Gretel herself chattered merrily away, unloading the boxes of guns, telling us stuff we’d never remember, no matter how hard we tried, stuff about the forest country here, where the Koperveldt gave way to the foothills of the Koudloft, where the wildlife was still pretty much intact despite centuries of human depredation, though, of course, the vast herds of womfrogs that’d once roamed these plains were somewhat reduced...
When she handed me my rifle, I felt a familiar spark ignite, flood me with welcome warmth, spacesuit’s long-silent voice suddenly alive in my head, whispering specifications, suggesting a range of tools. Stock unclips from the gun mechanism just so, you see, and then you unseat the powerpack from its plug at the back of the magnetic induction catapult mount... look at that. Copper wire. Incredible. All right, the trigger mechanism, just a dummy for a somewhat antique solid-state switch here, comes off the control box like this, then you...
Gretel’s voice, at my shoulder, in my ear: “You seem rather familiar with our hunting rifles, Mr. du Cheyne.”
I looked up and was startled to see everyone else had stopped talking, stopped doing whatever they’d been doing, that I was surrounded by a silent, staring circle, people watching me dissect the silly thing. “Well, no. I never saw one before, but...”
Narrowed eyes, a funny sort of grin. “That’s a little hard to believe, Mr. du Cheyne. I’ve seen professional gunsmiths with clumsier hands than yours.”
Not very good gunsmiths then. I shrugged. “What can I say? It’s just a piece of machinery, I guess. Not very complicated.”
A long, measuring, still-suspicious look. “What did you do, back on Earth?”
Back on Earth, back on the Land, de Aarde their word for Sol System, because they still thought in terms of worlds, these colonials. “Do? Um.” Didn’t she believe I was just some nice, idle billionaire, touring all the worlds? “Take things apart. Put them back together.”
“Some kind of repairman?”
“Sort of.”
She said, “Can you put it back together?”
Starting to believe me? Maybe understanding anyone can take something apart until its just a pile of loose, unfamiliar-looking parts. I looked down at the box lid where I’d laid the dismantled hunting rifle. Sixteen major parts, some wires and plugs, a miscellany of connectors, mostly clips and thumbscrews, simple machinery designed by some kind of idiot.
Too many parts. Too easy to lose.
“I guess so. I...”
She sneered, and said, “Well, maybe I’d better...” Sort of reaching out now.
I picked up the MIC core, cold metal in my hand like the thunderbolts of Jove, unfinished, not quite ready for the god. Grinned at her, feeling a little wobbly on my feet for some reason, but... Sure. This here. That there. Snap. Click. Screw the screws. Clip the clips. Plug in the plugs. Fumble with the stock until you get it lined up...
I thumbed the igniter safety switch and felt the gun vibrate, listened to the soft whine of the condenser cascade charging up. “Um. Where are the ammunition clips?”
Gretel Blondinkruis standing there, hands on hips, looking at me, face expressionless, eyes in shadow. “Over in the green box, Mr. du Cheyne. There’s a belt for each of you.”
Behind me, I heard Évie whisper in French, presumably to Claude, and the translator echoed in my head: “There’s something rather odd about that man.”
Claude said, “Pas merdez, Soeuriée...”
o0o
I think, after a while, I started to get the hang of riding a live animal, convincing myself that the horse was a being, rather than some kind of machine. The problem, more or less, was expecting it to be like a spacesuit or toolbelt, responsive to my needs as soon as they surfaced, anticipating them when it could. I kept trying to think of what I wanted it to do, not quite able to grasp what I was supposed to do with a crude control mechanism consisting of leather ropes, connected to a studded cylinder laid across the poor fucker’s tongue, of issuing commands with subtle movements of my hands and feet.
The countryside around us was changing slowly, subtly, as we rode down the trail, trail that ever so slowly grew forested, riding through hills that slowly grew steeper, so that, more often than not, we could look out over the tops of the trees in whatever direction happened to be downhill. Outcroppings of rock now, gray slopes of granite, white knife-edges of quartz here and there, poking out of the dirt.
Finally, a long, distant view, out over the rolling hill country, facing southward, Tau Ceti now an orange-gold ball in the west, sliding toward some far horizon. The Koudloft looked a bit like an aerial view of the Himalaya’s I’d once seen, jumbled white mountains, but mountains with gentle, non-Alpine slopes, mountains more like hills in the nearer distance, rimed with white snow, shrouded in pale mist, mist hanging above dark valleys where...
Movement above, catching the corner of my eye. When I turned my head to look, up slope, in the direction of our local hill’s bald dome of pale gray stone... Something looking down at us, gray white, motionless against the rusted blue of a late afternoon sky... Again, that view from the zoo, that memory, fat white wolfen staring at me out of its cage, whispering a soft werroowahh... Not words. Not even a little bit like words...
Zzzippp!
Sharp, loud in my ear, noise right beside me, making me jump, animal vanishing from the hilltop, then a little flash of light, remote pop! maybe ten meters from where it had been... Some fat Orikhalkisto whose name I’d not bothered to learn, astride his horse beside me, rifle still leveled, grinning. “Almost got the little bastard!”
Gretel then, a glint of anger in her eye: “Mr. Pandazides. Unless you want to alert the womfrogs we’re following, please keep your rifle in its holster ‘til I tell you to take it out.”
He lowered the thing, resentful of the reprimand. “How d’you know there’re womfrogs nearby?”
I snickered, looking at Gretel, feeling a crawl in my belly knowing I was, somehow, craving her approval. “Unless I miss my guess, those mossy-looking piles the horses keep stepping over are relatively fresh womfrog dung.”
Pandazides gave me a slightly sour look, asshole in his eyes.
Gretel smiled. “You continue to surprise me, Mr. du Cheyne.”
o0o
A couple of hours later, just as Tau Ceti was starting to scrape the horizon, downslope to the west, out beyond the Plains of Brass, we caught up with them.
We were riding along under a darkling sky, streamers of vermilion and red overwhelming the blue-green, purple looming in the east, presaging nightfall. And, quite suddenly, one of Gretel’s men, a plump, rat-faced fellow with whispy silver-blond hair and eyes so pale they looked almost white, reined in his horse, nose in the air, hand raised.
Évie said, “Qu’est-que...”
Breath of sound from motionless Gretel Blondinkruis, watching her man: “Sh.”
Silence.
Well, hell. If there’s silence, they’re listening for something. Images from old movies, Indian scout with his ear pressed to the ground. Hear-um pounding hoofbeat in distance, Qui-mo-Sabe...
The library AI took that as a cue and started cataloging the sounds it was getting, using my ears as a remote pickup. Sure. The wind in the heidensaard trees, a whisper we’d been listening to all day, to the point where it’d become soothing white noise. The faint, periodic hooop of a common segmented arthopod, something like a centipede, with the pleasantly illogical name hoepslang...
Horses breathing, moving, little snorts and clops and belly gurgles no training could suppress. Maybe one horse breathing a little louder than the others. Gretel whispered, “All right. They know we’re here. Don’t know we’ve heard them.”
Heard what, for... Oh. People breathing. Horses breathing. Something else breathing. I muttered, “Are you telling us they’re hiding somewhere nearby?” Image of the thing in the zoo, fingerless, staring down at me. Where, here, would you hide one or more giant elephant-crickets the size of school buses?
She said
, “Yes. Keep your voices down. Get off your horses, take your guns.”
We made a great deal of noise, despite attempts at caution, the library AI telling me the unaccounted-for breathing had become rather softer, become intermittent. They, whatever, wherever, tightening up with fear, holding their breaths? Shhh. They’re coming. Be still...
We crept up the rocky path, hardly a trail anymore, though something regularly passed this way, Pandazides cursing softly, angrily, as he stepped on one of the mossy piles, breaking through its crisp integument, getting some kind of green-black goo on his boot, liberating a smell like rich licorice, tainted with nutmeg.
Gretel, “Shhh...”
Somehow, I was right behind her, walking in her footsteps, my shadow falling on her back. Is it wise to approach whatever from up-sun at dusk? Won’t they see us and... She stopped and I bumped into her gently, Gretel crouching before me, bent over. She looked over her shoulder, eyes more or less expressionless, motioned with her head for me to creep around her and look.
All right. The underbrush, rather moister here than it had been down on the plains, seemed to cooperate with my attempts at silence, falling to my knees on ground covered with broad, soft, wet, leaf-like things, crawling forward to what appeared to be the edge of a...
My head poked out of the underbrush. A rocky gorge, maybe six meters across, more trees on the other side, gloom down below, glint of ruddy evening light on shallow water and glittering, wet eyes. Sensation of my heart clamping, high up, almost in my throat, my own breathing stopped.
Looming below us like shadows, motionless, silent, legs folded close to their bodies, as if crouching. Yes, certainly crouching, making themselves as small as possible. Just the way a spider freezes when you look at it. Crouching just so. Ready to spring, watching you... Counting shadows. Six? Maybe seven if that little dark patch over there was a calf.
I watched the nearest womfrog’s eyes turn, tracking together, until they were looking up at me. Cold crawling on the back of my neck. Mottled, unearthly eyes looking right into mine. Seeing me. Knowing...
It sprang, earth crunching loud under its hooves, reaching up the face of the muddy cliff, twin trunks curling forward, black-tentacled hands reaching for my face... I recoiled, pulling back into the underbrush, stumbling against Gretel, for Christ sake I... Arm and hand slapping on the ground where I’d been , clutching a basketful of leaves, fingers like so many fat snakes, each one big enough to squeeze me like a movie python, I...
Gretel laughing, rising to her feet, the sharp whine of her rifle’s condenser drowned by her shout of, “Tally-HO!!”
Gretel Blondinkruis stepping over me, stepping right on that big black hand, stamping down hard on boneless fingers, some vast human voice, voice deeper than orchestral bass, bellowing, “ArArArAr!”
Gretel like a goddess in denim and khaki, aiming her gun down into the defile, zzzip-POP!
Agonized scream, as of a giant’s dog, hand snatched away just as Gretel raised her foot and let it go, and zzzip-POP! Something thrashing down below. More sounds from the defile, womfrog’s voices like so many panicking cellos, ururur...
Crunch.
Shadow flying over us, vast, black against the sky, shadow with the merits of a flying elephant, the shape of a leaping frog.
Gretel: “DenArrie...”
One of the others: zzzip! Fire forming on the elephant-frog’s dark flank, POP! Shadow shape tumbling suddenly, seeming to fall down into the trees, hard crackle of breaking trunks and a dense shiver of moving earth.
Others coming forward, my excited comrades in arms, Pandizides, with his candyshit-flavored boot stumbling over me, seeming to aim a deliberate kick before stepping to the precipice, people aiming their guns, condensers snarling, and zzzip! zzzip! zzzip!
Sound of opera singers howling from the shadowy defile, interrupted by the heavy popping of explosive loads. I got up, stepped forward to stand beside Pandazides, fat man standing with his gun held high, recoiling in his hands as it sizzled away. Flashes of light down below, bullets bursting among the trapped womfrogs, womfrogs boiling around each other, big ones trampling the little ones, screaming, trying to leap away, falling back as the bullets tore them open.
Zzzip. Zzzip.
Pop.
Almost silence down below.
Soft rustling, less and less and...
A deep voice, choking on phlegm, whispered, “Ooooohhhh...”
Then nothing.
Gretel clicked off her rifle, listened to the gentle static susurrus of the condenser discharging back into the battery. “Well, that’s it then.”
Dark, motionless, hulking shadows down below.
Pandazides, rifle tucked under one arm, turned to grin at me. “Hey, you little shit, did you even uk!”
Eyes bugging out, dropping his rifle in the mud as I planted a quick kick in his crotch. “Oooh!” Soft whistle of Pandazides trying to catch his breath, astonished. Grabbed him by the shirt front, gave him a hard shove, watched as he toppled, flailing, shouting, and fell down into the ravine, falling right on the carcass of the nearest womfrog.
Gretel Blondinkruis said, “God damn. If one of them is still alive...”
I shrugged. “Well, that’d be something.”
Long stare. Shadow of a grin. “You are a peculiar fellow, du Cheyne. You know?”
All I could do was stare at her and wonder why she would think I might not know I was a little odd.
o0o
Somehow, by the time full night had fallen, familiar stars blazing overhead, hard and wintry-looking, we’d divided into two groups, some people gone back down the trail to where we’d left the horses, going with DenArrie to unpack the tents, start the cooking fires, visible now as a ruddy glow through the trees, generally set up the camp. I stayed with the second group, standing on the rim of the defile to watch the butchering of the womfrogs.
Down in the little valley, hardly more than a giant gully I suppose, Gretel Blondinkruis gathered her tourists around her, taking out her big boeie knife, chromed blade glinting like a mirror by the shifting light of twin moons Wan and Hope, showing them what to do, Mr. Pandazides an attentive pupil, watching her closely, keeping his back to me.
I could feel a smile tugging at my lips as I watched him, remembered the way he rose, hunched over, clutching his genitals with both hands, angry, blustering, staggering up the hill, slipping and falling on his face in the mud.
Claude and Évie were standing on the edge of the little cliff beside me now, preferring, I suppose, to watch, clean and dry, rather than go down and participate in the... meat cutting. Talking to one another in French:
She said, “This is a disgusting business. I wish we hadn’t come.”
A sigh from Claude. “I suppose so. These are disgusting people.”
Évie: “Especially that wretched Mr. Pandazides. I’m glad Mr. du Cheyne did what he did.”
A nod from her slim, handsome dark husband: “I too. Nice to see such an unpleasant bully get what’s coming to him.” Turning to me then, smiling, in heavily accented Greek he said, “He thought you were a coward, this Pandazides. The look on face when you threw him down the hill...”
The fear in his eyes when he looked back up the hill, saw me waiting with my hands dangling most capably by my sides, wishing to kill me, knowing what would happen to him if he tried. I shrugged, looking at the admiration evident in pretty little Évie’s dark eyes, and said, “It’s a common enough mistake.”
More common than I care to remember. This du Cheyne, you see, unresponsive and... afraid? It must seem so. Seem so until they act, until I... react. It makes them angry, but... courage is a figment of men’s imaginations. Most bold men are merely unafraid, which is a different thing entirely.
Évie, astonished: “You speak French?”
I said, “So it seems.”
Small, slim Claude, suddenly looking at his wife, nervous, seeing her look at me. What is he thinking? Is he wondering if she got wet between her le
gs, watching me kick Pandazides nuts and then throw him down the hill? Is he imagining her in my tent tonight, invisible in the darkness, sighing to me, sighing in French, Oh. Oh, Gaetan. Que j’aime le soleil et les belle fleures...
I grinned and shook my head, trying not to imagine what poor little Claude was making of my smile. The truth? Somewhere inside of me, on the other side of the adolescent idiot who still dreams of women throwing themselves upon him, there dwells a still larger idiot, making fun of the whole damned business.
Below, Gretel’s knife slid down the length of a dead womfrog’s belly, making a long, soft wheep! like an old-fashioned metal zipper, hairy, leathery hide parting like magic, glistening yellow fat showing through. Stroke. Stroke. Stroke again. The fat and muscles and fascia burst open and the womfrog’s guts came tumbling out, along with an overpowering stench of hot apple pie.
Évie said, “Mon dieu, Claude!”
o0o
Back at the campsite, I sat in a folding chair in front of my little tent, while the others milled around the fires, helping with camp chores, watching, smelling, laughing and talking, while bits of womfrog cooked, sliced steaks frying in little plastic pans, chunks of leg, haunches, calves, roasting as they turned on the mechanic spit this useful Mr. DenArrie had put together. Amazing what you can carry in the saddlebags of horses. Even with Green Heaven’s antique technology, camping equipment folds up small.
Gretel standing over there, leaning against a tree, arms folded across her breast, watching everything at once, more the goddess than ever. When I look at her, all I see is the angular, yet rounded outline of her classic shape, tilt of hips, length of thigh...
Mr. Pandazides sitting on a big rock away from the fire, still sullen.
Claude and Évie standing together, small and slim, hardly more than shadowy outlines by the fire, he with his arm around her shoulders, she leaning in close. Mate-guarding behavior, I remember the phrase from some old book.
Mr. DenArrie tending the fire, laughing and talking now, the center of tourist attention, it seems. Maybe he doesn’t follow quite the same rule as his boss. Maybe the women will come to his tent tonight and sigh and sigh and...
Acts of Conscience Page 14