Balook

by Piers Anthony

  The boy's mouth worked. "F-Fudgie," he said after a moment.

  "That's your name?"

  Gravely, the child nodded.

  "Where's your home?"

  The boy turned and pointed. There was a small side road that intersected at this point; Thor had not noticed it before, in the darkness.

  "Your house is down that road?"

  Fudgie nodded again. He was shivering.

  "You had better go back home," Thor said. "It's cold and dangerous out here at night."

  The boy nodded affirmatively, but made no motion toward his home.

  Barb joined them. She knelt and put her arms around the child. "You're freezing!" she exclaimed.

  "We can't stay here," Thor said urgently. "They'll have cars surrounding us!"

  "Why are you here?" Barb asked the boy.

  This time he answered intelligibly. "To meet the monster."

  "The monster rhino?"

  He nodded yes.

  "Well, these are the rhinos, all right," she agreed. "But now you must go home before your folks miss you."

  "Can't."

  Thor saw a set of headlights approaching slowly from ahead. "They're coming! We've got to get off the road!"

  "But the child!" she protested, for the boy was now clinging to her. "He could get run over in the dark!"

  "Then bring him along!" Thor snapped.

  She pondered only an instant. "Yes, we'd better. For one thing, it's warm on the rhinos. But I can't lift him up alone. We'll have to go on Balook. You take one hand; I'll take the other."

  "But—" Thor started.

  "Hurry!"

  Bemused, Thor took one of the boy's arms. "Ready, Balook!" he called.

  Balook brought his head low. Thor climbed on the nose, bracing himself by an ear. Barb followed, anchoring on the other ear. The rhino's ears were relatively tiny, but tough; they made excellent footholds and handholds. Between them they hauled up the boy, who straddled Balook's forehead.

  "Up, Balook!" Thor said.

  The head lifted. The boy whined with fright and screwed his eyes closed again.

  When they were up, Thor left the boy in Barb's grasp and slid to Balook's shoulder. Then he hung on with one hand, reached forward with the other, and got hold of the boy's free arm. Barb let go, and Thor hauled the boy in to him. Then Barb slid down.

  Now they were all at the broad shoulder. Thor was behind, Barb ahead, and the boy securely between them.

  "Hang on," Thor said. "We're taking evasive action!" He kicked Balook, directing him nonverbally.

  Balook turned and plunged into the forest at the side. Theria immediately followed, and of course Blooky followed her. In a moment they were out of sight of the road, and the vehicles were unable to follow.

  Barb turned about so that she was facing back. "Now tell me why you can't go home," she said to the boy.

  " 'Cause I was bad," he explained. "Broke a lamp. Monster going to get me."

  "You were punished?" she asked. "For breaking a lamp?" Thor was concentrating on the escape, trying to direct Balook, but he was listening too. Barb was making progress with this incidental mystery. He had not known that she was good with children.

  "Played too hard. It fell. Mom told me the monster would stomp me."

  "The monster rhino?"

  "Yes. Then I saw on the teevee the monster coming, so I went out to meet it."

  "But why didn't you hide?" she asked.

  "Didn't want it to hurt the house."

  "You were afraid the monster would break down the house, just to get you?"

  The child nodded.

  "So you went out to meet it alone."

  He nodded again.

  "That was a very brave and generous thing you did, Fudgie!" she exclaimed.

  "No, I was bad."

  "Maybe so, but you paid for it. Now the monster is giving you a ride."

  "A ride?"

  "For being brave. The monster doesn't stomp brave children."

  "It doesn't?"

  "It doesn't. It's got better things to do."

  The boy thought about that. Then, slowly, he smiled.

  "I knew you'd understand," Barb said, hugging him. "Now you enjoy the ride, and look around, but don't fall off. Get a good hold, because sometimes it gets bumpy." She showed him how to hang on to the loose skin and hair, so as to be secure.

  Then she oriented on Thor. "How are we doing?" She sounded grim.

  "It occurs to me that we shouldn't let them know exactly where we're going," he said. "They'll be setting up roadblocks or worse. And if we get to the power company too soon, Mr. Turrell won't be there."

  "So we need to hide for the night and some of the day," she said.

  "Yes. But they can track us readily enough. I don't know if we can stay clear long enough."

  "They won't close in too fast," she said.

  "Why not?"

  "Because we have a hostage."

  "What?" Thor asked, shocked.

  Fudgie took an interest. "What's a hostage?"

  "It's a brave little boy who takes rides on monsters," she explained.

  He liked that. "Is it 'portant?"

  "Very important. Nobody can do anything until you finish your ride. Are you ready to go home yet?"

  "No. I like riding."

  "We'll let you ride with us as long as you want."

  Thor realized that Barb had had reason to bring the boy along. The authorities would be helpless, because there was no safe way to get the boy down without the cooperation of the rhino, and Thor and Barb were the only ones who could guarantee that. They weren't really holding the child hostage, but his presence was exactly what they needed. They were already in so much trouble that a charge of kidnapping would not make much difference.

  "What about the electromagnetic hazards?" Thor asked. "I have to know before I brace Mr. Turrell."

  "How can something like that save Balook?" she demanded. "He's not a human being; he doesn't care about magnetic fields!"

  "Precisely. What can you tell me?"

  "All right," she said wearily. "Here is the short course; stop me when you get bored. The electromagnetic spectrum includes waves of all frequencies, ranging from X-rays down to ELF waves. Those aren't little men; that's an acronym standing for Extremely Low Frequency. Some waves are definitely dangerous to living things; some aren't. Microwaves affect a slew of things—I'd have to read my notes to remember them all—but there's genetic damage, loss of memory, cataracts, malformed fetuses—how much do you want?"

  "What about power lines?" Thor asked.

  "That's uncertain, but interesting. They generate the ELF. Fields of similar frequency are generated by the earth—the magnetic field—and the human brain. The theory is that when living things formed, they adopted the electrical environment, borrowing it from the earth, just as they adopted the nature of the sea water to make salty blood. So there's obviously a connection. If people are shielded from the earth's magnetic field, their biological cycles foul up. When the magnetic field reversed 25,000 years ago, several animal species became extinct; we don't know whether that's coincidence, but it's alarming. If it affected their brains—" She shrugged. "But of course most of the world's species, including ours, survived nicely. So we just don't know."

  "What about the power lines? What do they do to people?"

  "There isn't much information. The power companies have rallied to suppress studies, because there's no getting around the fact that civilization needs power. If we stopped the transmission of electricity, we'd be in a relatively primitive technological state, I think."

  "But I've heard stories. C'mon, Barb, it's important!"

  She sighed. "I certainly don't see how! Some experiments indicate that a strong ELF field near a human head induces anesthesia and affects the chemical balance in the brain, blood and liver. Bone tumors can occur. It may stunt growth. Bees in such a field can go crazy, sealing themselves up and dying. But it's inconclusive; other studies don't show these
effects. So it's all one big question mark, and I can't tell you anything for sure."

  "So the power lines generate ELF waves," Thor said. "There's a lot of power in the air; you can light a fluorescent bulb without plugging it in."

  "Yes; the power isn't just running through the wires; it's traveling a corridor thousands of meters in diameter, guided by the wire. But we normally can't even feel it. Thor, what is the point?"

  "Would you take a full time job next to a power line?"

  She laughed. "Not now! I don't know how much of the suspicion is true, but I wouldn't care to take the chance. I don't want my brain zonked out!"

  "So how do you think the workers feel who have to stay close to those power lines?"

  "Well, you know there aren't too many. Once the wires are connected, those lines are pretty much left alone. They use big clumsy machines to prune back the encroaching trees."

  "Because they can't get enough human workers to do it!" Thor exclaimed triumphantly.

  "I suppose. But I repeat: what is the—"

  "Pruning back the trees," Thor said.

  Then she caught on. "Oh, Thor, do you really think—?"

  "We've got the world's best tree-pruners."

  "But—"

  "If I can just persuade the power company to hire them."

  "But Balook can't prune anything if he's dead!" she cried.

  He laughed humorlessly. "That had occurred to me."

  "I think you're crazy!" she flared. "If the ELF is that bad for people, maybe, can it be good for Balook?"

  "He was hours under those lines, and they never bothered him. It's a risk we'll have to take."

  "I don't know. All this—this—"

  He reached around Fudgie and caught her shoulders. He brought her face into him and kissed her. She met him warmly, then reconsidered and pulled back, then re-reconsidered and kissed him again.

  "Gee," Fudgie said, wedged between them.

  Barb tousled his hair. "I kissed him," she said. "Don't tell."

  Fudgie knew about secrets. He agreed not to tell.

  "There's something else," Barb said. "The Project—this publicity has been bad for it. The funds have been impounded."

  "But the sale of the Western site—" Thor said.

  "Yes, those funds. And an Act of Congress may shut down the Eastern site too. We may have nowhere to go."

  "But the rhinos have to be somewhere!" he protested.

  "Not if they are executed, because they have been judged a hindrance to the welfare of mankind." Now the reason for her grimness was clear. "That's why I broke them out, instead of just bringing you a rope. We're at the end of the line, no pun."

  "They're going to hang the rhinos?" Fudgie asked.

  "Same thing," Thor said. "They weren't really coming after you; they were fleeing from bad people."

  "But they're nice monsters!" Fudgie said, beginning to cry.

  "Yes, they are," Barb agreed, hugging him for comfort. But she was crying too.

  Thor stared bleakly into the starry sky. Now his wild notion was truly their last resort!

  THOR VERIFIED THAT cars were patrolling all the adjacent roads, and he was sure that all exits from the county were barricaded. But the authorities did not dare come into the forest after the rhinos during the night. So Barb took Fudgie to the ground to handle natural functions, then brought him back to be with Thor while she rejoined Theria. In the interim the little boy and the little rhino got together, seeming to like each other's company. Balook and Theria seemed not to notice; that was their way of signaling that they had decided that Fudgie was not a threat. In due course the human folk slept, while the rhinos browsed.

  Then it was dawn, and two problems manifested. First, the three human beings were hungry. Second, there was a cordon around the area, impossible to pass unnoticed.

  "Time to show our hostage," Thor said. "You understand what we're doing, Fudgie?"

  "Making them leave us alone!" the boy said brightly.

  "Yes. But we want your folks to know you are all right. You may stay with us until we talk to the man at the power company; then we'll all have to get down. I think by then your folks will have forgotten about the lamp. And after this, if a monster comes for you—"

  "I'll pet it on the nose!" Fudgie said zestfully. His attitude about monsters had undergone a complete transformation during the night. He was enjoying himself now.

  They rode out to the highway.

  "You are surrounded!" a speaker blared from a police car. "Don't make us use force!"

  "What force?" Thor called back. "Do you want a dead rhino here? You can't do that until the appeal is denied." But he knew that that wasn't all of it. They did not want to shoot one rhino, and perhaps have Thor killed in the fall, and the other rhino go berserk and complicate things further.

  "Wave to them, Fudgie!" Barb called from Theria.

  Thor braced the lad with his hands, and the little boy stood up on Balook's six meter high shoulder and waved vigorously.

  A ripple of dismay went through the assembled forces. Apparently they had not realized that the boy was with the rhinos. The stakes had abruptly risen.

  "Now we want food and water," Barb called. "Delivered in standard containers, with no tricks."

  "Donuts and chocolate milk!" Fudgie cried enthusiastically.

  "Within the hour," Barb said. "I will come down for them. The others will remain on Balook. If anything goes wrong..."

  It seemed to Thor that such a barefaced bluff could hardly work, but the men below were evidently daunted. They could not afford to have the hostage hurt—and they knew that if Balook got out of control, with the boy still on him, disaster was likely. It was an impasse, for the time being.

  The supplies were brought. Barb collected them, took a share up to Thor and Fudgie, and then carried her own onto Theria.

  "Now make way," Thor called. "We want a better pasture." He guided Balook slowly forward, and the men and cars got out of the way.

  They crossed to the forest on the other side of the road. There was a scramble behind as the authorities sought to reform their cordon. But it hardly mattered, because the cordon was no longer a barrier to the party's passage. Thor let the rhinos forage, taking no particular direction, while the riders ate their own meal. It was like a picnic.

  Then in midmorning he abruptly started the party moving. The men of the cordon were caught off guard as Balook forged purposefully to the highway. "Make way! Make way!" he cried.

  "Make way!" Fudgie echoed gleefully. This was high adventure!

  Now the rhinos proceeded down the road, directly toward the power station. Again there was a flurry of motion and much confusion as the authorities tried to reorganize. They were not apt at this; they had not even tried to negotiate. Thor had seized the initiative, and it stood him in good stead.

  They made as if to pass the power complex—then abruptly veered into its open main gate. "Where's the president's office?" Thor demanded of the astonished attendant at the gate.

  "Third floor, west side," the man said. "But you can't—"

  "Thanks." Thor guided Balook to that portion of the main building. He saw amazed faces staring out of the windows.

  He went to the fanciest window. "Push, Balook!" he directed. "Slowly!" Mostly he spoke with his foot signals, which the rhino understood better than the verbal ones.

  Balook put his blunt nose to the window and shoved. The window broke inward, its plastiglass bending but not shattering. Then the frame collapsed, and a hole opened in the wall.

  "Stay here, and hold on, Fudgie," Thor told the boy as he scrambled up on Balook's head. "Hallo!" he called into the window. "Anybody home?"

  There was a portly man at an ornate desk. "This is an outrage!" the man exclaimed.

  Balook poked his head into the open window, carrying Thor along. "Mr. Turrell, I presume? I must talk with you."

  "What on earth could you want with me?"

  "Well, you wouldn't talk to me by phone, so I
had to come in person," Thor explained. "I really think what I have to say will be of interest to you." It had to be, or all was lost!

  "This is preposterous!"

  "I agree. But this whole situation can be relieved, if you will just give me a reasonable hearing." Thor was amazed at his seeming poise. It stemmed from desperation; he knew this was their only remaining chance, and he had to play it properly.

  The man seemed ready to huff up until he exploded, but his voice was even. "Suppose we talk for fifteen minutes? Will that satisfy you?"

  "That's fine," Thor said, and slid off Balook's head. "Go find a good tree, Balook," he said. "But don't shake anyone off." He had already warned the boy about holding on; Fudgie had been delighted by the prospect of riding the monster solo. He had gone rapidly from terror to overconfidence.

  "Now what do you think could be of such interest to me that you find it worthwhile to endanger the public, destroy property, and kidnap a child just to inform me about it?" Turrell demanded.

  "I want to save the life of a unique and innocent creature," Thor said evenly. "You want to make money. We may have a common interest."

  "I want to serve the public interest," Turrell said angrily.

  "That, too. So do I. I don't think that the public interest is well served by throwing away a billion dollar project without cause. Certainly it isn't by killing an animal who never tried to harm a man. Balook is no more guilty of manslaughter than is a car that slips its brakes and runs over someone who charges into its right of way."

  "You may have a point, but that decision is neither yours nor mine to make. Exactly what are you getting at?"

  "Suppose you had an efficient, reliable crew to prune back the vegetation that impinges on your power lines, that charged nothing for its services except maybe a drink of water every day?"

  "Power transmission is a special problem," Turrell said. "We can't get reliable crews, so we use machines, inefficient and costly as they are."

  "I know. But if a living crew offered to do it for nothing, and you knew that crew would never go on strike or leave for higher pay, what would it be worth to you?"

  "I just told you: the matter is academic, because of the superstition against electromagnetic radiation. We have tried in vain to educate the public—"