Deathbeast

by David Gerrold

  210

  DEATHBEAST

  running around loose in a civilized society? This is an easy way to get rid of them.”

  “But the animals, the killing—?”

  “The theory is that all these creatures are already dead. A hundred million years dead.” He sniffled and wiped his nose; the cold air wasn’t good for his sinuses. “It’s a solution,” he said. “Not a good one, I guess, but it works.” “Is that why you’re a guide?” Her voice was quiet, but still the question sounded like an accusation.

  He was mildly annoyed. “I told you, sometimes a hunter gets killed in a particularly messy way. People get what they deserve—” And then he realized that it applied to himself as well. “Boy, is that ever true—”

  She didn’t say anything.

  Tril looked up suddenly, confused at the abruptness of their silence. She looked around, and. then at both of them. Back and forth her glance swung. After a moment, she remembered to swallow.

  Neither Nusa nor Loevil was paying any attention to her. Loevil forced himself to snap out of his self-conscious reverie. “Let’s get set up,” he .said. He stood up—he creaked as he did so.

  Nusa stood up too, a little slower—she didn’t want to do this thing. She offered him the scanner.

  “Leave it,” he said. “There’s too much interference around here. It won’t be much good until he’s right on top of us, and once we’re in position, we’ll have more visibility with our goggles.”

  Nusa nodded and put the scanner down next to Tril. She looked at her, concerned. “Will she be all right?” Loevil thought and said, “Probably. As long as she doesn’t move—and I doubt she will.” He bent and wrapped her in a foil blanket, then moved to turn the lantern off. Tril started to whimper as he did so and he looked back at her. “You want the light?”

  DEATHBEAST

  211

  She didn’t answer directly, but she smiled as he turned the light back on. He adjusted it to just a subtle glow, not much more than a soothing night-light for her, but still enough; it would be an anchor to keep her to this spot. She’d be okay. “Come on, let’s go,” he said, and prodded Nusa.

  The last night was upon them.

  The Earth was a young planet, not yet four and a half billion years old—most of that time she’d spent settling down into her nice comfortable orbit, developing all the manners and habits of a lady of her position. She hiked up her continents, belched fire from her volcanoes, reversed her magnetic polarities whenever she felt like it, and in general, acted like the lovely, well-behaved planet that she was. She was a credit to her star. Indeed, Old Sol was proud of her—often he would say to Mars or Venus, “Why can’t you be more like Earth? At least she knows how to keep her atmosphere stable.”

  Life was only a comparatively recent style for Earth to wear—only a few hundred million seasons so far, and she wasn’t sure yet if it would become a permanent fashion; but she was patient and she could wait to see how things developed. It might be interesting yet—even though she’d had nothing but variations on the theme of dinosaurs for ever so long now and they were starting to get a little monotonous....

  Her little sister, the moon, was also almost four and a half billion years old—but she didn’t look a day over three billion; that was because she’d never gotten herself an abrading atmosphere that would wear her pretty mountains down. So she seemed almost virginal. Perhaps she was—or then again, perhaps eternity was kind. She still wore the same face here that she would wear a hundred million years from now; her map was pretty much

  DEATHBEAST

  212

  the same—minus a few craters perhaps, but nothing major. She preserved her youthfulness quite well.

  The only human eyes that had gazed upon the moon so far were those of tourists from another time, and they were so familiar with her older self that they looked at her without a sense of awe or wonder. It was not a'good introduction to humanity from the moon’s point of view —she did have a streak of vanity that had yet to be fulfilled—and human beings should have been a proper audience. But these few callous visitors were lacking in respect; they were hairless and presumptuous primates, the weak descendants of belligerent apes—and they had known a later moon, one who was a conquered woman— they knew her only as a cold desert globe of rocks and dust and mountains sheer as lies beneath an inky sky and baking sun. They were from an age of science and had no mystery in their lives—and they did not expect to find one here. Now, on the other hand, if they’d come from a time before the age of science, when myths still ruled the night and darkness, they would know the proper homage to the orb that circled Earth: they would see her as she was intended to be seen—a globe of shimmering white, an alabaster island floating in the glittering waters of the infinite starry sky.

  In the time of myths, still eons yet to come, it would be possible to fly in boats of yew or cedar, hung with sails of faery linen spun from spider’s gauze and rigged with silken cords and crystal fittings. The sky would be a foaming ocean to those frail vessels, her waves all flecked with dust so fine it hung like mist against the darkness, glowing with the magic bright-reflected from the silver moon—no matter how far you sailed, you could always find her light somewhere in the sky.

  In the time of myths, there would be an ivory city on the moon—a place where faery souls, yet unborn, lived

  DEATHBEAST

  213

  before they went to Earth to be entrapped in mortal flesh. The Earth was dreaded Hell to them, you entered through the dark and bloody portal known as birth, and were thereby damned into the endless tunnel of unholy life. But those who sailed to that nameless city on the moon, those who journeyed up from Earth across the bottomless seas of the sky, brought tales to the unborn souls that filled them with intrigue, despair, and, worst of all, a growing, yearning wonder.

  Through the deep and dangerous waters of the night in boats fragile as glass, they washed in like bits of driftwood—they came in on breakers made of mist and landed on a shore of ebony—and all was gleaming all around. These sailors, striding forth like angels—sweet and lithe, or tall and bronze, or dark and mean, or bright and fiery—these sailors landed on the moon like questing prophets. Their eyes were always deep like pools of jade and moonlight, and they spoke in tones intense with questions and emotions. They told tales of their adventures, of the things that they had braved in life and death, of all the obstacles they’d faced to make this journey to the moon, and all the other battles they had been in too—they told of savage fears that taunted them like weasels biting at their backs, like jackals coming down in packs, like lions chasing them through jungles— they told of beasts of wrath and madness lurking deep in hollows, dark and endless—haunting forests, filled with sadness; they’d explored them wrapped in coats of sorrow; a maze of gnarled thoughts and failed wishes, the place where spoiled dreams had come to die, where frustrations fed and grew into the towering plants that nourished all the beasts of madness: the black forests of despair—

  Oh, and there was magic too; the most amazing kind of magic—the boldest adventure of them all—a magic

  DEATHBEAST

  214

  more alive and powerful than anything that would ever be known within the nameless city of the moon—it was the magic of the joyous laughter of a giggle of children scattered on a hillside like a sprinkling of butterflies—or the gurgle of a newborn infant, or the look within its mother’s eyes; the greatest magic of them all, the one called love—the wistfulness of newly sensed emotion in two younglings’ eyes, their cautious touches, and the tender passion when they learn the reason for delight, and the happy strength that comes to them in later years as the thing that grows between them reaches fulfillment—and yes, the happy sadness of remembrances as well, the strength that comes to one who carries on alone because of special knowledge carried in the heart—that what existed once between two souls had been unique—of all the possibilities of the universe
, nothing would ever occur again in just that way, and that’s what made it something to be cherished. He wasn’t gone, he still lived within her heart.

  This magic was the one the faeries liked to hear the best. It was the most intriguing of them all. And it was the lure that drew them from their city, outward toward the inky waters and the blue and distant Earth. She was a pool in their sky and she called to them to come and live on her, if only they would only listen—she blew winds at them with scents of something precious carried soft like clouds, a magic that they had to go and taste themselves, if only they would wonder what it tasted like—

  —for only those who lived in mortal flesh can know the truth of love. Those who live forever, the souls who walk the wide ways of the city on the moon, those who choose to stay unborn; they never do experience love, nor even sex, perhaps not even lust—they can only giggle in their ignorance, content to live forever, without reason, without meaning. But ever so occasionally, a faery

  DEATHBEAST

  215

  might look up and wonder. And for an unborn soul to wonder is equivalent to dying. As soon as thoughts begin to form, the faery is no longer pure; she has turned into the glimmering of an embryonic soul and the blue-green eye of Earth will draw her into it sure as shining candles magnetize a moth. '

  That’s what the travelers did to faeries—made them wonder; they gave them life and killed them. Every time a mortal came to walk the city with no name, then hundreds, thousands, millions turned to souls and flickered instantly to Earth to be bom across millennia of years; time works in different ways for those who are immortal. The faeries had no choice—when they heard of love, they had to know more of it first hand—faeries are fickle glimmerings, impulsive things, easily bored—curiosity transcends immortality and they were drawn to it because it was the greatest adventure of them all—

  Or so the legend goes.

  But this world—this dark and hostile Earth and the cratered bloodless eye that hung above it—these worlds were before the time of myths as well as science. Here was nothing.

  There were no souls, not on the Earth, not on the moon. Not yet. These dwellers in the slime, these scaly creatures, armored beasts and spiny monsters, these things that walked the plains and forests, stalked the jungles, swum the seas, the streams, the rivers—these creatures all were soulless; they hadn’t learned to grow them yet—they never would; they were not the kinds of creatures that souls would be drawn to—and there were no souls yet to be drawn to them. These creatures merely lived, existing. There wasn’t wonder here, except that which was imported from a later time—and wonder doesn’t always travel well; it should be savored where it ripens. Bottled wonder never has the real fizz and giggle in it

  DEATHBEAST

  216

  Anyway, this was a soulless world still. Someday perhaps, there would be souls living here. Someday the little shrews that lurked beneath the rocks, within the crevices, under the fallen logs, inside their earthen burrows, someday perhaps these little peepers might begin to wonder —and then they might be homes for souls. For if wonder brings on death to faery things, it is the birth of life to mortal ones-—the two of them unite to make a total being; flesh and spirit are mated in the forge of wonder. But not yet The little mammals couldn’t do it while the dinosaurs were here—not yet—because the competition was too fierce. All the ecological niches still were filled with beasts too large or fierce or hungry. Red-eyed monsters stalked the night. The little mammals had to wait for now, trembling while the dragons walked the Earth in bellowing, soulless pride. Someday perhaps, not yet....

  They would not forget the dragons.

  But because they had not grown their souls yet, because there were no myths, the moon was still an empty ball. There were no faeries yet. A place of magic waiting for its magic to occur. A god cannot exist without its worshippers and neither can a magic happen if there is no one for it to happen to.

  So Tril’s soul walked the hollows of the moon alone.

  She had journeyed in the chariot of her mind, on wings so pale they were nothing more than thoughts, they glowed like ghostly veils waved before the distant stars, and where they fluttered, they left clouds of glittering dust that twinkled briefly, sparkling myriad colors before fading into nothingness again. The phosphorescence of a childlike enchantment wreathed the madness of poor gentle Tril. She needed wonder too. Her journey was a silent one, in silence it continued; her eyes were wide as empty rooms.

  The island of the moon was dark. The city with no

  DEATHBEAST

  217

  name stood shining on a plain of ash and rock. The avenues of ivory were deserted, the lights glowed brilliantly in marble halls, the spires stood vanilla-clean and empty, and all was still unbuilt except as memories within TriFs mind. She wandered through the walks and boulevards alone. There was nothing here but memories of the future; loneliness whispered through the distant towers, sighing like the chorus of the wind.

  There were motes, like dust, like little insects, fluttering around her—they seemed attracted by her presence; they were little glassy sparkles that chimed like tiny bells, they were multicolored ghosts of moths with jeweled eyes of red and green and blue. Their wings were long transparent ones of speckled gossamer and veined with black and silver. They clung to Tril like baubles and when she touched them she could hear the hint of wordless songs, the music of emotions trying to express themselves. Perhaps these were the embryonic faeries—she didn’t know, she couldn’t—and besides, she was entranced herself, enchanted like a faery in a madness of her own—which was why she’d found herself drawn to the city on the moon. She’d known this place before, hadn’t she? In that time before she found herself in mortal flesh, she’d lived here, mindless, happy—

  But anyway, these insect-things, they were some form of ethereal life, a supernatural existence that later on might grow into a larger kind of magic. Perhaps it took a touch of wonder to turn them into faeries; and then a larger taste to make them into souls. Perhaps even now, Tril’s presence was a catalyst to begin that aching soaring process—but for the moment, these insects weren’t anything, not yet the faeries who might greet a traveler with a burst of wonder. And if they were trying to talk to her, they had no-words to do so with—perhaps, like insects, they were merely phototropic—but instead of light that

  DEATHBEAST

  218

  they were drawn to, it was life that so attracted them; the warmth from TriFs soul drew them to her like an orange lantern.

  She wasn’t sure what she was looking for here—there had been someone. But he was gone now, wasn’t he? Would he be here? It was the only place she knew to look—

  There was a tunnel that her body seemed to live in, a place of lingering shadows, a place limned not by light, but darkness, and filled with things of massive size that screeched like all the terrors she tried not to know about, as well as all the little voices that lurked outside her head and gnawed quietly at the base of her delicate and fragile skull—

  That tunnel—it was all around her other self. She had had to flee her body for this place instead, and now she wandered down the empty corridors trying to remember the name. If she could just recall it, then she could escape the shadow-tunnel—he’d take her back home to—to—she couldn’t remember that either. But it was someplace she wanted to go.

  The corridors were floored with diamond. The marble pillars glowed. Everything was light. The lunar horizon was visible beyond them like a crust of gleaming ebony. The sky was studded with jewels more various and multicolored than any puny bits of matter might conceive. The dust of craters glittered like silver sand. The breakers of mist crashed silently on magic shores. Tril’s footsteps were the only sound, they echoed loudly in the halls. The little insect things were gone now—vanished where?—and she was all alone again.

  The wind plucked at the silken gauze she wore around her—it was a foil blanket too, but she couldn’t see the
foil part, only the shimmering. The wind was like a handmaid, always touching, readjusting, patting at her sleeves

  DEATHBEAST

  219

  —and it spoke to her of places it had been and things that it had seen; it had been doing that for days—and it brought her presents. It brought perfumes to her and tantalized her with them—flowers mostly, but other things as well; and sometimes blood and death—but those were interesting in their own way as much as flowers were. To the wind all scents were equal and she offered them to Tril to share the fair delight of them. “Here, try this one; it’s the honeysuckle flowers on the vines—now try that, it’s the sap from the piney conifers, isn’t that nice? And sniff at this one too—what do you think of its muskiness? Isn’t the night-grass sweet? Do you smell the big beast yet? He’s coming too, you. know—his smell used to be like cold leather, like ice and snakes and thunder— how he smells like fire and ash, now he smells like forests burnt and creatures dying—but he still smells powerful, don’t you think? Like something huge and metal maybe— “And do you like these other smells, dear Tril? The smell of fresh-dug earth? Remember that? The smell of something dead? The smell of plastic too? The smell of ozone? You should, you know—