Resolve gazed at him for a moment but didn’t comment.
After they had been walking with the ferals for perhaps half an hour, the group came upon a clearing. Numerous horizontal poles were arranged in rows, a foot or so above the ground and supported by forked sticks embedded in the soil. Arranged atop the horizontal poles were rows of berries, roots, mushrooms, finger-sized pieces of meat, and even earthworms and cream-colored grubs. All of these were drying in the sun, no doubt to be added to the ferals’ winter sustenance cache.
Two bony women and two wiry men were tending to these drying racks, and they stopped what they were doing to stare.
“What are them vassals doing here?” one of the men shouted.
“For mongrels’ sake, they ain’t vassals!” Abel said as he emerged from the forest.
“And what’s that vassal musk monkey doing here?” the man asked.
Resolve and the other mushroom-hunting ferals ignored the man’s questions and made their way through the rows of drying foods to the far side of the clearing. They walked a short distance into the shadows of the forest and came upon an opening in a rocky crag beside a dry creek bed. The hole, perhaps eight feet wide but only four feet tall, revealed a dark cavity within. It was the mouth to a cave. Smoke wafted from the opening, smelling of burning wood.
The ferals stood in front of the opening. Prudence said, “Before you folks go fixin’ to seize our parcel, you’d be well judged to get a measure of what good it’ll do your herd of seven hundred. We’re but forty-six ferals, and this here cave’s our domicile. As you’ll see, it’s a tight squeeze for forty-six.”
“You people live in there?” Gretchen asked, making no attempt to hide her disgust.
“Keeps winter’s chill from claiming our souls,” Prudence said. “Nine of every ten of us lived to see the spring this year. We count ourselves lucky to have it.”
Desmond, Arty, and Gretchen exchanged solemn glances.
“Can’t you build log cabins or huts or something?” Arty asked.
Prudence narrowed his eyes. “How can plump vassals like y’all be so ignorant? The mongrels don’t allow domiciles built by the hands of men.”
“What do they allow?” Arty asked.
“They allow us to draw breath, to walk the earth. That’s about the extent of it.”
Desmond asked, “Do you know of any colonies of ferals as large as seven hundred?”
Several of the men scoffed.
The man named Calm said, “Perhaps you ain’t wise to the logistics of the wild land. You won’t find feral herds more populous than what the land provides for. We’re but forty-six, and that ain’t due to the size of our cave—it’s due to what our parcel can provide. Every morsel of sustenance this land produces, we need. If mushrooms or grubs have a bad year, we lose people to starvation. Hell, your herd could seize ten parcels and still want for sustenance.”
Resolve added, “There ain’t no parcel anywhere from one ocean to the other that could sustain a herd of seven hundred. That’s the plain and simple truth of the matter.”
Carrying capacity. That’s what they were talking about. The carrying capacity of any natural ecosystem was the amount of biomass the system could support. It all depended on the land’s productivity, which was determined by climate, rainfall, soil fertility, and other factors. The land, in its natural state, could only support so many ferals. The only way to increase the carrying capacity was to manage the land methodically to produce fewer non-edible plants and animals and more edible ones. Agriculture.
Desmond feared he already knew the answer to the question he was about to ask. “Have you tried farming? Raising crops to provide more reliable sustenance?”
Again, a round of scoffs.
“Mongrels don’t allow it,” Prudence said.
With those four words—mongrels don’t allow it—Desmond’s hopes for the colony’s survival sank to a new low. The mongrels, whatever the hell they were, didn’t allow houses, or villages, or cities. They didn’t allow tools. They didn’t allow agriculture.
The wild land wasn’t the answer.
“Why do you live in the wild land?” Desmond asked. “Why not live as vassals under the care of the mongrels?”
Prudence grunted. “Care, did you say? Care? The vassal herds are naught but mongrel entertainment. They pander to the mongrels’ savage whims in return for scraps of sustenance and the promise of rapture every other fortnight.”
“You do know I’m here, within earshot, do you not?” Abel said, hanging from a low branch twenty yards away. “You ferals fail to grasp the mongrels’ good intentions, notwithstanding their fickle whims. They endeavor to cultivate this land’s most natural state. They are stewards of the land.”
Prudence gave Abel no more than a perfunctory glance. “Come,” he said to Desmond, “We’ll show you our domicile lest you get a hankering to seize it for your herd.” He gestured to the cave’s mouth.
Desmond hesitated. “I have another question,” Desmond said. “I’m desperate here, and I hope you’ll be honest with me. If you were in my situation—if you were responsible for the safety of seven hundred people who had come here to avoid certain death in their own land, what would you do?”
The ferals looked at each other, frowning. Abruptly, one of the feral musk monkeys—the one named Resilience—spoke up. “You want honest opinions? I’ll give mine. I was a vassal to the mongrels. A human vassal, if you care to know. It was mongrel mischief what transfigured me to a musk monkey. Coulda been worse, I reckon. As a vassal I partook of daily feedings. I hankered for my share of rapture. I was all what the mongrels wished me to be. Until the day I weren’t. You see, the rapture touches different folks in different ways. Me, well one day I had simply had one too many pricks from the venomcrook.”
Desmond glanced over at Abel.
“I know nothing about this,” Abel said. “Twas before my time.”
Resilience went on. “Anyway, as if my mind had broken, I suddenly could no longer wait my turn. I wanted rapture again, just after having received my allotted prick. Like a skeeter needs blood. There was no quenching my thirst for it. I hollered and cried like a young ’un fresh from the womb. The next thing I knew, I had four green arms, a tail, and a strange new mind that percolated thoughts in ways I couldn’t understand. I ran and ran, scared and not even sure where I was. But my mad craving for rapture still didn’t give up its hold on me. So I tried turning back, running back to the mongrels. I’d have done anything to get just one more prick from the venomcrook. But by that time I was as lost as a blindworm with legs. Prudence here found me. He saw my condition and tied me to a tree. I hollered and begged, thinking only of getting more rapture. Finally, my condition passed, and Prudence freed me. That’s how I became a feral musk monkey, and every word of it’s true.”
Desmond waited, wondering where this story was going. “I asked what you would do if you were me?” he reminded Resilience.
“Yes, yes. What I’m trying to convey, in no uncertain terms, is that I hate mongrels. I hate ’em like a human hates lice. But if I was you, well, I’d stuff that hatred away where the sun don’t shine and realize that your herd’s got no prospects of seeing the green sprouts of spring unless they become vassals to the mongrels.”
“That there’s precisely what I’ve been implying,” Abel said. “But who listens to Abel? No one, that’s who.”
Gretchen spoke up. “So I’m supposed to accept that our only two choices are to live like this,” she waved toward the cave, “or to live like the painted people in the herd?”
The ferals gazed at her without answering.
She turned to Arty. “I can’t wrap my head around this. It just can’t be happening!” She wrapped her arms around her shoulders and headed over to where Abel was hanging from his tree.
Desmond watched her for a few seconds. Her shoulders began shaking slightly as she stared out into the forest.
“Could you go talk to her?” Desmond asked Arty.
Arty nodded and walked over to her.
Desmond turned back to Resilience and spoke softly so Abel wouldn’t hear. “Is there any way to fight the mongrels? Can they be killed? Can we split open their bubble or something like that?”
Several ferals frowned and glanced toward Abel.
Resolve whispered, “You reckon we’d be living in this cave if there was any chance of killing mongrels? They’ll smite you the moment you try. Hell, they ain’t even really got bodies. They’re like water, changing shape at will. That’s why they’re called mongrels—they don’t look like nothing in particular.”
“And,” Resilience added, “you can’t kill ’em, any more than you can kill a cloud.”
Desmond sucked in a deep breath of air tinged with smoke from the cave. “Okay, I have an idea. It may be our only chance. The mongrels seem capable of doing pretty much anything they want. If they wanted to, they could allow seven hundred people to establish a colony in or near their bailiwick. If they wanted to. So I’m going to convince them they want to. I need to talk to the mongrels.”
The ferals eyed him without speaking.
“He’s mad as a woodchuck in rapture,” one of them said.
“You can’t talk to the mongrels,” Resilience said. “They ain’t got mouths.”
Desmond lowered his voice even more. “Abel talks to them, doesn’t he? How else would he know what tasks they want him to do?” He looked at the feral musk monkey, Resilience, and then shifted his gaze to the other, Perseverance.
“Don’t look at us,” Perseverance said. “We was both humans before. We got no inkling of how that pandering, vassal musk monkey gets his orders. Besides, you can’t trust Abel. And you sure as shit can’t trust mongrels.”
Desmond glanced over at Abel, who was watching them closely.
“Something tells me I’m being talked about,” the creature said.
When Desmond turned back to the group, he glimpsed Prudence shaking his head at Resolve, obviously part of a silent exchange.
“What?” Desmond asked.
“Tell him,” Resolve said to Prudence. “What’s the harm in it?”
Prudence sighed, frowning. He eyed Desmond. “It’s just that, well, there’s a fella in our herd claims he used to talk to the mongrels.”
Desmond’s pulse quickened. “Really?”
“He did talk to them,” Resolve insisted. “Swear to the moon he did. Else how’d he come back out alive? He weren’t transfigured into a varmint or nothin’.”
Prudence sighed again. “The feral he’s talking about is older than any of us,” he said to Desmond. “His name’s Reason. Claims to be over fifty. Maybe he is, maybe he ain’t, but he sure looks it. Some of us—me not included—believe they saw him talk to the mongrels. Nigh on ten years have passed since then.”
“I was there—I seen it,” Resolve said.
“I seen it too,” Resilience added. “Before I got transfigured. Reason was always hankering to speak with the mongrels, trying this and trying that, but never making no headway. Wanted their permission to build himself and his woman a domicile of logs from trees. Then one day, well, he must’ve figured it out, because the mongrels pulled him in. I was there, I watched it happen, swear to the moon.”
“What do you mean, pulled him in?” Desmond asked.
“Pulled him right in—into their domicile.”
Desmond blinked. “Into the bubble? He was inside that thing?”
“For a good long time, long enough to drown ten times over. Came back out alive. But the mongrels had tinkered with his wits. He didn’t talk so much after that. Left his woman and the vassal herd to become a feral. For a while, he was the best egg hunter we had, in spite of always hunting by his lonesome. Ain’t much spunk left in him now.”
“What did we miss?” It was Arty, who had just returned with Gretchen.
Ignoring Arty’s question, Desmond asked, “Can we talk to this guy, Reason? Is he here?”
Prudence nodded. “If there’s but a slight chance it’ll dissuade your herd from seizing our parcel, you’re welcome to try. Thisaway.” He and the other ferals crouched low and entered the cave.
Desmond motioned for Arty and Gretchen to enter first. As he followed, he heard Abel say, “Well, isn’t this keen as paw paw pith? Suppose I’ll sit here and chew the fat with my own waggish self. Ain’t like I got other chores need tending to.”
They followed the cave’s low, rugged antechamber for at least thirty yards, and they were forced to crawl on their hands and knees. Although the rocky floor had been worn smooth by decades of use, scrabbling over them was painful. Finally, the tunnel opened to a cavity tall enough to stand in. The back of the chamber was filled to the ceiling with fist-sized objects wrapped in dry leaves, no doubt the ferals’ food stores for the coming winter. The remaining space not occupied by food stores was only about ten yards deep and five yards wide. How could forty-six people live and sleep in this space?
Two small fires were burning near the food bundles, apparently tended by four gaunt women. The women had been busy rearranging the food bundles, but they stopped and stared when they noticed the strangers. Desmond assumed they had been rotating the food to periodically expose every bundle to the drying heat of the fires. This task probably had to be performed constantly, day in and day out, to avoid mold and microbe growth on the sun-dried foods.
“Reason,” Prudence said, gazing at a naked figure sprawled on the floor against one wall, the only other person in the cave. “We got some people here want to speak to you.”
The figure let out a barely-audible grunt and rolled over. “Them’s plump vassals. What in thunderation they doing here?”
Prudence stepped over to the figure and kneeled beside him. “Reason, you best hear my words. These plump vassals got a herd of seven hundred. They’re new in these hills, and they got no parcel nor bailiwick. You fathom what I’m saying?”
Reason turned and gazed at Desmond, Arty, and Gretchen. “Seven hundred? That’s a lie. Ain’t no herd of seven hundred.”
“Well, they want to speak to you, and I reckon you’ll do them the kindness, else we may find ourselves with no domicile come winter’s chill. You fathom that?”
Desmond made his way over and kneeled beside Prudence. He studied the older man, who was naked, for a moment. Reason was malnourished and sickly. In the dim light from the fires, the man’s skin appeared dark. Like the other ferals’ hair, his was cropped short, but his was the first silver hair Desmond had seen on a feral. The most striking thing about Reason, though, was the color of his eyes, light, perhaps pale blue, but with reflected flames dancing upon the corneas. Reason appraised Desmond. The man’s starvation-tightened skin and protruding cheekbones contrasted with a gaze as intense as that of a curious child.
Desmond swallowed and spoke. “Reason, I understand you’ve communicated with mongrels. Could you tell me how you did that? I want to talk to them myself.”
Reason’s eyelids widened slightly, making his eyeballs seem too large for his emaciated face. “Most folks don’t believe I’ve ever done such a thing. Fabulist, they call me. Fibber. Mad old coot. Around the bend. Out of my tree. Cockamamie yarns of a raving luna—”
“Reason!” Prudence interrupted. “He’s asking you, ain’t he?”
Reason thought about this. He then pushed himself up to a sitting position, sending a waft of his stench Desmond’s way. “The mongrels, they can talk, just not the way you’re thinking they should. Ain’t nothing can prepare you for confronting mongrels in their own domicile. You ever conject on what it might feel like to talk to God? Well, even that won’t prepare you for confronting mongrels. If you live to tell of it, you’ll forever wear the face of a chastened man. If you’re still a man, that is.”
Desmond felt prickles on his skin. “I need to talk to the mongrels. I’m willing to do whatever it takes.”
A smile began to form at the corners of Reason’s mouth. “That a fact? Well, I’m sorry to d
isappoint you.”
Desmond stared at him. “You won’t help me?”
“Ain’t a matter of whether I will. It’s a matter of whether you’re up to the task. You see, I studied the mongrels for a good piece of a year. Watched their shenanigans. Listened to the utterances of the vassals that tended to stir up their mischief and fury. And, though you may think me a fool, I listened to the utterances of beasts and varmints in mongrel proximity—the peeps, the grunts, the cries, and all manner of critter vociferations. What I learned was there were certain sounds that not only pacify the mongrels’ fury, but, moreover, will draw them to you, like skeeterbugs to a fire. I learned to imitate them sounds, and then I learned to utter them together in a particular concatenation, one which rouses the mongrels’ curiosity. Took a fair heap of practice. I don’t reckon you’re up to it.”
Desmond felt a wave of relief. This wasn’t a problem at all. For anyone else, maybe, but not for him. “I might surprise you, Reason. Let me hear the sounds you learned, the sounds that convinced the mongrels to listen to you. I’m a fast learner.”
Reason let out a brief, huffing laugh. “Steadfast as a bout of typhoid, ain’t you? Well, I’ll oblige you, though I figure nothing will come of it.” He cleared his throat, which made a sound like someone shaking a box of rocks. “It’s been some time, but there are particular things that defy all your efforts to forget them.” He cleared his throat again.
What came from Reason’s mouth next resembled no human language. Instead, it was a sequence of seemingly random animal grunts, huffs, yowls, and squawks. The sequence continued for at least ten seconds, ending with what sounded like the piercing yelp of a woodpecker called the yellow-shafted flicker.
The cave was silent for several long seconds.
“He is a mad old coot, sure as hellfire,” one of the ferals muttered.
Desmond closed his eyes. In his mind, he ran back over the sequence of sounds, committing them to memory using a trick he’d invented when he was four years old. He formed a mental picture of a creature that may have made each unique call. Whether the visualized creatures were real or accurate didn’t matter. It was the association of each sound to a distinct mental image that made the trick work. He then lined up the mental images in the order in which the corresponding sounds had been produced and formulated a brief, almost nonsensical story, a sequence of actions carried out by each creature. One creature biting the ear of the next, the second then flying off while dropping a turd on the head of the third, and so on. This memorization process took about twenty seconds.
Bridgers 3_The Voice of Reason Page 12