“Not yet? Well, you just wait a bit, you will, you will—” And then the wind whipped off, a flighty maid of taunting thoughts and malicious ways of teasing. She brought her tray of scents and offered you the nice ones, and when you breathed them in, enjoying them, she’d flirt at you with something horrid too. The wind could be a nasty sport. She giggled as she vanished up the stairs.
There was a tower in her mind and Tril climbed up to the top of it and looked out at the landscape. But the curtains were still drawn across the windows. They were wide and open, but so empty—she couldn’t see beyond them. All that she could see was the fineness of the gauze that swirled soft across the spaces. Beyond them there seemed only darkness, maybe a hint of orange light
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perhaps. The lunar landscape was out there, cratered and bright in the naked sunlight. Tril’s hand stretched out and touched the veils, stroked the smoothness of the nonexistent cloth—
She could hear voices now—if she listened. They were filtered—but that was normal. They were echoing in the tunnel that they all were trapped in—
“Loevil?” someone was asking. “Anything?”
“No, nothing.”
“Same here.” After a moment, the same voice suggested wistfully, “We could sneak away... ?”
The words were meaningless to Tril. She didn’t know what they were all about. She stood idly at the window of the tower, listening and stroking at the smoothness of the veils—they were so cool—and so silky—
“It wouldn’t be safe to move in the dark. There might be other things out there. Hungry ones. I wouldn’t want to risk it.”
“All right,” said the voice. Should she recognize it? Or the other one? “Out,” it said. There was a click. Static crackled. It made the tower feel crumbly—if she’d let it. Something said to her, “Peep,”
She blinked.
It opened its yellow eye and asked, “Peep?”
She heard the sound as if from a great distance. “Peep?” it repeated.
A creature perhaps? Small and silver-furred, with a flat face and big dark eyes, a white belly and brown shading on its back? The tower trembled—
“Peep?”
She blinked again. And the veils started to tear— “Beep,” the scanner said. It had stopped questioning. Now it was sure. “Beep”
Tril’s mouth began to form a word. She asked, “Beep?” She knew that word—there was something—
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Beep.
“Beep?” she frowned. “Beep?” she asked.
Her hands found the scanner. Its yellow eye was open. Beep, it said, quite certain of itself. Beep.
“Beep?” What kind of a statement was that anyway? What was it trying to tell her?
Beep.
Maybe it was hungry—a bit of ration-bar perhaps. Beep. It merely looked at her, uncaring. Blinking.
She stroked it and tried to comfort it. She said as softly as she could, Please, be a little creature—be a jriend—“Beep?” And finally, suddenly, the windows fell open with a crash—
Nope, I’m just Loevil’s scanner, coldly saying, Beep. Scanner. Something—she—
Beep.
—tried to remember—the pieces—a name—she—all
fragmented—
Beep.
—and slowly—
Beep.
—her face started to—
Beep.
—quiver—one last—flicker alive—try to—
Beep.
“Beep!” she insisted. Please, not this—dorft do this— leave me alone—
Beep. The sound was insistent.
—and crumpled softly into tears; her first real ones— Beep.
—the tunnel was retreating from her faster than she could follow—leaving her, defenseless against the reed truth—“Beep?” she tried to ask, but it was already too late; she knew what she was saying. She could see the name before her, she could remember it now—
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Beep.
And then the sobs came like a gulping torrent; her throat clutched up and tightened like a painful knot. She held the scanner in her hands and cried softly into it while it blinked and beeped at her. The name was—
“Oh, Eese—Eese—” The emptiness of endless night was like a chasm yawning in her life before her, there was no other side. He was somewhere in that coldness and she would never know his touch again, feel the warmth of him beside her like a wall—she’d loved the smell of him, the fuzziness of his chest, the rippling of the muscles in his legs and belly—she remembered now that he was Eese, and he was gone, and she was left alone and very much afraid of being left alone—and she let her grief pour finally out upon her lap and on the scanner that she held within her hands—
It said quietly, one more time, Beep.
And then its light turned red.
( She didn’t notice, her eyes were blurred by tears. The ground was rumbling somewhere near, but her sobs were racking harder.
And Loevil’s scanner kept on beeping.
Eighteen
“FIRE!"
Tril sat in a puddle of grief and cried. She gulped and choked in sobs that streaked her eyes and left her throat all tight and dry and hurting. Her chest was racked, her shoulders heaved, she poured out all her tensions, all the fear and anguish that tormented her—
She sat in a pool of orange light, with Loevil’s scanner beeping at her feet. Its red light blinked alarmingly—but she didn’t see it—
The moon was high and bright and haloed in a sky of blue and blackness. The world was a nest of purpling senses. To her left there was a grove of trees; behind her there were sheltering rocks—she was in a hollow underneath a cleft; it was a perfect place to hide and cry. Before her was a meadow and a swampy tar pit, lost in darkness. Somewhere out there were people she could trust. To her right... there was an open stretch of land that sloped gently up toward higher meadows; they too were flanked by trees and rocks.
And in that deeper darkness at the far end of the
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meadow, something moved, something huge and horrible.
She didn’t see it, wasn’t looking for it—she had no idea where she was or where she was supposed to be. She was crying now because she was confused as much as any other reason, and distraught as well—and because crying has its own momentum that carries a person on and on.
Something moved—was moving closer. The ground was trembling with the beat of its approach. A darker black within a moonlit deathscape—it had detached itself from terror and came stumbling onward like a spastic mountain—blindly—gurgling in its throat—
It was unsteady—it wasn’t certain—but always it came onward. It paused to hold its nose up to the air, holding that position for an endless moment—as if it had forgotten why it came and was concentrating on remembering —then began to cast again, back and forth, its head came swinging low as its tail raised up high, almost perpendicular and drifting like a sail, a huge and towering balance for the massive weight before it—the beast was tall on massive legs that stumped like pounding iron—it pivoted its weight upon a steel pelvis, levering forward to attack the space before it, biting as it moved, then raising high again to sniff the chilly air—it came closer, ever closer, moving with deliberate pace, a rhythm carved in blood and pain—
The red eye blinked against a blackness all around—
They would hear it coming. Its breath was like the ocean’s crashing surf breaking in a storm—and there was a bubbling in its lungs, the fluid aftermath of a thousand crimson slashes—
Tril sniffed into the back of her hand, her sleeve, and wrinkled her nbse. Her tears were starting to subside a little now. She honked and sniffled, wiped again, and gulped an occasional “Eese ..
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—and something grunted deeply.
TriPs head came up, listening—
—There was silence from the blackness—
—and then the pounding of the ground began again—-a thunderous booming—oh, so slow and ponderous—and growing ever louder—
—it was the roar of a throbbing Earth—a beat, a beat, a beat again as it came closer—
The blackness broke and separated into pieces—the largest one came moving toward the lantern’s glow—
—the deathbeast loomed above her, something huge and foul-smelling, ash and fire-tasting, with one red eye reflecting back the orange glare—
Tril turned her head and saw it.
Meat and bone, the head swung down, the tail raised— the eye came down to meet her, glaring, staring at her— blinking—what was this—? Confused—pain clouding its own purposes—
Tril was motionless, her throat so tight she couldn’t breathe—the tension knotted her insides—a whimper finally bubbled out—“Oh, no, oh no—” Her hands clutched at her face. “No, please—not me—please, God, not me—please, no—” The sounds were babbled meaningless, her mouth worked by itself, her eyes were wide and horrified—
The red eye was a siren, all the power of authority, the dreadnaught of the night, it was the smoldering pit of God confronting her at last—and questioning....
Was it you who challenged me?
“No, no, please, God—not me—please—”
God gave a deep and ruminative grunt. He was a bit confused. So much had happened—
Tril choked on her own words, and coughed and hacked and gasped—
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God blinked, and found an answer to its question. It began to swing its head, its mouth began to open—
Tril raised her arm against it, cringing—- —and then the night turned red—two blazer-bolts came snicking through the air—blue-white turning yellow, orange, red, an afterglow of luminescent purple, flecked with stars of white and fiery static—shrieks of sawtoothed anger, electric, pouring, slashing—sheets of wrath, arising, roaring—the beams came sleeting in and splattered flesh out of the cratered wound that was the ravaged side along God’s head—flesh charred and shriveled, sizzled, smoked—in half an instant, all was agony—
—God’s head jerked up and out, away from Tril, who sat there stunned and gasping still for breath—
The bolts came in and all around him, snicking, flicking, touching—he reared up, confused and angered, readying to charge, his tail rising, whirling, toppling trees and shattering rocks; already he was stumbling in confusion—back away from Tril, he barely missed her, then caught himself and roared and came back turning toward the glaring sources of that stinging brightness —the night was shattered by the crackling energies, the bolts came screaming in—electric acid banshees made of neon fire—the beast’s lungs poured out its rage in bellows like the sounds of mountains dying—
He was illuminated once by a bolt that splattered off a rock, a wash of light across him like a fountain—he glowed like he was jeweled for an instant, sparkling from each myriad detail as if carved in twinkling brilliance, intense, incredible and infinite—the image would be etched forever on the retina of Tril’s mind, it would be framed in fire, the sight of God transformed into a beast and towering huge before her—
There were souls here! If only she had seen them!
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—and then the moment broke and shattered—the
beast came down and charging—threw itself across the meadow, down a tunnel lit by flames and beams of nightmare white—and static, crackling all around, ozone purpling in the air, and smoke reflecting as it curled, and screeching notes of deathbeams flaring—
She couldn’t stand to see it! She hid her face behind her hands and tried to shrink inside herself again—if she could just remember how—
The beast went stumbling—and stopped, stood poised in momentary indecision—the beams came flicking at it from two different sides—it reared and roared and snapped at them—it caught one in the mouth and jerked in agony as its tongue went sizzling and shriveling—it struggled onward toward the sources, the fiery foreshortened flarings at the pinpoint head of every screaming bolt. The beams appeared to him as points of lightningmaking-pain, distanceless and hanging in the blackened smoky air—
He moved now toward the points—one had disappeared, the other still was biting—it flared at him again, again—each time he roared in agony—and he kept moving toward it—
—suddenly it was gone! No, there was pain—he swung and turned and almost stumbled—there was the point of wrath again, its acid-brilliance glaring just beyond his reach—it had jerked back to the other side and he shifted his direction, moving toward it, snapping, grabbing—it flashed and bit at him, a laser-strafing acrid agony, and always, always just beyond his reach—
It was so tiny, so far away—but how it burned!
—he came towering toward the point of fire, leaning into his charge and moving faster, leaning lower and darting with his head, back and forth, staggering as the fire bit his thighs, his back, his tail high and lashing—
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The beast came on toward Loevil, a mountain of moving flesh. Loevil fired steadily—he played his flashes all about the creature, trying to confuse it, stun it, and wishing for the kind of superchargers that would let him pump enough heat into the thing to finally kill it—
Nusa, in awe, stood up to watch, her rifle lowered now—the beast had to advance toward Loevil first before she could distract it. It was outlined by his screeching beams, the flickering explosions of energy and light— it was awesome—the incandescent beast biting at the flames of Hell!
Nusa’s eyes were bright, reflecting back the crimson glare of the battle roaring in the marsh before her. There was Loevil, unafraid, a slender silhouette poised on a jutting rock, his blazer held up like a staff of heaven, hurling flames across the sky at the demon-charge of Satan’s promised Armageddon thundering down upon him. He was even more beautiful than Ethab! She realized it with a start. Loevil was smaller, thinner— almost boyish—she thought of him as David unafraid beneath mighty Goliath—and dark inside of her, there lurked a small and hungry thought that wondered what he’d look like poised above her, naked, gleaming with the sweat of love and plunging, pumping, impaling her with her own gasps and sighs. There was a monster inside of her that needed to be fed—she wanted Loevil now to feed it—and hoped that just beyond that, he might also prove to be the hero destined and foretold in all the legends who would tame that monster, master it and make it slave—if he could do it, she would own him. The master is forever owned by the responsibility to the slave....
But.. .do heroes have that inner strength of purity and justice any more? Are there really any heroes any more? Or are they just another kind of frail human being
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no different from the rest of us, except that they don’t show their fear? Is the power in the man—or is it just the power that he uses, flicking agony at something monstrous, that imparts a sense of strength to him in the minds of all who watch? What doubts assail the hero’s mind? Or is he too busy doing to be doubting? Is that what makes a hero?
As if in answer, her communicator crackled, “Come on, Nusa—!!!” Loevil’s voice was almost panicky. “Fire at him! Fire! Distract the bastard! He’s coming in too close, goddammit!”
“Uh—” She fumbled with her blazer, momentarily confused—and then, reflexively, her training taking over —thank you, Ethab. That part worked—the rifle floated up into her arms and screeched and hurled fire at the beast that loomed across the field—
Loevil was backing steadily before it—he’d already stopped his firing. Why make it easier for it to find its mouthful? Nusa’s bolts etched sideways through the dark and sizzled at the beast’s right flank—he jerked as
if confused, and then turned off, distracted momentarily by her dispassionate, methodical fire.
Loevil stood there soaking in the cold heat of his own sweat—and gasping too. He’d been looking for a place to jump to—and there hadn’t been one. It was like the worst part of a nightmare, the one where you are being chased and can’t escape. The beast was something from the shadows of the soul. It no longer was a creature spawned of Earth—it was something large and monstrous moving through the nightscape of your dreams, always just behind you—and every time you think that you’ve escaped it, there it is behind you, roaring out again from the madness underneath the shadows—a blackened charred enigma, writhing, lashing in a frame of radiance.
—and then the beast turned back to him.
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Oh, God!—it didn’t believe in Nusa.
It wasn’t fooled. It wasn’t going to chase the pain!
The head came swinging down, around, its nostrils wide and flaring—it almost seemed as if its thoughts were being broadcast—
There is something near those bushes—I can smell it!
It smells like those things that always hurt.
The beast was certain but ponderous in its step. Loevil kept himself from shooting—oh, God! How he wanted to!
The beast ignored the raging fire slashing at its other side—first this one here; then the other—even in its pain, the beast could tell that there were two of them—
Oh my God! “Come on, Nusa!!” Loevil didn’t want to fire—he couldn’t fire—he’d give himself away—he skittered sideways across a gravel shelf, picking his way with care, aiming his steps for the patches of grass or mud, so as not to make a sound—he gritted his teeth, hard enough to make his jaw hurt. “Come on, Nusa!! Shoot the bastard!!”
The beast’s head came around, following the source
of the words—
Loevil kept on moving—he was caught on open ground. On one side was the oily blackness of the lake, the purple water with the tar beneath it—on the other was the upward sloping field, he couldn’t even try to outrun the beast across that stretch of ground, the slant of it would hold him like molasses, the beast would come down on him like an avalanche—
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