"I asked you why you're going to Volcania."
Volcania. That stirred an old memory somewhere, but she couldn't place it. "Filer, we need to be straight with each other. I can't tell you why I have to go there. I have no right to complain; you've been really kind to me, and for no good reason, but I have some secrets too. If you won't take me, I'll go alone. I've been trained to deal with dangerous people like the Ralpha Dogs, and I won't say more than that."
Filer nodded. "Well, Ma'am, I don't usually let people ignore my questions, but you've been right fine company on a trip I really didn't want to take, and I'd rather remember you alive than full of holes. My hunchmaker thinks you've got the numbers wrong. What's the elevation where you're going?"
It was an odd question, but the wry warmth had returned to Filer's face, and she wanted to see what aces he had up his sleeve. "In the middle of the island, on the saddle between two peaks. 2888 meters." The elevation was not critical, and she might not have remembered it at all were it not for the string of eights.
Filer looked down at the map. "Look closely at the island. It's too small for contour lines, but the tallest peak is marked."
Geyl peered at the very small print. "2513," she read. Not a huge difference, she thought, and how good could Hell's maps be without satellite data? Her eyes drifted to the map's edge. The OVODS survey logo was there, by the year 2126. So it wasn't a Hell map at all! And OVODS maps were accurate to a fraction of a meter.
"Now look here:" Filer pointed to a spot inland yet still on the equator, on the other side of the mountain range that ran along the eastern length of the continent. It was along a contour line marked 2880.
"So where is that?"
"16:11:48."
Geyl wracked her memories. Could she have made such an obvious error? But no, she had studied from a map, generated from SIS databases. And only a handful of people knew of her mission. In fact, the Governor General herself had approved the plan and gone over it with her, point by point.
Had Sophia Gorganis fumbled the information? But there had been a map—and Sophia Gorganis had provided the map. Geyl shivered, and hoped Filer wouldn't notice. "I guess I asked the wrong question. What's at 16:11:48?"
Filer re-folded the map and went back to tuck it into his pack. "A gathering of my people. They're waiting for something, and that's where they're waiting for it. Why are you trying to get to Volcania?"
Silence settled over the room "I'm not going to say. And if this means we part company, so be it. Jow and all that."
Geyl bent down on one knee and began loading one of the Moomoo blankets into her pack. She felt Filer grasp her arm and pull her back to her feet.
"Giver says jow," he said with a grim smile, his hand on her arm like a vise, "and you've given me almost nothing to go on. Stand still."
Geyl tensed. A man, like any other man. Like all other men. She estimated the moves it would take to get her knee into his crotch, to get her pack into one hand and vault the table for the opened door.
"No. Not that. Stand still."
He reached for her other arm, slowly, with something a great deal like tenderness. His face, which more often than not showed vague amusement or earnest concentration, relaxed to a look of serene acceptance, as though it were opening to some mystical experience. With both of his hands on both of her arms, his grip relaxed, and his eyes rested on hers, watching and waiting as the seconds extended weirdly.
"Filer, I…"
"Shush. A second more, I promise…there it is."
"There what is?"
He released her arms, and Geyl drew back, feeling her heart pound in fear or fascination, or both.
"The truth. Had to dig for it. Don't need to do that much. My hunchmaker had you pegged, but I needed context. The authority you serve—some power, won't come clear—is trying to get rid of you. Lied. Fudged the maps, dropped a convenient digit."
Geyl backed away, from the idea more than the man, and felt the fieldstone wall against her spine. "How do you know that?"
Filer shrugged. "Don't know how I know. I just do. Right handy sometimes, though it doesn't always come when it's called. But believe me: You're standing in somebody's way, and it's a dangerous somebody."
"I don't believe you."
"I don't blame you, Ma'am. But I'm not going to say anything more about it. Come with me, and you'll get where you're going. Go where you think you're going, and you'll never get anywhere but dead."
For a night and the day beyond it, they did not speak to one another. Filer cooked meals that they ate in silence, with the only sounds the wind in the roof shingles and the occasionally trumpeting of the mastodons. Geyl found a small storeroom with a lock in the cattle station and slept behind it, on a shelf that (from the smell of it) had once held jerked beef. The suspicion that Sophia Gorganis would betray her was frightening, not because it was inconceivable, but because it fit too well with too many small twists in the road that had led her to Hell.
Filer's hunches had always come through for him. Why not trust him one more time?
To trust him was to admit that there might be rottenness in the organization to which she had devoted her life. But to go her own way meant facing—alone—Tofir Snitzius' grim-faced minions.
The deadlock within her would not break, and it was only when Filer announced that he was leaving that she slouched to a non-decision, to follow him solely because—and against painful denial in her rational mind—she could not bear to leave his side.
There was a pass through Those Damned Mountains, and a rail line from the station followed it. Filer admitted that, recent adventures notwithstanding, he had a fondness for railroads, and intended to follow the tracks any way he could.
On the rail siding beside the cattle station were a dozen empty cattle cars, some empty feed hoppers, and a few flatcars. In the maintenance shed was a gutted switcher diesel, its massive engine lying upside down on the floor beside its wheels, evidently halfway through an overhaul. Filer began rubbing his chin when they lifted a dusty tarp and found a rusty but intact diesel-powered inspection car at the rear of the shed. The station's underground fuel tank was empty, but Filer found the switch engine's fuel tank almost one quarter full, and rigged a hose to drain fuel into the inspection car's tank, with enough left over to fill a pair of hundred liter drums he had lashed to the car's rear platform.
"More than enough to get us to the top of the pass, and then we coast to the end of the line."
It took an entire morning to make the inspection car run, and Filer indicated that he was not sanguine about the usefulness of its brakes. But come noon Geyl had loaded their packs, along with the few blankets and several pounds of jerked beef that were everything of value they had found in the station buildings. Filer transferred most of what the Moomoo assassins had in their mastodon saddle packs to the car's platform, including many bulky unmarked bundles and six long, slender tanks of propane.
"Any idea what the tanks are for?" Geyl asked.
"Yes, Ma'am," Filer answered, in a tone Geyl now recognized as meaning that the subject was closed.
With its nose pointed toward Springheels Pass and Geyl apprehensively holding the throttle, the inspection car put-putted its way uphill along the track. Filer was sitting atop the two fuel tanks on its platform, boot heels hooked in the lashing, hooting periodically on the peculiar instrument—he called it a "skinner"—that the mastodons found so irresistible. And bounding along behind the car came Chewy and Chirp, now almost frisky without the weights of their saddles and cargo. Filer claimed he was leading the mastodons to the hardwood forests in the mountain foothills above the cleared cattle land, where the forage would be better. Geyl recalled Filer's idle comment indicating the mastodons' superb ability to track, and suspected he was leading the big animals to where they could not be ordered to follow the paths of their former riders.
The rail line through the pass as far as the divide followed the course of the Scratch River. They camped that night beside
the tracks with the sound of the river rolling around and over the smooth stones torn ages ago from the mountains. Beside their fire circle on the riverbank, Filer played his file, and the force of its music drove back some of the intensity he had shown since they had arrived at the abandoned cattle station. The file was something like a fiddle, but deeper and mellower, and the old Irish airs he played tended toward sadness. Geyl recognized some of the melodies but had never heard their words, save for the old Shaker theme, "Simple Gifts," which she sang like she had as a schoolgirl.
Filer insisted on sleeping on the slope of the gravel embankment with his ears within a meter of the rails, so that he could hear their characteristic vibration if a locomotive came up the line behind them. Geyl found a sheltered patch of ground slightly uphill from the rails and slept fitfully, waking shivering in her blankets several times an hour to hear the mastodons' tearing foliage and tree branches and stuffing them into their insatiable mouths. There were nightjars in the trees along the river, and their intermittent cries made the night seem colder and more menacing.
With a blanket over her head and shoulders she picked her way back down to the rails where Filer slept, and knelt beside him. For days she had smothered her desire for him beneath the weight of her mission, consigning its stridency to the tension of not knowing if she would succeed in carrying word back to Earth of Hell's impending revolt—or even if the entire mission were a sham and a cover for something darker. But on the edge of interrupted sleep she suddenly understood why she wanted him, as she had never wanted Peter or the dozens of other men she had worked with over the years.
She bent forward and listened to him breathing, lying on his side with the light of Hell's gray moon making his face pale and his hair dark ash. Beneath the lingering smoke of the campfire she smelled another, more ancient smell: tension, concentration, and beneath it the very male promise of violence. There's something wrong with me, she thought, and that's why I'm here. I call it my training but I'm only fooling myself. I should be ashamed of what I am, but I've never been prouder. The smell of him summoned an even sharper pang of desire, and the insight that she had been trying to deny for long days rose to undeniable clarity: I want him because I am what he is.
"Filer, please make love to me," she said.
He turned his face toward her, blinking and squinting. "I have a system of ethics, Ma'am."
Certainly the oddest refusal she'd ever heard of. Geyl grit her teeth, shivering. "Then at least have mercy on a woman who's freezing her shameless ass."
His strong arm reached out, took her arm and pulled her down toward him. He raised the edge of his blanket and she slipped beneath it, wriggling up against his back. His warmth was salvific, his smell overpowering.
She placed her head on the bundle of clothes he had set on the stones for his pillow. "You're right about me. I am a sicaria, sent here by the government of Earth. My true name is Geyl Shreve. Your true name isn't Filer Fitzgerald, is it?"
"No." It was a regretful whisper, fading to a sigh.
"So you're a sicaria too. I knew it. I smell it."
"The male form is 'sicarius,' Ma'am."
By next midmorning the land had flattened somewhat and the river broadened. They could see the forests to the west where Filer wished to lead and then lose the mastodons, assuming they would want to forage more than they would want to follow the railcar once Filer put his skinner away. This was still Moomoo grazing land, tall with the brown grass of early autumn, and the longhorn cattle abandoned by their mysterious masters could be seen here and there, dipping their heads to graze, then raising them to warily sniff the wind.
Something was agitating the mastodons. Several times Chirp raised his trunk and released a high, ragged shriek, waving his deadly steel-bladed tusks from side to side in a movement reminding Geyl of a terrier shaking a rat.
Filer pulled his automatic rifle from the railcar's splintered deck and placed it in his lap. "Watch the track!" he called through the cab's rear window. Geyl nodded, suddenly glad she was in the cab and wishing Filer were too.
Filer stood, one hand gripping the fuel tanks, and re-emphasized his orders to the mastodons by a long, continuous hoot on the skinner. Both mastodons were looking south, shaking their heads and making calls Geyl had not heard before. They rounded a shallow curve, passed through a small aspen grove, and emerged into the open once again. The river gorge was now scant meters from the north side of the tracks, and both mastodons were on the south side of the railbed.
As if in unison, both mastodons stopped in their tracks, raised their trunks, and trumpeted. Filer blared in response on the skinner, but this time the big animals were taken by some stronger force, and bolted south, away from the tracks, hooting and shaking their heads savagely. Geyl pulled the throttle back and the car creaked to a halt.
"Stay in the cab!" Filer shouted, thrusting the skinner under his belt and leaping from the back of the railcar, rifle in hand.
"Like hell!" Geyl threw the cab door open and pulled Filer's pistol from the seat beside her.
Filer slid down the south embankment, Geyl close behind. They rounded a stand of young mesquite, and Filer put his arm out.
Ahead lay a longhorn bull in a circle of trampled grass, its neck torn open, the ground around it dark red. Standing over the carcass was a smilodon, its muzzle soaked in blood. The cat was inching backwards, its head scanning back and forth between Chewy, who was advancing, head down, and Chirp, who was curving around further out, apparently trying to get behind the predator.
Chewy stopped, waving his head back and forth. The cat's eyes returned to Chewy each time the mastodon shook its tusks. Chirp, now some distance behind the kill scene, abruptly turned and trumpeted, then charged.
Filer saw the cat snarl and vault over the fallen bull, leaping one way and then another. Chewy whipped around faster than Geyl thought a pachyderm could manage, slashing at the fleeing smilodon. Chewy's tusks missed the cat by decimeters, striking the ground and hurling up divots of soil. Filer grasped Geyl roughly by the upper arm and hauled her between several aspen trees. He dropped her to the ground, spun around, and released a burst of several rounds in the big cat's direction.
The mastodons were fast, but the cat was nimbler, and the bullets went wide of their mark. Geyl smelled its musk as the creature darted past the aspen grove scant meters away. Chewy thundered past the grove, Chirp close behind. Both mastodons' heads were down. This was to the death; all posturing and trumpeting ceased.
"That cat-smell drives mastodons wild," Filer said, then cursed and left the grove at a run. The mastodons were following the cat back toward the rails. Filer stopped, crouched, and fired a deafening blast into the air over Chirp's back. The thunder of live fire finally reached the half-maddened animal, and it stopped.
Chewy, however, had already breasted the rail embankment, and hurled himself down the other side in pursuit of the smilodon. Geyl pulled up beside Filer just as Chewy, trumpeting, fell over the embankment's edge into the river gorge. The mastodon slid on one side down the rutted bank for twenty meters, then struck a three-meter boulder and flipped completely over. One more agonized shreik and the big animal was still.
The smilodon, smaller and more agile, made it to the gorge bottom unharmed and began loping along the river bank. Filer fell to one of the rails, sighted on the fleeing cat, and fired. The smilodon yowled, kicked violently into the air, and landed in the water just off the bank, thrashing amidst a spreading stain of red.
"Can we help him…" Geyl began, looking for a safe way to descend the embankment.
"Geyl, no," Filer grasped Geyl's arm, then pointed to where Chirp stood on the track ten meters behind the railcar. Chirp's eyes were fixed on his fallen brother. "Mastodons know what death is. They understand respect, and they mourn. He'll kill anything that tries to get close to Chewy. Get back in the car and get it rolling. Now!"
Geyl nodded, pulled the cab door open, and gunned the idling engine. She eased the clutch into p
lay, and looked over her shoulder to see Filer pull himself smoothly onto the car's deck, rifle at ready in case Chirp should charge.
Chirp, however, seemed oblivious to anything but Chewy's motionless shape on the river's edge. Just before the car rounded another curve and shut the tableau out of sight, Geyl saw the mastodon raise his trunk and howl so mournfully she had to turn her head away.
Some sorrows are private sorrows, she thought, and gave the big animal the solitude he deserved.
"The Moomoos breed their cattle big, and they breed them mean," Filer explained. He had joined Geyl in the cab, and sat with one boot up on the cracked wooden dash. "They bred the longhorn stock brought from Earth with the wild aurochs that they found here. Not much will go after a longhorn on the plains. The dire wolves learned what those horns mean a long time ago. They stick to elk now. The cats are different. They're smart, but they don't seem to learn.
"When the Moomoos started herding out here on the plains, they noticed that although the woolly mammoths ignored the smilodons, the mastodons would attack the cats on sight. The cats were the only things left that could and would take out the longhorns. So the Moomoos began domesticating the mastodons. Mastodons are smart, probably the smartest of all pachyderm species. They learned fast who kept the big steel troughs full of corn cobs, and they seemed to understand that men controlled death-at-a-distance.
"Mastodon calves are singletons, and take years to reach maturity. A mastodon herd invests a lot in its young, who are very vulnerable to smilodons. The grudge is right there in the genes. Maybe the mastodons saw the smilodon hides nailed to station building walls and figured it out. They understand displays and power. Maybe they actually watched the Moomoos take out the big cats with rifles. We won't ever know for sure, but Mastodons began birthing near Moomoo stations, perhaps understanding that their young were safe from the smilodons with men standing guard. But now I'm sure it goes way beyond that. The mastodons seem to know that with Moomoos on their backs and swords on the ends of their tusks, they're kings of the natural world. And a man on a mastodon is probably the one thing the longhorns don't defy."
The Cunning Blood Page 26