Monsters and Magicians

by Robert Adams

  Disarmed, the tank crew and their officer had been marched through the tunnel under guard of the infantry riflemen they so despised, while Sergeant Kiyomoto had trailed the column in the tank, that its exhaust fumes not choke the men and that, in the event of a breakdown, it not block the tunnel to the column and the mule cart. The unquestionable age of the structure of the tunnel and the announced fears of the tank officer notwithstanding, not one sfone fell or so much as shifted during the transit of the tank and the column.

  They left the camp in the ruins at about ten o'clock

  in the morning, under a cloudy sky that threatened imminent rain, but as the tank exited through the space the men had hurriedly hacked and chopped through the heavy growths at the western mouth of the tunnel, Kaoru suddenly realized that it seemed to be—at least to judge by the position of the sun which burned hot upon them there on the hillside— not much more than two hours before sunset. He was certain that the tunnel's length had been no more than a couple of hundred meters, at the most, so how could this time lapse be?

  But no one else had seemed to notice and, with so much else of serious import to occupy his thoughts, he just allowed the enigma to remain that and turned to other matters. First, he sent out a platoon-strength probe under command of one of his remaining junior officers—a one-time classmate—to scout out the track that lay beyond the visible line of trees and be certain that no enemies lay in wait to ambush them.

  Disastrously, one of his primary problems of the moment was effectively resolved while still the strong patrol was on its way to the stream and the trees beyond. Upon being refused return of any of his personal weapons by Kaoru the tank officer had gone into a livid, frothing rage, shouting vile utterances at his captor the one moment, the next lying upon the ground, writhing, face twisted in obvious agony, hand clutching clawlike at his chest. Then, suddenly, he had gone first board-stiff, then limp, lifeless, unbreathing.

  Kaoru would have liked it better to have put Sergeant Kiyomoto into the vacated command of the tank—he understood the vehicle better than any other infantryman, he had proven that he could drive it

  and, moreover, the surviving crew members all moved in undisguised fear of him—but he was needed too much in the day-to-day management of the infantry company, so the young commanding officer had put the vehicle under one of his juniors.

  He would have liked to order the proper disposition made of the newly dead corpse of the tank officer, but he knew not but that the ascending smoke of a funerary pyre would attact the decidedly unwelcome attentions of the enemy in one form or another, so he had the body stripped of all its equipment and most of its uniform, then buried on the hillside near the mouth of the tunnel, taking a compass bearing of the location and noting it down for the eventual turnover to battalion headquarters. Under the circumstances, he felt that he had done his best by his deceased brother officer.

  The patrol was gone far longer than the mission should have required and, although Kaoru had made good use of the time by positioning the men out of sight from the ground or air and positioning the tank just inside the mouth of the tunnel with the cart behind it, the company commander was getting more than a little worried when the watching Sergeant Kiyomoto came to report that the missing patrol had been seen recrossing the stream, apparently bearing with them at least one body, either seriously wounded or dead.

  While the soldier who had died of a broken neck when he had fallen from a tall tree after being sent up to try to spot the track was being stripped and buried beside the tank officer, Kaoru had occupied the commander's place while Sergeant Kiyomoto had

  200

  driven the tank over to seek himself for the mysteriously missing track. They had not found it then or ever since. Nor, since setting off to the west in search of it, had they ever again been able to relocate the tunnel mouth or the two graves, despite the carefully noted compass readings.

  When diesel fuel for the tank was almost nonexistent, Kaoru had discussed the matter with his two officers, and the decision had been reached that they should make a permanent camp where they then happened to be. It was a place that seemed to offer many benefits; both large game and smaller seemed abundant in the vicinity along with several types of edible wild plants and both fish and crustaceans in the flanking stream.

  And there was abundant proof that some other party once had found this spot favorable. On the hillslope about halfway between base and low crown, there still stood the log walls of a structure about thirteen meters long and four meters wide in outside measurements. Two other, smaller, almost square huts of identical construction stood downslope closer to the stream and, farther down still, lay the tumbled logs of still another that seemed to have been wrecked by some flood which had undermined its footings.

  The decision being made, the logs of the larger building had been meticulously examined and, upon being determined basically still sound, Kaoru had ordered the interior dug clear of earth and debris. The excavations had, early on, revealed the way in which the collapsed roof had been constructed— interlaced branches holding a layer of turf and itself supported by interior columns and girders of wood.

  Beneath the last layers of earth and rotted wood had been found two circular firepits and, most welcome, a fine selection of cooking pots and pans wrought of verdigrised brass, bronze, and copper and some lumps of useless rust that had once been knives or utensils of some nature-There had also been moldering bones beneath the last layers. At least six sets of them had been human remains—ranging from one that had been an infant to at least three full-grown adults—and some had the appearance of butchered animals bones or bone tools. One, however, that one found nearest to the entry and between the two firepits, had been that of a gigantic beast. Kaoru had been sent for when first the size of the thing had been realized—at least four full meters from tailtip to snout—and had been on the spot throughout its disinterment.

  It had appeared to the senior officer that the beast had in some way blundered hard enough against a treetrunk column to knock it out of place and thus bring down the entire, immensely heavy sod roof on itself and all within. The rotted remains of the thick main beam still lay across the skeleton's crushed spine and ribcage, and the column itself lay upon the skull it had splintered just behind the tooth-studded jaws.

  Looking at the overall enormity of the skeleton and the size and quantity of the recurved teeth, Kaoru could not repress a strong shudder. He could not imagine just what sort of a beast the monstrous bones had once supported, though the teeth looked vaguely reptilian, shaped a little like those of a python, he thought. Lizard? Possibly so, but most prob-

  202

  ably not, for not even the oversized monitor lizards of that island near Sumatra got anywhere near this big. He just hoped that he never would see the like of this in the flesh. It was to be a vain hope.

  Within the succeeding months, almost all of his officers and men were killed—and sometimes eaten— by living relatives of that huge skeleton found in the old log house. Rifle fire could not stop or even slow the terrible things, and they could run faster than any man, though only for short stretches. Powerful as they were, their attack almost always resulted in the death of at least one man.

  Brutal and deadly experience established that the only sure way to kill them was either a sustained and well-aimed burst of machinegun fire, a lucky hit by 50mm mortar shell, 37mm tank gun or grenade, or determined men pinning the thing down with bayonets long enough for another man to step in and sever the spine with stroke of sword or machete or axe. Since the things scavenged as well as predating, Sergeant Kiyomoto had devised and baited deadfalls of heavy logs; one monster had been killed in this way, but none since that one.

  Initially, it had seemed to be the two mules that the monsters came seeking—the invaluable mules, without which the snaking of logs from out the forests would have been made far more difficult and strenuous of accomplishment than it already was. And so, until a safe, strong pen and stable co
uld be constructed to house them, the draft beasts had been brought into one end of the big log house when not in use and guarded.

  When, of a night, one of the monsters had tried to

  break in through the single, thick-planked and heavily barred door, to be pinned down by bayonets and axed and sworded to death on the very doorstep, Kiyomoto had set the men to felling even more trees, stripping them, digging deep holes and setting them in a row all around the log house and enough land for a few other buildings to be erected later. The palisade logs had not been abutted one to the next, but rather left with enough space between them for a man but not a monster to pass through; in this way, only a single gate just wide enough for a mule was necessary-

  Kaoru and all his dwindling company had discovered that the fearsome creatures were definitely reptiles, but such reptiles as no one could recall ever having seen or heard described. They also had made the discovery that the flesh of the huge things was not only edible but also tender and tasty if properly prepared and cooked, so the attacking monsters they had had to kill in defense did not go to waste. So fond did they all become of monster-flesh, in feet, that they not only eagerly anticipated another highly dangerous attack, but often tempted one or even set out to deliberately hunt down the creatures, if they suspected the presence of one in the general vicinity.

  Not a few men having been lost in this pursuit, their bayoneted rifles having placed them in a proximity to their quarry that had proved deadly in the end, Sergeant Kiyomoto had come up with and— with, of course, die commander's approval—implemented the making of long spears: shafts of ash or oak, knife-edge points fashioned of mild-steel armor stripped from the fuelless tank and cold-hammered

  into shape by him, then fastened firmly in place by way of brass rivets fashioned from 37mm shell cases. These proved themselves in use, and quickly. They were long enough to allow a man to maintain a safe distance from one of the creatures while at the same time pinning him securely that the men with swords or axes might do their deadly work on the dangerous beast.

  Though unspeakably horrified by this callous desecration of their huge, complex weapon by a mere sergeant of infantry, the three remaining members of the tank crew liked to eat monster-meat too and usually kept their peace.

  For all their appalling losses and how seldom they won so much as a nibble of flesh anymore, the big beasts still occasionally tried themselves against the deep-sunk palisades, often, oddly enough, by day. In such cases, when most of the men might be some distance away at some task or another, the guards on duty joined to spear-pin and axe the smaller ones and machinegun the largest. They none of them needed orders to aim for the toothy heads and expend only what was absolutely necessary to the job at hand of the steadily dwindling supply of 7.7mm ammunition.

  The men, for some reason, took to calling their edible foes "dragons," though they little resembled any representation of a classic dragon, and Kaoru had himself taken up the practice, at least in his thoughts. Sergeant Kiyomoto, on the other hand, had named the monsters "Burma beef."

  Toward the effort of maintaining proper morale, discipline, physical conditioning and esprit de corps

  under conditions that were, at best, often very trying, Kaoru had established and seen kept up a correct, military schedule of training and assigned duties for all members of his much-reduced company, nor did even he stick at joining the ranks in the physical and weapons drills most often overseen and conducted by the more than competent Sergeant Kiyomoto.

  That had been why, of a morning—early morning, prior to the first meal of the day—he had been in ranks like any common soldier, spear-armed, unshod and in minimal clothing, responding to the snarled commands of the professionally glowering Sergeant Kiyomoto.

  When one of the on-duty perimeter guards had reported having seen the unmistakable tracks of a large dragon on the banks of the stream at the place wherein it entered the winding defile—fresh tracks, laid down since sunset of the preceding evening— Kaoru had detailed one of the spearmen in formation to run back to the log house, fetch his swords and an axe (which was the much preferred weapon of Sergeant Kiyomoto) then follow after the rest of them at his best speed. Then he, the company sergeant and the remainder of the drill formation had set off through the long, narrow, meandering, brush-grown defile, set to beard a big dragon.

  By purest coincidence, at a point only some third of the way to where the defile would debouch into the open space wherein their smaller stream joined a large (which larger was, Kaoru was certain in his own mind, some nameless tributary of the Irrawaddy River), the leading runners of the hunt chanced to flush a trio of red deer does. Kaoru managed to spear

  one of the big cervines in the side, just behind the shoulder, but the unbarbed spearhead pulled out as the wounded and terrified creature surged ahead. So the erstwhile dragon hunt suddenly, unexpectedly, became a deer chase, for—as Sergeant Kiyomoto would have put it in his earthy, rural way—meat was meat.

  As was usual in running hunts, Corporal Tanuki took the lead, his short but powerful legs churning so fast as to frequently look like only blurs of motion. Also as usual under like circumstances, he was closely trailed by the other corporal—one of the erstwhile tank crew, Tanulas patent rival in many ways, who despised mere infantrymen as much as had his late officer, and whose presumptive behavior had often brought down upon him the heavy, horny hands of the grim sergeant of company, Kiyomoto—the tall, slim Numata.

  When Corporal Tanuki's shouts were heard by the closely bunched average-speed runners, the officer and sergeant included, that not only was the doe down on the bank of the large stream but that a sizable dragon was feeding on her carcass, all the men grinned, took fresh grips on their spears, gasped as deep breaths as they could and did their best to increase the pace of their tired, trembling legs.

  As he ran on, just a bit behind the hulking Sergeant Kiyomoto, Kaoru sincerely hoped that the man got up to them with his swords before one was needed; otherwise, someone would have to try to put a spearpoint into the eye of the pinned but thrashing, powerful and still deadly-dangerous monster . . . and not a few of the now-deceased officers, NCOs and men of his company had died while essaying just so risky a task in a hunting of dragons.

  barely had graduated at all. And not only had his father—his pompous, arrogant, hypocritical and disgustingly well-heeled farther—flatly refused to take his youngest son into the family law firm with his elder brothers, an uncle and cousins, but he had declined even to try to use his many contacts to get David into any other prestigious practice.

  In their last meeting, his father—looking, in his meticulously tailored silk-and-wool three-piece suit, his gold Rolex watch, his short-cropped, Grecian-Formulaed hair, his Miami Beach-tanned face and his contact lenses, the very epitome of all that his youngest son most hated about the land of his birth— had said, "David, you know well that you were offered the best education that I could afford, the equal of that offered your older brothers and your sister, Raquelle, no less than what your grandfather offered me and your uncle, way back when. From your freshman year in undergraduate school on, you had the use of a good car, tuition, room and board, charge cards and a checking account. All that you were expected to do was to study, apply your known intellect and develop into a fine, professional man like your brothers have done.

  "So, with all these benefits, you did what was expected of you? Oh, no, David, not you, not our little Dave Klein, not him! You could have majored in anything you wished—law, medicine, accounting, dentistry, business administration, engineering, psychology even—but you chose to major in revolution, so that it's cost the family thousands of dollars over the last few years to get you into new schools when the old ones chucked you out, more thousands to

  keep you out of jail so that your poor mother wouldn't lose her mind.

  "So, now youVe graduated ... by the skin of your teeth. And you did finally manage to pass the state bar examination. But now, thanks to your extracurricular ins
anities of past years, you are strictly on your own. With your record of repeated misdemeanor arrests and convictions, no respectable firm is going to be willing to take you on until and if you can manage to prove yourself as something more than an anarchist bomb-thrower. Why, oh why, David? Why couldn't you have ignored the radicals and stuck to the books? You had such great promise, more promise than did either of your brothers at your age."

  Bitterly, David had replied, "You're a windbag, you know that, Daddy? You always bragged about being a lifelong Democrat, a liberal, a humanist, and it was all just pure bullshit! Where were your so-called principles when this rotten sewer of a fascist country was supporting a totalitarian dictator in Saigon and all your fat-cat friends were growing even fatter and richer making napalm to barbeque yellow-skinned, slant-eyed children in Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos? Where was your famous humanism when, if we did study hard and graduated, we knew wed go directly into the fucking Army or something and end up crippled or killed even? What did you ever do to try to stop that unjust war? What, Daddy ; what?"

  His father had shaken his head, slowly. "David that war is over, done, finished, but you, God heir you, are still fighting it and I fear that, until you £ long last grow up, that's just what you'll keep doin^

  I agree that the time and the place, the people we were supporting and the way in which the war was conducted, all were . . . ahh, ill chosen. But unjust? Not at all, David. That phrase, an unjust war/ is an infamous Marxist catch-phrase; to them, an unjust war is any conflict that does not, is not intended to advance the goals of Marxism.

  "Drafted? David, you know and knew back then that you never would ever be drafted. You're Four-F, son, just like your cousin, Judah. Look, you keep fighting that war as long as you feel you must, but please let the rest of us alone to get on with our lives and our work in the real world. Okay?