The Galactic Circle Veterinary Service

by Stephen Benjamin

  And I waited. The sun rose toward noon before I heard some rocks move behind me and felt a tickle of wariness. I whipped around just in time to see my fat friend pop down. I moved up the slope. Sure enough, another hole.

  Crap. He probably had a dozen of these to get away from predators. I laughed. Me? A predator? Not a very good one. Time to move on. I put away my blade, climbed down the rocks, and moved off toward the plain. I looked back after a few steps and saw a half dozen furry faces watch me go. No doubt it was my imagination, but I could have sworn they were laughing.

  As I followed the creek from the waterfall, I saw several small herds of grazers near the big river. As I walked, they moved away from me at a distance that made any thought of hunting them moot. The trees along the creek were scattered and not thick enough to serve as cover for anything large. They resembled the imported cottonwoods of Dovid’s World, with thick boles and a spreading canopy of dull green leaves.

  Maybe when I got to the river corridor, I’d have the cover I needed. As the sun baked me, I assuaged my thirst in the cold creek. It was now a day and a half since I had eaten. I knew this was not a life threatening issue, so long as I had water. I could go many days without food, if necessary, not that it appealed to me. Plus, Leader had said I must kill and eat something to pass the test. I wondered if plants counted. You could kill and eat them, after all, but this skirted the issue. The Lupans were carnivores.

  Of greater concern right now was sunburn. Yesterday, I had been in the shade of the forest, but now the sun broiled me like an Antarean rock lobster. I scooped mud from the creek bottom and smeared it over as much of my exposed body as I could reach. I would have a nice red spot in the middle of my back, like a target. Not the most comforting image.

  I studied the trees along the larger river before I moved toward them. I did not want any more nasty surprises. The outer trees were acacia-like umbrellas, and formed a verge with thin underbrush. Then came a band of tall, thin trees with spiky, reddish-green leaves. These tapered off into a willow-like thicket that would be hard to maneuver through, interspersed with the cottonwoods. A game path paralleled the smaller creek where it fed into the river, and I followed that.

  The river flowed brown, peppered with leaves and debris, certainly not the crystalline beverage of the stream I had drunk from earlier. As I examined it, I heard something move in the brush. A dun-colored animal about my size moved into the open and stopped. It looked toward me, but its gaze slid past as if it did not see me. A black stripe down the front of its face terminated in a grey-pink nose, nostrils flared. Arm-long black horns spiraled upward above mobile ears several times the size I thought should fit the head. I let out the breath I held, and the ears locked onto me like radar dishes. This thing obviously depended on hearing rather than sight. I shifted a foot, and a leaf barely crackled beneath me. With a squeal like a dying cat, the beast took off. The leap was at least twice my height and covered more than five times that distance, like a jet-propelled kangaroo. With those ears, it reminded me of a character I had once seen in an animated vid: Dumbo, the flying elephant.

  I shook my head. I had as much chance of catching one of those as I did one of the planet’s moons. I drank as much as I could hold from the clear stream, before I moved on along the main river’s course. A while later, I heard wood crack in the brush, and I dropped into a crouch behind a bush. Another alien nightmare slunk out of the willows no more than fifty meters from me. The creature looked in my direction and a wave of ravenous hunger washed over me. It was not my own.

  CHAPTER 19

  The animal was vaguely feline, but taller and leaner than any cat I knew. The head had an elongated crocodile-like muzzle, like the shifted Lupans, but with canines that resembled those of the extinct Terran saber-toothed tiger. The legs seemed too long and thin for the tawny, black-spotted body. Even crouched, its head towered above me. Saliva dripped from its mouth, like some rabid beast.

  I almost panicked and jumped up to run, but caught myself in time. My heart pumped panic through my veins.

  The beast lifted its head and snout toward me, and audibly snuffed the air.

  Shit. I was upwind of the thing. Did it catch my scent? Oh God, please no.

  After an eternity, it turned away and moved to the river to drink.

  It didn’t smell me. It must’ve been the mud I’d smeared on me. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  Then a goat-sized brown gazelle-like animal startled me when it bounded out of the thicket. It stopped between the cat-thing and me and swiveled its oversized ears like antennae. It looked toward where the predator crouched behind some small bushes, but did not seem to see the cat. The gazelle moved to the water, stood straddle-legged, and drank.

  The felid crept closer, then roared and sprang. The gazelle went rigid at the sound. A bite to the neck made quick work of the grazer, and the cat dragged the carcass onto the bank and into the brush. I could hear twigs snap as it moved away. I did not move until I could no longer hear or sense the beast.

  When I stood, my knees were rubbery and my hands trembled even more. I could have been the target. Now every bit of cover seemed to hold a cat-creature or something even worse. Should I hide in the brush or stay out in the open where I could see any dangerous beast though it could see me? I sat down with a thump.

  “Get hold of yourself.” I spoke aloud. “You have another two days out here, and you can’t be scared shitless the entire time. You have intelligence: think.”

  I listened and watched as I followed the grassy bank along the edge of the river. After I traveled perhaps a kilometer this way, I saw movement ahead of me. I squatted behind some brush. An animal the size of a fox moved to the river’s edge to drink. It was brown with grayish spots, had cloven hooves, a long face, two small white nubbins of horns on its head, and the typical, huge ears. I could feel its wariness, but it did not spook.

  At five meters, I would never hit it with my spear, even though my tremors had decreased. I recalled the reaction of the gazelle to the cat-thing, and wondered if I could freeze it. Maybe the acute hearing that seemed to be the primary protection also was its weak spot. I leaped up, gave my version of a predator’s roar, and sprang. The little creature froze, just as I had hoped, and I drove the spear into its chest.

  Its pain and fear cut through me as if I had been the one assaulted. My stomach cramped and acid rose to my throat.

  I had to kill it. The empathetic agony made me want to scream, but I suppressed that and pulled my knife. Hot needles of pain stabbed behind my eyes when I slashed the creature across the throat. I staggered away from the animal as it died, and vomited water, acid, and bile, all that remained in my stomach.

  It took many minutes to gather my strength and my will. I had to do something with the carcass, but I could not bring myself to touch it.

  “Come on. You have no choice,” I chided myself. “You killed it. Don’t make that sacrifice for nothing.”

  I gutted the animal and then skinned it. Even a small hide would be useful when night came again. I scraped the skin clean of as much fat and tissue as I could, then thought about the meat. My stomach rebelled. With difficulty, both physical and emotional, I cut off the head. Somehow, it was better without those glazed eyes staring at me. With my now dull knife, I sawed off several strips of hide that I wrapped around my feet, hair side in, and secured them with thinner strips to make sandals. I cleaned myself of blood as best I could in the river, threw the bloody carcass over my shoulder—which negated much of the previous effort—and set out away from the water. After two steps, the remaining grease on the hide caused my feet to go out from under me, and I landed smack on my coccyx.

  I cursed, tossed away the sandals, and moved away from the river as I rubbed my tailbone. When I reached the outer trees, I sat gingerly on the hide with my back against a bole and tried to regain my equilibrium. I pushed the carcass out of my field of vision and closed my eyes.

  The next thing I knew, I awoke with a start.
The sun was half way down. I had slept several hours. I stood and stretched out my cramped muscles. The bites hurt much less now and the tremors were gone.

  I brushed some insect-like creatures off the carcass of the grazer and lifted it and the hide to my shoulder.

  “I’m lucky that nothing scented the blood and found me while I slept.” I shook my head. “That was stupid.”

  I had to think more clearly. As I looked around me, the next part of my dilemma hit home. I had no way to cook the thing. I had killed, but I still had to eat. Raw?

  The retching that accompanied that thought resulted in nothing more than a cramped stomach.

  How do you make a fire? Ah, twirl a stick in some tinder, right? The way our ancestors did it. With twigs, dead leaves, pieces of bark, and a small stick placed as best as I could remember from old vids, I twirled the stick between my hands. Long before I saw anything resembling smoke or fire, my hands hurt like hell and my arms trebled with fatigue. I rested and tried again. Nothing. Maybe I didn’t have the right ingredients, but this was sure harder than it looked. I gave it one more try before I gave up and slammed the stick to the ground.

  “Shit. This is ridiculous.”

  The sun approached the horizon. I needed a place for the night, but I didn’t want another hole. I found a climbable spiky-leaved tree. With the carcass and hide tied to my belt, I worked my way up through the lower branches. I wedged myself into a sturdy fork, hoping I would not fall if I slept. I also hoped I was high enough to be safe from terrestrial predators. I did not even want to think about anything that climbed. Once settled, I untied and stared at my dinner. At least I no longer retched at its sight, maybe because I was as bloody as the damned meat, but I decided I was not quite ready yet. I tucked it in a nearby, smaller fork.

  The past two days unrolled before my mind’s eye. I had given my adrenal glands quite a workout. I had done the “kill” part and had to steel myself for the “eat.” Somewhere ahead were the three Lupans. I wondered if I already had done the “face danger” bit—I sure as hell hoped so. Well, first things first. I used my knife to hack a chunk of meat off the rear of the carcass. I stared at it for a long time before I raised it to my mouth.

  ***

  The howls woke me. Two large bright moons hung above my tree. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and squirmed to a place where my back and butt ached less. The howls came again, a chorus of them. My guts squirmed in time to the sound.

  Sleep banished, I wondered if that was my three adversaries. It seemed logical. Tomorrow was the third day and though I had seen or heard nothing of them, I guessed that they knew exactly where I was. No doubt they had kept tabs on me the whole time, as they waited for me to fulfill my charge. I alternated between being pissed at the Lupans for my trial, or elated because I had made it this far.

  The howls were closer now. Did I stay in my tree and risk getting stranded, or jump down and get on the move? One thing I did know: the little carcass would stay behind. I had managed to choke down a half-dozen chunks of the bloody meat, but that was it. Even then, they had threatened to seek release more than once during the night, but they stayed put and would give me some nourishment for the final day.

  As I dithered, the howls cut off, replaced by a series of barks and deep growls and a loud bleat. The sounds of snapping jaws tearing meat and crunching bones made my decision easy. I tried to find some comfort on my branch, but it eluded me. I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered, partly from the cold and partly from the grisly sounds that came from nearby. The little hide was as useless as the rest of the meat.

  It seemed to take forever for the moons to saunter across the sky to the horizon. The forest had quieted by then. As dawn raised the world’s nightshade, I slipped down from my tree and stretched to work out the kinks that invaded every joint in my body. I started a vigorous set of calisthenics to get my blood warmed, but that did not last long; I had little energy to spare.

  I crept toward the scene of last night’s party. The dismembered body of a large herdbeast lay scattered in a small clearing. The meat was gone and the bones cracked open. There was no sign of what brought it down other than some piles of scat. Though I assumed it was the Lupans, I really had no idea how many different predators were out there.

  As I walked around the clearing, I looked for some clue to inspire me as to what to do next, but it eluded me. I backtracked to the small stream and quenched my morning thirst. My stomach was the only water container I had. I washed up again, but some mixture of blood and mud remained. As I followed the creek back out to the plain, I scared up a bevy of small rodent-like animals in the process. Thank God I no longer needed to think of them as food.

  I stopped at the edge of the trees. A herd of the same kind of beast I had seen dismembered in the forest grazed just outside the woods. A constant alertness overlay a feeling of satisfaction with their food. When I stepped out of the shelter of the foliage, the entire herd wheeled to look at me. Fear hovered on the verge of panic, but I tried to send a message of calm and moved away from them. They watched for a while and then went back to grazing, although two of the largest kept me in their sights. I walked on, at a loss as to what to do next. It turned out I did not have to decide.

  I neared the cliff when a pack of Lupans in wolf form stepped out of the trees. There were six of them and they advanced on me, hackles raised and growling. Two were female, the first female Lupans I had seen.

  “Look guys, I’m not sure what it is you want me to do, but I’m trying my best.”

  This elicited more growls. Suddenly, it hit me that these beasts could not be the Lupans. For one, they lacked the luxurious manes. The ruff of fur around their necks was sparse and the same color as the rest of the body, a dull gray-brown. Second, the brain cases were distinctly smaller than the Lupans’, even in their wolf form. Third, my empathic reception did not feel like what I’d gotten from sentient beings. Their emotions were a mixture of hunger, aggression, and even a bit of fear, but they did not cause me undo distress.

  I stepped backward and the pack stepped toward me. I tried to send my own message. Be calm. I am no threat. There is no reason to attack.

  If anything, the response was of increased aggression. What a time for my reverse empathy. Hackles rose; legs and tails became rigid.

  What were these things? Whatever they were, I could not back off, not show fear. That might trigger an attack.

  Now they started to encircle me. When I moved toward an opening in the circle, they darted to close it.

  Not good. Not good at all. My heart thumped as I hefted my spear.

  “Know what this is, beasties? This is a spear. It can skewer you. One false move and...” I made a thrusting motion with my arm.

  No response. Hunger and aggression had all but drowned out the initial fear I had felt from them. Their fear had transferred to me. My breath came in short gasps.

  The pack now dropped down, bellies close to the ground, and edged toward me.

  I figured I was finished. Even if I broke through the circle, no way could I outrun these things. Hungry, thirsty, and pressed to the point of exhaustion, my blood boiled over.

  “Stop, Goddammit. I’m tired of this shit. I don’t know what my test was supposed to be, but getting eaten by a pack of overgrown ploofles is not included.”

  The pack came up short. A quiver of fear returned to their emotions.

  That was it. I needed to show dominance. That worked with some predators.

  “All right, enough,” I barked in as gruff a voice as I could manage. “You.” I pointed and stepped toward the wolf in front of me. “Sit!”

  I felt confusion, and a bit more fear. The thing’s hackles lay down and it backed off.

  I pointed and moved again. “You next. Heel!”

  A similar response. The creature tucked its tail between its legs. They could not understand the directives I gave, but the tone of voice and command was the thing.

  I turned and waved my spear at a
third. “Play dead!” I almost laughed at myself on that one, but suppressed it. I could not show any chink in my dominance display.

  When that wolf backed away, I stepped toward it and threw my knife, a calculated gamble. I knew it would not hurt the animal. Even if it had been a throwing knife, I had no clue as to how to launch it. The flat of the knife hit the wolf on one shoulder. It yelped, whirled, and with a flash of fear, zipped off across the plain. The others followed.

  My trembling legs barely kept me upright. Just then, three Lupans—real ones in their humanoid form this time—stepped out from behind some trees and approached.

  I faced them, recognizing the three from my trial. “Okay, what the hell was that all about? Those things could have torn me apart. What were they, anyway? They looked like your wolf form, but they’re not sentient. So, now do I fight you, too?”

  My body tensed. I was mad enough to take them on despite the fact that I knew the hopelessness of such a fight.

  Rusty ruff raised a hand and growled in Common, “Complete portion of challenge. Follow.”

  “Portion? What—?”

  Before I could even think further, the three melted into their lupine forms—I would never get used to that—and loped across the grassy sward toward the cliff.

  When I couldn’t keep up with them, they slowed their pace to a comfortable jog, and I hobbled behind as best I could. A cavern at the cliff’s base led to a tunnel to the plateau’s top. Beat climbing the cliff. The trip back was surprisingly short. I had not gone as far as I had imagined.

  My guides let out a few howls as we approached the village, and Leader met us. He had both Fur and Levi in tow. Levi’s usually ruddy face was bloodless.

  I bent over and gasped for breath as Fur grinned at me. “Glad to see you back in one piece, Captain.” He looked me up and down. “Though your attire leaves something to be desired.”