—and Nusa kept on firing. Her sleeting bolts lit up the meadow like a beacon; they reflected flashes off the distant trees; the rocks beyond them flickered with the radiance of all the shrieking fire. The beast turned in confusion. Nusa’s bolts outlined it in a wash of brilliant heat; blue-white and crimson incandescence, purple
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auras, streaked with orange, splattered off the larger turning darkness at the core.
“Come on, Nusa—!” Loevil’s voice was frantic.
“I’m doing my part—” Her voice came gasping back. “Complain to him!”
The beast kept trying to ignore the agony across its back and side, kept trying to find Loevil—Loevil had one hope only—if he could hit the other eye... if he could blind the beast entirely...
—and then the beast stepped sideways, hesitating, cocking its head—but still jerking spasmodically every time the fire touched it—
—it had lost the scent!
The scent was covered up by fire and ash, by oil and tar, by grass and smoke, and worst of all, by the smell of the beast’s own charring flesh—
One eye was ravaged, the other was swollen almost shut. What vision was left to the Tyrant King had to be streaked with afterimages and glares. He was trapped inside a night that stabbed at him in stinging colors. He kept turning on his monstrous pivot, roaring, raging wrath and madness; he turned back again, around and screeching at the source of sparkling agony—distracting, always distracting—turned toward Nusa now and moved— his steps thundered like the shaking of volcanoes— Loevil stopped where he was, paused in midscramble, straightened and stared—he wiped the grit and ashes from his face and smarting eyes, the tears were streaking down his cheeks like ice. The beast was moving down toward Nusa, toward the narrow spit of lake before her—would he stumble into it or not?
Loevil couldn’t tell—he bit his lip and began racing after it. If he’d had time to think about it, he’d have run the other way—his mind was gibbering at his body: No! Goddammit! No!
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Carrying his rifle in one hand, he loped across the ground, straight at the tower of darkness, straight for the lashing tail—he had to see for certain! If the monster went around the lake, then he’d have to draw it away from Nusa—and then what? Who’d distract it off of him? Down the slope he pounded, all the while trying to catch a single glimpse of the footing of the monster. If they’d planned it right the beast would hit the shallows of the tar pits first before he ever got to Nusa, a place where he’d bog down and—they could stop him there! He was so close—tacking back and forth across the meadow, first toward one and then the other, back and forth, always a little closer to the tar, but—Loevil had to see for certain!.
Something was happening. The beast staggered—
—and slipped—
—and sank forward a little, as majestic as an ocean liner sinking—
—and every bit as tragic, this ship of cold prehistoric night—
—and then the beast jerked upright, thrashing, catching itself and balancing abruptly with its tail flailing back and sideways, splashing across the surface of the water, spraying steam and droplets in twinkling instants illuminated by the flash of Nusa’s bolts—the tar lurked just beneath—
—there was oil floating on the surface. The beast stood in the shallows, ankle-deep on footing slippery as ice, and sliding toward the deep—
—another step, he skidded, caught himself again and kept on moving through the waters toward the pinpoint brilliance of his anger—
Loevil’s hand crept to his collar and touched the tab of his communicator. He whispered, “Now, Nusa. Now— do it now!”—and prayed she’d heard it.
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She had. She laid her rifle down and picked up the crossbow lying on the ground beside her. It was armed already, a bolt carved out of wood was poised within its frame. Its warhead was a matted wrap of grass and cloth; the grass was dry, the' cloth was soaked in oil and tar. She touched her lighter to the bolt and let the fire lick at it—it flickered for a nervous moment, then it caught and burst aflame.
She brought the crossbow up and aimed—carefully, now—she wasn’t aiming at the beast, but at the dry grass just beyond him where the oil soaked into the shore. She wanted to ignite it and from there, they hoped, the oil on the water would catch fire too. The whole front half of the bolt was flaming now—
She let it fly—-
—it whistled through the darkness, an arc of flame across a velvet sky—it rose gently up and seemed to hesitate, then arced back down to Earth as if homing on the beast, slanting down like the debris of some large and distant fire, the explosion of some piece of man’s not-quite-perfected technology—
—and went tumbling past the beast and past the oil and bounced futilely beyond. She’d missed.
“Shit!” she said, and reached for a second bolt.
The beast was still trying to move through the shallows toward her. It was having trouble with its legs. The water steamed around it, parts of its skin smoldering and peeling—it was making liquid gasping sounds, deep rattling grunts, a bubbling noise; its lungs were filling up with fluid—it kept on struggling through the tarry bottom—
Loevil’s eye was caught by a flicker of motion—
—the first bolt hadn’t gone out, it was burning in the grass, and there was—someone moving toward it, picking it up and—
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“Triir
“Huh? What—” That was Nusa—
“It’s Tril—Tril is out there!”
She was moving across the field, holding the flaming bolt by its end, moving toward the deathbeast—she was running now—
The deathbeast turned, it swung its massive head, its eye came down and looked at her. As if it knew.
And Tril stopped before it. She met its gaze and her face was unafraid.
Her eyes were grim, and cdive again.
Deliberately, she bent and touched the torch she carried to the ground, to the dry weeds and grass that stood therej They exploded into flame. She jumped sideways and touched the torch again—she touched the torch and jumped and ran, again, again! The smoke began to rise around her. She drew an arc of fire circling the shoreline of the oily lake. The beast’s escape was gone—
And then, while framed in fire, her own eyes glowing in the glare, her face bathed in orange flickering radiance, she stopped and stood and looked back at the beast —it was almost motionless, transfixed by all the light and by the single darting figure in the flames. She looked up at it, her face was fixed in angry ecstasy, triumphant vengeance was a cry of joy! Her lips were stretched in something like a smile, but painted on with madness, her teeth were bared in glorious rage—
—there was a God!
This thing—this blackened, maddened mountain! This smoldering hurricane of meat and horror—this thing was merely ancestor to God—the real God, the one who was compassionate—she knew that now!
—and even as she looked at it, this thing who’d taken Eese—he had no right!—she was already moving her arm back and stiffening it—
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Nusa stared, amazed. Loevil was already running toward her, shouting, “Tril—!” But she was so far away— —and Tril swung her arm, as straight-armed as if she were throwing a grenade, an arc as perfect as if it had been drawn on bearings, the bolt came rising up, around and high—and she released it and it rose upward, whirling through the air like a baton, leaving gorgeous streaks of yellow, slow-motion flame, and hurtled toward the beast’s one staring scarlet eye—
The beast jerked back—the bolt bounced off its charred and ravaged chest and through its grabbing arms and fell and hit the shimmering water—the oil on its surface exploded with a roar—the beast jerked back again, its footing slipped, it skidded, and—the beast jerked back again and off the shal
low shelf, slipping, skidding into deeper water—the beast jerked back—the flames were roaring all around it!
It turned—tried to turn—its legs no longer visible, it turned within the oil—and sought escape! It jerked as if on broken strings—and when it saw that it was circled by the fire, it knew fear.
The ancestor of God had learned to be afraid.
It pointed its head at the sky and opened its mighty jaws—and from the throat there came a sound that no human ears had ever heard before, the screech of an era dying—the realization by the beast that there was finally something mightier than he. The deathbeast screeched a note of crimson lizard anguish, pain that peeled flesh like ribbons, shriveling terror into blackness, a single mote of feeling at the core, all wrapped in horror, crying, anger flayed away from it and nothing left but whimpering gasps, pitying, hissing, dying—there was nothing left to hate; not even fear—it was so small—
—and Loevil, slowing, knew what killed the dinosaurs. He padded through the marshy field with the knowledge
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growing in him like a star. It was humanity killed the beast—oh, the humanity, the humanity! All the people— not the hunters, just people like himself who came and walked this world and altered drastically the collective conscious of the prehistoric pastorality. It was humanity who taught this world how to fear. The beasts were only beasts, they lived and died, unconsciously, a moment of emotion, hunger, satiation, fear and rage, and little more— but human beings strode among them and the world trembled, changed. The beasts looked up, and for a moment, wondered—and in that wonderment, they died. If for one moment only they were smart enough to think, then the knowledge that they gained when they saw human beings hurling fire would be a terror that would bum itself into their vast, no longer impassive, deep collective consciousness, and somehow, gradually across a million years, the lesson would sink in—the dinosaurs were dying—
Species would tremble in their ecological niches. Individuals would know more than stress, a deeper kind of anguish, unexplainable. They would lay their eggs with thinner shells because of that distress, so fewer eggs would hatch and that would only add to the distress of species, herbivores and predators alike; thinner shells and decreased hatchings, creating even more distress. And one day, there would be no more—
—and all because a man had come and walked the Earth a hundred million years before his birth and made the dinosaurs begin to fear and wonder.
Nine tons of lizard screeched in pain. The pitiful little creature whimpered. It was dying—its world was dying— and Loevil could not help but feel sorry for it. This tiny thing, so ponderous yet powerless, writhing as the flames enveloped it—it couldn’t know; it was only trying to do what it was bom to do—and being punished for it—
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Loevil felt sorry for it because he saw lhat it could hurt too.
And all that it had ever tried to do was just defend itself.
A thought was shouting inside Loewi’s head. Vm the real deathbeast—me! I am man! And man kills whatever he touches—we have left a swath of death across this land—I am just as guilty.
How dare I condemn Nusa for encouraging Ethab— I’m as much a part of what has happened as they are; I condoned it with my presence! I helped them be what they were! The realization left him numb. There was an empty place where his feelings used to live. I’ve become what I despised.
Either I’m wrong for doing it—or wrong for despising—
He didn’t know the answer to that thought
The beast was still attacking the fire, snapping at the roaring flames. Its sounds were small, but somehow brave; it still refused to die.
A deathbeast never quits—it isn’t smart enough to know when it is beaten.
Loevil began moving toward Tril again. The flames were spreading across the meadow, but not rapidly. “Tril —! Over here!”
—and there was Nusa, also moving toward her.
Tril stood just beyond the fires, sooty, blackened, smiling, almost blank again, but not quite. She was lit like a martyr by the orange flames. Her eyes were bright as spotlights, she was still alive, exhausted yet triumphant.
In the lake, something struggled, unidentifiable and moving into deeper water, splashing, bellowing, fading. The night was closing in around it—
Tears were running down Tril’s cheeks, leaving streaks of pink drawn in the layer of ashes on her face. Nusa
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came up beside her and touched her gently on the shoulder, but she didn’t seem to notice. A moment later, Loevil arrived and touched her other arm. “Let’s go,” he said. “It’s almost dawn.”
—it was over....
Nineteen
THE RETURN
They did wind-sprints. They ran a hundred meters, then they walked a hundred, ran a hundred, walked. Ran and walked, ran and walked. The ground beneath their feet turned barren. The grass gave way to shale, sandstone, gravel, dust and sand. Outcrops of rocks came jutting from the darkness like reaching claws.
The line of dawn was red, a bleary lid across the eastern edge of darkness; they kept it on the right and plunged up northward, always looking for the beacon that would mark their destination. The ground was rising steadily, it made it hard to lope; the uphill slant defeated them, tired them too quickly. Somewhere up ahead, there would be a pale glow against the sky, a stabbing orange beam inside it—was it just beyond that crest of rocks, or would it still be hidden behind the next far maddening ridge? •
“It hurts—” said Tril. “Loevil, please—it hurts!”
“Good!” he said. “That means you’re still alive. Hang on to that hurt—it’ll keep you going.”
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They were stripped down to the bare minimum of equipment, just their rifles and the scanner; they’d thrown away their helmets long ago—not the goggles though, they needed them for flashback—and the sidebags and their backpacks and even their canteens once they were empty. They moved like demons now, wild-eyed and crazy; they raced across the glimmering morning with a grim determination bom of rage and lust and hunger, fear and pain and madness—just a little farther now and they’d be going home.
Ice water! Air conditioning! A real chair! A stinging, steaming shower—soap! Clean-smelling skin! Towels and heat lamps and scents and powders! And then a bit of Beethoven, a heady glass of port, some hard cheese and fresh fruit too—a bowl of spicy soup! The warmth would soak the gritty achiness out of their muscles—
Loevil’s knee was swollen purple; it throbbed with every step. And if he picked his footing wrong and slipped or came down on it hard, the pain went stabbing through him like the bite of fiery jaws. Oh, God, it was so far— Loevil was beginning to understand it better now; at least, he realized what heroism was—because he’d finally experienced it himself. It wasn’t that nonsense that Ethab had told Megan about courage, about doing things because you were afraid of them, and thus in mastering them, you made yourself a man—oh, all that stuff was true, of course, but it wasn’t heroism. It was only growth. You could grow for years and never be a hero—never be complete.
What it was—this giddy madness, this strong and bloody siren—this thing called heroism—it was all done for the thrill of it.
In that one moment when you confront the fact of your own death, that’s when you are most totally alive! —call it peak experience, call it mystic, or “Eureka!”
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or even inspiration—and all of them are right in their own way, because in that flashing moment of Aha! At last!—however you define it, the person is enlarged and functioning totally at the highest levels he can reach. And when it’s death he faces, then every sense and synapse is riveted on just one fact: this moment of identity and terror, will he find the answer to survival? And then the last coin falls and all the pieces fit together, and eve
rything goes click! inside his head and all the muscles move in lithe, elastic synchrony, a sliding joy of certain sureness as the thought transforms into triumphant action—and suddenly the taste of terror, that thrill of bright adrenalin, coursing fire in the veins, turns into ecstasy, completion, godhood transcending godliness!
It wasn’t courage—never! That was just a side-effect, a symptom of the hotter fire. The forge was savagery, the soaring, high, exciting moment when the essence of the ape and the fullness of the mind transformed the man into a higher being: a congruency of action, a communion of identity and thought! It was aliveness! That was the drug that led a man into the hungering search for heroism in the bed of horror—he wanted to be finally alive!
Loevil understood because he’d tasted it.
And the horror of it was that one taste of it was not enough. He wanted more. He wanted it again.
Completion was followed by incompletion. After the thrill of the up came the ache of the down, the emptiness, the hollow feeling in the mind and body as the pieces -separated, fragmented. Completion never was a lasting satisfaction—as contentment staled, it faded into echoes, and the thirstiness returned—it wasn’t slaked at all, it was only whetted. The hunger was a driving thing, and Loevil knew that one bright incandescent moment of completion couldn’t be enough—he wanted more. He wanted a completion that would last forever—but if he couldn’t have
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that kind, then he would take the momentary tastes that lasted only seconds. The awful truth of it was this—
The longer it takes getting to the top, the more spectacular the view...
—and the more horrifying the drop.
This drop could go on for years. And at the end of it was death.
Loevil looked down below him and saw the yawning vista of his future, its landscape spread before him like a map. Every path was neatly charted—and they all led back to here. The sense of desolation.
He should have felt fulfilled—instead he felt de* pressed. Already he was plunging into letdown from the thrills that he’d experienced. It was the knowledge that he carried—he’d been too high and seen too far—he knew the prices of those heights and vistas. He’d been transformed not only by the journey up, but by the knowledge at the peak. He’d become a filing he didn’t want to be, a hero. He had never had respect for heroes in the past because he couldn’t see the difference between a hero and a fool. Now he could. The hero sought the thrill—and so would he again, if he ever had the chance.
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