been formally charged with breach of the peace. But while the arson investigation was going on, he was restricted.

  The worst of it was, he was separated from Balook. The judge had noted that all of the trouble Balook had gotten into in this region had been while Thor was with him. Again, there was no formal charge, but Thor was forbidden to join Balook until the facts had been ascertained to the judge's satisfaction. The judge, it seemed, was not an easy man to satisfy.

  Barb tried to cheer him, but there was little anyone could do to alleviate his gloom. He had been apart from Balook for so long, and then so actively rejoined, and now to be apart in the hour of crisis—the distress drove him relentlessly. He lost his appetite, he had trouble sleeping, and his entire existence seemed bleak and meaningless.

  "Is there anything I can do?" Barb asked worriedly.

  "No!" he snapped. "Just leave me alone!"

  She did not snap back. "I know how you feel. I've been through it myself. Without those lovely creatures, we aren't anything." She moved to the door.

  Thor looked up. "You do understand," he said. "Balook means more to me than anything. More than you. I guess you could hate me for that—"

  "Or love you," she said. "If you aren't true to your first loyalty, what else is worth anything? If you didn't love Balook, and I didn't love Theria—"

  "There wouldn't be anything between the two of us," he finished. "I guess most people would forget about the animals—"

  "Don't ever do that!" she exclaimed. "Then I'd hate you!"

  "I'm sorry I snapped at you," he said. "There is something you can do for me. Two things."

  "I know them both," she said. "First—" She pulled his head down and kissed him.

  "That was one," he agreed.

  "Second, I'll go talk to Balook for you."

  He nodded. "Tell him I miss him."

  "I will. Third—"

  "Third? You're not going to try to break me out of here!"

  "A gift for you. I thought it might help."

  "A gift?" He took the small package she presented.

  "A statue of Balook—maybe."

  "Maybe?"

  "That's right. Bye." She departed.

  He opened the package. It was a block of brown tallow.

  Thor shook his head. "A statue of Balook?" he asked the air, baffled.

  The box said SCULPTOR'S WAX.

  Then Thor smiled. A statue—if he could make it! What better way to spend his lonely hours, than to fashion a replica of his best friend, Balook. It would certainly give him something to do—something that was both a challenge, for he had never tried sculpting before, and a blessing, for the effort would surely occupy him for many hours.

  There was an instruction leaflet in the box. It told how this hard wax would soften when warmed by human hands, so that it could be worked. It could also be carved by a knife. But its main property was its ability to melt away cleanly when subjected to appropriate heat, leaving no residue. Thus it could be used as the base for the "lost wax" process of metal sculpture. This was a method by which the wax carving was enclosed in a kind of cast, and the cast was heated, and the wax melted and flowed out a hole, leaving only its shape inside the cast. Then the hot metal was poured in, and cooled and solidified, and the cast was broken open. Result: a metal sculpture just like the original wax one. Few sculptors actually carved metal these days; wax was easier, and of course this process made it possible to make many replicas.

  Thor was abruptly fascinated. A metal statue of Balook! Why not? He could have it with him forever, even if—

  He stifled that thought. Balook had to live, somehow!

  He took out the block of wax and ran his hands over it. The surface did soften, but not much. This was not clay, that could be scooped and kneaded readily!

  He took the knife that came with the set and carved a shaving from a corner. It was not wood, either, or soap. It had its own texture, distinct from anything else. It was intriguing, but took time to adjust to.

  Well, he would just have to plan his statue carefully, so as not to have to make any change in the main mass of wax. Part carving, part molding—it could be done, with patience. The great mass of the torso here, and the head here, and the legs—no, he'd better do them separately, and attach them after the rest was done, so that they would not break. And the head—attach that too. Otherwise there would be too much wax wasted, and the figure would be smaller than it had to be.

  Thor contemplated the wax for some time, judging how to use it economically, figuring out ratios. He tried to visualize the form within it: a rhino waiting to be expressed. Balook, in miniature, as if seen through a window. At last he decided he could make a statue six inches tall at the shoulder—inches, not centimeters— for a ratio of one inch to three feet. Skip would love such a ratio, for he used the archaic measures. Thor did not, but it just didn't work out so neatly in the metric system. He needed something simple, so that he could match it up readily by eye, and not have to bother with fractions. An inch a yard was simple. Call it an inch a meter, a compromise between systems. Just as Balook himself was a compromise between epochs.

  First he had to carve out the main torso, headless and legless. But he had to do it in such a way that the head could be conveniently formed from the largest cut-out chunk of wax.

  He assessed the situation, reconsidered, judged, and decided that his assessment was good. He proceeded to the carving, using first the knife for the broad outlines, then a dental pick Barb brought him for the finer work. The hours passed like phantoms.

  The body took shape, seeming almost to form itself from the wax. The separate head assumed character, guided by the same imperative. The legs began as crude sticks of wax, but became four stout, sculptured columns; he carved each to its proper proportions before attaching any. He made the tail similarly, and set it similarly aside.

  Now he focused on the detail of the head, making the ears perk up, the nostrils flare, the lips part. He drew down the folds of skin at the neck, and made the lines around the eyes. The character of Balook emerged from the wax, as if Thor were merely cleaning away a covering on the figure that had been present all the time.

  When all seemed right, he commenced the job of assembly. The head and neck attached to the body, and the line of their joining disappeared. The legs and tail attached to their respective moorings while the statuette lay on its side; the wax was stiff enough to maintain them this way without bending. He secured them as well as he could; it would not do to have Balook weak on his feet!

  At last he stood the assembled statue on its legs.

  They were uneven; he had to make adjustments. He made them, getting the footing firm. He removed his hands, and the statue stood alone for the first time.

  The figure of Balook seemed to waver. Thor shook his head violently. He couldn't fall asleep now; it was almost finished!

  But soon it wavered again. "Balook, stand still!" Thor exclaimed. "How do you expect me to fix your foot when you keep moving about?"

  Balook twitched his skin indifferently.

  "I wish you could talk," Thor said. "We'd have such a conversation!"

  But of course the rhino could not talk. Instead he reached up for a branch and tore it down with one good wrench of his neck. There was a small scar on that neck, where the smashed radio had been, and another on the belly.

  "Balook, we've
got to go away. Far away. Where they can never catch us."

  The animal merely browsed.

  "Come on." Thor walked beside him, tugging urgently at a fold of skin on the leg. "We don't have much time."

  Now Balook paid attention. Thor guided the huge hornless rhino through the big trees. Slowly the nature of the vegetation changed, and Thor headed directly into that change, still on foot, still leading Balook.

  The terrain became marshy, with many water plants. Balook didn't like it; his huge bulk needed solid footing. "Right; we'll turn back," Thor said. "Look for a way around this bog."

  Abruptly he stopped. Before them, rooting in the soil, was the strangest elephant Thor had ever seen. It had a normal proboscidean or elephantine body and head—but its trunk was so broad and flat it was as though the creature had been squashed by some horrendous accident. Its lower jaw was almost as long as the trunk. The two tusks, though about half a meter long, were dwarfed. Two tremendous shovel-like teeth projected from the tip of that jaw.

  Thor was back, away, and up on Balook's back before the first shock faded. Then he suffered a second shock, less horrendous, more profound. The shock of recognition.

  This was no elephant, but a weird extinct offshoot he had seen illustrated in paleontology texts. Platybelodon—a swamp-rooting relative.

  A contemporary of Baluchitherium, in the Miocene Epoch.

  He remembered Barb's reference to her dreams about Theria. About going back to the Miocene Epoch, meeting Baluchitherium's contemporaries. That was what he was doing now—with a vengeance!

  Did Balook see the same thing?

  From up on Balook's shoulder, Thor did not find the Platybelodon as imposing. It stood perhaps three and a half meters tall at the shoulder. He seemed to remember that they got larger later in the epoch. Anyway, they weren't aggressive. After looking briefly at Thor and Balook, the creature went back to its foraging. It used the two great front teeth to slice through water, vegetation and turf with singular dispatch, scraping up huge mixed mouthfuls that it then strained and sorted in its mouth. Its tongue, tusks and long lips separated solid from liquid, and organic from inorganic with marvelous facility. Watching it operate, Thor almost felt his own mouth watering for a taste of rich swamp muck.

  Actually, it was not so strange to see this elephantine cousin foraging in the swamp. The elephants had been swamp-dwellers first, and had gradually moved to drier pastures as the climate changed and the swamp dried out. Some of them had even become mountain dwellers, in America; those had survived almost until the coming of the white man. Their extinction was theoretically a mystery; actually man was responsible, as with so many other innocent species. Man was the worst scourge to come upon the animal kingdom since the devastation of the dinosaurs. It was a mistake to assume that the present distribution and habitat of any species represented its paleontological evolution. There had once been woolly mastodons and woolly rhinos, as well as the tropical species.

  Just as there had once been very large hornless rhinos like Balook. Could man also have—?

  No, that was before man's time. That was one crime Thor's species could not be charged with. That was a relief!

  They moved on, skirting the swamp. Thor swatted a mosquito; the insects did not seem to have changed much! He saw birds flitting through the foliage. He was no ornithologist, but they seemed familiar too, at least in general type. So did the trees and plants. All of which fitted together: the insects had evolved with the flowers, and the birds that preyed on insects followed right along.

  Now the forest thinned. Piglike animals trotted out of Balook's way, unhurriedly. There was a snarl, and Thor saw a cat with tusks: a sabertooth. It had been ready to pounce on a porcine straggler, being hidden downwind, until Balook had disturbed the herd. No wonder the big feline was angry!

  Farther along there was a huge dog, stout and muscular. In fact it was a bear-dog, for the bears had not quite separated from the canines in the early Miocene, and the raccoons had only just branched off. Thus these doglike carnivores were a very broad and important group.

  Thor felt nostalgia for this world that had existed twenty million years before he was born, and faded ten million years ago. Balook's world...

  "Let me down," Thor said. "I want to touch this realm, to experience it directly."

  Balook obligingly lowered his head, and Thor climbed down. He walked among the trees, just looking and breathing. Behind him, Balook reached up to crop a high branch.

  There was a surly grunt. Thor stopped. Before him a pig stood at bay—but what a pig! It was about one and two thirds meters tall at the shoulder, and three long. Thor placed it: Entelodon, another Old World Oligocene specimen. Part of Balook's world, of course. The trouble was, the monstrous swine was making ready to charge!

  The pig advanced. Thor retreated. Those tusks were not large, in proportion, but the animal itself was so big that Thor wanted no part of it. He scooted back to where Balook stood.

  But Balook was gone. He had wandered away, browsing. It had not occurred to him that there could be any threat to his small friend; after all, there was none to Balook.

  Now this Oligocene-Miocene world seemed less delightful, more menacing. The huge pig had given up the chase, satisfied to have driven the intruder away from its territory. But what other animals were roaming nearby?

  Thor hurried nervously along the trail of broken branches and hoofprints Balook had left. He had to catch up! With Balook he would be safe, for the rhino had no natural enemies here. Alone, Thor was in trouble, for there were many pigs and saber-toothed cats and bear-dogs ready to do him in.

  How could Balook have gone so far? It had been only a few minutes!

  A few minutes! Thor remembered the chase he had made on the bicycle, when Balook had winded Theria and traveled across the countryside to join her. Balook could move, when he chose!

  He burst into a glade, and almost under the tusks of something huge. Another elephant, or Platybelodon— no, it was yet another variation. These tusks pointed downwards and back, as though the creature's jaw had been turned upside down. This was Dinotherium. He remembered that these creatures had achieved enormous size—over four meters tall at the shoulders— second only to Baluchitherium. But that was later, in the Pliocene Epoch; this one was only three meters. Still too big for comfort!

  Thor retreated, and the elephantoid did not pursue. These herbivorous animals who had never known man were basically peaceful; they only looked horrendous! Still, he would not want to cross one during mating season, or debate territory with it. Thor was struck by the complete similarity of the bodies of these creatures, with only their jaws and tusks differing; it was as if an elephant had interchangeable heads. Yet it was much the same for man; the basic human body had been perfected before the head, so that Australopithecus, Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon and modern man could be distinguished only by their heads. And not always then!

  On he went, past numerous deerlike animals: "even-toed" ungulates, ancestors to the cattle, sheep, goats and modern deer. Still he did not find Balook. Belatedly he realized why: he had been following the trail of broken branches, but in this framework many large animals fed on the trees. Any of the elephant types could have done the damage. Balook might be far away, his trail having diverged long ago.

  Now Thor really was lost.

  He forced himself to stop running. He reminded himself that he was not really threatened here. There was hardly anywhere in the world, in all its history, where a man could not have walked with fair security. Few animals attacked man, and fewer could overcome him.

  He peered through the forest, and saw a line, strung up high. He went to it.

  Sure enough: it was the power line. The same one he had stayed under when they had fled the city. Oasis of peace!

  No wonder he was breathless. He had come all the way out here on foot. But his running could not avert Balook's fate. If only there really were a hiding place, here in the thousand kilometer narrow oasis of vegetation
!

  Then he saw it. Not only the power line, but the thing it stood for. More than high voltage electric current, more than an advanced technology world.

  He saw Balook's salvation.

  If only he could make the authorities understand in time...

  But at the moment he had a more immediate problem. He had evidently dozed off, or gone into some kind of trance, and wandered in a realm of his own making, of fantasy. A realm where Balook was safe! In the process he had not only deluded himself, he had violated his restriction, and would be in trouble with the court.

  How had he done it? Surely there were guards or something in the building who should have challenged him! And the city—was it possible for him to have sleepwalked through that unobserved? And the time— he could not have come this far in the few minutes he had been afoot!

  Ah, but he had been riding Balook! The rhino could have traveled that distance; after all, he had done it before.

  Except that Balook was confined to the compound. It had been the scale model statue of Balook Thor had mounted. That of course was even less likely.

  There was only one answer: he had fallen asleep, and was still dreaming. That dream had brought him to the answer that must have been lurking beneath his consciousness.

  All he had to do was wake up.

  With that realization, he relaxed—and fell into a deeper sleep.

  HE WOKE AT the sound of the door. He was lying on his bunk beside the statue. Blearily he looked up. Barb was there, her face tragic.

  That could mean only one thing. "They found Balook guilty?" he asked.

  "Of manslaughter," she agreed. "They have sentenced him to—"

  "To death," he said. That was the penalty for an animal who killed a man, whatever the circumstances.

  Suddenly his revelation of the night seemed inadequate. He had been looking for a way to convince the jury and the public that there was a place for Balook in the contemporary world. Perhaps there was—but the decision had come too soon. Now it was too late to present his idea, too late to make the jury understand.