The vision is of a place like here, but it is not here. Dust blows by, and tumble-weed, east to west. Mud’s third eye starts moving in the opposite direction, across stony earth and stubble and onto sand where a skeletal female impala takes high twitchy steps toward a fever tree. From a branch of the tree a male baboon dangles and drops and then scrambles over to a troop of his own kind. There are at least twenty of them, lean and squalid, spread out on the bank, and in the sand at the feet of every big male is a water hole. A mother baboon with a youngster hanging from her belly approaches one of the holes, and the male who guards it bares his teeth. The mother sits. At the next hole a huge male gnaws at the face of a dead impala calf, whom he holds by the neck and swings while he chews, and the limbs of the calf whip like vines. The male squints toward a pool of muck. In the centre of the pool a crocodile spins. When the spinning stops, the crocodile opens its jaws and out spills a gang of hatchling crocodiles. They wriggle to the far side of the pool, where the first of them is scooped up between another pair of jaws, these belonging to a lizard. Before the lizard repositions the hatchling so that it can be gulped down head-first, the hatchling’s miniature jaws snap at a fly.
On Mud’s third eye goes, past a running ostrich and along the base of a hill into the wreckage of fallen acacias. A little beyond the logs, lying on the ground, is a cow.
She-Screams. Her skull is crushed, her torso bloated. Her tusks and feet are still there, although she appears to have been dead for some time. A hyena enters the scene and tearsat the rump, and a torrent of maggots gushes from under a flap of skin. The hyena devours them. When a lappet-faced vulture alights on the trunk, Mud’s eye begins to close. The last thing she sees is the vulture looting gore from the skull.
* Certain fruits (such as that of the doum palm) ferment in the stomach and, if eaten in quantity, can cause intoxication.
* Known as underscents, these odours hover beneath the buoyant smells of dung, leaves, living animals and even slaughter.
Chapter Nine
Tall Time is worried. The persistent itch in his right ear, the oryx arriving at the salt lick, the anonymous she-one skeleton, the circle of vacated human “nests"–all proclaimed that the day would be unlucky. Not calamitous, the links were more indifferent than that, their collective message adding up to: Do as little as possible. Or, as his late aunt She-Balks used to say, “Venture nothing, forfeit nothing.”
Since quitting the vicinity of the escarpment twenty-one days ago, he has drunk only from mucky seepages, even though the links those days were generally favourable. Why, then, on a day when the links are not favourable, has he come across a giant water hole where water never used to be? He rounded the thorn trees and saw, downwind, a circular glare. A female Grant’s gazelle stood at the bank, head bent but not drinking. Mesmerized by her reflection, Tall Time thought. Or by the water, its sudden, uncanny arrival.
When she caught Tall Time’s odour she hobbled off snorting and he cautiously approached the hole. That the feathersand swill of previous drinkers were on the skin of the water told him the hole at least had a history. Humans dug it, he guessed, judging by the size. And yet in this vicinity there was no smell of humans. And why was the hole not swarming with other creatures?
He drank and showered, sprayed himself with dirt, ate all the tasty grass roots surrounding the hole, scratched his hide on a stump, had a second shower and a dirt bath (taking his time with each activity, slowed down by wonder and suspicion) and then started to feed on the thorn trees.
Late afternoon he is still feeding, still wary, but allowing himself to fall in and out of a memory of yesterday so that he can look for the powerful link he must have missed. He can’t find it. Or perhaps what he can’t do is identify it. Suppose Torrent was right about the links being infinite? Suppose everything is a link? High above him he hears the creaking of a big bird’s wings, and he thinks, “That could be a link,” and he reels within the sickening prospect that everything exists for the purpose of pointing to something else.
In his search for the white bone he has travelled long distances without reaching the horizon, and the misgiving has grown in him that even were it possible to hold a perfectly straight course you could walk a hundred years and never arrive at the brink of the world. “Domain without end,” he often finds himself thinking, and it sounds like a lyric, an old truth, but it is blasphemous. Thinking it now, he worries that he is cursing himself and he twirls his trunk three times to the left, three times to the right, drops to his foreknees and bellows:
With gladsome pulse and open throat,
Down on my knees I fall
To thank the She, creator of
The links, both great and small.
From shades of night She brings the light
And from the ground the grass.
From everywhere Her blessings break
Our praises to amass.
Full in Her sight we lowly stand
By Her strong tusk defended,
For She whose mercy guides this realm
Our footsteps hath attended.
Thus transported he is oblivious to the upwind approach of the She-B’s-And-B’s. They are directly behind him when the new matriarch, She-Brags, trumpets, “I told you he wouldn’t hear us!”
The greetings are far more passionate than they normally are between a bull and his kin. Not since the last Long Rains Massive Gathering has Tall Time run across any member of his birth family, and not since early in the drought has he had news of them. He tells them of coming upon the carcass of She-Bores-And-Bores and they tell him, weeping, that it was a single human with a miniature gun that killed her. He sings “Where Do the Tusks Go?” and, as the last line is fairly optimistic (“And there to float serene, past care, upon The Shoreless Water”), the greetings erupt again, and the evacuations of dung. “You are the same,” he gloats. They are not, hecan see that. To a cow they are angular, and the calves smell sickly. What he means is, they are not dead.
When the greetings are over, She-Brags rumbles, “Let us drink in proper order.” The big cows go first while the younger ones keep the calves–the three who are small enough to risk falling down the water hole–from approaching the perimeter. And then the adolescents drink while the big cows guard the calves, and after the adolescents have had their turn, the big cows fill their trunks again and pour water into the calves’ throats and over their bodies. Tall Time resumes browsing on the thorn trees. He waits until the family joins him before asking his adoptive mother, She-Bluffs, in whose sly, glittery eyes he detects a plea that he single her out, “What brings you to this place?”
“What brings you?” she says cagily.
“The big water hole,” She-Brags answers him. “Naturally.”
The trunk of the large tree he has been butting snaps and the tree falls, throwing up a stack of dust. “You have been here before,” he says.
“Not at all,” She-Brags says. She breaks off one of the tree’s branches.
“How did you know that the hole was even here?”
The matriarch wags her ears. All the other occasions on which she has preened in this fashion flutter through his mind, and he prepares for a self-glorifying response, but she says only, “We were told.”
“By whom?”
“Me-Me.”
“Me-Me?”
“Me-Me the longbody,” she says, watching him closely, “told She-Booms.”
She-Booms is the family’s mind talker and his former calf-hood playmate. She has only one tusk and was consequently timid and virtually silent until the first day of her inaugural oestrus. On the morning of that day her squeal swelled into a roar so powerful as to eventually produce in the ears of all the She-B-And-B cows an incessant ringing. Tall Time turns to her and finds her peering at him.
“YOU HAVE NEVER MET A LONGBODY NAMED ME-ME?” she thunders.
“No.”
“HE IS TELLING THE TRUTH,” she informs She-Brags.
“Me-Me is a notorious liar,
” declares She-Brags. “I knew she was the instant I smelled her.”
“SHE DIDN’T DECEIVE US ABOUT THIS WATER HOLE.”
“About its being where she said it would be,” She-Broods mutters. “But is it safe? Why are we the only creatures here?”
“If this were a hindlegger’s trap,” says the stern young nurse cow, She-Betters, “bones and carcasses would be everywhere.”
“Hindleggers have been known to remove the evidence,” She-Broods says darkly.
The reedy voice of She-Begs, who is a fine scenter, says, “There is no stench of hindlegger in the vicinity. And no ominous signs either, or the Link Bull wouldn’t be here.” She moves into Tall Time’s line of vision and fixes him with her supplicating eyes. “Would he?”
“No,” he rumbles, but feels fraudulent and turns to She-Booms. “This longbody. Why would you think I had met her?”
“SHE SAID YOU DID. SHE SAID THAT THE TWO OF YOU CROSSED PATHS WHEN YOU WERE AMONG THE SHE-R’S AND THAT YOU SPOKE TO HER THROUGH THE SHE-R’S MIND TALKER.”
“I have never been among the She-R’s.”
“Didn’t I say as much?” rumbles She-Brags. She appeals to the former matriarch, She-Blusters. “Mother, didn’t I say that our Tall Time would never mingle with those dreadful She-R’s?”
“Well, ah–” sputters the old cow, bits of bark dropping from her mouth. “You may … I can’t … ah … you… .”
“What did this Me-Me say she and I spoke about?” Tall Time asks She-Booms.
She-Booms’ odour turns anxious. Without meeting his eye she thunders, “SHE SAID THAT YOU PROMISED HER OUR NEWBORNS. SHE SAID THE PAIR OF YOU CAME TO AN AGREEMENT THAT IT WAS WORTH SACRIFICING THE NEWBORNS’ LIVES IN EXCHANGE FOR—” She stops at a slap on her rump from She-Brags.
“Promised her the newborns!” Tall Time is aghast.
“Naturally I didn’t believe her,” She-Brags says. “I said, ‘That is not possible!'”
“Who am I to promise the lives of newborns to anybody?” He gapes at the smallest of the three tiny calves, her thin rump, her meek flickering presence. “The lives of innocents!” he trumpets. He whirls upon She-Booms. “In exchange for what?”
“Calm down,” She-Betters says, as if speaking to a calf. “You are frightening the little ones.”
So he is. The smallest now cowers between her mother’s hind legs and Tall Time is reminded of his first sight of Mud. Looking past mother and calf, he sees that two ostriches have arrived at the water hole but they do not drink and he is overtaken by a promiscuous alarm, as if the ill omens here are so pervasive as to be undetectable. “Don’t linger at this place,” he says.
“I believe I know what’s best,” She-Brags snaps. “As it happens,” she says more amicably, “we do not intend to linger. We have heard of green browse to the north.”
“From whom?”
“Rumours abound,” She-Bluffs says slyly.
“The longbody?” Tall Time trumpets. He looks at the matriarch, who looks at She-Broods.
“A shared secret is no secret,” She-Broods mutters. “Thus spake the She.”
“Whom could he tell?” She-Brags says. Turning to him she says, “Me-Me knows where The Safe Place is.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Somewhere on The Domain there is a place called The Safe Place.”
“I know of it.”
She-Brags nods. “I thought as much,” she says. “When we hadn’t heard any news of you, I told myself, he is searching.”
“For the white bone!” a bull calf says rapturously.
Tall Time touches the youngster’s flank. “Speak of it as the that-way bone. It loses power when spoken of directly.” To She-Brags he says, “Does this Me-Me creature know of the that-way bone as well?”
“I am sure she doesn’t. She has never spoken of it to She-Booms. We ourselves learned of it from She-Laughs of the She-L’s-And-L’s. How Me-Me learned of The Safe Place, now … well, she knows where almost everything is. Where there is browse, where there is water–”
“But, Matriarch, she lies!” Tall Time trumpets, affronted that this slanderer should be granted the least credibility.
“It surprises me,” She-Brags says, “that you have never heard of Me-Me. No"–she anticipates his interjection–"I am convinced that you haven’t. It is only that she is notorious for trailing any number of families since the end of the last Long Rains Massive Gathering.”
“How unnatural,” he says.
“Oh, she is quite unnatural. Not only does she not respect territorial bounds, she craves the flesh of newborn she-ones. She couldn’t bring down a newborn on her own, she has no exceptional physical prowess. She says to the mind talker, Your newborn in exchange for the location of green browse, the location of The Safe Place. She asks for the bulls. She appears to be under the impression that we don’t value bull newborns as much as we do cow newborns.”
“But you have given her no newborn,” Tall Time says.
She-Bluffs smiles at him. “Nor,” she says, “have we said that we never will.”
“That is abominable!”
She-Bluffs folds a bundle of twigs into her mouth. “It is strategy, my dear.”
Tall Time feels the coarse trunk of She-Blusters rasp across his hide. He twists around and she brings her face close to his, her ancient bloodshot eyes fairly howling. “Don’t,” she growls. “I … we … all these… .”
“SHE’S TRYING TO SAY,” SHE-BOOMS ROARS, “THAT THESE ARE TERRIBLE TIMES AND WE DO WHAT WE MUST TO SURVIVE. OF COURSE WE WOULD NEVER GIVE ME-ME ANY OF THE NEWBORNS. BUT WE LED HER TO BELIEVE WE MIGHT IF SHE PROVED HERSELF OUR ALLY.”
“It is to her advantage,” She-Betters says, “to lead us to soft browse that the newborns can eat so that they remain fit.”
“It is to her advantage,” She-Broods says morosely, “to tell us where to go so that she knows where to find us.”
“OUR HOPE,” She-Booms continues, “IS THAT WE COME ACROSS THE … THE THAT-WAY BONE, AND THEN WE CAN GO TO THE SAFE PLACE ON OUR OWN AND HAVE NOTHING FURTHER TO DO WITH HER.” She opens her ears. “HAVE YOU ANY SUGGESTIONS AS TO WHERE WE SHOULD BE SEARCHING?”
“Torrent said to go to the most barren places and the hills and to look for an extremely large standing feast tree. What were you told?”
“NOTHING LIKE THAT. THE SHE-L’S-AND-L’S SAID IT WILL BE FOUND NEAR A WINDING RIVERBED NORTHWEST OF A RANGE OF HILLS.”
Tall Time is taken aback. After a moment he says, “Torrent’s information came directly from the Lost Ones.”
This creates an uproar and a great many questions and speculations, at the finish of which She-Broods mutters, “We had better widen our range.”
“I’ll find it,” says She-Brags.
“Have you really told us all you know?” She-Bluffs asks Tall Time.
“Dash it all, Mother,” he says. Her gleeful refusal ever to take him at his word is the reason (it occurs to him now) that he allows himself to lose touch so completely with the entire family. “Why would I deceive you? If I knew anything more, you would be the first cows to hear of it. And if I find The Safe Place, you will be the first cows I lead there.”
“THE SECOND,” She-Booms says, apparently without intending to, for she startles and then seems embarrassed to have divulged his thoughts, which were, it is true, that he would go first to Mud. Quickly recovering herself, she asks, “WHICH MUD? FROM WHICH FAMILY?”
The question annoys him. She-Booms is too free with her mind listening, and while he is anxious to learn whether there is any news of the She-S’s, he does not want his family–his adoptive mother–to know which Mud is so dear to him. Or even that there is a creature outside of his birth family who is so dear to him, although it is probably too late to conceal that. “I will lead you there,” he growls. “By my troth.”
“It is more likely,” She-Brags rumbles, “that I will lead you there.”
Tall Time looks at her, wondering if he can bring himself to ask the
unthinkable question.
“What is it?” she says.
He exhales a long breath. “Has any family given the longbody a newborn?”
She-Brags turns her back and says briskly, “Me-Me claims that the She-R’s gave her an injured one. In exchange for an island teeming with green grass.”
“No!”
“They are a lowly herd. I wouldn’t put it past them.”
“But there is no such island.”
“Don’t be so certain. Me-Me’s knowledge of The Domain rivals my own.”
It is intolerable to him, the admiration in her voice. “How can you trust her?” he trumpets.
“She can’t fool me,” rumbles She-Bluffs.
“Where and when did you last see her?” he asks.
“Four days ago,” She-Brags says, shaking dirt from the roots of the bush she has excavated. “At the huge Rogue’s web southeast of here.”
He looks at the water hole. The ostriches are gone and a flock of sand grouse hops indecisively at the hole’s edge. He is grateful that Mud is at Blood Swamp, where the water never migrates in its entirety and where, for more than twenty years now, the signs have been favourable. He would be there himself were he not searching for the white bone. And from now on he’ll be keeping a scent out for that revolting cheetah as well. He tries to picture doddering old She-Sees (he thinks that she is still the matriarch) contending with Me-Me. Considering how well fed the She-S’s are, Me-Me is bound to attach herself to them sooner or later. He looks at She-Booms–he is about to ask her which families the cheetah has been harassing–and finds her gaping at him and is overcome by the dissevered feeling of watching himself and therefore knows that he is living a moment already witnessed, days ago or hours ago, by some visionary cow. He knows that the moment is portentous. Later he will even imagine that he knew what She-Booms would say. Which is, “OH, MY DEAR TALL TIME! THE SHE-S’S ARE DEAD!”
The White Bone Page 12