by Brian Daley
"Not enough to be burned by sky-flame. And then, too, it goes against the Verities. Not the Old Verities, but the New Verities, which were chanted after humans cut the herds from many to few, with fire."
Alacrity looked to Floyt and Paloma, who watched him wordlessly. "The thing is," he said, "we have a reason the herd should come along, for its own sake."
"Even to listen to this runs counter to the Verities," Pokesnout announced.
"But you're already doing that!" Floyt put in.
"I don't always agree with the Verities, but then I will probably be outcast soon. But there is no reason that will make the herd listen to you."
Paloma leaned over the voice pickup to say "We can tell you why the herd is growing smaller and smaller, and how to save it from dying out."
"Wait, while I gather the others," Pokesnout said, trotting off at urgent speed.
* * * *
It took an unholy amount of honking, squealing, and bellowing on Pokesnout's part to get even a few others of the herd to approach the proteus tree. The infrasonic impulses stormed.
The humans watched from their spying place, eating wheyberries and sipping from a canteen improvised from a hard vegetable suggesting a tubular gourd, and scratching their various bites, rashes, and sores.
More than one male seemed inclined to batter horns with Pokesnout rather than listen to what they considered an amorous plant. But it turned out that the survival-of-the-herd argument was, as Paloma's info indicated it would be, powerfully persuasive, even in the face of the Verities. At last one of the big, dominant bulls approached the tree while hundreds looked on.
"I have to speak with you," Alacrity said. The male immediately lowered his head and charged the unoffending talking tree. The tree trembled to the blow, several fractal-veined leaves shaken loose. They'd chosen the sturdiest tree feasible, yet the bull had nearly tilted it.
Pokesnout reacted at once, charging the bigger male. The male turned to give battle. The humans expected to see one of the gawks' highly ritualized combats, with the usual posturings and protocols.
But Pokesnout altered the rules at the last moment, sheering off and avoiding a horns-to-horns collision. It was the first time the castaways had seen a gawk use such a trick. But then, as they were starting to understand, Pokesnout wasn't like other gawklegs.
The bull stood his ground, straddle-legged, confused by the unauthorized change in procedure. But at least Pokesnout had made him forget his determination to bring down the strange talking tree. The runt male stood off a way and harangued, bending his head back so that he could give full throat to it.
"We should at least listen to the amorous tree!" the proteus interpreted. "For the sake of the herd!"
"What can a rutting tree tell us?" the bull lowed.
"I can tell you this," Alacrity intervened. The gawklegs turned to hear out the tree. "I can tell you you haven't got many generations left before there's no more herd, and you already know that yourselves. This herd used to number thousands, and there're barely three hundred of you left!"
Several bulls dropped their heads combatively, pawing and braying. A few of the cows, though, were moving closer and paying attention to the proteus, calves keeping close to their mothers' flanks.
Even the translator program's pseudo-AI couldn't sort out what was going on; there were overlapping snatches of outrage and animosity. "What does a horny tree know?" … "teat-biting liar!" … "fix this up with a good knock of the head" … "driven Pokesnout out of the herd a long time ago!" The uproar kept the hummingbird vermin eaters from alighting.
"You're having fewer and fewer calves, and fewer of those live!" Paloma yelled into the pickup. "A disease that affects one of you affects all! You're too inbred! You blithering numbskulls, you're dying out!"
Hearing that, the bull who'd attacked the tree did so again, joined by several others. Pokesnout shifted undecidedly; trying to stop them would probably get him trounced and driven from the herd, outcast or perhaps even killed. But just then the herd's alpha-male, the top bull, trotted for the tree, lowering his head. Pokesnout held his place.
The other bulls hit the tree one after the other, from different angles. On the third hit the tree heeled over, dragging up roots clotted with red-gray soil, pulling and snapping taproots. Two more charges and it went down.
The bulls moved in among the branches. They reared and stomped and butted; limbs and branches gave way. The commo link went dead as hooves flashed.
The gawks didn't stop there; they went on bashing and trampling, peeling big areas of bark with horns and hooves, jolting the heavy trunk around like a piece of athletic equipment. Floyt watched sadly, even though all data from his proteus had been transferred to Alacrity's. The cheap Earthservice proteus had been with him since his misadventures first started. Paloma chafed his hand between hers sympathetically. "You'll have a new one, I promise, Hobie."
Floyt's hand felt like it had a corona around it. He'd been aware of her day and night, her lissome stealth in the woods and her soft breathing as she lay wrapped in her stained evening shawl, asleep under mounded leaves. He'd watched Alacrity and Paloma circle one another, seen the standoff tested and reaffirmed a half-dozen times; he conceived hopes of his own every day and each night, only to quash them in the name of friendship, of teamwork, coexistence, and other things that he tried not to question too closely.
The top bull wasn't joining in the tree-stomp. His head was high in the air, the three great nostrils flared, sniffing in the humans' direction. He started moving, a creature five times the size of a Cape buffalo, stronger and meaner in proportion.
"Uh-oh," murmured Paloma.
"Don't anybody move," Alacrity whispered. "But if he starts coming this way, run for the rocks. And don't stop, no matter what!"
The alpha-male moved almost daintily, picking up one or two feet at a time, poising, sniffing. The humans hesitated, hoping he wouldn't get wind of them; their tree was far downslope, almost out on the flatland, and a gawk at full speed could cover ground at an appalling rate, making escape a long-odds bet.
As they wavered, the top bull was prancing closer. Paloma had her mouth open to say something just as the big male began gathering himself by centimeters, like a cat getting ready to pounce, for a charge.
All at once Pokesnout was cantering in the humans' direction. Instead of lowering his head for a butting duel, though, he was belching and braying to the gathered cows and their calves. He was too far off for the proteus to give a translation, but the females milled uncertainly and the other males stirred around, undecided.
Always watchful for a challenge, the top bull turned, forgetting the human scent. Pokesnout continued his foghorn tirade, galloping in a wide detour around the alpha-male as, one by one, the cows set off in a wide circuit to follow.
The top bull, legs spread wide, watched, angry but bewildered. Pokesnout skirted him, slowing to a brisk trot, cutting a course straight for the tree where the humans crouched, wavering.
"He's bringing them down on us! But no, that can't be," Floyt contradicted himself.
"Not with the females and calves following him," Paloma said. "I wonder how he got them to come along."
"If we don't talk these hefties into helping us we're probably dead anyhow," Alacrity said. "What the hell; not much chance we'd make the rocks. Let's see what happens." He kept his spear across his lap.
The alpha-male and other bulls began following after Pokesnout, the cows, and calves, gathering speed as herd instincts warned them the herd's future was going into possible danger.
Pokesnout led the females and young right up to the tree where three apprehensive humans sat clutching the bole and fingering the bark nervously. Pokesnout spared them only a brief look with huge, liquid eyes green as wheyberries and a hawking sneeze of acknowledgment. Then he got the cows and calves bunched around the tree. Nonbreeding males and females were watching from nearby.
Alacrity and Paloma had their proteus' pickups at max b
y the time the bulls arrived and the argument began. The bulls were pawing and butting for a crack at the tree, but the females wouldn't get out of the way and the calves followed their mothers automatically. The bulls would shove one interloping cow away—neither savagely nor gently; herd instincts kept them from harming females and young—only to have another take her place and the displaced one circle around to rejoin the jostling.
Floyt, Paloma, and Alacrity watched open-mouthed, pulses racing, as the horns dipped and tossed, and hooves dug. Even the relatively lesser jockeying of the females to protect the tree-perch had the tree swaying and jarring.
All the while, the proteuses were having intermittent luck translating snatches of the argument in assorted synthetic male and female voices, not bothering to interpret the calves' bawling, puling, and farting.
"Out of the way!" … "hear what they have to say!" … "my hoof on your horns!" … "Stand clear!" … right about our calves! Think how few we" …
Then Pokesnout was yelling over all, somehow making a lot of noise even for a gawk, so that the humans, shrinking back from the din of it, almost missed the translation.
"They're in a tree; where can they go? Hear them, hear them! If they raise our tempers, we still have them. If they won't tell us what we want, we can let them feel our horns and hooves then. This agrees with the Verities!"
The bulls were uncertain as it was. Soon the herd had turned to the alpha-male, who was standing to one side, head lowered. After a while they were all quiet except for the unceasing snuffling, pawing, and lowing.
Alacrity spoke carefully. He was no expert in nonhuman psychology, but it didn't take a headboarded syner-genius to figure out that the key to the problem lay with herd behavior. It would either motivate the gawklegs to help Floyt, Paloma, and himself or drive them to bash the tree down and play hopscotch on them.
"The reason the herd is dying isn't your fault!" he yelled by means of the proteus. "It's not the fault of the cows and not the fault of the bulls!"
There was more agitation in the mining and trumpeting when the gawklegs heard that, although they went on listening. I wonder who's been blaming what on whom? Floyt thought.
"The reason's something you can't see," Alacrity pushed on. "As invisible as—as the wind, or your herd instincts."
The top bull's head came up. "Do you talk about the All?" He sounded ominous. "Are you saying the All is punishing we who are part of it?"
Oh, my aching ass! They've got a religion! "No, no!" Alacrity yelled to cut in over the babbling, holding his proteus far from him as its directional sound projector turned his words into gawkleg sounds at highest volume. That was barely high enough.
"Not the All. The words in my language for what you've lost are 'gene diversity.' You have to—to renew your blood with another herd!"
That was good for a small hurricane of sound, like a thousand alligators in a sing-out against a million bullfrogs. Pokesnout somehow managed to trumpet over it, "But what are we to do? We have to save the herd! How can we save the herd?"
The feisty runt-male was looking better and better to Floyt, who was once again overcoming his Earth-bred aversions. In moments the doubts and hesitations had all vanished into an all-embracing concern for the survival of the group, a gawkleg instinct that took priority over almost all others.
"The herd!" … "How shall we save" … "The herd!"
"I'm telling you," Alacrity hollered. "You've got to mingle your bloodlines with another herd! We can guide you to them. We'll go with you."
"The Verities forbid the Long Trek!" "They also forbid letting the herd die out!" "The humans' death-from-above will kill the herd more quickly than the dwindling of our calves!" "Sky-fire is only a chance, but I have dropped three stillborn. I say we go!"
"But Pokesnout said—" some female's voice came, and another cut in. "That nub-horned calf! A bad one, from bad stock, him and his Shadow Verities! We should have driven him out long ago!"
A strange thing happened as the debate-cum-jostling match went on. The herd jockeyed its way back to more open ground by habit and instinct, the humans ignored for the time being, until the proteuses couldn't pick up the exchanges anymore. Some arguments were punctuated with a butting of heads, nip, or kick, but the disputes didn't unravel into the riot the humans expected to see. The gawklegs honked, switched their tails, droned and jounced one another as Invictus sank toward the horizon.
The onlookers gradually realized that Pokesnout was studying them from below. "Go back to your bedding place," he said when Paloma pointed her proteus his way. "There won't be any decision tonight, perhaps not tomorrow."
"What are the Shadow Verities?" she asked.
"There are the Verities," he replied, "straight and simple and uncomplicated, the way we like things. But there is also a special body of lore for things and times the Verities don't cover. They are grim and complicated, and they upset many herdmembers, so the knowledge is passed down in confidence, as my mother passed it to me. It contradicts many of the Verities. This knowledge is the Shadow Verities."
"We need to ask you more questions," Floyt said.
"And I would like to hear more from you," Pokesnout answered. "But I must join in chewing over this great decision, or it will surely go against you. And I must prepare." He swung around and trotted off.
Alacrity was already shinnying down the fractal tree. Now he stopped partway and, clinging with one hand and his climbing spikes, held out his proteus to ask " 'Prepare?' "
"Heads decide things in the herd," Pokesnout threw back over his shoulder. "Sometimes with thought. More often with horns." He continued on for the restive herd and wouldn't look back when Alacrity called out after him.
"Heretic," Floyt said affectionately.
* * * *
"Alacrity, what've you done to your hands?"
"Nothing, Ho," Alacrity assured him, joining Floyt and Paloma on the flat rock from which they'd been watching the herd-milling through most of the day. "Squeezing up a little wheyberry juice. I'm betting we can ferment it."
"Well, we could've used your umbrella," Paloma said snappishly. "It's hot out here."
"Sorry; it's back up there." He gestured vaguely toward the lair. "Still no decision from the Steering Committee, huh?"
"No, but we think something's happening," Paloma said, pointing to the herd with her chin. "They've been breaking off into two groups, coming together and breaking off again, for hours now."
"Somebody's about to call the question," Floyt predicted.
"Let's just hope Pokesnout's not in the middle of it," Alacrity said. "One of those big bulls could do him in with two hooves in a trench."
There were very strict rules for gawk ritual combat, most of which would work to the disadvantage of diminutive Pokesnout.
Down on the valley floor, one group, by far the more numerous, was made up of the cows and calves and the majority of the nonbreeding males and females. The other was mostly the alpha-male, his lieutenants—or betas—and the rest of the bulls.
As the trio watched, Pokesnout, standing between the two factions, belly-oinked and thrummed infrasonics at the holdouts, the dominant males. One of the betas took an uncertain few steps to join the bigger group. The top bull whirled and bellowed at him, rocking his huge horned head in warning. The would-be defector got back in place.
The alpha-male, a bull named Treeneck, whirled in a space no longer than his massive body and went thundering at Pokesnout.
"Oh, damn, I knew this was coming!" Paloma raged. Watch your tail, Poke!"
Pokesnout couldn't hear the translated warning, but didn't need it. As the little male threw himself at the alpha, Alacrity wondered how much a night and a day of jostling and wrangling had weakened the contenders, and who had the edge. Treeneck was traveling like a gravrail freighter, but Pokesnout somehow managed to duck under his charge and hit his shoulder.
"That's not in the rules," Floyt yelped. "He's cheating?"
It was more than a mere t
ransgression of form; the herd would react as one against an individual who violated its Verities, especially Verities pertaining to something as central as ritual combat. As far as Floyt understood, Pokesnout was making himself outcast, even if Treeneck didn't kill him. For now, though, the herd simply watched the fight. And, against all Verities, Pokesnout started to win. The humans almost fell off the boulder, rooting for him.
Pokesnout broke the rules over and over, snaking under the top bull's head, avoiding impact where he should've met it straight on, and hitting his opponent blindside when the other wasn't in position to defend.
Treeneck tried to spin and take Pokesnout from the side, but the little gawk was fast, eluding the strike and smashing into the alpha-male's chin in one quick butt that struck Alacrity as practiced. And Pokesnout had said he was going off to prepare.
How long's he been preparing? Alacrity asked himself.
Pokesnout nipped the side of the top bull's face, drawing dark, purple-red blood, then sprang away, coming around end for end on the fly as his enemy lurched at him. Pokesnout kicked with his hind legs, connecting with the alpha's jaw.
The hind legset hooves crashed into the top bull's chin and his forelegs gave out. He dropped to his front knees, dazed. Noting Pokesnout's blasphemy, the herd made a hostile, concerted noise; the beta-males pawed and trumpeted furiously, indicating that they might intervene.
Alacrity slipped back off the rock; Floyt and Paloma, screaming and cheering for Pokesnout, were too preoccupied to notice.
Pokesnout rushed his foe just as Treeneck was beginning to rise, butting the bull's neck and the back of his head as hard as he could while the dominant male was still struggling.
The fight was taking place very near to where the castaways were watching. Alacrity made his way out toward the battle, hoping he could get away with simply yelling a warning to Pokesnout against sneak attack if one shaped up; the betas were looking ornery. But Alacrity had a cold-stomach feeling that a diversion would be called for. He thought of tons of horn, muscle, and antisocial behavior charging at him and sweated, clutching his brolly the harder.